Breaking Danger (6 page)

Sophie shook her head sharply. She placed her hands against that massive chest, palms flat against his pectorals. Oh God. She wanted to push him away slightly, gain a little breathing room, get away from this magnetic field he exerted, but her body betrayed her.

She had always been disciplined, focused. Right now she dug deep into her depths to find just a little of that discipline and pull away.

“I just need to use the bathroom,” she said, finally pulling her dressing gown tightly around herself. With every ounce of her being she wanted her voice to be cool and matter-of-fact, but she was breathless. She didn't even know if she'd said the words or if she'd just mouthed them.

His arms opened immediately and she almost staggered at the sudden lack of support. A big hand shot out to her elbow, then he withdrew his hand when it was clear she was steady.

Or at least she looked steady. He watched as she walked across the room, tightening her silk robe again, as if he hadn't already seen, already touched, her naked flesh. In the bathroom Sophie leaned her hands on the rim of the sandstone sink, blew out her breath, and looked at herself in the mirror.

What she saw astonished her. She was expecting to see her usual pale face overrun with embarrassment. What she saw was a rosy version of herself, rested and relaxed, the exact opposite of the person she'd been seeing in the mirror these past few weeks.

Things had been very wrong at Arka Pharmaceuticals. Much as she'd tried to ignore it, concentrate on her work, which was both fascinating and incredibly challenging, warning bells had been clanging for some time before she allowed herself to notice anything. Orders from administration made no sense. The protocol timelines were increased—doubled, at times trebled. They'd be taken off one line of testing and put on an entirely new one and pressed for results. That's not the way science worked. Science worked by reason and slow deliberation, neither of which were present in Arka's leadership.

She and Elle had been deeply worried even before people started disappearing. It had been like doing science in a whirlwind. And then the disappearances started.

She had started losing weight, when she had no weight to lose. Hollows were appearing under her cheekbones because she found it almost impossible to eat, given that her stomach was usually in knots. She'd stopped sleeping and the purple bruises under her eyes were starting to look permanent.

Now she was looking at a woman with wild bedhead spiraling around her pink, flushed face. It looked like she'd put three or four pounds back on, all of them from eating fabulous food.

Here it was, the end of the world, and all it took was the best sex of her life to make her feel better. Shaking her head at her own folly, she stepped under the shower for a quick wash. Not much in the world worked, but her building still had hot water.

Who knew how long that would last?

It might be her last one in this lifetime so, though she was fast, she was thorough. The hot water revived her, except when she swiped between her legs with the washcloth. Everything down there was supersensitized, slightly swollen. It was as if the tissues themselves bore a cellular memory of Jon's presence inside her body. Her legs trembled when she washed herself and she had to stand for a full minute, arms braced against the tile wall, under the hot torrent until the trembling passed.

Sophie kept some yoga outfits in the bathroom so when she walked back out, in a thin T-shirt and yoga pants, she felt more in control of herself than when she'd walked in.

Jon was exactly where she'd left him, by the window, looking down at the destruction below with a drawn face.

“Jon?” she asked softly, putting a hand on a massive shoulder.

Oh God.
Touching him made all her senses flare. It was the lightest touch, her palm lightly pressed against his shoulder blade. Under her palm was warm hard muscle and a sense of vibrancy, of unusual power and strength, like the engine of a racing car temporarily idling.

“Would you like to shower at some point?”

He pulled in a sharp breath and turned, his ice blue gaze so very sharp and intense. “Do I dare? What if we run out of water?”

Sophie didn't have many answers to what was going on, but she did have an answer to that. “The building has a huge reservoir on top and I don't think too many people are left”—her voice wobbled as she thought of all her neighbors—“are left alive. The building has a mini heliostat, so the electricity will keep pumping the water until it's finished. I have a second bathroom with a hip bath and that is filled with water. I have filled every large pot and pan and bucket with water. The water will last at least a week. The water will outlast—”

Us
. She stopped herself before the truth could come tumbling out. The water she'd stored would outlast humanity, at this rate.

She tilted her head, studying him. He was tall, visibly very strong. There was a stunner in a holster on the floor next to his Superman suit, some kind of gun in a shoulder holster. But still—

“How did you make it here?” she asked.

Someone screamed. A woman. Not close, maybe from a building across the street. It wasn't a scream of fear but of rage. Sophie waved a hand at the window, encompassing the fallen world outside. “How can anyone survive out there?”

It wasn't an idle question. He was here to rescue her and get the case with the live virus and the vaccine, but unless he had a tank right outside her front door, she had no idea how they could manage to get five feet without dying or, worse, without being turned.

Something of her terror must have been showing. He lifted a big hand, cupped the side of her face. His deep voice was soft, almost tender. “I'll keep you safe.”

She nodded, though of course that was an insane comment. Nobody could keep anybody safe. Not in this new, broken world. “How did you make it?” she repeated. She shivered.

Jon looked down at her. “I have a helo.”

She blinked. For a second she thought he said—
I have a halo
. He was an angel? What?—and then she understood. A
helicopter
. He had a helicopter.

A little shiver of hope went through her, the first in three days. A helicopter! Helicopters could land almost anywhere. And they took off, could just fly right over the chaos and violence.

“Here?” she asked eagerly, looking up toward the roof. Could it be that easy? Somehow make it up the stairs and away? “On top of my building?”

Jon sighed, that big chest expanding. It was a sigh almost of sorrow. “No, sorry. We checked your rooftop, and though my helo doesn't need much of a helipad, there was some equipment taking up most of the roof. Couldn't land safely.”

She bit her lips. “Oh no. They are making repairs, the whole condo voted on it. The workers must have just abandoned their equipment.” And she'd voted for the repairs too. “So where did you land? Not on the street, I hope.”

“Nope. I landed on top of the Ghirardelli Building. Biggest high, clear space around. And I looked carefully as I flew down. The . . . infected aren't on rooftops. I don't know whether it's because they don't like stairs or heights or what.”

“But . . . on top of the Ghirardelli Building.” Sophie tried to keep dismay out of her voice. She loved strolling over to the Ghirardelli Building on weekends, checking the shops. Sometimes she and Elle would indulge in a hamburger at Sara's Diner, overlooking the Bay. It made for a nice walk. Running there, dodging monsters, lugging that heavy case . . . “If we make it, it would be a miracle. And the case is heavy.”

“I'll take care of the case.” Jon reached out with his thumb to smooth the crease between her eyebrows. “I'm not going to insult you and say it's going to be easy, but I have a stunner and a pistol and some grenades. And I'll give you my suit. We'll roll up the sleeves and pants. It's scratch and bite proof. And—”

“And we'll douse ourselves with perfume. I have plenty.”

His head jerked back. “What?”

“I've been observing them.” Her eyes slid to the window where she'd watched for hours, brokenhearted at the violence and bloodshed on her street. “I'm a scientist. That's what I do. Observe. I think that their olfactory sense has strengthened. I've often watched as an infected stops and sniffs the air, like a dog would. Hunting for a particular scent. I think that's what's happening.” Her throat tightened. She had to swallow to get rid of the lump that had suddenly appeared. “I think they are hunting . . . humans.”

He made a low noise deep in his chest. “Yeah. So—what? Dousing ourselves with perfume would help?” He turned his head, looked at her door. “That's all the scented candles at your door.”

She nodded. “Yes. It can't hurt. You can have my Chanel N˚ 5. It's real perfume and it costs the earth.” She smiled a little at the thought of him doused in her Chanel. He didn't look like the Chanel type.

“What else? What else have you observed, Sophie? Anything at all. Any information is better than none, it ups our chances of survival.”

She didn't need her notes, though she'd take them with her in her laptop. Everything she knew was seared into her mind. “I think their eyesight is diminished. Perhaps the virus affects the optic nerve, perhaps their brains are no longer equipped to process all the data that comes in through the eyes. Smell is the oldest and most primitive of the senses and that is why it is strengthened. I think the virus amplifies the limbic system, hence the savagery, the inability to reason. I haven't seen an infected be able to open doors with handles and they have great difficulty navigating stairs. Eyesight is diminished, as I said. At twilight they start bumping into things. I think they might be essentially blind in the dark. But they'll still attack if they touch someone.”

“Shit,” he swore in a vicious tone. “They're like fucking zombies.”

“No,” Sophie said. “They seem like zombies because it appears they don't feel pain. I think the pain receptors are wiped out. That's very dangerous to them, by the way. You've heard the stories of people who have no pain receptors and who sometimes burn to death because they can't feel pain. The same with the infected. They have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. And they are dying. Let me show you. Do you have a thermal scanner?”

He took a scanner and tapped the side. A hologram popped out. Their two bodies showed, glowing pale yellow.

“Now aim it out the window.”

He held his arm up and the hologram showed the street scene outside. There must have been a hundred infected outside on the street, showing up crimson with trailing tails of red when they moved fast. They were so hot, they managed to heat the air in their wake.

“Let me show you something else,” Sophie said, swiping her finger left to right along the bottom of the hologram. Instantly the outline of the bodies darkened, but digits appeared above their heads, following the infected in their almost Brownian movements. The digits ran from 99.5 to 104.

“Whoa.” Jon frowned. “I didn't know it could do that.”

She looked up at him briefly, then concentrated on the scanner's image. “We have these in the lab.” She closed her eyes in pain. “
Had
them in the lab.”

For an instant, Sophie allowed herself to mourn the lab. Except for the past few months, which had been weird, she loved her job. Loved the camaraderie of science. Everyone striving for the same goal: knowledge. Everything orderly and rational, everything this new world was not. Maybe science as she understood it was gone. Maybe the generations that would come—
if
there were to be any generations and mankind didn't simply die off—would worship the moon and the stars.

She trembled at the thought. Jon put a big hand on her shoulder, almost as if he could read her mind. It steadied her, stabilized her. Science wasn't quite dead. Not as long as she was alive. And if Elle was emailing her, she was somewhere safe. Elle was a brilliant scientist.

“So what are we looking at?” Jon asked.

Sophie shook her thoughts off. This was no time to be mourning what was lost. Now was the time to fight hard to keep what was left. “The infected's temperatures.”

Jon's eyes widened. “They've all got—”

“A fever. A raging fever. It's why they show up so red on your scanners. There's obviously been massive damage to the hypothalamus, which is the body's thermostat, regulating body temperature. Everyone out there is close to heatstroke. I've seen a couple of infected fall down suddenly and twitch. I didn't have my scanner with me, but it looked like they were having a seizure; and if their core temperatures reached 105 degrees, it was a seizure. One way to fight a high temperature, besides pharmacologically, is fluid and electrolyte replacement, but I don't think they have the brains to look for water. A fever this high for any sustained period is incompatible with life, as medical texts say. The infected are not doing anything at all to bring their temperatures down. There's nothing they can do in their state. So they are all dying. It's just a question of time. So we need to set your scanner to scan for bodies with a temperature of 98 degrees and up. That way we are almost sure to capture only the infected. Another thing . . .”

Sophie swiped from left to right again and the digits above the glowing outlines showed different figures ranging from 140 to 200.

“There,” she said, pointing. “Look at those numbers and then look outside.”

“Okay.” He studied the hologram, then watched the scenes below carefully. “What am I seeing? What are those numbers?”

“What you are seeing, first of all, is an exclusively young population. I'd guess there isn't anyone over forty down there.”

Jon's face tightened as he observed more closely, watching in silence for five minutes. “You're right,” he said finally. “No old people at all.”