Max Collins - After the Dark

Max jumped onto the perch and grabbed him by the front of his robe. “What the hell—”

“This facility will self-destruct in five minutes. More or less. Less, now.”

She put her hands on either side of his face and looked at him, as if she were going to kiss the silver-haired leader. “You won’t have to wait,” she said.

And broke his neck.

Hopping down, she said, “Alec — take a look at those controls. We got minutes to clear this place and get our people off these grounds!”

Mole pitched what was left of his latest stogie and grumbled, “Why can’t these megalomaniac meatheads be satisfied with killin’ themselves? Why do they gotta take a bunch of people with ’em?”

“We’ll break up into discussion groups later,” Max said, unceremoniously pulling the corpse of Matthias by his feet down off the throne onto the black floor, while Alec scrambled up in his place.

She looked at him, hopeful. “Think you can unlock ’em?”

“No problem.” Alec touched a button.

The explosion rocked the building and knocked Max on her butt.

She sat there, next to dead Matthias, and again looked up at Alec. Not so hopeful.

Alec gave her half a grin and half a shrug, and said, “I seem to have blown up one of the outbuildings.”

Getting on her feet, she said, “Don’t just go touching any more buttons, until you’re sure, okay?”

Four thirty-four... 4:33... 4:32...

“Maybe I should crack open a brewski,” Alec said, “and read the manual... You know, at my leisure?”

“Just do it, Alec,” she said, and she and Mole were out of there.

Max told Mole, as they sprinted down the stairs, “You take the cells on the left, I’ll take ’em on the right... If Alec can’t unlock ’em, just pull the damn things off their hinges.”

“No prob,” Mole said.

That was when the sprinkler system started in, whether automatically — thanks to the explosion of the outbuilding, its fire presumably spreading — or by more experimentation on Alec’s part, she had no idea. The indoor rain felt icy cold and smelled of rust, as though it had been captive in the asylum’s pipes for a long time.

Max prayed that Alec had found the button to unlock these doors...

In the long bare hallway, she tugged on the first door and nothing happened. She cursed, but it was inaudible over the sound of the sprinklers and voices screaming in cells all along the hall.

Finding a fire extinguisher in a box on the wall, Max elbowed the glass, got the thing out and started clanging it against the lock of the first door. Finally, the old lock gave way and she threw open the door...

On the single bed suspended by chains from the wall, a wide-eyed C. J. Sandeman lay wrapped in a straitjacket and gagged. Even so, it was clear that he recognized her immediately.

“No time to get you outta that,” she said, yanking him off the cot, steadying him onto his feet. “Building’s going up in a couple minutes. Get down to the first floor, they’ll help you.”

He managed to nod and stumbled out and off toward the stairs.

Mole tried a door, looked at her bright-eyed. “This one’s unlocked!”

Quickly he opened it and stuck his head in.

Just as quickly he yanked his head back out and slammed the door shut.

Mole shuddered.

“What?” she asked.

“Snakes,” he said, and went on.

You’d think he wouldn’t have a problem with that, she thought, going on to the next cell, trying to keep track of time. About two minutes left...

With the water coming down, her hair was well-matted by now. She had released four prisoners when she finally heard the locks all click open. All the doors thrummed open slightly and the prisoners needed no further encouragement than that. They flew down the hall, splashing, barely aware of Max waving them toward safety. She stayed on the floor, going from cell to cell making sure everyone got out.

She saw no other inmate or prisoner until she got to the last door, which she opened wide, and looked in to see a lump in the middle of a padded cell whose stuffing was largely hanging out of gaping tears.

“Get on your feet!” she said. “Building’s gonna blow!”

The lump rolled over to reveal a sickly, emaciated man who had obviously undergone a great deal of torture, a man who stared at her with beady dark eyes...

... a man she had known all her life.

Stunned, all she could say was, “I thought you were dead.”

Colonel Donald Lydecker — the dreaded surrogate father of all the Manticore siblings — looked up at her, his hands shakily reaching toward her. “Not if you help me...”

She recoiled. “Go to hell. Get out on your own, if you can, you bastard.”

And she turned to go, the time pressing her harder than this stunning discovery.

But behind her a weak version of that strong voice called out over the sprinkler din: “I understand how you feel... but if you help me... I’ll help you.”

Her back to him as she stood poised in the door, she said, “Help me? Like you’ve helped me in the past, killing my sibs?”

She was halfway out when his words stopped her: “I know where your mother is.”

Her birth mother... her father a test tube, but her mother a real woman, who Max had longed to find, to meet, to know...

As the clock ticked, her mind flew: he was lying; Lydecker always lied. He knew her hot buttons and had pushed the hottest one he could think of... that simple.

She left him there and went running down the hall.

And then she turned and sprinted back to duck into the cell and scoop up her sickly surrogate father.

The transgenics were scattered across the grounds, robed figures sprawled around them on the snow-dusted landscape. Among the dead, the white-sheeted body of the boy stood out, as did the headless corpse of his father. Here and there a few of the patrol guards, in TAC gear, lay dead, shot by Mole. Any way you figured it, the battle was over, the opponents either dead or badly injured... those who hadn’t fled.

“Building’s gonna blow,” she cried, “any second! Run! ”

And they ran.

It galled her that she was the one hauling Colonel Donald Lydecker to safety.

They were at the edge of the woods when the building exploded — actually, three small explosions placed around and within the building that together rolled up into one big one, and one fireball, flinging chunks of stone and showering debris like an ugly, landbound comet.

Within a very short time the fallen, half walls of the complex — though one outbuilding stood, relatively unscathed — were home to orange, licking flames and foul, rolling gray-black smoke, the crackling of the fire like sporadic gunfire.

And then the bearded Logan was at her side. He glanced down at the withered form of Lydecker, shivering, coughing, and said, “Look what the cat drug in.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” she said, and told Logan what Lydecker had said.

“You can’t trust him,” he said.

“I know. I know.”

“But Max... you can trust me. Really.”

“I know, Logan.”

“You do?”

“Going to your uncle for the ransom... he almost died, because of me, Logan. He may still die... he’s comatose. And I knew... if I caused his death... telling you would be the hardest...”

He took her hand in his — flesh-to-flesh, no virus to worry about — and squeezed it. “You did this for me, Max. I know you did. You rid mankind of this demented snake cult... or anyway, diminished their ranks considerably, including Ames White himself... but you didn’t do it for mankind, did you?”

“No. It was for you, Logan... We hadn’t finished our argument.”

He laughed, gently.