Page 5 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

It turned out she didn’t need for one of the men in black to glance in the other direction, or let down his guard.

Turned out that two lab techs, Carla Stiller and Robert Krotow, two of the gentlest and smartest people she knew, had become infected.

They basically ate the two men in black.

Arka’s security guards, who she’d read had been recruited exclusively from US Special Forces, didn’t stand a chance.

Sophie had hidden in a supply closet until the carnage outside was over, opening the door only when she saw the two blood-stained lab rats lope down the hall for other victims, leaving behind two men in black in six distinct pieces.

The concept of door handles proving too much for the infected to conceptualize, they’d forgotten all about her.

It was now or never. Sophie had taken the elevator to the 21st floor of the Arka offices where the Big Boss himself, Dr. Charles Lee, resided.

It had been the slimmest of chances and her heart had pounded every second while her body was screaming at her to get out.

But something told her she needed to have samples of the viruses and the vaccine that had been in Dr. Lee’s notes. She’d gone up to the administrative offices floor, hoping her Arka pass would let her through.

Her Arka pass hadn’t made any difference at all.

All doors were open, there were four dead bodies in the corridor, the fire alarm was booming, smoke was in the air.

The door to Dr Lee’s sumptuous office was open, a big Halliburton case on the floor.

She snatched that and the 360 terabyte flash drive on Dr. Lee’s desk and ran for the stairwell, reaching the bottom winded and desperate.

Chaos reigned. Several buildings had their fire alarms booming, up and down Market people were fighting, screaming, dying.

Sophie had leaned with her back against the wall of the Arka building until she saw a taxi driver slow down.

Without thinking, she wrenched open the door, threw in the case then threw herself after it.

“Beach Street,” she gasped.

The taxi driver turned a terrified dark face to her. “Hey lady, I’m not in service! I’m getting the hell out of here. Whatever’s happening here, I don’t want no part of it.”

“Get out of town. Fast. The Bay Bridge is closed.” She’d seen that on Google news. “The Golden Gate will be open for a few hours more. Let me off at Beach Street and I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”

The taxi driver’s jaw worked. Something really awful was going down. But…a hundred dollars.

He stepped on the accelerator and they shot up Market.

The further away they got, the less chaos there was.

Sophie planned to get her car in her building’s underground garage and head out.

At Beach and Jones she had the driver stop a second, threw a hundred dollar bill at him and scrambled out.

The case was so heavy she had to practically drag it, two-handed, home.

She was wheezing by the time she made it to her building.

She swiped her key, planning on descending to the garage when a pack of monsters came unexpectedly around the corner, screaming and raging. They were all caked with blood.

Two people at the head of the pack howled when they saw her. Heart pounding, she pulled the heavy front door behind her and ran up the stairs. The idea of being caught in the open spaces of the underground garage was too terrifying for words.

The stairs were clear and she managed to lug the heavy case to her apartment, slamming the door and leaning back against it, panting.

The goons of Arka would look here for her first, of course.

But somehow she was sure that the chain of command had broken now that the world was burning around them.

Security would have no way of knowing she had the virus and anyway, they were probably already dead or infected.

Either way, she was sure no one would come for her.

She was safe.

But she was trapped.

That was yesterday. She’d spent a sleepless night shaking, listening to the sounds of screams and explosions, the city falling apart. And she’d spent the day watching the carnage outside her windows.

Her building had photovoltaic solar panels on the roof. At least she’d have electricity until the end. Probably. Maybe.

She made herself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa. It was the new Frau model with a digital music player in the arm. She plugged in her new noise cancelling earbuds and sat back, eyes closed, savoring the utter silence for just a few minutes.

The day had been filled with the cries of the enraged and the dying. Fire and car alarms going off all over the city. The sound of feet pounding on the pavement, glass shattering, a few far off explosions as gas mains went. Howls. Terrifying sounds of utter destruction.

Now the noise canceling ear buds gave her the gift of silence, a moment of weary peace. She loved silence. Sometimes after a stressful week she’d head up to the Marin Headlands for a long walk. Something she’d never be able to do again.

The last of the TV announcements had said that both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate were closed off and that Marines were stationed at the San Francisco ends.

Earlier today, there’d been a huge explosion, a column of smoke rising from the west. Her windows gave out onto Beach with no view of the Golden Gate Bridge but it sounded as if they’d blown it.

Or maybe they’d blown up the access roads?

Maybe she could never leave San Francisco ever again.

Unless…

Before the internet had gone last night, her best friend, Elle Connelly, had emailed to say that someone named Jon was coming for her, would be there in a few hours. Elle had made only the vaguest mention of where she was—somewhere up north. And no mention of who this Jon was.

Then Sophie lost her internet connection and was left only with this thin thread of hope.

Something about the way Elle had written the email— Jon is coming— had given her a rush of hope. Jon was coming. She had no idea who this Jon was but it felt as if though the end of the world was here, Jon was coming maybe, just maybe, things would get better.

That was 24 hours ago and Jon hadn’t come.

Jon was dead somewhere, torn limb from limb. Or, worse, Jon was now roaming the streets of San Francisco or wherever it was that Elle was, with madness in his eyes, covered in blood and killing as many people as he could.

She’d watched death on a massive scale all day. Now she needed respite and silence. The noise-cancelling headset beckoned.

Sophie leaned back, enveloped in the cool embrace of the silence, wishing there was some kind of image-cancelling mechanism, something that would cancel memories the way the headsets cancelled noise. But some things, once seen, could never be unseen.

So much violence, so much blood. So many dead.

She tried visualizing other things. Better things.

After all, her life had given her plenty of wonderful images.

Her parents sneaking downstairs on Christmas Eve, placing presents under the ten foot Christmas tree, relaxing with a glass of wine, making out on the couch and then pretending with a perfectly straight face the next day that Santa had arrived.

Playing in the snow with her gorgeous, dumb-as-a-rock cocker spaniel Fritz on the lawn of their house outside Chicago. Pajama parties. Piano recitals, her first kiss, her first lover, Allan Mercer, who’d been just as gorgeous and just as dumb as Fritz.

She smiled, eyes closed.

Lots of good things.

Lots of not so good things, too. The death of her parents in a car accident when she was 24. It had been the death of her family. No siblings, her parents had been only children too. They’d been a close, charmed circle, untouchable until the hand of fate swatted her family away.

That same hand of fate was going to swat her away, too, together with the rest of humanity if she died here and no one found the vaccine and the original virus.

Oh, God.

Without even thinking about it, a tear trickled down her face. She opened her eyes and sat up straighter. Tears weren’t going to change anything. If there were ever a situation in which tears couldn’t help, this was it.

Maybe wine would help. Yes, a glass of that really good Damoit Chambertin.

She’d bought a case of the ridiculously expensive wine because she was enchanted with the origin name—Cote de Nuits.

The Night Coast . Turned out it wasn’t a coast at all, but by that time the vendor had charmed her out of $400.

It was okay because it was fabulous stuff.

Right, she had 12 bottles of it.

A bottle a day…

Would the world last 12 days?

Probably not.

Don’t think like that. Don’t think at all.

Yes, a glass of wine would do her good. She pulled the earbuds away and frowned. Was that a sound at her door? Something…something there just as she removed the earbuds. More an echo of a sound than a sound itself.

Was she crazy?

It couldn’t be an infected. The infected didn’t make soft noises. They bellowed and staggered and crashed into things.

She walked slowly to her door, pushing at the items she’d placed near the threshold.

Studying the infected from the window, it seemed to her that their eyesight diminished but their olfactory sense was amped up.

A couple of times she’d observed an infected stop, nose up in the air to sniff, then take off in another direction.

Just as a precaution, in case the infected had a new ability in their sick heads to smell the uninfected, she’d placed scented candles and potpourri around her door and had sacrificed half a bottle of Miss Dior around the frame.

Maybe it was that, maybe it was the whim of the gods, but so far no infected had beat at her door, the way she’d heard them beating at other doors on her floor and downstairs.