The Infected (Book 6): Last Shot (7 page)

Chapter Fourteen

“Marc I need to talk to you.” A low rumbling voice said from the other side of the door.

I pulled it open and Chris was standing in the hallway. I stepped to the side and said “Come on in, mate.”

He saw the towel in my hand “Not disturbing you am I?” and walked past me.

I shook my head and closed the door “Nah mate just washed my face. The sleep in the corner of my closed eye is a fucker.”

“Yeah sorry about that.” He said with a sheepish grin.

“Fuck off you’re not sorry at all.”

A large grin spread across his face “Your right I’m not sorry.”

“What were you after Chris?”

“Shit almost forgot. Jake came across another message from the oil rig and that fucker Dr Jackson. Somehow they have found out that someone is going to make a run at the oil rig. Dr Jackson was talking to their security about making sure the oil rig is fastened down and all approaches are covered.”

I started to lose my temper “How the fuck did they find out?”

“I think we could hazard a guess as to who might have a vested interest in her father surviving any attack on the oil rig.”

I shook my head “I can’t see how she is getting the information to them.”

“Not sure but it might be a good idea to keep an eye on her up until you and Mike leave.”

“Honestly I can’t see her doing this. She is happy here. I think we might need to cast the net a little wider. I’ll have a chat with Tom later on and see if he has noticed anything.”

Chris sat down and rubbed at his arm “Are we sure we can trust him either? After all he used to work for her dad.”

He did make a point. Plus he had access to the radio equipment that we kept in the armoury; I grimaced at the idea that he had access to radios and the explosives. SHIT THE EXPLOSIVES!

“Dude the explosives!” I shouted turning and running for the door. I pulled it open and let it bang off the wall and ran out into the hallway. I heard Chris curse loudly behind me and heard his heavy footsteps thundering behind me. He reached the lifts just as I did and we waited for it to come. I was shaking because the way the explosives had been set up it wouldn’t be too hard for someone to set them up and wipe out the whole Bunker. The doors to the lift opened and we stepped inside. I jabbed the button for the second floor hoping to make the lift move faster. The doors seemed to take forever to close and the jerk of the lift moving dragged. Chris’ face looked just as worried as mine probably did. The door opened and we turned onto the hallway. I was the first to see Tom walking out of the armoury; he had his head down and was looking at the floor.

I slowed down and called out “Hey Tom!”

His head shot up and I could tell just by his expression something was up. His eye’s widened when he saw Chris’ mass behind me. He turned to walk the other way.

“Hold up Tom!” Chris’ loud voice cried out in the hallway.

Tom started to run.

“Chris, get in there and check the explosives,” I said as I ran after Tom. I wasn’t up to any form of a fight, but I had to stop him. I really needed to ask him some questions.

Chris grunted and ran to the armoury and pulled the door open and ran inside. I watched Tom duck through the doorway and into the gym. I slowed to a stop at the door and waited to hear anything on the other side. The good thing was he was cornered in there. There wasn’t any other exit other than this door and this hallway. Putting my back to the wall I reached out with my good hand a gently pushed on the door. I heard the shots and jerked my hand back as two holes appeared in the door itself. I flattened myself against the wall and waited for any more shots to come my way.

I heard a door open further up the hallway and saw Chris quickly look out. When he saw it was just me in the hallway he leaned out.

“Is that fucker shooting at you?”

I nodded.

“Two seconds!” he disappeared back inside the armoury.

I stood there waiting for either more shots or for Chris to return. After a few minutes, Chris looked back out. He crouched down and slid a Browning 9mm automatic down the hallway floor. I stopped it with my foot and lifted it up. Pulling the slide back, I made sure it was loaded. Releasing the magazine I checked the load and slammed it back in the pistol.

“How are the explosives?” I asked him.

Chris shook his head before replying “He started two blocks on a twenty-minute countdown and placed them on top of the others. It’s a bloody good thing that I set them up because I managed to disarm them. If it had been anyone else but me the Bunker would have been fucked.” He disappeared back inside the armoury.

“TOM! I JUST WANT TO TALK!” I shouted out.

His reply was two more shots and two more holes in the door to the gym. I heard running and turned toward the noise with the pistol in hand. Amy and David pulled to a stop and held their hands up.

David slowly lowered his hands “What’s happening? Jake managed to raise me on one of the radios we keep in my office he said there was shooting outside the radio room in the hallway. Amy was coming out of Doc’s office and we headed straight here.”

I turned back to watch the door “It looks like Tom has decided to work for Benton’s again.”

“What the fuck are you going on about Marc?” Amy said.

Just then, Chris came out of the armoury carrying an MP5 and was just pulling back the charging handle. He beckoned Amy and David over and started talking to them in a hushed whisper.

“TOM! COME ON MATE, I JUST WANT TO TALK!” I shouted at the door.

“Fuck off you all want to kill me” a muffled reply from inside the gym.

“Look if we don’t settle this reasonably, then yeah you probably will end up dying. Come on talk to me.” I heard a murmur of whispered voices and turned to see that a crowd had gathered further up the hallway. David and Amy were talking to them and Chris was standing a few feet away from me with his rifle.

“Look, Tom, we are starting to get a crowd out here. It might be easier if I came in there and we can talk properly.” Out the corner of my eye, I saw Chris shaking his head.

“Send them away!” Tom’s voice cried from inside the gym.

“Chris, see if you can get to David and Amy to shift them further back. The last thing I want is for anyone to get hurt if this turns into a shooting match.”

Chris looked at the crowd and then at me “Don’t you fucking dare go in there. For all we know this was all too just kill you.”

I just nodded my head. He turned and slowly walked up the hallway and started talking with David, Amy and the crowd. I could see some panicked faces amongst them and Amy looked really pissed off.  That was actually something that I was starting to get used to. After perhaps five minutes of conversation, Amy and David started to move people away from the gym and toward the lifts.

Chris made his way back down and stood holding the MP5 in the crook of his broken arm. His face looked like thunder and I knew that if I let him in the gym with Tom then we would end up with a dead body and no answers.

“Are you going to talk to me Tom?”

“Have you sent the others away?” He called out through the closed door.

“Yeah, they’ve been told to leave. Now can Chris and I come in?”

There was a large pause from the other side of the door.

“Come on Tom there is no way you’re getting out of there, not the way things are heading.”

“Ha! If you both come in here one or both of you are going to kill me.”

I had to admit he had me on that one. I knew Chris wanted to kill him as soon as he saw the little shit. The only thing stopping him going in there and trying to kill him was that fact that he wasn’t in tip top condition. I was about to point this out to Tom when Mike came trotting down the hallway.

“Is it fucking true?” He asked stopping on the other side of Chris.

I nodded and Chris started to whisper what had happened up until now. Mike’s face went hard when Chris mentioned the explosives in the armoury.

“Marc?” Tom shouted.

“Yeah?”

There was a slight pause “Could you come in by yourself?”

Chris started to wave his hands saying no and Mike was doing the same. To tell the truth I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do at the minute, but the idea of just trying to starve him out seemed to come to mind. As soon as I thought it I regretted even thinking it. How could I explain to Rosa that we had starved her boyfriend to death?

“Look I would love to but you and I know that I am the main target for Benton’s and therefore you,” I said.

“That might be true Marc but I wanted to live after killing you, but it doesn’t look like I am going to get that choice. If I kill you, Chris and the others are going to come in here and fuck me right up before killing me.”

“True.”

“I’m sorry, but my life means more to me than killing you does.”

“Ok, I’m coming in,” I said and pushed open the door and stepped inside before Chris and Mike could grab me. I could hear them going nuts as the door closed and I walked into the gym. Tom had moved some mats and created a small area in between the weightlifting gear at the rear of the gym. If he had wanted he could have shot me as I walked in through the door. The space between me and the little-barricaded area was about twenty feet. I saw Tom’s head peek over the mats, it ducked back down.

“Glad you didn’t let Chris in. He scares the shit out of me.”

I sat down on the floor, holding the pistol in my lap. I had the safety off and kept my hand on the grip. “I think he might have the right to be slightly pissed off at you Tom.”

“Ha Ha, I mean before now, he’s always scared me. When he looked at me it was always as though he never trusted me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah I could never get rid of the feeling that he knew what was going on.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You mean this hasn’t given you any clues? Good I must have covered my tracks well then!”

“Come on Tom just tell me why?”

“Why?...Why? Let’s just say I wanted more than to live in a hole in the ground. We had been planning the release of that cat for next year and then you go and let it out earlier than we wanted.”

“So you’ve been in on this since the beginning?”

“Of course it was Dr Jackson and I that thought up the whole thing. Of course, I had planned on being on the oil rig with them, but Rosa and I got caught out didn’t we.”

“So Rosa has been in on it as well?”

“Don’t be stupid. She couldn’t find her way out of a wet paper bag without her father and then they would have needed someone like me or Dr Jackson to help them. No Dr Jackson and I were going to set ourselves up as the new leaders of the world.”

“But you’ve never been out of here since you got here. How the hell have you been in contact with them? I can’t even remember you being in the Communications room?”

“That’s where you helped. After all, it was you who asked me to help run the armoury.”

“The armoury?”

“All those nice boxes that were full of equipment they happened to include three sat phones. Since you put me in charge of the armoury I have been in constant contact with the oil rig. I told them of your mission to save Jane and her pet dyke. So we set up a small trap and it nearly worked. Then you headed off on your own, which wouldn’t have helped so I helped the others get you back. I thought I might have been able to slip away, but then you went and made a plan to blow the oil rig and I couldn’t have that, so I decided to blow the Bunker and head off to the oil rig. Yet again your luck seemed to hold and you caught me and now I am fucked.”

“What the fuck did we ever do to you Tom to deserve this?” I asked.

There was a pause as he thought of what he wanted to say “You are the fucking thorn in my side that’s why!”

“So you decided to kill everyone here who has been good to you just because I ruined your plans for world domination? What about Rosa do you not love her in the slightest?”

He laughed out loud and his laughter echoed round the room “I hate the stupid bitch. She was just a way for me and Dr Jackson to get the funds and materials we needed. I couldn’t care less about the scum that are here in the Bunker.”

I heard a low creak and turned my head slightly and saw Chris worm his way through the door and across the floor on his stomach.

“So how do you think you are going to get out of this?” I asked turning back to the barricade.

“Well, I thought you could let me walk out of here and give me a vehicle. Oh! And some supplies as well.” He said his tone coming across smug.

I felt my face screw up because I was confused with what he had said. “How can you even think that I would even consider that?”

Chris had made it along the wall and was slowly working his way along the long wall toward the barricade. He was hidden by several large pieces of equipment.

Tom’s voice echoed out from behind the barricade “Well you see I’ve already told the oil rig of your strike planned against them. If you let me go I promise that we will leave your little part of the world alone.”