Lockdown, page 13
part #4 of Liars Series
And then things got worse. Because Jarli instinctively raised his hands to protect his face . . .
Forgetting that he still had the laser scalpel in one hand.
The laser sheared off part of Jarli’s helmet, narrowly missing his ear. Cold air rushed into the suit and scorched plastic fell onto Jarli’s hair, stinging his scalp. In a panic, he dropped the scalpel. As it fell, the laser beam carved a black line across the wall towards the gas outlets Anya had been examining—
Where it ignited the oxygen.
Just as Anaconda was about to crash into Jarli, flames gushed out of the outlet. A line of fire raced across the wall as the oxygen pipe ruptured, setting fire to the cladding in the wall.
Then the oxygen tank outside went up with a tremendous KABLAM! An explosion ripped out of the wall, and then the floor opened up to swallow Jarli and the whole world went a dazzling white.
Twenty seconds earlier
Bess squirmed under the weight of her own crutch. Taipan was leaning on it, crushing her ribs. She wondered if she could roll sideways, knocking him off balance.
Maybe. But she would still have Rattler’s sword to deal with. And Mamba had reloaded her crossbow. Plus, Taipan had a flash grenade in his hand. He had removed the pin and was holding it closed manually. If the police shot him with their stun guns, Bess and Hayes would be blinded and scorched.
‘We’ve lost the other hostages,’ Taipan was saying.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Mamba said. ‘With Anaconda, it’ll be cramped in the escape vehicle. We’ll only have room to take one hostage with us.’
‘Which one?’
Hayes met Bess’s gaze. Which one of them would be left behind?
‘The girl is smaller, and easier to manage,’ Mamba said. ‘Kill the other one.’
Hayes squeezed his eyes shut.
‘Wait!’ Bess cried.
Ignoring her, Rattler raised the sword—
Then the world exploded.
Bess screamed as the ceiling disintegrated. Blocks of masonry rained down, along with an avalanche of brick dust, an operating table, a laser scalpel, two people in space suits, and what looked like a giant—
But then Mamba fell on top of Bess, obscuring her view. Bess tried to push Mamba off, but already so much debris had landed on Mamba that Bess couldn’t move her. She could hardly even breathe.
Boom! A secondary explosion shifted some of the rubble. Maybe it was Taipan’s grenade. Broken glass rained down like wind chimes.
Soon the white flash of the explosion died away, leaving Bess in the DARK. She was buried alive. She only had the light between the cracks of the rubble to see by.
Mamba was still on top of her. She wasn’t moving. She’d been struck by a spectacular number of rocks.
Help, Bess tried to scream. But there was no air in her lungs.
She was slowly suffocating in the blackness.
GOLIATH
‘Move in, move in!’ Detective Arno yelled.
The police swarmed up the hill towards the front of the hospital, where the entrance had been before the explosion. The front wall was just gone—it was like looking at an open doll’s house. Ribbons of twisted steel and chunks of concrete were scattered all over the hillside. In a matter of seconds, the landscape had changed from a siege to a war-zone.
In her training, former Constable Blanco had seen photographs of bombed-out buildings. She had learned about the hazards of entering one— falling debris, toxic particles in the air, the risk of secondary blasts and fires. And those were just the hazards from a normal building. A hospital would be much worse, since half the debris could be contagious or radioactive. And four criminals were in there somewhere.
Just the same, Blanco ran up the hill alongside the other police officers. There was no time to be cautious. School kids and injured people were in there, including Jarli Durras and Kellin Plowman. She couldn’t just stay back and wait.
In the chaos, no-one stopped her. Soon she was in the ruined foyer, climbing across the rubble like a mountain goat. She could hardly see anything through the smoke and dust. The other officers had goggles, masks, body armour and guns. Blanco was horribly vulnerable, with nothing except her civilian clothes.
Blanco coughed and rubbed dust from her eyes. In the torchlight she could see various objects scattered in the debris—half a computer monitor, a portable defibrillator shooting sparks, a chair with only one leg still attached. A reception bell was half embedded in one wall. Emergency lights flickered in the room above the collapsed ceiling, which looked like a surgical theatre. Something was on fire in the corner. No sign of the hostages, or the hostiles.
‘Clear!’ someone yelled.
Detective Arno was already headed towards the double doors on the other side of the room, which looked intact. ‘Seal off the area,’ she ordered. ‘Johnson and Shu, go left around the building. Ruiz and Poe, go right. Don’t let anybody leave. There are sixteen kids in here somewhere; their safety is—’
And then something huge erupted from the rubble.
Blanco jumped back as rocks tumbled. Arno screamed as a huge hand shot out of the debris and grabbed her. She was like a mouse caught in an eagle’s claws. A giant emerged from the earth, illuminated by torches and emergency lights, his skin and his ragged clothes were grey with concrete dust. It was as though the rocks themselves had come to life. Blanco had never seen anything like it. She found herself frozen, her feet rooted to the rubble.
‘Halt, or I’ll shoot!’ Rodney yelled from behind Blanco. The spell broke and she threw herself to the ground, to give him a clear shot at the giant.
The giant didn’t halt. He raised Arno up with both hands and then threw her at Rodney.
Arno sailed through the air and crashed into Rodney. They both fell into a heap. Rodney’s stun gun went flying.
The giant turned his furious gaze onto Blanco. Then he stomped towards her like a hungry T-Rex.
With no way of defending herself, Blanco turned to run, but she immediately tripped over an exposed pipe sticking out of the debris. She hit the ground and rolled sideways, trying to get out of the giant’s path—
Then she bumped into the portable defibrillator.
Without even thinking, she grabbed the dented paddles. As the giant reached for her, she rolled over and held up the paddles like a shield.
As soon as the giant touched the metal surface of the paddles, they kicked back in Blanco’s hands. The giant bounced backwards as though he’d collided with an invisible wall. His whole body went stiff, and he hit the ground with such force that even more chunks fell out of the ruptured ceiling. He lay there, twitching.
Rodney was climbing to his feet, stunned. ‘What . . . how . . .’
Blanco rubbed her face with trembling hands.
Arno was back up already, examining the fallen giant. ‘We’re gonna need to find some big handcuffs before he wakes up,’ she said. ‘I don’t think zip ties will cut it.’
Something moved underneath Blanco. She lifted some of the broken bricks to reveal the back of someone’s head. She shifted a few more, and saw someone else trapped under the first person. A girl.
‘About time,’ Bess wheezed. ‘Get me out of here!’
Blanco dug frantically through the rubble, unearthing Bess and an unconscious woman holding a crossbow. One of the criminals, she guessed, signalling to Rodney to secure the woman and her weapon.
‘Are you OK?’ Blanco asked Bess.
Bess coughed and spat. ‘You have to find Mr Hayes. He’s under here somewhere. Hurry!’
Blanco kept digging. Arno and Rodney joined her. More police officers came to help with the search.
Soon they had uncovered several people, including the PE teacher, two kids in hazmat suits, and three more criminals. Two of the criminals were unconscious. The other—a squat man in swim goggles—was awake but said nothing. He just glared at everyone as Arno dragged him out of the rubble.
By some miracle, everyone was alive. The hazmat suits seemed to have protected the two kids who were closest to the explosion. The falling rubble had left some nasty scrapes and bruises on everyone else, but no-one had a broken skull. A police officer used a steel tube to break through the locked door to the corridor, where he found more than a dozen hostages—terrified, but unharmed.
‘That’s all four criminals,’ Arno said, as she tightened some cuffs around the man’s wrists. ‘It’s over.’
‘There are five,’ Bess said. ‘Viper is here.’
Arno was at her side immediately. ‘Did you say Viper?’
‘He’s upstairs, operating on Mr Plowman in Theatre One. You have to stop him!’
Arno grabbed Rodney and the police officer with the steel tube. ‘This way,’ she said. ‘Come on!’
She ran through the double doors and disappeared.
The squat man in the handcuffs chuckled quietly.
‘What’s so funny?’ Blanco demanded.
‘You’ll see.’
Arno sprinted up the corridor, flanked by two police officers. If Viper was here, then she had to get to that surgical theatre. Fast.
This was a chance not many police officers got. Arno had spent her whole career catching people who followed orders—killers-for-hire, thieves-for-hire, money launderers. Arno would arrest them and put them away, but someone else would immediately take their place in the criminal underworld.
Today she had the opportunity to make a real difference. To arrest the person giving the orders, not just the pawns who followed them.
Today, Arno would cut the head off the snake.
She hit the stairs and kept running. The route to the surgical theatres was branded into her memory. Years ago, she had waited outside one of them for hours while a BULLET was removed from her partner. A bullet paid for by Viper. Now it was time to get even.
An orange-haired paramedic was hovering in the corridor, his eyes wide. ‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ he said. ‘I’ve been hiding in the bathroom. Was that an explosion?’
‘Get downstairs,’ Arno hissed as she ran past him.
The doors were just ahead. Arno slowed down, not wanting Viper to hear her coming.
Because he was in there. He had to be. The building had been surrounded for hours. Even if he had finished operating on Plowman, there was no way he could have escaped.
She pressed her ear against the door. She could hear movement inside. The beeping of the heart monitor, the faint clack of metal on metal. The sounds of surgery. He was still in there.
Arno held up three fingers at the other cops. Then two. Then one. Then she clenched her fist.
One of the police officers rammed the steel tube against the door, right below the handle. The door crashed inwards and Arno stormed through, gun raised, adrenaline fizzing in her veins.
‘Put your hands where I can see them!’ she shouted . . .
At no-one. Kellin Plowman lay on the operating table, unconscious. A surgical robot loomed over him, threading a short row of tiny stitches at the back of his scalp. The surgery was complete. No-one else was in the room.
‘He can’t have gone far,’ she said. ‘Search the building!’
As the other cops raced out of the room, Arno edged cautiously around the robot, her gun still up. A radio communications device—it looked like a modified signal jammer—was plugged into the control panel of the robot. The surgeon wasn’t here. Someone had been controlling the robot remotely.
Arno grabbed Plowman’s shoulder. He appeared to be waking up—his eyes were open now, at least.
‘Where is Viper?’ she demanded. ‘Where did he go?’
Plowman smiled politely. ‘I’m sorry—who is Viper?’
LONG HAUL
Everything hurt. Doug’s back, neck and thighs had all cramped up. But he didn’t dare shift his limbs. For all he knew, the drone was a hundred metres up, carrying the crate over a field of jagged rocks. The slightest movement might dislodge its grip, sending him tumbling to his death.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in the crate. He couldn’t reach his phone to check the time. After a while he’d started counting the seconds, but he’d given up at about five hundred. Wherever the drone was taking him, it was a long way from the hospital.
But that didn’t mean he would be safe. It was the criminals who had put the crate on the rooftop. He could be going to their hideout.
A sick feeling in his guts told him that the drone was descending. He had nearly arrived.
Doug fought to keep still as the drone swerved several times. It felt like it was dodging trees, or swooping under power lines. He braced himself for impact, but was still shocked when it came. The crate hit the ground with a thud that crushed the foam packaging under his knees and forearms. The wooden floor of the crate left splinters in his palms.
There was a clanking sound as the drone detached. Then it whined away. Silence fell.
Doug listened for people or vehicles, but heard nothing. The drone must have dropped the crate off in a secret location, and the criminals would come to pick it up later. Doug needed to be gone by the time they got here.
He pushed the lid off, slowly, carefully, and poked his head out like a gopher.
The drone hadn’t been taking him through trees— it had been taking him through doorways. The crate was indoors—it sat on an unsealed concrete floor between two walls made of temporary-looking plasterboard.
Doug climbed out of the box and turned around, increasingly confused. The two walls made a corridor with a T-intersection at each end. When he walked up and down the corridor, he realised that each branch of T-intersection led to another corridor with a T-intersection at each end.
He was in a maze.
The walls weren’t much taller than Doug. They didn’t reach the distant ceiling, which was insulated with a crumpled foil-like substance. The maze had been built inside a warehouse, or an aircraft hangar.
Maybe Doug could climb up onto the box and peer over the walls to find a way out. As he made his way back through the maze towards the box, he heard a faint voice.
‘Victor Green. Nice to meet you.’
Then a different voice:
‘Victor Green. Nice to meet you.’
Then the first voice again.
‘Victor Green. Nice to meet you.’
The same line was repeated back and forth, two people saying the same words over and over, echoing around the warehouse so Doug had no idea where it was coming from. The first voice sounded like a recording, but the other was a little different each time. By the time he reached the crate, he was thoroughly unnerved.
A scuffle.
Doug quickly ducked behind the crate. He risked a peek, just as someone shuffled into view at one end of his corridor—a woman with a walking frame. At least, Doug thought she was a woman. She wore a shapeless hospital gown and her whole head was cocooned in bandages. All except for her eyes, which were concealed behind a pair of dark glasses—even though the corridor was already dark.
She was alone. The voices were coming from somewhere else.
‘Victor Green. Nice to meet you.’
‘Victor Green. Nice to meet you.’
Despite the walking frame, Doug didn’t get the sense from the woman’s hands or bare feet that she was old. She clanked faintly as she walked. Doug saw steel pins protruding from her shins. Maybe she was recovering from an operation.
She didn’t look like much of a threat. Doug stood up. ‘Hey,’ he whispered.
The woman froze. She turned to look at him, but didn’t say anything.
‘What is this place?’ Doug asked.
The woman hobbled away as fast as she could.
Doug hovered near the crate, not sure whether to chase her. Then she was gone.
Whatever this place was, Doug wanted out. He scrambled up onto the crate and stood on tiptoes so he could see the layout of the maze.
It didn’t take up the whole warehouse. Five or six turns would get him out. Most of the warehouse seemed to be occupied by a curtained-off area. Mysterious lights blinked behind plastic sheeting. At the other end of the warehouse was a big door for vehicles, and a small door for people. Both were closed, but maybe one would be unlocked.
‘Victor Green. Nice to—’
The recording stopped abruptly. The sudden silence was unsettling.
Doug took one last glance at the route, and then jumped down off the crate. He ran through the maze towards the exit. Left. Right. Right—
Another scuffle.
Doug turned, expecting to see the woman with the walking frame again. But the corridor was empty. The sound had come from somewhere else.
He turned back—
And found someone standing right in front of him. He got a split-second view of a face covered in horrible burn scars before a gloved hand pressed a damp cloth over his eyes.
Doug tried to scream, but the cloth covered his mouth, too. Another gloved hand had grabbed the back of his skull so he couldn’t move away. The cloth tasted like dishwasher detergent—it had a lemony sting.
He flailed at his attacker, but his arms felt suddenly weak and clumsy. His knees buckled. He hit the ground and his attacker knelt down next to him, keeping the cloth on his mouth.
‘Shhhh,’ Viper whispered.
Then Doug blacked out.
QUARANTINE
The time in quarantine was the longest two hours of Jarli’s life.
He sat on a cold plastic bench in his undies, shivering, while three people in hazmat suits circled him with handheld microscopes, thermometers, Geiger counters and other devices he couldn’t identify. Someone stuck a needle in his arm and siphoned some blood into a vial. Several times he asked about Bess, Anya, Doug, his other classmates and his family. The doctors—Jarli assumed they were doctors—said they didn’t know anything.
The examination took place in a big tent, hastily erected on the lawn outside the hospital. The tent was inside another tent, which created a kind of airlock between Jarli and the outside world. A plastic tarpaulin covered the wet grass. The rain had started again, battering the canvas above Jarli’s head.
