13. 13
As expected, multiple checkpoints were situated outside Richmond. What I didn’t expect was that the man who approached the window when we stopped to greet us by name.
The man raised a hand, signaling for us to slow, and approached the driver’s side window. Elias rolled it down, preparing to show him his credentials.
“Elias Correa, Cassia Hayes?” He asked, nodding at us both.
“Yes, sir,” said Elias. My mouth was hanging open so I didn’t speak.
“You’re the only two permitted to enter the city that I know of. You must be crazy,” he muttered.
“No, just given an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Elias answered through gritted teeth.
“I know the feeling,” said the soldier. “I need to mark your vehicle, I was hoping it would be something. . . less nice.” He walked in front of the car and pulled out a can of spray paint, painting the top of the windshield with a series of letters and numbers.
Elias groaned. “I’m definitely not footing the bill to get that cleaned up.”
When the soldier was finished defiling Elias’s car, he came back to the window.
“Baker and Pryor is locked down pretty tight, we’ve got troops stationed around the entire building, taking care of anything that comes out.
Go straight there, and uh,” he paused for a moment.
“Good luck with whatever it is that you’re doing. ”
I held Elias’s hand for the last few miles of the drive. There wasn’t much support he could offer me now, seeing as we were already committed to what we had to do. He was right all along, my panic and arguments so silly now. We were dead either way, and it was best to go out fighting.
It wasn’t about us now.
Besides the Glock Elias had loaned me, he’d given me his magnum, too, in case of emergencies. He warned me about the kickback, how I wouldn’t get a second shot off in time, but if I was about to be eaten, I’d have another tool to help me get away.
He stood next to me, outside of Baker and Pryor, with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle on his back.
I couldn’t remember the name, but it was his gun when he was in Delta.
It had kept him alive, he said, and he hoped it could do it again.
Of course, he had a hand gun, too, but he was bringing in some major firepower.
“We get to the lab. That’s all,” he said. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You can stress smoke as soon as we get there, I promise.”
I smiled, anxiety be damned. We’d make it in, and we’d make it out. We had to.
It was eerie, walking through the front door. The soldiers stationed outside paid us no mind, so they either knew we were coming, or they knew better than to mess with whoever was insane enough to walk into ground zero.
I didn’t know what to expect to find when we entered. Silence or chaos would have both been acceptable, but I was betting on absolute anarchy. Somehow, it was a mixture of both.
It was relatively calm, some beeping in the distance, and the lights flickered and flashed, but it was quiet. An abundance of blood was spattered about the clinically white walls, lines of the viscous liquid looked like they were left by an abstract artist.
A scream in the distance caused me to pause and look at Elias, but he just shook his head. We had to keep moving. Whoever that was was likely as good as dead.
In fear of making too much noise, we walked, rather than ran, through the halls. Elias looked confident, his shoulders firm and his gun held high. I was feeling much less so, but still kept my gun ready by my side. He was a better shot, anyway.
We tiptoed, walking around bits of broken glass and stepping over equipment that had been thrown into the halls, careful not to touch a thing. Because Elias had studied the building so thoroughly, he had our path mapped, and he guided me as safely as he could through the hallway.
I imagined him in the Army or working for Unit 12, and how he might guide his team in a similar situation. He was steel, hard and calculated. Every move he made was decisive, even the way he held his flashlight under his pistol when he rounded a corner was trained into him.
He was all instinct here. This was what he was built for.
As we descended our first flight of stairs, we had to step over a body, mindful not to slide on the blood that had pooled on the steps. The soles of my shoes gave a small slip, and I let out a squeak as I caught myself. Elias whipped his head around to see if I was okay.
“I slipped on the blood,” I whispered.
“Just be careful,” he answered. Not angry, just a reasonable request. Though I had definitely been trying to “be careful,” I didn’t say that.
Another body lay near the bottom of the steps, and a few mice had made a meal out of it. Elias stomped on one, and my face scrunched up in disgust. Twice more he squashed the mice, and scraped the bottom of his shoe against a step to get what was left of them off the bottom.
“They have the virus, too,” he said when he saw my face.
“Animals can get it?” I asked.
“Mice aren’t the only animal they’ve been experimenting on down here. I just hope that the mice are the only ones that managed to escape.”
I swallowed hard. “I know that animals are necessary for testing vaccines, obviously, but I couldn’t imagine they’d be infecting them with something like this,” I admitted.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Mostly mammals: dogs, cats, rabbits. No monkeys, though, at least. They’re too hard to shoot.”
“That’s barbaric,” I said. “I don’t think I would’ve worked here if I knew we were testing mutant viruses on animals.”
“There’s a whole lot of shit I could tell you about Baker and Pryor, but I feel like you’ll find most of it out tonight, anyway. Also, time is an issue.” He moved on now, but my thoughts lingered on what I might uncover about my employer.
Scientists, people who spent their lives learning and loving doing so, willingly injecting animals with this?
There was no reason other than torture. If Elias had seen a variant of the virus years ago in Cote d’Ivoire, then Baker and Pryor knew exactly what the virus would do, and had their employees test it anyway.
Beyond developing a vaccine for something so horrible, I couldn’t understand what the point would be that it was allowed to enter the building in the first place.
Terrorism, maybe, but I failed to understand what a major pharmaceutical player would gain from causing chaos.
It was always greed, but I couldn’t quite connect the dots.
Either Baker and Pryor sought out the virus on the black market, or the US Government asked them to look into it.
For everyone’s sake, I really hoped it was the latter.
We reached the end of the hallway, and Elias pulled a key card from his pocket, holding it up to the reader. Nothing happened.
“I thought I’d give it a try,” he shrugged. “I think we can reroute some power to this door to get it open.”
“I don’t even see a door here,” I said.
“That’s the point.”
“Okay smartass,” I sneered. “Just show me where to go next.”
“The control room is on the other side of the building,” he said.
“Lovely.”
Turning on our heels, we went up the same steps I slipped on moments ago, and Elias gave me a stern look before we did so.
He moved more quickly now, and I kept his pace.
I had a clear goal in mind this time around, and it pushed me further than what I’d be capable of on my own.
Turning left at the top of the stairs, we reached a part of the building where the power had been cut off completely, a few weak red emergency lights were all that remained on.
I watched where Elias stepped, not looking forward as much as I probably should have, but I didn’t want to trip over anything on the floor, and the place was absolutely trashed.
Vending machines had been tipped over, and seemingly a hundred pop bottles had been broken, leaving the floor a nasty, sticky mess.
I could feel bits of glass and plastic under my feet, the thick soles of my hiking shoes catching them in the tread, and the combination of the floor and the debris made my footsteps much more noticeable.
Glass windows were shattered all throughout the corridor, discarded bodies strewn about. The number of bodies surprised me. I expected more to be infected than dead, but I didn’t entirely understand what the virus did besides making the victim go out of their mind.
We’d just passed the reception desk when I fell, and my gun skittered across the floor out of my hand. It slid to Elias, and he used his shoe to stop it from going any further. I tried to stand, but I hadn’t tripped over my own feet. I had been grabbed, and was yanked again.
The creature was crawling up on me, using my body like a rope to get closer to my face. Its legs had been gnawed off, by the looks of it, and I tried to kick it, but it was stronger than I expected.
Elias fired a single shot, and the creature fell back, but was still determined to get to me. I was dragged backwards. Elias’s firm hand gripped my shirt by the collar and pulled me free. In one fluid motion, I was back on my feet.
“You’re okay,” he said, patting my arm, handing back my gun. “Keep moving.”
I thought I’d be shaken, thought that I’d have to do some breathing exercises on the floor, but I didn’t. Without sparing a glance at the creature, I kept moving. It was an order from the Special Agent.
We ran now, away from the echo of the gun shot.
More were sure to come, drawn to the sound.
Up the stairs this time, Elias didn’t slow for me and I began to lag behind.
Hearing the infected down the hall convinced me to hustle, but my lungs were burning at the top of the second flight.
Before opening the doorway to the second floor, Elias stopped, allowing me to catch my breath for a moment.
“We’re going to work on your cardio,” he said. “Starting tomorrow.”
“Kiss my ass, buddy,” I panted.
“If that’s what you’re into,” he said, pinching where I told him to kiss.