Havoc by Shannon McKenna

27

Whack.The fox-faced guy holding her smacked her hard in the side of the head. Then again, whack. Her eyes swam with tears.

“We have nothing more to learn from each other, Cait,” Kimball announced. “Time to learn some manners. Darius, get out your meat cleaver. I doubt Cait will be using her hands again anyway, so we’ll start there and just chop away until we’re no longer enjoying ourselves. Sound good?”

“No!” She struggled madly. Whack. The guy hit her face, and flung her to the ground. He was reaching for his soft-sided knife case for that chopping blade, oh God.

Suddenly both Darius and Kimball were looking over their shoulder, frowning. She could hear a commotion over there, but she couldn’t see it. She shook violently.

“What in the holy fuck is going on?” Kimball yelled. “Bingham? Wilkes? What the fuck are you doing? Who crashed the fucking tractor?”

Kimball turned to Julian, the other twin, and the third guy. “Go and see what the hell is going on!” He turned back to Cait, his lips curling back to show his teeth, and kicked her in the hip. “Get out that blade! Chop her fucking hand off! Right now!”

Cait curled up as tightly as she could, but she couldn’t stop the merciless hands seizing her right wrist, dragging it out in front of her. She writhed, screamed—

Bam. Bam. Who…?

Something fell, crushing her. Couldn’t move. She struggled, fought.

Bam, bam, bam.More shooting. Blood, hot, sticky. She couldn’t tell whose. With huge effort, she rolled the man off her, and sat up.

It was Darius, but most of his face was gone.

She looked up in disbelief, to see Mace’s flying leap right onto Kimball. The gun flew out of Kimball’s hand. Mace bore him over backwards. They were wrestling on the ground. Mace spun Kimball around, his arms over Kimball’s throat, pulling his head back.

Cait was yanked suddenly back up, a gun barrel shoved to her ear. “Let go of him, fuckface! Or I blow her head off!”

It was one of the other guys Kimball had sent after the tractor. The gun barrel against her head pulled it all together. An instant of absolute clarity. Time slowed, showing the madness in Kimball’s face. The anguish in Mace’s eyes.

Mace let go of Kimball, shoving him away. “Don’t shoot her.” His voice was raw.

No. She wasn’t allowing this. Getting her head blown off was a better death than Kimball wanted to give her, and it might give Mace an opening. Time to choose.

Her last choice.

Cait dragged in air, and screamed as she twisted backwards, pulling the guy off balance. Boom, the gun went off.

Boom,another shot. She heard it, muffled and faraway. Her face burned. Her ear. It was hot, wet. Blood ran down her neck. She’d been hit.

Another body, on top of her. Her ears rang. She heard yelling now, from far away. She heaved with desperate strength and rolled the twitching man off herself just as Mace leaped after Kimball, into the clean room, and followed him inside.

She heard a whooshing sound. The clean room doors snapped shut, and sealed. The air scrubbers came on. The light panel lit up, a string of colored lights, green and orange.

She pushed herself up from underneath of the dead man, and gasped.

The thick seal distorted the scene inside, but she saw it too clearly. The virus case was wide open, and Kimball was holding up a vial, in triumph. He’d snapped it open, and his laughter was picked up from a microphone inside, and it came out of a speaker on the outside, harsh and tinny and distorted.

And Mace was inside that chamber with him.

“It’s out!” Kimball shrieked. “It’s out! I’m the only one who’s vaccinated! And now your fuckboy is exposed, too. I own you, bitch! I own you both! I own everyone!”

Mace lifted his gun, pointing it at him. “No you don’t,” he said. “Prick.”

Kimball gasped and choked with hysterical laughter. “You can’t shoot me without breaching the seal,” he said. “You can’t come out without releasing the virus.”

Mace pulled a knife out of his boot sheath, a long, wicked black blade. “I can cut you into pieces inside here,” Mace said. “That’s something.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen your burn scars up close,” Kimball said. “You are as ugly as shit.”

“So is the hole in your balls,” Mace said. “We popped open some champagne when Fiona punctured your ball sack with those scissors. Oh happy day.”

Kimball licked his shiny lips, his eyes wild. “Dumb punk. You were supposed to die in that fire. But you fuckers had to ruin it for me. It’s just what you do.”

“That’s the one true thing you’ve ever said.” Mace fished inside his shirt, and pulled out the silvery pendant beneath. “See this?”

“What, am I supposed to admire your man-jewelry now? Stick it up your ass.”

“Remember how I wired this place to blow thirteen years ago?” Mace said. “I’ve learned some tricks since then. I’m better at it now. This time it all comes down. On you.”

He turned to Cait. “The explosion should burn up the virus,” he told her. “I hope. Three minutes, Cait. Run. Please. Now.”

“But Mace—you can’t—”

“I was an idiot, and an asshole,” he said. “I’m sorry. I love you.”

“I won’t let you sacrifice yourself!” Cait yelled.

“It’s not up to you. I have to do this. It’s the only way. Run!”

Mace wrenched the top off the silver device, and pushed the button. He held it up, showing the clock on the display, its countdown racing.

“It’s done, Kimball,” Mace said. “It’s over.”

“You filthy punk. I always hated the shit out of you,” Kimball snarled. “You and your fucking snotty attitude. Always mouthing off.”

“I hated you right back.” Mace turned to her, his hand pressing against the flexible plastic. “Cait, run!”

Kimball pulled a knife from his sleeve and lunged. Mace spun around at Cait’s shriek, parrying with his arm, and stabbing up into Kimball’s belly.

Mace let him drop, his hands and his knife drenched in blood. Kimball slid down heavily, until he plopped onto the floor, looking vaguely surprised.

Mace turned back to her. “Run, goddamnit! Or else it’s all for nothing!”

Yes. Of course, she had to run…but she couldn’t. Desperation, grief, love, anger and…something else. Something teasing her, tugging at her. She picked up the gun that Julian had dropped, and staggered forward, half-stumbling over their corpses.

Kimball was spitting blood. He smiled, his teeth bloody. “Aww! You just can’t leave me alone, can you, sweetheart?” he crooned. “Our lives, forever entwined.”

The case was wide open, Kimball’s arm draped across the vials. She could see the stenciled letters, upside down. Bothell Strongbox.

I played a shell game with the Bothell SB.

Oh, dear God. Of course.

“I can’t stop the countdown!” Mace yelled. “It’s too late. Go out there, have a great life for me. I wish I could’ve shared it.”

Cait pointed the gun at Kimball. “There’s no virus in there, Mace.” She looked at Kimball. “My dad screwed you. But you weren’t smart enough to get the joke.”

“Bullshit!” Blood trickled through Kimball’s fingers. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” She pointed the gun at Kimball’s head, pressing it against the flexible plastic wall. “Dad left a dummy virus in the Bothell box. Not the real virus. And you are going down, you mediocre piece of shit.”

Kimball opened his mouth, but she didn’t want to hear it. She pulled the trigger.

Boom.

* * *

Cait gotKimball right between the eyes, punching a bullet hole in the plastic wall. Alarms begin to squeal. Some change in air pressure must have tripped them.

Mace cut the plastic with his blood-drenched knife until he had a slash big enough to crawl through. “Run!” he yelled, grabbing her hand.

They sprinted toward the entrance. His internal clock knew exactly how many seconds they had left. Not enough. Too slow. He glanced down. She was barefoot.

He hoisted her up over his shoulders as the explosives started to go off. Earthshaking, bone-rattling, but they were almost at the opening, daylight beckoning…

Dirt and rocks rained down. A huge, grinding noise. Darkness.

Buried alive.

Mace fought the weight of it. Got one arm free. Scrabbled with it, pushing until he got his head up. Air. He was in a narrow space under a tumbled wooden structure. Part of the makeshift cavern door had shielded them, left an air pocket. He still saw light ahead.

He dug himself loose, and then started frantically digging for Cait.

He found her in less than a minute. A handful of that dress fabric led to a hip, then a shoulder. Then her face.

Unconscious. Blood ran from her nose. So her heart was still beating.

He scrabbled in the dirt until he could lift her up into his arms, crawling with her toward the light. “Cait,” he said. “Cait, please.” His voice was gritty and thick with tears.

Cait coughed, choking on the dirt in her throat. “Huh?”

“Cait? Are you okay?”

She coughed again. “Not sure,” she croaked.

He positioned himself in front of her, and dragged her out, slowly and laboriously pulling her through one last filthy hole, and they were outside, clinging to the side of a big, sunken pit. The cavern had fallen in on itself, and they were on the edge of that crater. He cradled her in his arms. “Cait?”

“I seem to be in one piece,” she whispered, thickly. “Stuff hurts, but it works.”

He wrapped his arms around her, wordless and awestruck at his luck.

“Mace! Mace?” It was Eric’s voice, from far away.

They were here. Thank God. They hadn’t gone through the tunnel. He tried to call back to Eric, but he didn’t have the strength or the wind to make a sound.

They just sat there in the dirt, clinging to each other.

People arrived. Eric, Nate, Anton and Fi. Bristol, emergency medics. Cait was strapped onto a stretcher. They tried to put him on a stretcher, too. “I can walk,” he told them. “I’m fine. Concentrate on her. Take care of her feet. She hurt her feet.”

“Don’t worry,” the woman soothed.

Then he felt the sting of a needle, and it all went away.