Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [76]
Twenty-Six
BART KAPLAN WATCHED ALICE, RAIN, AND the others go off into the vent even as he stuck the barrel of the revolver into his mouth.
This was it.
He'd fucked up enough. His stupidity got One, Warner, Drew, and Olga killed. His panic indirectly got J.D. killed. Hell, his shutting down the Red Queen was what let these zombies loose.
He should pay for what he did.
Even as a zombie that used to be one of the doctors clambered up the pipe toward him, he prepared himself to pull the trigger.
At the last second he pulled the gun out of his mouth and shot Dr. Zombie in the head instead.
Then he threw the gun at the one behind the doctor. "You're gonna have to work for your meal!"
Suicide was for quitters. Kaplan was many things, but he was not a quitter. Yeah, he fucked up, but dammit, he was doing his job. He followed orders, he did what he was told. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but he was not gonna let himself take the fall.
Kaplan didn't release the T-virus into the Hive. Whoever did that was responsible.
Not Kaplan.
Pain slicing through his leg where it had been bitten, Kaplan clambered into the crawl space behind him. It led to a vent. If he was lucky, even with his wound, he could keep ahead of the zombie hordes—especially since they seemed to be temporarily fixated on the corpse of the doctor.
He didn't think, didn't obsess, didn't panic, didn't do anything except focus on putting one hand in front of the other as he crawled through the vent.
That worked right up until he reached the dead end.
Fuck.
He turned around. His leg was bleeding profusely, and he could hear the march of the zombies as they came after him.
Looking up, he saw a grate.
It took about a minute for him to climb up into the hallway. The agony in his leg was white hot, but he did everything he could to ignore it and not to scream.
At that last, he wasn't entirely successful, but there wasn't anyone else around to see or hear him.
Favoring his injured leg, he limped down the corridor. Opening his wrist-top, he tapped into the Red Queen, trying to get a heat-signature scan. It wouldn't pick up any of the zombies, but he could at least find the others.
Some of the others, anyhow. Three heat signatures were in one of the labs. The lowest of the three body temperatures was probably Rain. Kaplan couldn't tell who the other two were.
He wondered which of them died.
Was it uncharitable to hope that it was Spence?
Probably. But right then, Kaplan didn't care.
When he got to the door of the lab, Kaplan collapsed against it. He was beyond exhausted, the pain in his leg was now an inferno, and he couldn't move another step.
Then he saw that the locking mechanism had been shot out.
Great.
Drawing on reserves that J.D. and Rain would never have given him credit for having, Kaplan dragged himself to the other door and entered the code to get it open.
He could see inside the window. Alice, Rain, and Matt were inside.
Looked like Spence was the dead one. Good.
Then he looked up and saw the monitor.
How did Spence get to the train station? And what the hell could've done that to him?
Shaking his head, he entered the code again.
Nothing happened.
He looked it up on his wrist-top. The code he entered was the right one.
Unless…
"You changed the code, didn't you?"
"It needed to be done."
Kaplan blinked. He hadn't expected the Red Queen to reply.
"I need to get the door open."
"I'm sorry, but I can't."
Reaching into one of the pouches in his chest, Kaplan pulled out the remote control.
"Yeah? Well, I'm not at all sorry about this."
He pushed a button.
For the second time that day, he powered down the Red Queen. Only this time, she was permanently fried.
The door, obligingly, opened.
Alice was holding an axe, looking like she was ready to take someone's head off. Matt was just standing there looking stupid.
Rain was kneeling in the center of the floor, hip-deep in water, looking like hammered shit. But she was the one who spoke.
"Kaplan?"