People were coming out of locked rooms, most standing wonder-ingly in the doorways. He saw two staff members running toward a refuge room, and he continued running himself, past the elevators, into a down-stairway. Down two flights into the security wing.
The Gods should be out of their cells, waiting.
Armageddon…
LUCAS SHOUTED TO NORDWALL, "Grant's at the hospital- he's killing people. Get the guys, get my guys up there, get them to the hospital. Get everybody you can up there…,"
He turned and ran for the truck, jumped in, did a tight circle, and roared toward the street. He was on the north outskirts of town; the hospital was probably seven or eight miles away. Since he'd be slowed going out to the highway and off the highway up the hill to the hospital, just about that many minutes away. Eight minutes: a hundred people could be dead in that time…
Past kids on the sidewalk, nearly T-boning a red Taurus, losing it on a turn, over a sidewalk, onto a lawn, off the lawn back onto the street, down a hill to the highway, right, flooring it, the truck screaming in grief, his cell phone ringing, ringing. He ignored it through the set of curves, shifted into the vacant oncoming lane, and blew past a Harley with a bearded old man on it. He picked up the phone on a straightaway. Sloan: "You know what's going on?"
"No, but it's bad. Cale called, he was freaked. Grant's inside shooting, there are at least three down, I'm coming up on it, I gotta go…"
"We're two minutes behind you…"
Off the highway, up the hill, down the approach road, burning past the entry building, fumbling in the seat console for extra.45 clips. There were two of them, and he put them in his jacket pocket. He topped the last rise to the main parking lot, cut past a man on a four-bottom lawn-mower, serenely chopping grass, and found a sheriff's car and an official-looking SUV parked facing the steps to the main entrance, their doors open.
Lucas jammed the Lexus in beside them and jumped out, ran up the steps, his eyes catching an insignia on the SUV, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. A game warden… and then he was through the front doors and down a dark hallway to the cage.
Cale was there, with a deputy, a game warden, two armed guards, and two orderlies who were opening the outer doors with a manual crank. A half dozen administrative types stood back, clustered, silent. Lucas saw Beloit on her knees in the cage, behind the bars, with another orderly, working over a body-she must have been caught inside. Cale, face white, eyes crazy, shouted, "We've heard shooting… all we've got is emergency power, the fire alarms are going off…"
"You got staffers in there?" Lucas asked.
"There are a couple dozen of them, we know there are twelve or fourteen in refuge rooms; there are some more, I don't know how many, locked in patient rooms, we've more coming in, they're calling on cell phones, all we got is cell phones, we got people shot, Davenport, we got people shot…"
The outer door was opening, an inch, two inches. Lucas pulled his.45, popped the clip, checked it, jacked a shell into the chamber, and asked, "Does anybody know where Grant went?"
One of the administrative types, a woman in a powder blue jacket,said, "He went to the stairs way down on the end. I think he was going down to security cells. That's what I think."
Lucas said to the deputy and the game warden, "Get all the guys with guns and put them in the stairwells. The elevator won't be working. I don't whether they're trying to get out or on some kind of suicide run, but we can't let them run us around. We have to move in on them and finish them in a hurry." The two men nodded, and the game warden pulled his pistol and checked it. As he did, they heard two muffled explosions and turned that way.
"Big gun," the warden said. His voice was cool.
Lucas said to Cale, " There are more cops coming in, a minute or two behind us. Get them to seal off all the floors, tell them to be careful, that we're out there.
Cale nodded, and then his eyes went wider: "Oh, my God."
Lucas tracked his eyes, looked down the hall to the right. Black smoke boiled out of a door and began filling the hallways.
"Did you call the firedepartment?" Lucas asked.
"Yes, yes, they're coming."
"Get some of your office people, go behind the guys with guns, take a fire extinguishers, but be careful. Make sure they stay behind the guns."
Game warden: "I think we can get through."
Lucas said, "Block the stairs, guys. Remember, more people coming. Tell them we're out there."
He squeezed through the slowly opening cell door and heard three muffled booms. Beloit was crawling out of the cage, hair hanging in her face, leaving bloody handprints on the floor: nothing he could do, just an image to take with him. He pointed the game warden down to the right, while he went straight ahead toward the shooting. Heard another boom, and kept running…
GRANT RAN DOWN the stairs, his feet pounding on the steps, brief-case slapping against his legs, screams ringing in his ears. He burst into the hallway and looked to his left. The door to the security wing was open, and Biggie Lighter was peering around the door frame, a smile wreathing his sallow face. When he saw Grant, Lighter stepped into the hallway.
"Is this it?"
"This is it. That goddamned Davenport got me." Grant reached into the briefcase, saw Taylor behind Biggie, gave Biggie a pistol, and passed one to Taylor. "Is Chase…?"
"He's fucked up, but he's walking around." Biggie peered at the gun. "How many shots?"
"Eight," Grant said. "They jumped me, and I didn't have time to get more clips." He looked past him at Taylor. "You've got ten. Both of them are loaded and ready to go. Push the safety off and pull the trigger."
Taylor nodded. "I'm familiar with this model." They heard somebody talking, loud, and Taylor looked over his shoulder. "Here comes Chase."
Biggie scuttled off down the hall, toward the doorway. "I'm going up to three. I'm going to shoot Morris Knight. See you in hell." Taylor went after him, calling out, "I get Landis. I get Landis." Grant watched them go, took his own pistol out of his pocket as Chase pushed through the door.
Chase stared at him for a moment, his eyes shifting to the pistol. He said, "Good. Give it to me."
"This is mine," Grant said. "Come on with me, and we'll get you one upstairs."
"MINE," Chase screamed, and he launched himself at Grant; Grant wasn't ready for it, and they went down to the floor, Grant's head snapping back against the terrazzo.
Stunned, he struggled to keep the gun, but Chase had it with both hands, Grant had only the one hand, and Chase wrenched it free.
Grant scrambled to his feet. "Give me the goddamned-"
Chase screamed, "Shut up," and pointed the pistol at Grant's face.
"Don't do that…" But Grant saw the developing flinch in Chase's eyes and jerked his head away. He was smashed in the face, felt a separate impact when his head hit the floor again, never heard it, never heard the gunshot, then everything went red, and a lightning stroke of pain ripped through his body…
LUCAS WENT INTO the stairwell intending to go down to the isolation area, but heard another shot, and it seemed to be up. He went up instead, leading with his pistol. He could hear people screaming, several of them.
At the top of the flight, he got to his knees and did a quick peek both ways down the hall, then a longer look. Two people were lying prone in the hallway, two or three others running away from him, and four or five were either standing or crouched against walls, two with their hands wrapped over their heads.
Two guys were fighting; rolling around, screaming at each other, but were apparently armed with nothing but their fists. The alarms were still belching out the raucous, enervating brenk brenk brenk, and he could smell smoke but not see any. Two emergency lights were working far down the hall, but closer by he could see glass from two more, shattered.