He allowed himself the luxury of holding her for a long, lingering moment. “Come on,” he whispered through the tangled mess of her hair and into her ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She nodded. “Sounds good.” As they drew apart, she caught him by the hand, cutting a glance down at the M16. “But I think I’d better handle the rifle from here on out.”
“Yeah.” He nodded as she hefted it in hand, snapping the safety back on. “That sounds good, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The hallway leading to Moore’s office stopped at a dead end. Which means we’ve got to go back the way I came, Andrew thought. Back toward the office where Suzette was hiding. Where we heard her screams coming from.
Shit.
“Stay behind me,” he whispered to Dani once they reached the mouth of the hall, the juncture from which he could look to his left and see Suzette’s door, half-ajar and plainly in view. He had snapped off the flashlight before reaching this point and stayed in the relative shelter of the wall for a long moment, unmoving.
“What are you doing?” Dani whispered.
“I’m listening,” he whispered back.
“For what?”
For sniffing, he thought, because even when the tumors had grown over the screamers’ eyes, they’d been able to smell their quarry, a distinctive snuffling. Truth be told, he was also listening to an equally telltale sound—that of chewing. Because Lucy and the other primates in the stockroom hadn’t just been mauled to death. They had been eaten.
“Come on.” The recessed emergency lights in the hallway were dim but cast enough of a glow so he could see nothing moving. But the fact that Suzette’s door stood open kept him uneasy, even as he crept out from the adjoining corridor to approach. He heard the soft whisper of Dani’s footsteps as she fell in behind him.
They made it several feet down the corridor, then a soft sound, a warbling groan, drew them both to abrupt, simultaneous halts. It was a woman’s voice, feeble and pained, and it came from beyond the darkened threshold of Suzette’s little office.
Dani stepped toward the door and alarmed, Andrew reached out, catching her by the arm. “What are you doing?” he whispered, eyes wide.
“Someone’s hurt,” she whispered back. “It sounds like Dr. Montgomery.”
“We can’t go in there.”
“She’s hurt,” Dani said again, brows narrowing. “We can’t just leave her.”
She was right and he knew it. Even though nearly every instinct in his body was screaming flight not fight at the moment, he resisted the urge to simply charge past the opened door and run as fast as he could down the corridor. Because even though he might not have much cared for Suzette at that moment—and even though there would’ve been no way in hell she’d do the same thing for him—he knew she was still alive and needed help. Especially if the screamers were still in there with her.
Following Dani this time, he reached behind him, drawing the pistol from the back of his pants. At the click as he thumbed off the safety, Dani glanced over her shoulder at him. Taking the nine millimeter into account, she raised her brow.
“I’m better with this one,” he tried to reassure her.
She managed a quick smirk. “Here’s hoping.”
They stood together at the threshold of the office, backs pressed to the wall. Cautiously, Dani leaned forward, using the barrel of the rifle to ease the door open all the way, sending it swinging inward in a slow-moving arc. Earlier, emergency lights inside had been aglow, but now there was only darkness. With her hand, Dani motioned Andrew forward so he could point the flashlight beam into the room, sweeping it in reconnaissance.
Moving in unison, they stepped through the doorway. Dani had thumbed off the safety and chambered a fresh round in the M16. She held it drawn to her face now, her head tilted slightly as she lined up her aim with practiced skill and ease. Andrew panned the light across the interior, surprised and caught off guard to find no screamers inside.
There were, however, definite signs of a struggle. Andrew could see dimpled impressions left in the drywall, places where something had hit the walls hard enough to crack the surface. Some of the ceiling tiles overhead lay lopsided, the fluorescent light fixture covers dangling from their hinges. Suzette’s cardboard box of supplies had been overturned and scattered, the packages of crackers stomped on and shredded, crumbs strewn everywhere like a dusting of snow. Cans of peas and green beans had rolled in all directions, their aluminum lids winking in the Maglite’s beam as it swept past them. Something else glittered weakly in the flashlight’s glow; dark and smeared on the floor, it glistened like wet paint that had been tracked in on a boot heel.
Not paint, Andrew thought. Blood.
“Oh, God,” Dani whispered as the flashlight found what was left of Suzette. Sprawled in a heap in the corner of the room, she looked like a rag doll that had been tossed tempestuously about by a toddler on a rampage. The front of her blouse was covered in blood, her khaki slacks were splattered with it in a grisly patchwork. Her stomach had been torn open. The meat of her entrails lay in a glistening, bloody heap against her groin, drooping in fleshy coils to the floor.
Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, Dani rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside Suzette.
“Dani,” Andrew began in protest, sweeping the light one last, anxious time around the breadth of the room. Where’d they go? he thought. If the screamers had attacked Suzette, they’d been quick about it and even quicker to disperse, which made no sense because they would’ve had no reason. So where are they, then? Why did they leave?
“She’s still alive,” Dani exclaimed. She’d felt along Suzette’s neck for a pulse and apparently had found one. Turning to Andrew now, her voice urgent, she said, “Bring the light over here. She’s still alive!”
Even as he crossed the room to squat beside Suzette, Dani was on the move again, hurrying toward the desk, the heap of blankets Suzette had piled beneath in a makeshift pallet. “We can use one of these to make a litter,” she said, pulling a sheet loose, flapping it between her hands to shake off cracker crumbs.
At this sound, sharp and smart, Suzette’s eyelids fluttered open. Andrew could see her nose had been broken and was now a swollen and misshapen lump, the nostrils crusted with blood. Her lips were likewise battered and bloodied, and a narrow laceration zig-zagged down the side of her face, nearly from her hairline to her chin. Her gaze focused blearily on Andrew and when she gasped, a ragged exhalation of air, blood peppered up from her lips to spatter her chin.
“It’s alright,” Andrew said, reaching instinctively for her hand. Their last encounter had been anything but friendly, but all at once that didn’t matter. She was clearly in pain. The glazed look in her eyes reminded him powerfully, poignantly of his sister, Beth’s; an injured rabbit caught in a trap that has struggled to the point where it had nearly torn, chewed or clawed its tethered leg loose to free itself.
“It’s going to be okay, Suzette,” he whispered.
Her eyes rolled helplessly from him toward Dani, then up at the ceiling, then down again. She croaked something, a gurgling sound he couldn’t make out.
“Don’t try to talk,” he soothed.
She seized the front of his shirt with surprising strength and he gasped in surprise as she pulled him toward her. “Run,” she hissed.
With a loud BANG that Andrew mistook at first for gunfire, the ceiling panel almost directly above his head came crashing down. He caught a blur of motion, felt thrumming in the floor beneath him as something heavy and large sprang down from the narrow open overhead, landing in front of him.