enough. She found the door and turned left, heading across the small room toward the first tunnel-the one that led her up and out. She got angrier at the thought of leaving Rook and the Russian woman behind her. But she knew she couldn’t fight the white creatures here in the dark, and they had been between her and the rest of the lab, back on the catwalk. She reached the tunnel just as she heard a door slam open behind her.
Crap, they’re close.
She used her fragment of rubble to smash along the wall as she made her way down the original tunnel to the metal ladder, sending small waves of sand and grit through the air in the dark behind her. She felt the dirt pelting the skin on her face as she ran. She misjudged the distance down this tunnel too, slamming her face into the metal of the ladder in the darkness. She reeled from the impact, dropping her brick fragment. She caught herself from falling backward by grabbing the ladder rung with her broken hand. A fresh wave of pain shot up her arm. She grunted, but most of the pain was drowned out by her rising fury.
Holding tightly to the insulated wire, she grabbed the rungs above her in the dark and climbed the ladder. When she reached the top, she forced her weight behind the flipping door that wore the fake bush like a feather- capped Royal attending Prince Harry’s wedding. It was heavy, but it closed quickly.
She launched herself out and into a newly fallen snowdrift. Snow poured down from the sky in tiny jagged clumps-not quite sleet, but not quite snow.
Queen rolled away from the hatch and into the snow, relishing the weather. The sun had gone down, but the moon must have been up somewhere. She couldn’t see it, but light was trapped between the two-foot layer of fresh snow on the ground and the low-lying clouds above her head. It reflected back and forth off the two surfaces making everything nearly as bright as day. She had seen a similar effect before, on a skiing trip in Flagstaff.
She couldn’t have asked for a better battleground.
She knew she should probably run. Get help. Call in the cavalry. But that could take hours. Maybe longer. If something happened to Rook…
Queen shook her head. Not an option.
“C’mon, you see-through assholes. I’m waiting,” she whispered, clutching the rubber-coated wire.
FORTY-TWO
Midtown, New York, NY
Deep Blue pulled the trigger on the confetti launcher as soon as the elevator doors parted. Instantly the hallway was a riot of white, pink, and pastel greens and blues, as shredded paper filled the air with a loud popping noise. The effect was surreal. Everything that had been moving a second earlier-King and the five dire wolves-just stopped as if turned to stone.
Even with the colorful airborne flak, Deep Blue knew he wouldn’t have much time. King was near the shattered window and the dire wolves were between them, stopped where they had been and so still that he couldn’t even see an eyeball moving. He wasted no time in firing on the dire wolves with the MP5. He ran through the falling confetti as he fired. He aimed at three of the beasts and drilled two of them in the eye, hitting a third in the chest, before the first two managed to fall off the walls, where they had crouched sideways.
As Deep Blue got up to where King stood, he could see that King had regained his senses but was unarmed. A quick peek back toward the portal showed King’s weapon on the floor, just in front of the glowing wall. Two dire wolves stood hunched over by the walls further down the hall, between him and the rifle. It was a loss. But the other thing wasn’t on the floor at all.
“Jack, where’s the nuke?”
“Sorry, Boss. I chucked it into the portal when I was under its control, but I forgot to arm it. The portal is putting something in the air-”
“Yeah, I got that part. I-”
“They’re moving again.” King pointed down the hallway.
King was right. The confetti had mostly fluttered to the floor. Deep Blue leveled the second confetti cannon he had nabbed from the nearby party supply store and fired it high in the air. One of the two dire wolves ran headlong at them and King snatched the pistol from its holster on Deep Blue’s leg. He fired three shots at the creature and hit its head each time, but the beast kept barreling toward them down the hallway.
“Look out!” Deep Blue shoved King into a door marked Stairs that had no handle-just a metal hand plate for pushing. King slammed into the door and it opened wide, spilling him onto the landing. At the same time, Deep Blue gambled that with the confetti in the air, the charging dire wolf really couldn’t see but was just striking out where it had last seen them. When the beast was nearly on him, Deep Blue lunged to the side, against the hallway wall. The dire wolf ran right past him and out the shattered window, into open space.
Deep Blue looked out the window to see the animal fall. Ole! he thought. Then he leveled the MP5 at the remaining dire wolf. This one had been content to wait for the confetti to settle, but its eyes swiveled in anticipation of being free to move unobstructed through the soon-to-be-clear air. Deep Blue put a burst of bullets in its cranium. The skull erupted in a gout of ichor resembling warm mayonnaise. The perforated beast sank to the floor as King was getting to his feet.
“You back to your normal self?” Deep Blue looked King up and down.
“Completely. Fresh air from the broken window helped. Shit. More of them!” King opened fire down the hallway as more of the creatures crawled and ran out of the wall of yellow light. As Deep Blue looked, he realized they wouldn’t be able to hold off that many.
And he was out of confetti.
“The stairs,” he said.
King stopped firing and bolted into the stairwell.
Deep Blue followed at his heels. “They were all over the outside of the building too. Keasling’s men are having a hard time of it.”
King leaned over the railing and looked down the stairwell, but turned quickly back to Deep Blue, his face grim. “Too many. Up!”
Deep Blue sprinted up the stairs until he hit the landing. King was still at the bottom of the stairs and fired as soon as the door opened, cracking the skull of the first dire wolf through the door. The body’s momentum carried it forward and down the lower flight of stairs to the next landing.
Deep Blue covered the door from the upper landing as King raced up the industrial gray steps to meet him. Just as King reached the landing, another creature leapt through the door and Deep Blue blasted it with a carefully controlled burst.
They continued up flight after flight of stairs, carefully picking off any of the monsters that got too close. When King passed a foam fire extinguisher on the wall of the 45 ^th floor, he halted and nimbly unlatched the bright red tank from the wall. He then leaned over the railing and blasted the contents of the extinguisher down the space between the flights of stairs. It was a narrow space, but it was enough for the burst of white foam to spatter into the air and cascade down several floors. The extinguisher ran dry as the first dire wolf reached a landing below them, stopped and opened its jaws in a snarl that looked almost comical.
Deep Blue fired two shots at it before the MP5 ran dry.
King threw the empty fire extinguisher canister down the flight of stairs, knocking the animal back and off balance slightly. Then he pulled up the pistol he had taken from Deep Blue. He had only one round left and no more magazines, so he aimed carefully and then fired.
The creature’s head crumpled inward. The bullet liquefied the brains, exited the back of the skull and pulled the white slurry out with it, splattering white gore across the wall. His stomach turned at the sight. If only I could unsee some of this shit. He turned and raced up the next flight of stairs with Deep Blue. The much-older man had managed to reload the MP5 faster than King had ever seen anyone do.
“How many more magazines?” He asked.
“Last one. Run faster.”
As though in response, the horde of dire wolves on the steps below resumed their loud pursuit, closing the distance.
