Текст книги "The Kill Order"
Автор книги: James Dashner
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
Mark had gotten to his hands and knees but someone jumped onto his back, taking him down again. An arm slipped around his neck, started squeezing. Mark gagged, gasping for breath as his airway was cut off. His lungs ached. He got his hands underneath himself and pushed off the floor, twisting to the side, throwing the attacker off. He spun and kicked the assailant in the face, realizing at the last second that it was a woman. Her head cracked to the right and blood flew from her nose.
Two other people rushed Mark from behind and grabbed his arms, pulled him to his feet. He tried to break free but their holds were too tight. A man stepped in front of him, a vicious grin crossing his face. He drew back his arm, slammed his fist into Mark’s stomach. Mark doubled over at the explosion of pain and nausea. He retched but had nothing in his stomach to throw up.
He heard another roar come from Alec and then the man tackled one of the people holding Mark. As soon as that arm was free Mark swung back hard and smashed his elbow into the chin of the other person, freeing his other arm. He lunged forward and took the man who’d punched him to the ground, where he landed with an “oomph.”
Mark didn’t bother with him anymore. He scrambled to his feet, then dived toward the stray flashlight he’d seen roll up against the wall. He slid across the floor and grabbed it, gripped it tightly in his fist. Then he stood up and swung its hard metal end in an arc before even looking at who might be coming at him. He connected, hitting some guy in the ear; the man cried out and crumpled to the ground. Alec, who’d stolen someone else’s flashlight, was just getting up from a tussle he’d had with two or three people who lay unmoving at the man’s feet. Mark ran to him and they slowly turned in a circle to face the remaining attackers, who still greatly outnumbered them. Packed together into two groups, one on each side of the hallway, the people seemed to be readying for one last charge to smash Mark and Alec in the middle.
Mark shined his light and noticed that the group between them and the door of the chamber was the smaller of the two, maybe eight people total. At least chance had given them that much. As if he and Alec were communicating telepathically, they roared and charged the small group at the same time. They crashed into them, sending bodies flying and tumbling all over each other. Mark went ballistic in a fit of desperation, kicking and kneeing and swinging the butt end of his flashlight at anything that moved. Scrambling and crawling and pushing, twisting away anytime someone tried to latch on to his limbs or clothes, he moved forward, barreling through the crowd of people.
Somehow Mark reached the other side, with a free path to the open door. Alec fought his way through as well, falling with one last surge but quickly leaping back to his feet. And then they were both running to the circular opening, climbing through. In seconds Alec was on the door, pushing to swing it shut. Several arms slipped through the gap, blocking the door from closing.
“Come help me!” he yelled.
Mark beat at hands and fingers with his flashlight; then Alec pulled back on the door and pushed it forward again, crushing it against those still trying to fight their way in. There were yelps and screams, and several pulled out. But another surge pressed ahead and almost made Alec topple over.
Mark abandoned his flashlight to help Alec. Together they held the outer rim of the door and jerked it open, then rammed it against those trying to break in. More arms pulled out, only to be replaced by new ones just as Mark and Alec swung the door out and slammed the edge against the assailants again. More cries of anguish, fewer arms left. They did it again. And again. Quicker, with more force, and a little closer each time.
“One more big one!” Alec yelled.
Mark braced himself, pulled the door out, then screamed and threw his body and all his strength into it. The slab of metal crunched bones and smashed fingers, and every body part disappeared from view.
Alec leaned into the door and closed it with a booming metallic ring.
Mark spun the wheel.
CHAPTER 40
The deafening silence that filled the room was broken by the squeal of the wheel handle as Mark wrenched it tighter and tighter. Alec helped him when the people on the other side tried to spin it back. The tighter they could turn it, the easier it was to prevent the attackers from doing the opposite.
“Just hang on to that puppy,” Alec finally said when they couldn’t turn it any farther. He took a step back and Mark gripped the right portion of the ring with both hands and hung on it. The chamber in front of him, where the landing pad rotated before lowering down into the ground, was empty and vast. Mark’s head pounded with pain, along with the rest of his body, after the scrum in the bunker hallway.
Alec was just picking up the flashlight he’d dropped, which was right next to Mark’s. The soldier shined the bluish light toward the chamber to the right, finding the massive shape of the Berg nestled there. Dust motes danced in the beam as he swung it back and forth, revealing scarred metal and rows of bolts and protruding edges and ridges. In the relative darkness, the whole thing looked like some alien vessel rising from the abyss of the ocean.
“It feels a lot bigger inside,” Mark said. His arms were getting tired, but he could feel tension on the handle, the wheel inching up, then dropping back down again. “Any chance of getting out of here in that thing?”
Alec was slowly walking around the ship, searching the Berg for something, probably the hatch door. “Best idea you’ve had all day.”
“Good thing you’re a pilot.” There were low, dull thumps on the door and Mark imagined Bruce’s people half out of their minds wanting to get through, beating on it in frustration.
“Yeah…,” Alec was saying absently. Soon his voice came from the other side of the Berg, echoing off the walls. “The hatch door is over here!”
Their pursuers suddenly stopped their efforts, grew quiet.
“They gave up!” Mark said, embarrassed at the kidlike excitement in his voice.
“Which means they’re up to something,” Alec replied. “We need to get inside this beast and get her ready to fly. And get that landing pad open.”
Mark looked up at the wheel and slowly let go of it, ready to grab it again if the thing moved. He got to his feet, his eyes glued to the handle.
He jumped when a loud clang cracked through the air, followed by the wrenching sound of metal screeching against metal. He whipped around to see what had happened, but the bulk of the Berg was between him and the source of the noise. Somehow Alec must’ve gotten the hatch door to open. Mark took one last look at the wheel handle, satisfied that it was okay for the moment, then made his way to the Berg to join Alec. On the far side of the ship, the man was standing with his hands on his hips like a proud mechanic as the huge ramp of the hatch door slowly swung toward the ground.
“Shall we board, cocaptain?” Alec asked with a wry grin. “I’m sure we can control this landing pad from inside.”
Mark could see it in the man’s eyes: he was anxious to be at the controls of a Berg again, flying it fast and free through the sky. “As long as by ‘cocaptain’ you mean the guy who sits around watching you do everything.”
Alec let out a huge, boisterous laugh, like he didn’t have a care in the world. It sounded good to Mark’s ears, and for a second or two he forgot just how awful everything was. But then he thought of Trina, and at the same time his hunger pains roared in his belly. So much for that.
Alec jumped onto the hatch door just as it thumped to a stop, wide open, and climbed up the ramp, disappearing into the darkness of the ship. Mark ran back out into the main chamber to check the door again. Once he saw that they were safe, the wheel not moving, he went back and followed Alec’s path.
He paused on the upper lip of the hatch door and took a second to shine his flashlight around inside. The Berg was spooky and dark and dusty. It looked much like the one he and Alec had boarded back in their settlement, albeit emptier. Alec was walking back and forth, investigating.
Mark stepped into the craft with a metallic thud. It echoed throughout the dark room, and the sound triggered memories of an old movie-something about astronauts boarding an abandoned alien vessel. Which, of course, had been full of aliens that liked to eat humans. He hoped he and Alec fared better in this thing.
“I don’t see any signs of the dart boxes we saw on the other Berg,” Alec said, pointing his light at a row of empty shelves.
Mark noticed something tucked away in the corner of the farthest shelf. “Hey, what’s that?” he said. He walked over, shined his light, then picked up a stack of three workpads that had been tied down with elastic straps.
“Look at this!” he called to Alec. “Workpads!”
“Do they, um, work?” the man replied, not seeming very impressed.
Mark wedged his flashlight in the crook of his elbow and tried one of the devices. Its face lit up, showing a welcome screen that required a numerical password for access.
“Yeah, it works, all right,” Mark said. “But we might need your old superhuman soldier brain to hack it.”
“Get back over-” Alec’s words were cut off when the entire Berg jolted and shook for a second. Mark almost dropped the workpad in his attempt to keep his balance. The flashlight slipped out of his arm and clanked across the floor, clicking off.
“What was that?” Mark asked, though he had a feeling he knew.
The words had barely left his mouth when the noise of cranking gears and scraping metal filled the air, coming through the hatch door. One of Bruce’s people must have pushed a button somewhere. The landing pad in the central chamber was rotating open once again.
CHAPTER 41
“Quick, you need to close the hatch!” Alec yelled at Mark. “The controls are right next to it. I’ll be getting this baby started up. We’ll crash it through the ground above us if we have to!”
Alec ran out of the compartment without waiting for a response, going deeper into the ship. Unfortunately the light disappeared with him, leaving Mark in the creepy blackness all alone. But the faintest hint of light was already appearing from the opening crack of the rotating landing pad, and Mark spotted his flashlight.
He picked it up, then ran over to where he’d found the workpads and strapped them back in, hoping he lived long enough to see what information they held. He clicked the flashlight to life and took a quick look around the room with the bright beam. He heard voices-shouts-over the cranking of the landing pad, and his mind slammed back to cold reality.
They already had visitors, probably readying to drop from above like he and Alec had done earlier. He had to get that hatch closed before people tried to climb aboard.
He ran over to it and started searching. The door was surrounded by things like cabling, hooks and the plates that linked the bare-bones machinery of the door hydraulics with the more aesthetic wall coverings of the large cargo room. He found the controls on the left side and studied them, picking out the correct button and pushing it. The motor turned on, and with a crank and a squeal, the ramp door began to close, slowly pivoting upward.
He heard more voices, closer now. It looked like he’d have to fight their pursuers off until the door was fully closed. He moved out of direct view and leaned on the wall, looking around as if some magical weapon might appear in front of him. But he quickly accepted reality: all he had was the flashlight and his fists.
The ramp seemed to be taking forever to close-it had only gone up halfway. Its hinges squealed as the large square of metal crept along, angling shut like the slow-motion capture of a Venus flytrap. Mark braced himself, sure that the intruders would make it to him before the thing sealed completely. He gripped the flashlight, wielding it like a short sword, ready to fight. The room outside was much lighter than before, meaning the landing pad was probably about vertical in its rotation.
Two people jumped onto the rising ramp and started climbing aboard. A man and a woman. Mark tensed his muscles and swung his arm around, aiming for the man, but he missed and the guy grabbed his shirt, then yanked his entire body forward. Mark lost his grip on the flashlight, which went tumbling end over end outside; a clang and the crack of glass signaled its demise. Mark slammed onto the metal of the hatch and stared into the man’s face-he had absolutely no expression, not even a sign of fatigue or strain from the climb he’d just made.
“You’re a bloody spy,” the stranger said, as calmly as if they’d just sat down for a cup of coffee together. “And to make it worse, you’re trying to steal our Berg. And strike three, you’re an ugly son of a gun, aren’t you?”
“I was just going to say the same thing about you,” Mark replied. Everything had turned surreal.
The man acted as if he hadn’t heard. “I’ve got him,” he called to the other person. “Get inside, stop the door from closing.”
It registered with Mark who these two people were. The pilots. He’d heard them speaking earlier.
“Sorry, man,” Mark said. The sense of surreality had turned into an odd flutter in his chest, making him feel almost outside himself. His head thumped with pain. “I’m afraid I can’t let you on without proper identification.”
The man looked a little taken aback. His partner was farther away, right on the edge of the door, crawling to get in before it closed. Something had snapped inside of Mark. He didn’t understand what it was, but something felt different, and there was no way he was going to let these people on board.
Mark gripped the man’s shirt and kicked out viciously with his left foot at the woman. He planted it right in her midsection; she yelped and jolted backward, flailed to grab hold of her partner. But it was too late. She tumbled and fell off the rising ledge, her head smacking the other pilot’s knee. Mark heard her crumple on the ground of the chamber.
The hatch door was almost closed now, a five-foot gap at most, moving painfully slowly. The man had leaned over the edge of the door to see if his friend was okay, but he turned now to face Mark again, full of rage. Mark felt rage, too. Like nothing he’d ever felt before. Like a storm erupting within.
He reached out and grabbed his foe’s shirt, squeezed it in his fist, then growled two words that somehow calmed the storm within him.
“Your turn.”
CHAPTER 42
“You’re going to die,” the man wheezed back through an angry breath. “You’re going to die right now.”
“No,” Mark answered. “I’m not.”
He balled his hand into a fist and smashed it into the pilot’s cheek. The man cried out, then threw his hands forward, grabbing at Mark’s hair and face and clothes. He finally caught Mark’s shirt and his shoulder and yanked him into a wrestler’s hold. They rolled against the hatch door. A metal ridge cut into Mark’s back as the pilot pressed on him from above, leaning forward with his forearm dug into Mark’s neck, cutting off the air to his windpipe.
“You messed with the wrong man today,” the pilot said in a low, vicious voice. “I’ve had enough people tick me off without you trying to steal my ship. I’m going to take my anger out on you, boy. And I’m going to do it over a very long period of time. Do you understand?”
He eased back on his arm and Mark sucked in a breath, filling his lungs. Then the pilot grabbed him by the shirt and sat up, putting all his weight on Mark’s stomach. The man reached high and swung down with a fist, hitting Mark square in the jaw. It felt as if something cracked in his face. The pilot punched him again and the pain doubled. Mark closed his eyes, tried to tamp down the rage that was building inside him like a nuclear reaction. How much could he take in one day?
“Better not let that door close for good, now,” the man said, clearly confident that he’d already won the battle. “As much as it’d be fun to hold your head out there and watch it get squeezed like a grape, I think I’d rather take a little more time.”
He slipped off Mark’s body and got to his feet, then walked over to the controls and pressed something. There was a lurch that Mark felt in his back, then a squeal, then the continued slow wrenching sound as the door started opening once again. He could see the chamber growing lighter than ever. The landing pad must’ve fully rotated and was now sinking into the ground. In a few minutes they’d be open to the entire horde of Bruce’s people, open to them charging aboard and ending it all.
Fighting the urge to move, Mark waited, letting the fury inside him continue to grow.
The pilot stepped up to Mark, then reached down and grabbed his feet, lifted them with a grunt. “Come on, now. Let’s get you in a good position.” He started to swing Mark’s body around as he walked sideways deeper into the cargo room of the Berg. “I’ll make sure you’re nice and comfy before-”
Mark sprang to life, screaming and kicking out as he twisted himself to jerk free from the pilot’s grip. The man stumbled backward until his back hit the wall next to the reopening ramp door. Mark scrambled to stand up as he lunged forward, finally slamming his shoulder into the man’s gut. The man doubled over and wrapped his arms around Mark’s back, both of them crashing to the floor. They rolled and tumbled, all swinging arms and punching fists. Mark tried to knee him in the groin, but the man blocked him, then swung up and connected with Mark’s chin.
Mark’s head snapped back and he fell off the pilot, who leaped forward, getting on top of him once again. But Mark never stopped moving, using his momentum to spin backward and throw the man off. Then he stood up and ran to the controls, realizing with a shock of horror that the ramp door had already lowered several feet. People might swarm aboard when it was fully open, for all he knew.
He quickly pushed the retract button and the door squealed, then started closing again. He was just turning back around to face his foe when the man tackled him, their bodies crashing onto the large slab of the ramp. They slid a few feet, almost to the very edge again. Mark twisted his body and grabbed the pilot’s shirt with both hands, trying to fling him off and through the gap of the door, but the man put his feet down and was able to push himself back on top of Mark.
They struggled against each other, punching and kicking. Mark was tired and hungry and weak, but he fought on, fueled by adrenaline alone. He imagined Trina out there somewhere, being held by the bonfire people, probably even crazier with another day gone and the debacle of the forest fire. He had to live. He had to find her. He couldn’t let this man stand in his way. That ball of spinning rage-the churning reactor of heat and fire and pain that had been building and building within his chest-finally exploded once and for all.
He lurched with a strength he didn’t know he had, throwing the pilot off his body. He was on top of the man before he could right himself, pushing him down onto his back, punching him. Hard. There was blood. The horrific sound of things crunching. Mark felt disconnected from his own body-he almost couldn’t see straight. Tiny bright lights danced before his eyes, his body trembled and he felt the blood boiling in his veins.
He was aware on some level that the ramp door was almost closed. On some level he noticed the walls of the chamber, people screaming and yelling, readying to attack the Berg. But Mark had lost all control.
He looked down, was surprised to see himself dragging the guy’s body to the edge of the ramp, shoving him halfway out so that the man’s head and shoulders hung over the lip of the ramp into open air. He’d tried to free himself from Mark’s grip, but Mark didn’t let him. He reached out and punched the man again. The pilot yelled and squirmed violently, obviously aware of what Mark intended.
Maybe even more aware than Mark himself. He held on, kept the man in position-half in, half out. Something had changed for Mark. His thoughts were purely focused on the man in his grip and on making him pay for everything. The anger was like a fog that had filled his head. And he couldn’t stop himself.
Something had snapped.
The ramp door closed on the pilot’s chest. Squeezed him as it strained to come fully closed. The screams that erupted from the man were horrific and pierced Mark to the core, jolting him out of the red-hot rage into which he’d sunk. As if he was seeing for the first time, he realized what he was doing. Torturing another human being. The sound of the man’s sternum and ribs breaking, the squeal of the door’s hinges as they continued to stress over the obstacle keeping the door open-Mark felt a rush of horror at himself.
He pushed on the pilot’s body, but it was wedged tight in the narrowing gap. His screams seemed to vibrate the metal of the Berg, shake the entire thing through and through. Mark scrambled around and got onto his back, pressed his elbows against the ramp, then, with all his strength, kicked out with both feet, connecting against the man’s middle. He budged a few inches more. Mark yelled as he kicked and kicked and kicked, pushing the body away from him, trying to end the man’s misery.
With a final kick, Mark knocked the pilot free. The man disappeared through the gap and the ramp door slammed shut.
CHAPTER 43
A deep and unnerving silence filled the cargo room, along with an almost complete darkness. The silence was interrupted seconds later by the grind of a motor, and then the Berg was moving on the tracks, jerking back to the central chamber.
Mark’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he pulled himself up and crawled to the wall, propping himself against it. He felt something inside that he didn’t like.
He wrapped his arms around his knees and he buried his head there. He didn’t really understand what had just happened to him. Those dancing lights, that fireball of rage, the adrenaline pumping like pistons in an old gas engine. He’d been consumed and out of control, every part of him wanting to destroy that pilot. He’d almost been happy when the man was wedged in the closing door. And then he’d come to his senses and pushed the man out.
It was like Mark had lost his…
He looked up when he realized the truth. He had lost his mind there for a second. Completely. And just because he seemed like his normal self now didn’t mean that it hadn’t begun. He slowly pushed himself up along the wall until he was standing, and folded his arms. Shivered, rubbed them with his hands.
The virus. The illness. The thing that attacked the human brain the way the man named Anton had described in the barracks. Which reminded him of something else they’d heard down there, ironically from the pilot himself when he’d heard him talking earlier. A single word.
Mark had it. His every instinct told him so. No wonder his head had been hurting so much.
He had the Flare.
CHAPTER 44
A surprising calm came over him.
Hadn’t he expected this? Hadn’t he come to terms with the fact that their odds of not catching the disease were almost zero? Trina probably had it. Lana and Alec, too. Why Deedee seemed immune to the thing-she’d actually been shot with a dart two months ago – was beyond him. But what was it Bruce had said? It made sense: anyone who risked unleashing a virus had to have protection for themselves. There had to be a treatment, an antidote somewhere. It just didn’t make sense otherwise.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a spark of hope. Maybe.
How many times had he faced death in the last year or so? He was used to it by now. All he could do was focus on the next rung of the ladder: Trina. He had to find Trina. If for no other reason than so he could die with her.
He was startled when the Berg suddenly jolted to a stop. Then there were more sounds of cranking and grinding of gears and pulleys. The landing pad was finally rising toward the sky. The Berg sprang to life-lights flickering overhead and engines and machinery revving.
With an unexpected burst of excitement, Mark sprinted for the door of the cargo room. If Alec was really going to fly this thing, he had to see it with his own eyes.
Alec looked more comfortable in the cockpit than Mark had ever seen him. He was a blur of activity-pushing buttons, flipping switches and adjusting levers.
“What in the world took you so long?” the man asked, not even pausing long enough to shoot Mark a glance.
“I ran into a little trouble.” The last thing Mark wanted to do was talk about it right then. “You’re really going to be able to fly us away in this thing?”
“Oh yeah. She’s half filled with fuel cells and lookin’ right sharp and pretty.” He nodded at the windows in front of him, where Mark could see a line of trees coming into view. “But we better hurry before the nut jobs swarm over us and break in somehow.”
Mark rushed forward to take a better look. Leaning in, he could see that quite a few of Bruce’s people had congregated outside at the rim of the landing station. They seemed a little out of sorts, pointing this way and that, obviously unsure of what to do. But a couple of them were really close to the ship, busy doing something, though Mark didn’t have a good enough angle to see what. An alarming thought popped into his head.
“What about the hatch door?” he asked. “You were able to open it from the outside, right?”
“First thing I did was lock out that function. Don’t worry.” He was still busy at the controls. “We’ll be launching this baby in about one minute. You might wanna perch that skinny butt of yours down in a seat and strap in.”
“Okay.” He wanted to get another look outside first, though. He stepped around Alec and went to the other end of the line of windows to take a peek. This side faced the wall of the canyon a little more, and the gray stone grabbed his attention before he could look down. His eyes were just running along the length of the granite walls when something flashed in the corner of his vision and he froze. The head of a huge hammer swung up and came at the glass. It made contact with a shattering thud, sending a web of cracks in every direction. Someone had climbed up the side of the Berg.
Mark jumped back as Alec yelped in surprise.
“Hurry, get us up in the air!” Mark called out.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Alec rushed his efforts even more, focusing on the central panel of the controls, holding his finger above a bright green button on the screen.
Mark looked back at the window just in time to see the hammer come down again, breaking all the way through with a horrible crunch and a shower of glass pellets across the controls-the hammer itself followed, bouncing off a panel and hitting the floor. Then a man’s face appeared at the opening he’d created, followed by hands and arms as he started to climb in.
“Get rid of that guy!” Alec yelled. At the same time he tapped the green button and the Berg lurched off the ground, the sound of thrusters filling the air like the roar of angry lions.
Mark caught his balance and reached down for the hammer. Just as his fingers closed around the handle someone grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked. An alien screech tore out of his mouth at the pain and he dropped the hammer, beat his fists against the hand and arm that had taken hold of him. But the man held firm and quickly slipped his other arm around Mark’s neck, then pulled back, bringing Mark with him.
Mark’s head smacked the top edge of the missing window’s frame and slipped through it, out into the hot air of the morning. Then half of his body was out, up to the waist-he gripped the window frame to stop himself from falling completely. All he could see were the tops of the trees and blue sky beyond, and he realized with a wave of horror that the man was literally hanging off of him, still holding on to his hair and neck. For the second time that day, Mark couldn’t breathe.
The Berg was rising toward the sky and Mark caught a quick glance of Alec looking at him through the window, his eyes wide in shock. Alec moved out of sight, leaving the Berg to hover just a few dozen feet above the ground; then Mark felt the man tugging on his legs, which only made the pain in his neck and head worse. A strangled, wet bark-a sound that scared Mark more than the pain-somehow escaped his own throat.
Alec pulled on him from above. The man hung from him below. It felt as if his body had been put into one of those medieval torture racks, stretching his bones and sinews. He wondered if it was possible for his head to pop off, like a cork from a bottle. He realized that with Alec holding him he could release his grip on the window frame; he beat at his captor’s arms, beat at them, clawed them. The world was upside down, the valley floor like an earthen sky.
Mark slipped out the window several inches-a thunderbolt of pure terror flashed through him like an electric shock before his progress stopped again. Something dark blurred past his vision. A black lump followed by a thin shaft of light brown. The hammer. There was an awful thump and a crack and a scream. Alec had thrown the weapon at the guy’s face.
The man’s arm slipped from its grip around Mark’s neck and he plummeted to the ground. Mark gasped for breath, sucking in the sweet air.
Alec slowly pulled his body up and up, back through the window, then crashed to the floor. Still heaving to get his breath, Mark touched his sore neck.
The old soldier looked at him carefully. Then, seeming to have decided Mark would live, he stood, returned to the controls and lifted the Berg toward the sky.
CHAPTER 45
Mark’s stomach didn’t do so well with the sudden movement of the Berg. Alec took it straight up until it cleared the walls of the canyon, then sent it hurtling forward like it had been launched from a slingshot. Mark’s insides turned over with a surge of nausea; he crawled on his hands and knees until he finally found a bathroom. He pulled himself inside and threw up. Nothing but bile and acid. His throat burned as if he’d swallowed corrosive chemicals.
