The imps stared at him. Jerry got on one knee, using his arms to corral the family behind him. When the lift stopped, Jerry held his breath, expecting the worst.
Which is exactly what he got, because as soon as the elevator doors opened, six men pointed automatic weapons directly at Jerry’s head.
Andy had an idea where his wife had gone.
Actually, not his wife. That thing his wife had become. That monster wasn’t Sun. It was Bub, controlling her DNA. Bub had infected her, altering how she looked and acted. Almost as if Sun were possessed. But he knew the cause was physical, not spiritual. Sun had some kind of disease.
Which meant, hopefully, she could be cured.
Hopefully.
Until then, he had to figure out some way to protect her. If there was even a tiny chance of getting Sun back, Andy would do whatever it took.
That, however, would pose a problem. Shortly after Sun ran off, the Spiral went on full alert. Rimmer’s men were all armed and looking for targets to shoot. One target in particular.
Andy had gotten to Kane’s office just as the General was leaving.
“You can’t kill her,” Andy demanded, holding out his palm and keeping the older man from advancing.
Kane’s eyes narrowed. “It isn’t your wife anymore, Mr. Dennison-Jones. It’s a demon.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Oh, really?” Kane stepped back, and Andy followed him to his computer monitor. Kane typed in a command, and Andy stared at the security footage, watching as Sun opened cell after cell, freeing terrifying creatures.
“If we don’t stop her right now, at this rate she’ll have released every guest within the hour.”
“You don’t have to kill her.”
“Dr. Gornman tried a sedative. It didn’t have any effect. The knock-out gas didn’t work on the faustling, either.”
“You can capture her. A net. Or force her into a cell.”
“And risk the lives of those under my command?”
“Please, General. It isn’t Sun who’s doing this. It’s Bub. If you kill Bub, she could return to normal.”
“Is that so?”
Andy didn’t think so. Sun had an infection, and the infection affected her thoughts. It was unlikely that Bub, if destroyed, would cure Sun. But if Kane focused on killing the demon, maybe it would buy Sun some more time.
“What if it was someone you loved?” Andy implored. “Wouldn’t you try?”
Kane sighed, his lips pursed. Then he said, “I can’t make any promises. My first duty is to this facility, to make sure the visitors are detained and never reach the outside world. My second is the protection of those who work here. But if I can fulfil those duties, and still contain your wife without destroying her, I’ll try.”
“Thank you, General. Do you know where she is?”
Kane frowned, then typed another command on the keyboard. It was a camera on subbasement 5, Sun rushing up to it and tearing it off the wall, making the image go dark.
“She’s destroying some of the surveillance cameras as she opens the cell doors. We’re sending a team down.”
“How is she opening the cells?” Andy asked.
Kane didn’t answer.
“General?”
“She apparently got a key card and the access code from Dr. Chandelling, after she tore off his ear. He’s in the infirmary.”
“Can’t you change his code?”
“No. It’s a safeguard. The key personnel all have unique codes. That way, if there is a breach in the chain of command, others can override it. Several of us have the power to secure the facility.”
“What do you mean by
secure
? You mean fill it up with cement?”
Kane stayed silent. Andy made his hands into fists, trying not to let his anger bubble over. This was Samhain all over again. History hadn’t taught these people anything.
Then again, it apparently hadn’t taught Andy anything either, or else he and Sun would have never come here.
“Just don’t kill her,” Andy said, quickly leaving the office.
Out in the hall, he startled to the sound of automatic gun fire. It was very close. Andy placed his back against the wall and peeked around the corner.
Three guards were shooting at something unseen further down the hallway.
A millisecond later, one of the men was pounced upon by something large, covered in colorful feathers.
It was the dinosaur.
Achillobator.
Tall as a man, five meters long, with a head bigger than a crocodile’s and taloned feet that tore open the soldier as easily as unzipping a sleeping bag. Guts spilled out, and the creature immediately opened wide and bit off the second man’s head before the soldier had a chance to adjust aim. The third turned and tried to run, but the achillobator’s tail whipped around like a stingray, impaling him through the back and out his chest.
Charged with adrenaline, Andy sprinted in the opposite direction, heading for the elevator. A small tree fell before him, and Andy jumped over it before realizing it wasn’t a tree at all, but a giant centipede, brown and thick as the trunk of a forty-year old oak. He glanced over his shoulder as he ran, and the insect reared up, its mandibles clicking and antenna whipping around furiously just as the dinosaur plowed into it. The centipede quickly wrapped around the prehistoric creature, coiling like a python, and Andy called the elevator with his key fob, unable to turn away from the two monsters as they locked in mortal combat.
As they battled, something else slunk around the corner. It looked like a giant bird of prey, with a massive, curved beak and sharp black eyes. But as the full animal came into view, Andy saw its back half was that of a lion.
The griffon.
It focused on Andy, and the feathers on its neck ruffled, standing on edge. Then its maw opened wide and it let out a terrifying screech that made Andy feel faint. It hunkered down—
stalking mode—and its yellow talons
click-click-clicked
on the tile floor as it slunk toward Andy.
This is bad.
Andy thought of the countless nature shows he’d seen over his lifetime, where some predatory bird gripped its prey and tore off strips of flesh while it struggled to escape, and he was hard pressed to think of a worse way to die.
The griffon crept closer, and Andy shrunk against the elevator doors, no clue at all how to defend himself. What do you do when a gigantic eagle/lion hybrid attacks? Go for its eyes? Curl up in a ball? Or just pray it all ends quickly?
When it was a meter away, the griffin lowered its body to the floor, getting ready to spring.
The elevator still hadn’t arrived, and Andy wondered what his very last thought would be. That he’d failed Sun? That he blamed himself for getting them into this mess? That it sure hurt like hell being eaten alive by a griffin?
Then the creature squawked again, immediately spinning around and attacking the dinosaur that had locked its jaws onto its back leg.
The elevator opened—blessedly empty—and Andy retreated from the monster wars and told the lift to take him to subbasement 5.
That’s where Sun would be heading. To free Bub.
Andy had no clue how he was going to stop her, but he had to try. If there was even the tiniest bit of humanity left in his wife, he’d find it. She was strong. One of the strongest people he’d ever known. If anyone in the world had the willpower to fight back against the infection that had overtaken her, Sun did.
As the elevator took him deeper into the earth, Andy tried to get his breathing under control and considered the future. If he was able to help Sun, and if they got out of there, and if Bub didn’t destroy the world.
A whole lot of
ifs
.
If things did work out, he vowed he and Sun would get off the grid. Go somewhere the government couldn’t find them. Hide away in a little podunk town where Sun could be a veterinarian and Andy could teach French or Spanish or something equally banal at the local community college. Change their names. Start a family. Get away from all the death and the monsters and the ever-looming threat of humanity’s annihilation.
When he reached subbasement 5, Andy tensed, but understood he couldn’t brace himself for whatever he was about to face. Maybe it would be crawling with creatures. Maybe Sun was waiting to kill him. Maybe Bub was already freed, ready to take the elevator to the surface and make good on his promise to destroy humanity.
But when the doors opened, the hallway was empty. Andy quickly made his way toward the cell Bub and Lucas shared. Bub hovered in place, eyeing Andy malevolently. Lucas sat in his chair, looking pensive.
“Your lovely wife?” Lucas asked.
“She’s… infected.”
“Aye. Controlled from within, so to speak. In 1518, in Strasbourg, there was a dancing plague. Over four hundred people afflicted and unable to stop dancing. It lasted almost a week, and some literally danced themselves to death. Their disease controlled their actions.”
“Was that Bub?”
“No. Least, I don’t believe it was. Just saying that people, sick people, sometimes aren’t responsible for their actions. Remember that, whatever happens next.”
“Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.”
Andy twisted around, and saw Sun had come up behind him. She had that toothed, demonic smile on her face, and there was blood on the front of her hospital gown.
“You… you can fight this, Sunshine,” Andy said. “I know you’re in there. You can—”
Sun backhanded Andy, sending him to the floor. Then she placed a key card up to the cell’s LED panel.
“Sun! Don’t!” Andy reached for her leg, and was summarily kicked in the face. Sun quickly punched some keys and the cell door opened.
Then there was a violent crash.
The batling was knocked clean out of the air by a flying net of steel, careening into Sun and sending them both sprawling onto the hallway floor.
The steel mesh fence that had separated Lucas and Bub fell on top of the batling, pinning it underneath. Sun lay to the side, unconscious and bleeding from a gash on her forehead. Andy quickly crawled to her. She had a pulse.
“I hate noisy roommates,” Lucas said, stepping out of his cell and staring down at Bub.
Bub grasped the fence in his clawed hands and threw it back at Lucas, hitting the Manx man in the midsection and knocking him into the cell. It then beelined past Andy, who punched with everything he had as it landed on Sun. A moment later Bub had the key card in its hand, then it turned on Andy, placing its claw on his chest.
“Jooooooooin usssssssssssss, Dennison.”
Andy felt a pinch, then Bub was gone, flying down the hallway. Andy lifted his shirt, saw the puncture mark in his sternum.
I’m infected. Like Sun.
He looked at Lucas, who was sitting against the rear wall of the cell.
“Wee bastard is strong, ain’t he?”
“He… Bub… injected me…”
“He tends to do that.” Lucas got up, seemingly unharmed, and walked up to Andy and Sun. With a punch too fast to see, he clipped Sun under the jaw. She slumped to the floor.
Andrew looked at his wife—the thing that was his wife—and realized he didn’t want to live like that. He’d been willing to do whatever it took to save Sun, but the thought of being a prisoner in his own, demonic body, slavishly serving Bub…
Andy would rather die. And he selfishly dwelled in self-pity for several seconds before saying, “Maybe you should just kill us both.”
“I didn’t peg you as one to give up, Andy. Didn’t you defeat this Bub fella once before?”
“No. I mean, we hurt him, but…”
“How’d ye hurt him?”
“Radiation.”
Lucas nodded. “I can see how that would work.”
“But it didn’t work,” Andy said. “It only slowed him down, but it didn’t kill him.”
“Slowed him down, did it?”
“Killed his cells. Bub has such an advanced physiology that he’s more susceptible to radiation than most life forms.”
“Is that so?”
Andy blinked, a beam of hope cutting through his despair. Was Bub’s mutagen serum also affected? Could a dose of radiation stop the infection in him and Sun?
“There’s an x-ray machine in the infirmary. They also have a PET scanner. Which means a cyclotron, for creating injectable radiopharmaceuticals.”
Andy didn’t know much about medicine, but Sun used a PET scanner at work (which always amused him because she was using a PET scanner to scan pets—irony is funny). It involved an intravenous radioactive tracer. Maybe some combination of internal medicine and external bombardment was worth a try.
“We can give it a go,” Lucas said.
“Okay. But you have to promise me one thing. If I… if I turn into one of those things…”
“Don’t worry, lad.” Lucas patted Andy’s shoulder. “I’ll put an end to your and your wife’s misery.”
“What? No! I changed my mind. I want you to make sure Sun and I are cured. No matter how long it takes. I don’t want to be a martyr.”
Lucas chuckled. “Understood. Truth told, your species always seemed a little too eager to self-sacrifice, if you ask me. Willing to march into death for the greater good. Noble it can be on rare occasions, but other times it’s just bloody stupid.”
“Can you help me with Sun?”
“I can do you one better.” Lucas picked up Sun and slung her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing. “And we’d better move along. Our demon friend is freeing beasties, and the ones on this level aren’t too friendly.”
Dr. Chandelling wanted to get the hell out of there.
The Sun-demon had promised Bub would reattach his ear—which he’d gotten back after overturning Satchmo’s tank and dumping the hungry little fish onto the floor. But if that promise turned out to be a lie, Chandelling needed to see a doctor. Someone with more talent and experience than Gornman.
The problem was, they were on lockdown. Which meant nothing got in, or out, until Kane and his staff of rent-a-thugs got the situation under control. Knowing Kane, that could take hours.
Chandelling didn’t have hours. His ear was on ice, but it wouldn’t keep fresh forever.
“Are you a Shakespeare fan, doc?”
Chandelling was startled by the voice, and he flinched in his hospital bed. He searched the room, but didn’t see anyone.