“He left me behind,” she told Andrew, unscrewing the cap and pitching it behind her. “Isn’t that just like a man? You dip your dick, then you hit the road.”
“You were sleeping with Moore?”
She tipped the bottle at him, a mocking toast. “When he left Cold Spring Harbor, he left me, too. He said they’d give me his post. Said he’d lined it up for me. You know what I got instead? Fired. This was his idea of making things up to me. This.” She motioned to indicate the room, the lab, and vodka slopped messily over the lip of the bottle top. “Being stuck out in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, U.S.A. playing Nanny-goddamn-McPhee to his half-wit, retarded brat.”
“Alice isn’t retarded,” Andrew said, bristling.
“You know what they had the nerve to tell me at Cold Spring Harbor?” Suzette continued, oblivious to his comment or choosing to ignore it. “That I had a drinking problem as well as a…” She cleared her throat, affected a, exaggerated stuffy, prim expression, her lips pursed, her nose wrinkled. “…‘demonstrated moral turpitude. ’ Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Anyway, they told me that they couldn’t turn over the helm of a multi-bazillion-some-odd dollar bioengineering research facility to a woman with a bottle in one hand and her ex-boss’s dick in the other.” Another long swig. “Never mind you can’t fill a kindergartener’s hand with Edward’s pathetic excuse for a cock.”
Glancing at him now, her brow arched, her lips uncurling in a thin smile. “Now your cock on the other hand,” she murmured, sidling toward him, stumbling unsteadily and marking a meandering path. “I can think of a few places I might fill with it.”
“Suzette,” he said with a frown, even as she reached for him, tickling him lightly along the collar with her fingertips.
“Andrew,” she replied, mimicking his stern tone, then following up with a drunken titter. Setting aside the liquor bottle, she hooked her fingertips beneath his waistband. “Why don’t we start at the top…work our way down?” The tip of her tongue swiped her lips suggestively as she dropped to her knees, trying to ease his pants down with her.
“Stop.” He caught her elbows, his grip tight enough to make her wince, her expression bewildered at first, then pained. “Get up.”
“You’re hurting me,” she whimpered, then she yelped as he hauled her to her feet.
“Tell me about the screamers,” he said. “You said in another week, it would be alright. What did you mean?”
“Let go of me,” she mewled, squirming in his grasp.
“Tell me what you meant,” he snapped.
“The virus can’t be stopped,” she cried. “Once it’s inside you in a large enough dose to overwhelm the immune system, it replicates out of control. The skin growths it causes, the tumors…they’ll cover their mouths and noses, crush their lungs from the inside out, stress the heart to the point of cardiac arrest.”
“You’re saying they’ll die?” Andrew asked. “What’s happening to them, it’s eventually going to kill them? How long until that happens?”
“I told you, another week,” Suzette said. “Maybe a little longer, maybe a little less. But once it’s started, there’s no way to bring it back into check. It’s like trying to find the square root of pi. It’s impossible. It never ends.”
Andrew gave her a little shove, sending her reeling back from him then unslung the M16 from his shoulder. Grabbing Suzette by the elbow again, he headed for the door, hauling her in struggling tow.
“What are you doing?” she whined. Her free hand flapped feebly for the vodka, knocking the bottle off the table, spilling alcohol all over the floor.
“Taking you with me. You’re going to show me where Dr. Moore’s lab is.”
“Why?” Suzette tried to dig in her heels and stop. “It’s not going to do any good. It’s too late. I told you—there’s no way to stop the virus. There’s nothing you’re going to find in there that’s going to make any difference.” Even as she spoke, realization dawned on her, cutting through the thick, belligerent haze of drunkenness. “But that’s not why you want to go, is it?”
She jerked mightily against him, pulling herself free. “She’s there, isn’t she? Dani Santoro, that fat-assed Hispanic bitch. Well, fuck you, Andrew, and fuck her, too. I’m not helping you do shit. You hear me?”
He reached for her, but she staggered away, her brows furrowed, her eyes flashing in furious challenge. “Fine,” he said. “Suit yourself. I don’t have time for this shit.”
Wheeling around, he marched to the door, throwing it open wide.
“I hope they’ve broken down the door and taken turns fucking her,” Suzette screeched from behind him. “I hope they tore her apart and are waiting for you there so they can rip your sorry ass to shreds right along with her!”
Andrew glanced off his shoulder. “Good bye, Suzette.”
“Fuck you!” she screamed, snatching the fallen vodka bottle in hand, winging it at his head. He slammed the door on her, and heard glass shatter on the other side as it struck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Following the numbers on the office placards, Andrew cut to his right shortly past Suzette’s door. To his amazement, he realized he’d inadvertently come to find his way along the path Moore had given him, because the fourth door down on his left was, sure enough, room number one hundred twenty-seven.
“Dani,” he cried, pounding on the door. “Dani, it’s me!”
He was so abjectly relieved to see the door intact, no signs of forced or attempted entry, he nearly burst into tears. And when he heard her voice, frightened and strained, from the other side, he laughed out loud.
“Andrew?” she called.
“Dani!” He fell against the door as if collapsing physically into her arms. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” Her voice was closer to the door now, as if she’d come to stand directly on the other side, and like him, had pressed her cheek to the wood. “Are you? Dr. Moore locked me in here. He had a gun. He was talking crazy, said you’d done something to Alice and he was going to find you, make you talk. I thought…oh, God, I thought he was going to hurt you.”
She’d begun to cry. He could hear her soft, hitching breaths through the door as she hiccupped against tears.
“I’m alright,” he said, pressing his palm to the door.
“I thought he was going to kill you,” she said. “He had a gun and he…he told me he was going to shoot you.”
“Dani, I’m alright,” he said again. “Open the door. Let me in.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered. “He did something to the door, messed up the code somehow. It’s locked from the inside. Even before the power went out, I couldn’t get it open.”
“What?” Andrew drew back from the door now in dismay. He grabbed the knob, but it was locked from his side, too. Still, he tugged at it, feeling panic swell inside him again. Clasping it in both hands, he twisted furiously, until the entire door shook in its frame.
“Andrew, I’m scared,” Dani said. “Get me out of here. Please get me out.”
“I will,” he promised. “Stand back. Let me try something.”
The hall was narrow, but still allowed him enough space for leverage. He backed up to the far side, then charged forward, ramming his shoulder into the door, hoping he could force it open. All he managed to do was knock himself backwards in the recoil, his shoulder aching and nearly bludgeoned out of its socket.
“Damn it,” he said, then tried again. Over and over, he backpedaled in the corridor, then lunged forward again, slamming into the door once, twice, three times, all with no effect whatsoever.