Chapter Twenty-Six
12:32 p.m.
River ran harder than he’d ever run before.
The hallway was marginally lit by red emergency lights, separated by too much space to provide sufficient light for any emergency evacuation. He was counting on the college-age terrorists finding the sudden loss of power disorienting, because the time to wait, to distract, was over.
He’d heard the phone ring.
Someone else, someone not here, was pulling the strings of these poor, stupid kids who thought they were fighting the good fight.
The bomb in the lab was going to go off. Either one of students would detonate it, or it would be remotely detonated, just like the bombs at the coffee shop earlier this morning.
He had to get Ava out of there.
The DS had done more than his job distracting and harassing the students. He’d also captured half of the remaining kids. River had frog-marched them out to the bus and tied them up with the first two. No time left to draw out the rest. He just hoped he’d get Ava, himself, and the DS out before it went off.
Someone was yelling worse than a drunk sailor on leave inside the lab, screaming for help getting his cell phone out of his pocket. There was a man–size shadow in the doorway to the lab. Not Ava; she was too small.
River deliberately plowed into the person in the doorway, knocking them back hard enough that they crashed into someone else inside the room. The two bodies hit the floor in a tangled, furious mess.
“What the…?” someone barked, just as the phone went off again.
“River!” Ava darted toward him from the rear of the room.
He grabbed her hand and towed her out of the room. “It’s go time, DS,” he shouted, as they ran.
A couple of shots followed them, showering them with drywall, but that only gave him more reason to run faster.
They rounded a corner and another, then hit the exit door to the stairwell that he and the DS had come in. River had Ava outside two seconds later.
She slowed, probably thinking they were safe. He didn’t agree and pulled her toward the street.
“River,” she gasped. “Slow down. I need to…catch my…breath.”
“We need to get to the bus.”
“Bus? What bus?”
He tugged her around the building, until the vehicle came into view.
“A transit bus?” She sounded confused. “What…?”
“It’s a long story.”
They reached the vehicle, and he went on first, just in case any of their captives had gotten loose. Nope, they were all tied up nice and tight, just as he left them. They were rather vocal about not liking the situation, however. He ignored them.
River sat in the driver’s seat and reached for the keys, but they were gone. Damn it, the DS had them.
A man hurtled through the darkness toward the bus. Compact with a buzz cut of gray hair that reflected the moonlight.
“Make a hole,” he barked as he reached the door.
The old man got on board so fast Ava almost tripped over her own feet to make room for him.
“Get outta my chair, Snowflake.”
River vacated it as fast as he could. “I think we should be as far away from here as possible, DS.”
“Yes,” Ava said. “The bomb is a lot bigger than the one that blew up outside the coffee shop. Sam showed it to me. It’s in a big crate.”
“What did it look like?” River asked as the DS started the bus’s engine and got them rolling down the street.
“Oh, um, I don’t really know. It was covered in black plastic.” The bus picked up speed as Ava spoke.
“You’re all going to die,” someone shouted from farther inside the bus.
“Shut the fuck up, Jose,” someone else yelled. “I don’t want to die.”
“Shut your pie holes, all of you,” DS yelled. “If I have to come back there, you’ll all wish your mother had swallowed.”
The shouting ceased.
Ava glanced at the various students he’d tied to seats. “How many people are here?” she asked.
“We grabbed every terrorist-in-training we could and tied them up in here.”
“And our driver?”
“Sergeant Ken Sturgis retired. Homeland Security asked me to help out Snowflake here.” He chuckled. “Never thought I’d be going into a combat situation while working for the El Paso transit authority.”
A flash, followed by a boom, shattered the windows in the bus and pushed the vehicle up and sideways. It knocked River and Ava off their feet. The entire bus shuttered and rocked as if it were caught in a tornado.
Their captive passengers shouted in alarm.
River managed to grab Ava and protect her with his body, but they still got tossed around.
A few seconds later, the bus came to rest. He got to his feet, Ava rolling to her knees next to him, and looked out what used to be a window. Behind them, the building that had once housed the chemistry lab was gone. Parts of the neighboring buildings were gone, too.
“Holy shit.” He hadn’t realized he’d spoken until he heard the words coming out of his own mouth.
“River,” DS said, his powerful voice oddly gentle. “You’d better check your girl. She’s bleeding.”
River jerked his attention from the devastation outside to Ava as she wavered on her hands and knees. River knelt next to her, putting one hand around her waist so he could offer his body as support for hers. He pulled out a flashlight and shined it over her, looking for injuries.
She had blood coating the right side of her neck, shoulder, and arm. It glistened in the light, twisting his stomach with something he was not going to admit was panic.
“Where are you hurt?” he asked, trying to see if there were any other obvious injuries, though he wasn’t entirely sure where the blood on her right side was coming from. “Ava?”
“I don’t…know.” Her voice came out breathy and uncertain. “What happened?”
“We got blown up.”
“Again?” She looked so confused.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t taking very good care of her. He was going to get fired. Fucking fired.
Hell, he’d fire himself as soon as this shit was over. She was a doctor, for fuck’s sake. Neither trained nor prepared to deal with explosions, bullets, or any of the violence attached to him.
He was the biggest danger to her health and safety.
She blinked a couple of times, but the confusion didn’t leave her face. Fuck, did she have a concussion?
“DS, I need you.”
The old man appeared at his shoulder a couple of seconds later.
“Hold this so I can see what I’m doing,” River instructed, handing the flashlight to the other man.
DS took it, and the beam of light followed River’s hands as he skimmed them over her body, looking for all the injuries she might have suffered. He found the source of the blood—several cuts on the right side of her neck, probably from shards of safety glass when the bus windows shattered. More nicks in her shirt along her back revealed smaller cuts, but nothing that needed more than simple bandages. There was a solid bump, along with a deep cut just below her right ear. Much deeper or lower, and it could have nicked her jugular. She’d have bled out too quickly for anything to save her.
She needed stitches, but the hospital wasn’t a safe place anymore. It was overrun with infected and dying people, and she wasn’t wearing a respirator. Hadn’t been for the last hour.
“I need a first-aid kit,” River said to the DS. “A good one.”
One of the kids groaned. “I think my arm is broken.”
“You dumb shits are lucky to be alive,” DS snarled at them. “If we hadn’t brought you with us, you’d be dead back there. Be happy all you have is a broken arm.” He turned to River. “I’ve got a small one, but she looks like she needs more than that.”
River considered his options, which, admittedly, were limited. The medical center was a no-go, due to the outbreak and its extensive overcrowding. Fort Bliss Army base was locked up so tight a piece of paper couldn’t get through. What was left?
All the college students sniffled and moaned in pain. The one who’d complained about his arm whined, “Come on, man. This really hurts.”
River raised an eyebrow and asked the DS, “Ever robbed a pharmacy before?”
“Nope, but something tells me I’m about to.”
“I’d better clear it first.” River said, pulling out his cell phone.
Smashed and unresponsive.
“Shit.” He looked at DS. “Have you got a cell phone?”
“Sure.” The old man reached into a pocket and pulled it out.
River punched in Dozer’s cell phone number and waited for the agent to answer.
“Dozer.”
“It’s River. I need—”
“Did you rescue Dr. Lloyd?” the other man interrupted.
“Yeah, I’ve got her, but—”
“You know anything about a big explosion at the university?”
“Yeah,” River said cautiously.
The pause that followed felt oppressive. “Again?” Dozer asked, his tone part disbelief and part irritation.
“Yeah, well, what can I say? People either love me or hate me. These guys…” He sighed. “They really hate me.”
“Any casualties?”
“Yeah, at least three, maybe four…of the terrorists. We’ve got another four live ones with us on the bus, too.”
“Is that the entire cell?” Hope turned his voice almost excited.
“Nope, Darth Vader is still out there pushing all the buttons.”
“Darth Vader?”
“The bastard uses the Darth Vader ringtone when he calls his minions.”
Another pause. “What do you need?”
“Permission to rob a pharmacy or doctor’s office.”
Another pause. “Say again.”
“Ava got pretty beat up, lots of cuts and abrasions. She also has an egg-size lump on her head. I need to check her out, but I don’t think bringing her there is good idea.”
A string of expletives rushed out of the phone, making River wince.
“No. Things aren’t out of control here, but we’ve got every bureaucrat who thinks he’s in charge of picking other people’s noses trying to tell Rodrigues what to do. That’s on top of standing room only in the triage tent we set up outside the ER. We’ve set up more tents to accommodate the sick. We had a couple hundred cots delivered three hours ago, and they’re all full.”
“So, about that pharmacy?”
“Yeah, do what you need to do. Just leave a note or something.”
River would have laughed if the situation weren’t so fucked up. “Will do. I’ll contact you when I have something to report.” River hung up. He looked at the DS. “Do you know a good place to rob?”
DS snorted as he handed River a small first-aid kit. “Let’s see if I can get this rig to run before we begin our life of crime.”
The bus’s engine turned over with a high-pitched whine that died down after a few seconds. The DS got it back on the road and pointed the vehicle toward the city. River swept the closest seat free of glass and debris, then picked Ava up and deposited her on it. She gasped and grabbed his shoulders, but didn’t complain.
“I’m going to clean up your neck first and see if I can do something about that cut, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, her voice barely audible over the unhappy engine.
“Feel any new injuries?” he asked, concerned there was more he hadn’t found when he ran his hands over her.
“Don’t think so. My head hurts a lot.”
“I think you’ve got a concussion.”
She gave him a one-sided smile. “I figured that out.”
He opened the kit and used a couple of alcohol swabs to clean her neck. The cut was still bleeding, but not dangerously so. There were some butterfly bandages in the kit, so he used them to close the cut, then didn’t hold back on the gauze when he bandaged it up. She never made a sound.
“How’s that?” he asked, her ear only a few inches away.
“It’s…better.” It came out as a whisper. She turned to look at him, her eyes wide, and cupped his cheek, respirator and all, with one hand. “You’ve got cuts, too.”
He couldn’t move, wouldn’t look away. She held him in place with nothing more than the soft touch of her hand and a gaze that seemed to see all the way down to the bottom of his soul.
He’d do anything to have her look at him like that for the rest of his life.
“I’m fine,” he whispered back, unwilling to break the bubble of intimacy around them.
She laughed, and it wiped out any pain he might have been feeling for seconds that seemed like forever. “You’re a tough guy, Mr. Smooth, but even soldiers need help once in a while.”
If it meant her hands on him, he’d gladly lose his tough-guy image for good. “You have my permission to heal any part of me you want.”
The joy left her face, like water running down a hill. “I’ve been exposed to several people who have the Neisseria. These cuts are probably the least of my problems.”
“Don’t go there,” he told her, bending even closer, maintaining eye contact with her. He wanted to kiss her, but if he took his respirator off, she’d probably give him shit for the rest of his life. “You sound more lucid now.”
“The dizziness isn’t as bad, and I don’t think I’m going to puke onto your boots anymore.”
“That’s a good sign.”
“Whoopee.” Her laugh contained no humor, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Given my current condition, I think there’s room for improvement.”
“Don’t you give up on me,” he ordered. “You don’t know if you’re infected or not.”
“I’m trying to be realistic. You know, avoiding the whole false hope thing.”
“I was an ass when I said that.”
One corner of her mouth curved up. “Only then?”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Shit disturber.” He let his gaze roam her body again, cataloguing all the injuries he could see.
She had a number of other cuts and abrasions that needed to be cleaned and either stitched or held together with butterfly bandages, but he’d already used up the DS’s meager supply. River stood and looked over the four young men he had tied to various metal parts of the bus. They all needed first aid, too.
“There’s a doctor’s office and pharmacy coming up, Snowflake,” DS said over his shoulder.
“I lost my lock picks,” River told him. “Do you have any?”
“Sure,” DS said, with a wicked grin. “But I call mine a crowbar.”
“Got two of ’em?”
“Always carry a spare, son,” DS said as he pulled their unhappy vehicle up to the curb. “You never know when you’re going to need it.” He put the machine in park, turned off the engine, and opened the door. “After you.”