"Cure this," she said and dropped to the ground.
The silenced weapons spat and popped.
Litt screamed. His blood splashed over her. The knife spiraled out of his hand and clanged against the metal hangar wall—a cymbal clash over the dull tones of bullets plunking into the same wall. As soon as his body hit the ground, she flipped around to face the Atroposes.
They stood in a tight group, their arms straight out in front, clutching pistols that smoked and projected arrows of red light over her head. They shared an expression of vague shock. Then all six eyes flicked to her and the laser beams lowered. The high-pitched whine of motors caught their attention. In unison, they rotated their heads toward the sound.
For the only time since seeing them together, Julia witnessed a disunity in their actions. Two began swinging their pistols toward the nearest Deadeye; the other reeled back, trying to shift his feet into hyperdrive.
The Deadeyes roared and vanished in billows of smoke. The Atroposes disappeared too. In a chunky mist of black and red. Sparks flashed as round after round pinged off their pistols. There were so many sparks, she thought later the gauntlets must have been made of metal as well. The men seemed to blur backward, like inked figures smeared by the artist's hand.
She closed her eyes.
The Deadeyes stopped firing. Their barrels continued to spin; they sounded like dentist's drills. Something wet smacked against the ground.
She turned away and cautiously ventured into the world of vision. Allen was sitting against the wall, one leg completely off the ground in a posture of defense. His hands gripped his head because they had nothing else to do. His mouth gaped in a silent scream. Moving in miniscule increments, his eyes—too big for his face—settled on her. His mouth closed on a frown, then a bruised tongue poked out and slid over his lips. He swallowed. His hands remained in the air. He started to speak, stopped. Another swallow.
"Did you actually say," he asked, wheezing out a thin chuckle, "cure this?"
ninety-nine
She had been gone no more than three minutes, and
when she returned Allen was still propped against the wall. He bore a numb, dull expression and was staring at the spot where the Atroposes had finally met their match. She had tried to avoid glimpsing any of that particular carnage, but the Deadeyes had done their job so thoroughly, everywhere she looked she saw
something
of the former assassins.
"They're just gone," he said. "They were here and now they're not. What kind of person creates a thing that can do that?" He looked up at her. "You lost your jacket. You covered him up?"
She nodded. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks still wet. "I had to be sure. What if he was . . . somehow . . . ?"
"I can't imagine those monsters walking away from any adversary who still drew breath."
She picked up Litt's case and sat down beside Allen. The bombs were raining down now, pouring into craters where the Quonsets had been. They had to leave quickly, but an equally pressing needed demanded her attention. She squared Litt's case on her lap. There was a single drop of blood near the handle.
She said, "Was he telling the truth, do you think?"
473
"One way to find out."
She could tell he was in great pain. His breathing sounded sloppy and wet. Still, he displayed more vigor than he had ten minutes before. Eyeing Litt's body, sprawled flat on its back an arm's reach away, she understood how he felt. She hoped he could hold on to the energy awhile longer. She worried about her ability to carry him to safety if he couldn't walk.
She took a deep breath, popped the latches, and opened the case. Mounted to the inside of the lid were two rows of stainless steel vials. Small labels identified their contents: "Ebola Kugel 4212A"; "Ebola Kugel 521 IF"; "Ebola Kugel 3294B" . . . The last one on the right was twice the size of the others. "EK Antiserum."
"That's it," Allen said.
"Do you think it's an actual antidote, not just his blood? Doesn't it take years to develop?"
"He told me he had an antidote. Antiserum's the same thing."
The bottom portion of the case contained a square metal box, what appeared to be bankbooks, passports, identification, and other documents. She opened the box. Inside were roughly two dozen memory chips in plastic cases.
"The formula for Ebola Kugel?" she wondered.
"Or digitized DNA records. Blackmail material. Financial transactions. Could be anything."
A jet streaked overhead, low. A thunderous blast shook the hangar. They realized it had emanated from the front of the hangar, much closer than the others.
She slammed the lid closed. "Come on."
"Wait." With some difficulty, he reopened the case, plucked three vials of Ebola from the metal tongs that held them, and tossed them toward Litt's body.
"Don't—" She stopped herself. Of course he was right. Nothing good could ever come from those vials. She reached in, removed the remaining vials—all but the antiserum—and tossed them onto Litt's chest.
"You think they'll be destroyed?" Allen asked.
A missile shrieked into the jungle and exploded. Noises of a million varying pitches and tones collided with each other, forming one bellowing scream.
"Witness the wrath of Kendrick," she said. "If he wanted to take down Litt and get his research, he'd have sent in a platoon of commandos." She thought a moment. "Actually, that's what I expected. No, he wants Litt and his germ destroyed. He won't stop until this entire place is a wasteland. Bet on it."
She removed the memory chips from the case and tossed those too. She pulled out the documents. He stopped her. From the sheaf in her hand, he extracted a stack of hundred-dollar bills. It must have been three inches thick.
"For Stephen's church," he said. He dropped the money back into the case and pushed against the wall to stand.
She closed the case and stood. As she reached for Allen, an explosion rocked the ground and she toppled into him. They hit the dirt hard. Then the neighboring hangar blew apart. Roiling clouds of fire and smoke flung jagged panels of sheet metal and twisted beams into the air. The hangar they leaned against lost a wall and started collapsing.
"Hurry!" She pulled Allen's arm around her shoulder and heaved him forward in a stumbling run.
On the other side of the chain-link fence, a huge tree instantly ignited and crashed down, crushing one of the Deadeyes and a section of fence. Heated air shoved them against the wall. Allen yelled out in pain and dropped to one knee, but he pressed on. She could feel him drawing determination from his physical distress, turning the agony into fuel that powered his fight for survival.
Together, they scrambled behind the hangars, awkward as shackled prisoners not yet attuned to each other's rhythm and gait. They tottered into a wall, pushed off, and stumbled forward another dozen paces before falling into the wall again. Instead of turning into the alley through which she had pursued Litt, she led Allen farther south: he did not need to see the body whose head and upper torso she had covered.
The explosions were no longer demarcated in an easily avoided region but seemed to be everywhere, ripping apart the compound's central area, its hangars and Quonsets. She thought the pounding was less severe on the south side of the base near the mineshaft. Or was that just wishful thinking?
She considered escaping through the main gate and along the dirt road where the compound's workers had gone. But she didn't know how far Kendrick would go to eliminate Litt's threat. After pulverizing the compound, might he then start on the road, with the intention of catching up to the fleeing masses? She wouldn't put it past him.