“Damn it!” he shouted, grasping the knob again, shoving his shoulder forcibly against the wood as he tried to shake it loose. From the other side, he could hear Dani trying, too, grabbing the knob and jerking with him. “Damn it, damn it, goddamn it!”
He shoved his hands through his hair, uttered a hoarse, frustrated cry, then kicked the door. “Goddamn it,” he yelled.
“Wait a minute,” Dani said. “I can take the door off the hinges.” She uttered a quick, strained laugh. “Why didn’t I think of it before? I can take the door off its hinges. I’ve got a screwdriver on my multitool, a knife I can use to wedge under the main pin. I can…”
She’d sounded so excited, he’d felt it, too; he’d gone back to the door, laughing along with her, forgetting about his frustration, his own futile attempts, until her voice abruptly faded from the other side.
“What?” he asked, his own smile faltering uncertainly. “Dani? What’s wrong?”
She laughed again, but it fell flat, a humorless sound. “It’s on my keychain,” she said. “My little multitool. It’s on my goddamn keychain.”
He realized. Which is in my pocket.
“Shit,” he said. “Wait. I can slide it under the door.” Pulling it out, he dropped to his hands and knees, setting the flashlight down to aim the beam beneath the bottom of the door. “Do you see my light?”
Within that equally narrow, illuminated space, he suddenly saw a sliver of her face come into view, her eye and cheek, the side of her nose. It was enough to make him smile. “Hey, you.”
She managed a miserable laugh. “Hey, yourself.”
“Here.” He tried to slide the Gerber Clutch under the door, but it wouldn’t fit. The tool case was too wide. With a frown and a grunt, Andrew turned it lengthwise, then tried forcing it, shoving it repeatedly, uselessly. “Goddamn it,” he snapped, frustrated, frightened, hurling the keychain down the corridor, sending it skittering and clattering into the darkness.
“I’m sorry, Andrew,” Dani whispered.
He looked back into her eye, saw it glistening with tears, then wedged his fingertips under the door, brushing against hers. “I’m going to get you out,” he promised.
From the far end of the corridor, back in the direction he had come, came a sudden, terrified shriek. Andrew jerked at the sound, eyes flown wide as his head snapped up, his eyes darting in that direction.
Suzette, he thought, as another piteous scream, shrill and agonized, ripped through the lab building. Oh, Jesus, that was Suzette!
“Andrew,” Dani cried. “Oh, God, what’s that? What’s going on out there?”
“Nothing,” he told her, peering under the door again, meeting her panic-stricken gaze. “It was nothing.”
I have to get her out of there, he thought, scrambling to his feet. He’d shrugged the M16 over his shoulder, but took it in hand now, raising it over his head. With a desperate cry, he rammed the stock down into the key pad beside the door, hoping against hope that this would somehow disable the locking mechanism in the door. He hit it again, then again. With the fourth blow, he managed to knock the key pad casing loose and it listed severely to port, revealing a tangled mess of multicolored wires beneath. Another shout, another blow, and the case clattered to the floor, leaving the inner workings of the key pad vulnerably exposed.
Still, the door remained locked. Another shriek echoed down the hallway, but this time it wasn’t Suzette. The sound was visceral, scraping and shrill, something brutal and primal, the triumphant howl of a wolf pack’s alpha male claiming first dibs on a kill.
“Andrew, you have to go,” Dani pleaded through the door. If Suzette had been able to hear the gun blasts as Barron, Spaulding and the other soldiers had tried to fight off the screamers, then Dani likely had, too. She may not have understood fully what was going on, but she’d been able to deduce enough to recognize the peril.
“Not without you,” he replied, gritting his teeth, turning the battering ram of his rifle’s butt against the door knob now.
“Andrew, please,” she cried. “I don’t know what’s going on out there, but people are screaming. Something’s wrong, there’s something very, very wrong, and you have to get out of here!”
“I’m not leaving without you,” he said again. Backing up, he leaned down, grabbed his flashlight again. Propping it beneath his arm, he clasped the rifle between his hands. “Stand back,” he called to her. Then as a second thought, he added, “Way back. Get underneath Moore’s desk. I’m going to try and shoot out the lock.”
“Andrew,” she protested.
“Just do it,” he cried. “I’m not leaving without you. I’m going to get you out of that goddamn office and out of these godforsaken backwoods, and I’m going to personally drive you all of the way back to the Bronx so you can see your kids again, do you hear me? Then we’re all going to go to North Pole, Alaska so I can introduce you to my mom and tell her she was right, that everything happens for a reason because you’re my reason, Dani Santoro, whether you like it or not, now just shut the hell up and stand back so I can shoot this goddamn door!”
And with that, bracing himself, readying for the thunderous report as it fired, he squeezed the trigger. Then blinked, bewildered, at the hollow click that followed.
“What the hell?” He frowned, cocking the gun to get a better look at it, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong.
“What is it?” he heard Dani say.
“I’ve got an assault rifle,” he called back. “It won’t shoot.”
She said something, but he couldn’t understand. Moving back to the door, putting his ear to it again, he called, “What?”
“Turn the safety off,” she said again. “There’s a switch on the side panel. Turn it to semi.”
He tilted the gun again, spied the little toggle she’d mentioned, then did as instructed. “Okay. Now what?”
“Is your bolt open?”
Another glance at the gun. “How can you tell?”
“It’s a slide bolt on the top of the gun. Is it pulled back?”
“Uh. No.”
“Then you’ve got a round chambered in there already. You’re ready to shoot.”
“Okay. Got it.” He backed away from the door again, raising the rifle. “Stand back. I’m going to try again.”
This time, when he squeezed the trigger, a loud series of rapid-fire shots blasted out. The rounds ripped into the doorframe, door and neighboring wall, pulverizing the drywall, punching through the metal door, clanging noisily off the chrome knob and lock plates.
“Jesus!” he yelled, because the gun had a mind of its own, and even though he’d gripped it tightly, the shots went wild, a meandering semi-circle arcing wildly toward the ceiling.
When he’d stopped shooting, he stood there stupidly, listening to the soft patter of drywall dust peppering the floor, watching it dissipate in the air in a thin haze.
“Holy shit,” he said as the door to Moore’s office slowly swung inward, then listed on its bullet-ridden hinges and crashed to the floor. He could see Moore’s desk inside through a lingering haze of gun smoke and shattered plaster dust.
Dani slowly raised her head from behind the desk, eyes wide. “I said switch it to semi, not burst.”
Sheepish, he let the gun fall from his hands, clattering to the floor. “Sorry.”
“Don’t do that again,” she said, then scrambled out and rushed across the room, stumbling over the fallen door. With a gasp and a cry, she flung her arms around his neck and fell against him.