When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [73]
“Nice try, sweetie,” I called to Max. But I could see she was upset. She didn’t like to fail. Had “they” made her that way, too?
She immediately flew back over the fence and joined me. She said “stay” and “good doggies” to the Dobermans. She was friendly but firm with them, and I wondered if that had anything to do with her recent escape.
Then Max was moving north away from the fence, picking up speed, heading somewhere.
I was almost jogging to keep up with her. The woods began to close around the narrow road. As each thick clump of trees was put behind us, another came and blocked my view.
A wall of firs opened onto a copse of birch that gave way to a grove of aspens shimmering like a curtain of glass beads. My heart was pounding, and it sounded louder to my ears than our footsteps. Without warning, the winding road opened into a sunlit clearing.
Before us sprawled a turn-of-the-century hunting lodge, or maybe a spa resort. There were countless windows cut into the stone face. White columns stood at the entrance. Thick vines covered the building and spilled onto the aged roof.
I looked at Max. Her pupils were the tiniest pinpoints. The irises were translucent gray disks fixed in a stare. I remembered that birds will often contract their pupils under duress.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s the Central Colorado Induced Mutant Lab,” she said. “The School of Genetic Research. I live here.”
Chapter 77
THERE WAS NO SOUND coming from the strange, eerie lodge, the place where Max had been kept, and God knows what else had happened to her.
There were no security guards, no parked cars or trucks. No immediate threat to us. Nothing that I could see, anyway.
“It’s too quiet. Way too quiet,” Max said in a whisper. “There should be guards somewhere. We should have been able to see them from the woods.”
“What does it mean, Max?”
“I don’t know. It’s never been like this before.”
Max and I skulked along the fringes of the clearing. We crossed quickly to one side of the building, then edged along the stone wall to an oak door halfway down the eastern side. There wasn’t any shifting of shapes or shadows behind the many windows. No one seemed to be around.
My confidence was growing a little bit. I took a breath, then I reached forward and groped the metal knob in my hand. The door opened easily. We entered the strange building and the heavy door swung shut behind us.
A dank, powerful smell of decay hit me. I knew what it was and I was repulsed.
“Something’s dead,” Max said.
She was right. Something was dead for sure. Something was decomposing inside the building and the odor was acrid and strong. We covered our noses and mouths with our hands. We continued to walk away from the front door.
Max said, “The fan must not be working.” She didn’t seem overly upset by the smell—by death.
I scanned the room for security cameras. I was certain they were there, somewhere, but I couldn’t find them. Was somebody watching us now?
I suspected that the small room we were standing in was used for decontamination. Bright yellow scrubs were piled in a large trash can near the door. Lab coats were hung from hooks. People worked here, didn’t they? Scientists, if they could call themselves that. Doctors. Researchers. They were conducting illegal experiments of some kind.
There was an open metal closet filled with clean scrubs, and shelves lined with rubber-soled shoes stood next to a bank of lockers. The lockers were empty, cleaned out.
Jesus God, what had we come to? What kind of place was this?
Max pointed to an interior door leading from the room and beckoned to me to follow her. I had the thought that this building was like a Nazi extermination camp. They put people to sleep here. They experimented on human beings.
We followed a wide main corridor. Max’s ballet slippers were quiet, but my shoes squeaked. A long fluorescent tube flickered above us in the ceiling. The beige-and-blue linoleum corridor unfurled in front of us