“Fuck it,” Hankins sighed, rain streaking down his face like heat-wave perspiration. “Looks like we’re going to have to go inside.”
“Looks like,” Thompson said with a nod.
“We’ll split up,” Hankins announced.
“Makes us both more vulnerable.”
Hankins kissed the air obnoxiously. “You’re so sensitive, so vulnerable, even with papa bear around.”
“Cut it out, man.”
Hankins grunted another, deeper sigh. “Sooner we get done with this thankless-ass job, sooner we can get away from this fuckin’ monsoon.”
“You’re right,” Thompson admitted, his voice calm even though his guts now seemed to be swimming upstream toward his mouth.
It wasn’t that Thompson was a coward. He’d seen action before, plenty of it — even for the post-Pulse world, Seattle was a tough town, and for cops and anybody working security, it was a higher risk job than steeplejack — and he handled the fear and stress just fine. What bothered him was, he didn’t think either he or even the rugged Hankins could handle a pissed-off transgenic alone. They weren’t human, those transgenics — they were monsters, really.
And Sage Thompson had seen monster movies before — he knew what happened when people split up in such circumstances.
He could tell himself that this was reality, not fantasy; but Seattle in the last few years had turned into a place more ghastly than the imagination of any mere writer or filmmaker could conjure.
Hankins said, “When we find the stairs, I’ll head up and start down. You begin down here and work your way up. We’ll meet in the middle, agree we didn’t find anything, and haul our soggy asses out of here.”
“It’s a plan,” Thompson said with a shrug.
Thompson slipped the imager back into his coat pocket, wiped the rain from his face — a fruitless gesture — and took a couple more steps forward.
The city was the reluctant home to a ton of these shabby old buildings, and they were all around the Emerald City, the structural equivalent of the homeless. Back when the buildings had been constructed in the 1940s and 1950s, they mostly housed factories that built things from scratch, packed them up and shipped them off to the four corners of the world.
But as time went on and the economy eroded around the turn of the century — only to take the devastating hit of the Pulse — many of the buildings stood abandoned, with some then used as warehouse space for other businesses. Each crumbling structure was different, depending on how it had been cannibalized. Thompson knew he might find a floor that was still all offices or one where all the office walls had been demolished to allow for the stacking of larger objects — there was just no way of knowing what lay ahead.
With half a head-turn, Hankins asked, “Ready?”
“Ready,” Thompson said, trying to keep a note of confidence in his voice.
Hankins turned all the way now, shined the light in his face yet again. “You okay, kiddo?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Just get the damn light out of my face.”
Grinning, Hankins aimed the flash back into the building. “Yeah, you’re okay.”
They were stopped outside a broken door, a heavy number that would have made quite a barrier if it had been locked rather than half hanging off its hinges. Both men pulled out their Glock nines and Thompson chambered a round. Hankins, Thompson knew, already had one in the pipe... and most likely already had the safety off as well.
Hankins stepped through the door and Thompson watched the older man swing his weapon from side to side, the hand holding the flashlight following suit.
Thompson stepped through the door behind his partner, his arms locked together in the same fashion, his pistol and flashlight simultaneously sweeping the room. Struggling to keep his breathing under control, he was thankful to at least be out of the rain. He could hear it banging on the roof far above him and on the remaining windows on this floor. Carefully, he tuned that out and listened closely for other sounds.
Moving off to the right now, putting himself out in front, Thompson heard Hankins’ raspy breathing and suddenly knew that, for all his bluster, his partner fought the same nervousness that wanted to paralyze him. To their left something metallic rattled, and they both swung around, their lights stopping briefly on a rattling soda can, then moving on, both beams settling on a huge brown rat. The rodent froze, but its black eyes were not the least bit intimidated by the lights.
“S’pose that sucker’s transgenic?” asked Hankins archly.
Thompson might have laughed — out of nervousness — but his throat felt too dry to pull it off. Letting out a long breath, he went back to checking out the room.
He moved slowly forward, allowing the distance between himself and Hankins to grow, but stayed close enough to cover his partner should the need arise. Halfway across the room, they found a stairwell leading to the second floor. Hankins’ flashlight shone up the stairs, his gun still balanced atop his wrist.
Turning his head halfway toward Thompson, he said, “I’m going up.”
“Okay. I’ll keep at it down here.”
“You find anything, let me know immediately.”
“Same back at ya,” Thompson said. Again he thought about the soggy headset plugged into his ear and hoped the thing had signal enough to get up six flights of stairs.
Hankins headed up the dark stairwell, the steps groaning for a while, but the sound soon getting swallowed by the hammering of rain, which was slanting toward the building, moisture working its way through the loose slats of boarded-up windows.
Thompson watched as Hankins and the light disappeared up the stairs. Shining his flashlight in that direction, he saw scant evidence that Hankins had even been in the building — merely a few wet footprints on the wooden stairs.
Thompson suddenly felt very alone.
Something scrabbled across the floor, just behind him, and he spun around, the flashlight and gun following in a wobbly arc, rainwater spraying off him like he was a wet hound. The beam of light and Glock settled on what appeared to be the same rat again, only this time the rodent stood on its haunches, and seemed to smile — showing its sharp yellow teeth — and almost appeared to be flipping Thompson off with its raised front paws.
Thompson suppressed the urge to squeeze off a round and end the little bastard, and it took no small amount of will to keep him from pulling the trigger — not just because the creature was a handy surrogate for both Hankins and Ames White, but because it might be helpful to end the distraction of the noise the thing was making.
Only, if the flashlights hadn’t alerted the transgenic to their positions, a gunshot most assuredly would... and God only knew what Hankins would think if he heard Thompson shooting, moments after the older man headed up the stairs.
Commuting the rat’s death sentence to life, Thompson resumed his search of the first floor. He moved carefully, doing his best to stay silent, a couple of times holding the flashlight under an arm as he probed especially shadowy corners with the thermal imager.
“Hankins,” he half whispered into the microphone.
No response.
Thompson felt a bead of sweat roll down his cheek, to mingle with the streaks of rain, and he unconsciously found a corner to press himself into as he spoke again, this time louder. “Hankins.”
This time the response was immediate. “Thompson, would you please shut the hell up? Transgenics from here to Portland can hear you. If you’re not in trouble — and it doesn’t sound like you are — zip it.”