“I always was a problem.”
The look Mason gave him was almost compassionate. Almost. “You still are.”
“Why don't you just shoot us?” Dutch yelled.
“Not today.”
Mason motioned to the door. On his way out, Melvin made a little point-and-shoot motion at them with his thumb and forefinger. It made AJ want to rip his hand off and feed it to him.
“Close it,” Mason said.
Seconds later, the door closed, and a welding torch began to seal them in.
3
They stared at each other awkwardly. “I guess we're in this together now, whether we like it or not,” AJ said.
Gideon picked himself up and straightened. He was looking better now, the effects of Melvin's little concoction wearing off. At his full height, he was taller than both of his companions. “Who are you people? And what the hell am I doing here? You know that asshole out there hit me? He actually hit me!” he said, looking around like he expected to find a lawyer hiding behind a cabinet.
“We didn't get a chance to meet yet, Doc. I'm AJ Trenton. This here is my friend, Henry Jones. There was another person with us before, a girl. We were brought here to… well, to consult, you might say.”
“Pleased to meet you, I guess.”
“How are you feeling?”
The man shrugged, his orange coat too big on his shoulders. “Aside from being back in here? How the hell are we going to get out?”
AJ looked at the doctor and then over to his friend. If Dutch was freaked out, he was hiding it well. The situation didn't seem real yet, maybe because it all happened so fast. “Well, this place worked once. I guess they figured it would hold people again. How did you survive, anyway?”
The man giggled. It was a strange sound coming from an adult male. “There's plenty to drink, if that's what you're wondering!”
“Not any more,” Dutch said. He was looking through the refrigerator and through the cabinets. “No more bottles.”
Gideon looked over his shoulder, and his face went ashen. AJ wasn't sure he liked that look any better than hysteria.
“They must have moved everything out. I don't think our imprisonment here is a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. They must have been waiting for an opportunity to get us separated.”
“You think it's true, what they said about Kate?” Dutch asked.
“I don't know. I didn't hear any shots, did you?”
“You didn't even hear the boat.”
“But you must have.”
Dutch settled his butt against the counter. “Yeah I did, and I didn't hear any shots.”
“They must have left her there.”
“Or drowned her. They'd have a hell of a time getting you and me underwater, but her?”
Gideon began to pace back and forth, his hands threatening to rip out chunks of his own hair. “Okay, okay, great! So no shots. No shots! But we're trapped in here. Right back to square one, you might say. Not just a chair this time. Can you build a welder? If not, then we'll be eating each others' corpses within the week.”
AJ actually laughed. The guy was nuts but not humorless. “Can you make a welder?”
“Me? Hell no. I'm just a biologist, for Christ's sake.”
“I'm sure Bruhbaker was counting on that.”
“Bruhbaker?”
“He's the asshole,” Dutch said, “the one who hit you.”
“Oh.”
AJ started around the room. He was scanning his memory, going over every detail he could remember. He wasn't on the engineering team, but he was well-familiar with the blueprints. It had been part of his job to know the place inside and out. The kitchen, of all places. It hadn't exactly been high on the list of security risks.
“Hey Doc,” Dutch said. “Maybe you want to calm down and tell us more about what we're facing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't know if you noticed, but it's a freakin' jungle outside. Those Carrion things are everywhere now.”
“They grow fast, don't they?”
“We noticed,” AJ said. He was over in the corner now, looking at one of the big, industrial stoves. Heat was always a concern, so the primary ventilation system ran…
“There are more of them than when I was outside last,” Gideon said. “When I heard the gunfire I expected… I don't know what I expected. I guess I expected hazmat teams and a government quarantine. I should have known VO would be trying to clean up its own mess.”
“With extreme prejudice,” AJ said. He had begun yanking the stove away from the wall. It was heavy, but it had wheels. “Dutch, you got a penny?”
His buddy tossed him a ten-centavos Chilean coin and went back to examining the door. It didn't look like he was having any luck.
“What I don't get is why they didn't shoot us. If they're trying to kill us, I mean,” Gideon said.
AJ knelt down and examined the space behind the stove. He found the screws he was looking for and starting twisting one of them with the coin. “They can't. Sooner or later, there will be hazmat teams and a government investigation. If our bodies are riddled with bullets, there will be too many questions. Mason was right about that. It might be the easy thing, but he cares too much about Black Shadow's reputation to risk it. Ever since Baghdad, the private sector has been very cautious when it comes to bodies. You got to imagine that goes double for the vice president's daughter.”
“What? Who?” Gideon asked.
“The girl,” Dutch said.
“They can deny we were ever a part of the investigation to begin with. They can claim we ended up here of our own accord.”
“That doesn't make any sense,” Gideon said.
Dutch shook his head. “My buddy's right. Without hard evidence, who's going to prove otherwise? They could make our contract disappear on a whim.”
AJ picked the heavy metal frame off of the wall and tossed it to the floor. It clanged against the counter, snapping everyone's attention back to him. He looked at them. “There's bad news and worse news.”
“Let's hear it.”
“I found the main ventilation system. It goes out the wall here and through the floor,” he said, pointing. “That's actually good news because it goes out of the building. The bad news is that it'll be a tight fit, if we can squeeze through at all.”
“And the worse news?”
“It's a fifty foot drop to the water. I don't see any rope, do you?”
“What about the windows? Have we tried those yet?”
AJ shook his head. “They're shatterproof. You couldn't break one of those with a sledgehammer.”
“I know, I tried,” Gideon said. “I mean, not that I had a real hammer or anything.”
Dutch let out a breath. “Well, there's no waiting it out, I guess.”
AJ looked at him. “I don't know about you, but I'm not counting on the government moving in for another two or three days. If the Shadow team manages to hold off the authorities, we'll be just as dead. In fact, I think that's their plan. Besides, you heard what Doctor Grey here said about how fast that stuff is growing. I'm not sure I want to wait until it drags the whole damned place down with it.”
“You don't think…” Dutch began.
“I don't think it can move, but it could grow heavy enough to topple the platform. This place may look solid, but you got to remember that it entered the water horizontally and was tipped ninety degrees into place. It could tip back if the supports break.”
They were quiet. Every groan of wind became an unbearable din. They could feel the strain of the place all around them, their prison getting smaller by the moment. No one mentioned the cut on Doctor Grey's head. No one mentioned the fact that — if they stayed — he might be as prone to The Carrion spores as the original crew, and it probably wouldn't take a full three days before something happened.