She approached the file server room, where the door was sealed airtight, protecting the racks of servers inside from the rising flood of fuel. Mariella intended to change that.
She tried the security guard’s access card a few times, but the lock didn’t open. She backed up, raised the automatic rifle at the door, and squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked her hard as she fired, and its nose lifted up and up, making her shoot higher and higher. She released the trigger, pointed the gun at the foot of the door, then held it down again, letting the gun strafe the door as it rose under its power.
When she’d emptied the ammunition, Mariella ran to the wreckage of the door and used the gun as a club to bash it all the way open. She stepped into a freezing-cold room lined with quietly humming hardware. The fuel flooded in with her.
She pulled and pushed the servers free, knocking them over into the rising fuel. She heard boots sloshing their way toward her, along with shouting voices.
Mariella turned to see three guards approaching her with automatic rifles like the one she’d taken.
“Raise your hands! Stay where you are!” one guard shouted. Not one thing had gone right for her so far, so it wasn’t a terrible surprise that she’d just lost her slender chance of escaping and setting the fire from outside.
Mariella raised her arms, with a cigarette lighter concealed in her left hand. Her mother had always told her that smoking would kill her.
“Go on and shoot me, then,” Mariella said, and she flicked the lighter. Her fuel-soaked fingers ignited, and the fire quickly engulfed her and filled the room. She screamed, and the guards mercifully shot her dead before the flames swept out to consume them all.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Jenny, Seth, and Esmeralda started towards the fenced motor pool by the front gate, intending to steal transportation, but the trucks there came to life, including an apparently empty armored personnel carrier, and charged toward the front gate, the drivers callously running over anyone who got in the way.
“That’s not going to work,” Jenny said, watching all the available vehicle charge toward the gate, which opened for them. The panicked crowd poured out on either side of the trucks, everyone desperate to leave before the rumored bombs exploded.
“Looks like we’re walking,” Seth said. He rearranged his shirt, pulling the baby sling inside. The tiny girl cooed against his skin, her eyes closed.
“That kid can sleep through anything.” Esmeralda shook her head.
They joined the general exodus of people through the open front gate, Jenny in her hospital gown, Seth and Esmeralda in their stolen scrubs. Nobody paid attention to them, despite the baby bulging from under Seth’s shirt. If any of them did recognize Jenny, they were wise enough to keep their mouths shut. Everyone seemed focused on saving their own necks. Jenny definitely liked it that way. Maybe they wouldn’t need to hurt anyone else tonight.
They jogged down along the steep road with everyone else, and Jenny felt a weight lift from her. They were free, they were alive, the baby was safe.
Then screams sounded from ahead. Pedestrians raced to clear the road as the trucks came back, led by the personnel carriers, which swerved hard toward Jenny, Seth, and Esmeralda and slammed to a halt in front of them. Armored men in biohazard masks poured out of the vehicles, armed with assault rifles. One of them ignited a flamethrower, while two aimed grenade launchers them.
“We got enough firepower to turn you all into grease and smoke,” Ward said. He led the men, dressed in full biohazard armor like the rest, grinning inside his face shield. Jenny recognized his two assistants Buchanan and Avery, who flanked him, carrying assault rifles. “Don’t try a thing. Especially you, Jenny,” Ward instructed.
Jenny felt frozen. The men were all sealed up, protected from her by technology designed specifically to shield them from her power. She looked at Seth, frightened, her mind moving fast, searching the memories of hundreds of lives for anything that might help her.
She remembered what Dr. Heather Reynard of the CDC had found, what Alise and even Kranzler himself had told her. The pox was not biological or chemical. It defied any known laws of physics. It was supernatural, made of the spiritual dark matter of her undying soul.
Who had ever said that gas masks, armor, or the latest biohazard-resistant plastics were any protection against the supernatural? Maybe there was a chance she could summon something aggressive enough to chew right through. Maybe her own beliefs had placed artificial limits on her powers.
“Everybody on your knees,” Ward instructed. Jenny knelt slowly, placing her hands behind her head. Seth and Esmeralda wisely knelt behind her.