Bad Company, page 27
"Shit, Ellie," he said, the grin sliding off his face. "You're hit."
"No, I'm—" She wanted to say No, I'm not. Tell him he was ridiculous. That she was covered with other people's blood, not her own. But she could feel it now, a coldness in her gut that was just now turning to pain. She hadn't noticed while she'd been pumped up with adrenaline and running at Kirchner, but she felt it now. It came to her that the falling guard must not have missed.
I mean, how could he have missed? He'd been practically close enough to kiss me.
She looked down then. Saw the hole in her shirt, blood just starting to seep through. Felt a wet numbness in her back where the bullet must have exited. She wasn't just hit. She was shot. Shot bad. And worse than that.
She could feel it starting to heal.
68
"Shit, Ellie," Quinn said again. He watched as her face splotched up. Sure sign it's the virus, he thought. But which one? Unfortunately, he knew the answer. It's the bad one. There was no way she could have been infected with the good one.
"Yeah, shit," she agreed. She lifted her shirt and stared down at her stomach. The bleeding had already stopped and Quinn thought the edges were starting to scab up. She looked up and he saw pain in her eyes and a deep, abiding fear. "Quinn?" she asked desperately.
He knew what she wanted. He checked that his new gun had bullets in it; Ellie pulled hers from Kirchner's temple. Kirchner didn't move, perhaps sensing that Quinn would beat him to death if he said a single damn thing.
And then he'd miss this moment, Quinn thought.
He pointed the gun at Ellie's head. She closed her eyes hard then opened them again. She was going to watch it coming.
Braver than anyone I've ever known, he thought.
His sight was blurry for some reason, and he blinked rapidly to clear it. The gun was unsteady in his hand.
Get yourself together, asshole! Make it count. Don't let her suffer.
After growing back three limbs, he felt like he knew about suffering. He didn't want Ellie to experience that kind of pain. And she didn't even have the mutated virus to give her her life back. Make the suffering worth something.
Wait a second, he thought. The mutated virus. He lowered his gun. What had Kirchner said while torturing him?
"The virus has…something…with the…whatever…"
Quinn shook his head desperately. That wasn't the part that mattered.
"Quinn!" Ellie said, her voice tight. "What are you waiting for?"
He squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring Ellie's desperate tone and Kirchner's barely restrained smile, trying to remember.
Kirchner'd been standing over me, holding that fucking saw, talking while his assistant took notes…
Then he had it, nearly word for word.
Further mutation could—and almost certainly will—lead to highly unpredictable results.
"Highly unpredictable results," he said to Ellie. "They don't know what my virus will do."
She didn't seem to hear him. "Quinn," she said, tears now streaming down her face. "You promised."
"Bite me," he said.
She heard that. "What?"
At least now she's pissed, not scared. "No, no," he said hastily. "Bite me! Get infected with my virus."
"But Lucas said—"
"That was the old virus. Mine mutated." He grinned at Kirchner who wasn't looking nearly as smug anymore. "They don't know what it's capable of. And I think it's tougher than the old one." She stared at him not moving. "Come on, Ellie. What have you got to lose?"
"Yeah," she said. "You're right about that."
He turned his head, and with a quick slash of his scalpel, opened his own jugular. "Come get some," he said, and then folded Ellie into him when she stepped in close. Out of her heels, she was smaller than he'd thought she'd be and had to go up on her tiptoes a little to get her mouth on his wounded throat. Then the pain hit, and along with it the pleasure of pressing a beautiful woman to his chest, and he couldn't separate the feelings from one another until he was awash in emotions he didn't understand and didn't want to stop.
She lapped at the wound, tentatively at first, then greedily, keeping it open with her tongue and her teeth. Then she was really digging in, gnawing at the flesh, trying to reach his spine. It hurt. Not as bad as his limbs growing back, but pretty bad. But worse than the pain was the knowledge that his plan hadn't worked.
She had turned.
And why did I think my stupid plan would work? he thought angrily. Lucas said it wouldn't, and he might have been a weaselly little shit but he was at least a thousand times smarter than some dumb mick shooter from Southie.
Quinn didn't bother lying to himself about his blurry vision anymore; there were tears in his eyes as he brought the gun up to Ellie's head. He stroked her hair once, then pushed it gently aside to press the barrel of the gun right against her temple. Someone sane might have tensed as the cold metal hit bare skin, but Ellie just kept chewing madly.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. It might have been the first time he'd ever said that and meant it.
But before he could pull the trigger, she suddenly stopped biting him. He froze, hoping fervently that she wasn't just swallowing a particularly chunky bit of him but was really…
"Quinn?" she said, her voice muffled. Pulling her face from his neck, she tilted her head back, looking up at him. Her face was blood—his blood—from the lips down, but what skin he could see was clear of the angry red marks of the virus taking hold. "Quinn, it worked."
She pushed herself away from him and reluctantly, he let her go.
"Fascinating," Kirchner said, sounding like Mr.-fucking-Spock looking at a particularly interesting alien specimen.
Guy knows he's about to die, Quinn thought, a tiny bit impressed, and he's as calm as an undertaker at someone else's funeral.
"'Course it worked," Quinn said. "I'm a goddamn genius."
Take that, Lucas! Guess you were only a hundred times smarter than me, you poor, dead bastard.
Ellie chuckled at his lame joke then winced.
Winced?
Quinn jumped forward and grabbed her arm. Lifted her shirt up, exposing her stomach. The bullet wound that had been on its way to healed was bleeding again. Quinn turned Ellie by the arm. Exit wound was open and bleeding hard, too.
"Shit," he said. "It worked too good. You're completely clean."
"And shot," she said. She looked like she might slump to the floor for a second, but then she shook off Quinn's hold on her arm. "I'm good." She turned to Kirchner, who sat in his chair, legs crossed at the ankles, hands steepled in front of him as if he were at some kind of tea and biscuit social, and said, "Time to make it stop, Doctor Kirchner."
"Oh, my dear girl," he said, smiling with teeth that Quinn decided were going to be a lot less perfect in a few seconds, "There's no way to stop it now."
69
Obviously, Ellie had never been shot before. She should have been in pain and shock and probably scared out of her brain. But after the mind-scrambling agony and undeniable want that she'd experienced just moments ago—a malignant and malicious cocktail that had caused her to gnaw rabidly into another person's flesh—she was having a remarkably easy time functioning with something as small and relatively painless as a bullet hole in her stomach. Unfortunately, it looked like it might not matter.
"What do you mean you can't stop it?" She looked at Quinn. Back at Kirchner. "I'd guess you've got about three seconds before he starts cutting pieces off of you."
The threat of involuntary amputation didn't seem to bug him. "Oh, I am certain that Mr. Quinn will torture me. But not for long. And it won't matter regardless. What I have set in motion cannot be stopped."
"If you can start it," Quinn said, "you can stop it."
"No, I cannot," Kirchner said to Quinn. He turned back to Ellie. "And I will not. No matter what your pet thug does to me." His expression was beatific. "I have made gods of man."
"Then let's test your immortality," Quinn said. He'd retrieved his scalpel from the dead guard while she'd been talking, and he held it in his left hand as he stepped toward Kirchner.
"Wait, Quinn, there's no need." He looked a question at her. "We'll stop it without his help."
"How?" Kirchner cackled. "No one will believe you. Not in time, anyway." He pointed at the computer. On one screen text streamed by too fast to read; on the other a projection map of the world was marked with a number of flashing red dots. There were several insets with street maps of big cities. She recognized New York, Beijing, and London immediately, but there were several more. Each city map had a red circle on it that was expanding steadily if slowly. "No two people can stop that."
"Oh," she said, letting herself smile a little, "there's a lot more than two of us." She tapped the second button on her blouse, the one with the camera in it. "We've got a world-wide audience. You getting all this, John?" she asked the air. "Because I think the last few minutes of tape are going to be very important to a lot of governments around the world."
To her amazement, Kirchner still smiled at her. "Oh, I don't think that will help."
"You think I'm bluffing?" She popped the button camera out of her shirt and showed it to the smug old bastard. "I'm a reporter, damn it, and this is a camera, and I'm telling this story to the world!"
Stupid line, she thought. We'll have to edit that later. The hole in her gut twinged its opinion at her. If there is a later, it reminded her.
Kirchner chuckled at her like a kindly grandfather. "Without reception, you're not telling it to anybody."
He was right. She hadn't had Investigative Reporter John Lyman in her ear since she'd gone underground, which meant he hadn't been getting the live stream this whole time.
Doesn't matter though, plenty of room on the flash drive. Just have to get topside…
"Shit," she said. It all made sense now: Kirchner's calm, his willingness to talk, his fearlessness at the prospect of torture. He's going to blow this place up. She figured he must have set some kind of self-destruct into motion at the same time as he was setting the infected loose in the world.
"What is it?" Quinn asked.
She didn't hesitate. "Kill him," she said. "Kill him and run."
Quinn didn't hesitate, either. She thought he'd probably never hesitated in his whole life. He emptied his pistol into Kirchner's face then dropped it and was out the door before it hit the floor. Ellie was right behind him, but now the extra belly button the guard's bullet had given her flared up and she gasped and buckled over. Quinn stopped when he realized she wasn't behind him. He started back, but she waved him along, grunting what was supposed to be "Go on! Save yourself!" but just came out as a wheezing cough.
"Run," she whispered as he hooked his arm under hers and levered her up. Damn fool time to be chivalrous.
"I don’t know the way out," he said.
Or that. "Up the escalators and to the right," she wheezed. "First left after the second security doors." Guess I'm the chivalrous one. She pressed the camera with its flash drive of world-saving information into his hand. "Get that to Investigative Reporter John Lyman at Channel Seven News."
"Can't," he said, taking the camera and tucking it into the pocket of her blouse. "No pockets."
She smiled past the pain. "Idiot."
"Shut up, Ellie," he said. Then they both shut up and concentrated on getting above ground as quickly as possible.
Quinn dragged her stumbling over dead bodies and broken glass and out of the lab. She got her legs under her in the hall and was able to move quickly through Kirchner's apartments, the cat hissing at them as they passed. Then out into the underground park and up the escalators three at a time. She could feel blood soaking her shirtfront, her pants, pooling in her shoes. But no pain. It was pure adrenaline now as they flew down the corridors, skidding around corners and pounding through the slow-opening doors.
They almost made it.
Ellie felt the explosion before she heard it, punching her in the back and tossing her down the security hallway like a puppy toy. The noise followed, a roaring boom that deafened her, thankfully blocking out the sound of her bones breaking. Her last thought was, And we were so damn close.
70
Investigative Reporter John Lyman was not a worrier by nature. If there's one thing he'd learned in his work, it was that bad things happened to good people and no amount of preparation, trepidation, or consternation could stop it. And worry was the worst parts of all three.
John was worried.
"She should have come back online by now," he said to his short glass of Maker's Mark. His laptop showed no connection in the window where her video stream should have been. No sound came from the speakers. The feed had died shortly after she entered the elevator with the Latina doctor she'd bamboozled.
He'd been proud of her. She'd worked that contact like a pro. Got herself inside. He didn't know what story she was chasing, but if she didn't get it, it wasn't from lack of skills. And if she got hurt or…
He was going to have to call the cops.
"And tell them what?" he asked his laptop. "And what about the story?"
John was not a religious man. But there was one thing sacred to him: the story. And he knew Ellie felt the same way. He wasn't going to do anything to screw up her shot at a story. Especially a big story.
So instead of calling the cops, he sat back and took a sip of his bourbon. Flipped between the 24-hour news channels. Checked the AP wire. Even got a feed from a local station in Rochester. There was nothing for what felt like the longest time, and then they all blew up.
"Explosion rocks Rochester…"
"Mayo rival ruined…"
"Mysterious disaster in Southern Minnesota…"
His cell rang almost immediately. Work.
"Yeah, I see it," he said to the producer, putting down his bourbon unfinished. "I'm heading down there now. Send my crew to meet me."
He did a live shot outside the burning rubble. Interviewed some rescue workers who knew nothing more than he did. He didn't keep them long; they had more important things to do than talk to reporters.
What happened, Ellie?
He knew he'd find out. He always found out. It's what he did. But for once he wasn't excited by the prospect of untangling a mystery, of revealing the inner workings of a huge story and offering it up on the altar of the people's right to know. He just felt tired.
She was one of us, he thought. She didn't know it yet, but she was one of us. He meant a reporter. A real reporter. A throwback, these days. There are so few of us left. Maybe it was the smell of smoke combining with his weary sadness, but for the first time in twenty years he wanted a cigarette.
"Hey," said a man, approaching from the crowd. "Are you Investigative Reporter John Lyman?"
"Yes, but I'm very busy right…"
"Shut up and listen."
That got his attention. He wasn't even offended. He could tell that this man obviously had something he needed to say. And though he wasn't a gambling man, right then he would have bet his house that he was about to get a scoop on the cause of the explosion.
"I'm listening."
The man was short and stocky and clearly not Minnesotan. East coast somewhere, but not speaking with his true native accent. He wore clothes that didn't fit him: a suit coat that was too big over a tee-shirt that was too tight, skinny-leg jeans made for a much different body-type. It was hard to place his age. He was clearly not young, but not old either. Crow's feet around the eyes, but physically very capable. No gym muscles for this guy, but a strong build, utile in his line of work—whatever that might be. His eyes made John think of the worst stories he'd ever covered: the smell of four bodies in a ditch half-dissolved with lye, the sound of a dog tearing the cheek off its dead owner's face, the look of charred bones on a dead child who'd had the bad luck to be raised by monsters.
The man held something out. Pressed it into John's hand. It was the button camera he'd loaned to Ellie. It was a little worse for wear, but the flash drive looked intact.
"Where'd you get this?"
The man ignored the question. "Everything you need to know is on there," he said. "Except this: a lot of people died to get this to you. And a lot more will die before this thing is over. You'll want to get it to people in charge as quickly as possible. Speed will save lives. But there's one thing you have to do before you show it to anyone."
"What's that?"
"You have to take me off of it. Every trace."
"I understand, but—"
The man shook his head. "This isn't a negotiation. If there's any mention of me when the story comes out, I'm going to kill you, your family, and all of your friends."
John had been threatened before. Side effect of the job. No one wants to be investigated, especially those who were doing bad things. But this felt different, somehow. There was no bombast, no bluster. Just a plain statement.
"You don't have to speak," the man said. "Just nod if you understand. And if you don't believe me, ask your friend Ellie about me."
"Ellie? She's alive?" The man just stared at him until he realized what he was waiting for. "Yes, I understand," he said quickly. "Now, where's Ellie?"
"Mayo emergency. Critical condition." The man shrugged.
Since it was the only physical sign he'd given off, John suspected there was a story there. And there was no way he was going after it.
"She'll make it," the man went on. "She's tougher than she looks."
"I know."
The man looked at him closely, as if judging if he believed him. Then he shrugged again.
