Chapter 20

I THINK it’s safe enough to say that I’d had my share of bad luck during this whole ordeal, so as I watched Mortimer and Stan move closer I decided that it was high time for a bit of good luck to come my way.

Of course, that’s a really stupid thing to decide when you’re in a situation like this. Sort of like the thunderstorm that always follows “So what else could possibly go wrong?” As soon as I thought it, I expected a suffer a fatal coronary, or for a slab of the cube wall to drop off and squish me, or for the floor to crack open revealing the pits of hell and six hundred and sixty-six demons ready to drag me down to my fiery demise.

As it so happened, I lucked out.

Roger entered the room, still uninjured. He saw my predicament, and began waving his arms over his head. “Hey! I’m still around! What’s the matter, you can’t find someone in your own place?”

Mortimer and Stan each turned toward the sound of his voice, but they didn’t go after him.

“Damn it, Roger, forget about me!” I shouted. “Get out of here! Unlock the rest of the cells!”

Roger left the room.

Stan and Mortimer exchanged a concerned glance. For all they knew, Roger had the pass card. After a moment’s hesitation, Mortimer went after him.

I truly hated sending them after Roger, but it wasn’t like he could get out of here without my pass card. Okay, so, he could have somehow taken out one of the bad guys and got a pass card of his own, but still…it was a wise strategic decision.

And the fact that Mortimer had gone after him revealed an important piece of information. Even though the alarm had gone off and the second cell door hadn’t opened with the pass card, they still believed we might have the means to get the prisoners out. So maybe we did.

I went around the corner on Mortimer’s side just as he exited the room and just before Stan appeared on my end. I ran toward the door. Stan followed me, but he was still shaky from the gonad pounding and engaged in a lackluster pursuit.

Daniel was crouched next to Josie, wrapping his shirt around her leg, not really paying attention to what was going on outside the cube.

I left the dart room, took a split second to recall the layout of the parts of the structure that I’d visited, and hurried down the hallway away from the cell area. After crossing through an intersection, I waved the pass card, opened the door, and stepped into the operating room.

Charlotte was strapped to the table, fully clothed this time. Her eyes widened as I shut the door behind me.

“I’m here to help!” I insisted. “I promise, I’m not some deviant rapist…despite my lack of pants.”

“What on earth is going on?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“It’s really kind of complicated,” I explained, unfastening the straps. “Your husband hired me to help rescue you, but things worked out kind of goofy.”

I cringed as I unfastened the strap binding her left wrist. Her arm was covered with five or six long cuts, stretching from the back of her wrist to her elbow. She noticed my concern.

“It’s nothing-don’t worry about it,” she said. “You look a lot worse.”

“Yeah, it hasn’t been a good day for my body.”

“I saw them wheel you through the place where they’re keeping everybody. I take it they don’t think you’re one of them anymore?”

I shook my head. “It was nice while it lasted.”

I finished the final strap and she got off the table. I knew we had to hurry, but we could most definitely spare a moment to gather some supplies. There were a lot of great weapons in here.

Charlotte grabbed a spiked metal club and a short spear. I went for the machete. “Could you take these?” I asked, handing a screwdriver and small knife to Charlotte. “I don’t have pockets.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. Let’s get out of here.”

There wasn’t a window in the door, so I opened it as silently as possible and peeked out. The hallway was empty. We left the operating room and began to quickly but softly move down the corridor. Our first job was to get to the cell area and hope that Mortimer hadn’t been able to catch up to Roger.

Hoping we wouldn’t get lost, I turned at the intersection. I didn’t particularly want to walk by the dart room, and I assumed there was another way around. The cell area was on the far left side of the structure, so if I just kept heading that way…

A gunshot. One that sounded like it came from the far left side of the structure. I picked up my pace, and Charlotte followed.

Off in the distance, I saw Mortimer run across an intersection. He didn’t see us, or even look in our direction.

We began to run even faster.

We reached the cell area. Roger immediately spun around and pointed a gun at us, but relaxed when he saw who we were. “Give me the card! Quick!”

I tossed the red card to him. He caught it in the air. The other prisoners were pressed against the cell bars, anxiously waiting to be set free.

“Are they right behind you?” he asked.

“Not at the moment, but pretty soon, yeah.”

“What do you think made the alarm go off?” he asked.

“I have no idea. Try a different cell this time.”

“If it goes off, what do we do?”

“We run. I’ve got some keys, and I’m pretty sure they belong to the vans that brought us here. We can smash through the gates and drive somewhere to get help.”

“Then everyone else will die,” Roger said. “I told you, they’re going to execute the prisoners if anything else goes wrong!”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Well, there are four of them out there. Josie’s hurt pretty bad. What about Mortimer?”

“I might have broken his nose,” said Roger. “I knocked the gun away from him, but he ran away before I could use it.”

“He could come back with something worse.”

“You think?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’ve got a gun. There’s only one way they could come in. We can keep them from getting in here, can’t we?”

“But nobody knows we’re here. They had Charlotte for months. They could just lock the place up, leave us to rot for a couple weeks.”

“Can we please stop talking and do something?” asked Charlotte.

“Try it,” I told Roger.

He waved the card over a cell reader, across the path from the one that had previously set off the alarm.

The cell didn’t unlock. The alarm went off.

“Shit!” Roger shouted.

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” I said. “Give me the gun!”

Roger handed it to me. I headed for the doorway, and then held the gun out to a heavyset, redheaded man in the cell closest to the exit. “Don’t let anyone through that door. We’ll be back for you. I promise.”

The man gave a grim nod and took the gun. Roger, Charlotte and I fled the room and ran down the hallway.

“Don’t worry,” I told Roger as we ran. “We’ll get everybody out of here.”

“Hell yeah, we will,” Roger said. We ran without speaking for a few seconds. “Hey, Andrew?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you promise not to be offended if I share something with you?”

“Sure.”

“You smell really bad. I mean, nasty beyond description. I’d almost rather be back in the cell.”

“I’ve missed you, Roger.”

“I missed you, too, Andrew.”

WE REACHED the far right end of the structure, which stopped at a wide white door. The pass card worked on it, and we went through.

Beyond the door was a small garage. Surprisingly, it looked like any other filthy garage, although standard equipment like a vice certainly carried a foreboding aura.

The van was there.

“I think we’re saved!” I said, unable to contain my relief even though it was far too early to relax. After a couple of tries I found the correct key on Foster’s key ring, and we all got inside, me in the driver’s seat, Roger and Charlotte in the back.

“Anything useful back there?” I asked, setting my machete on the passenger seat while I started the engine.