The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

110

THERE WAS A clank and a tremendous bang, and my heart almost stopped; I expected the gas to ignite and blow up the tanks, and me and everyone else with them.

Instead, Edgars screamed and writhed on the concrete floor, his bleeding hands clawing at the gas mask, his rifle three feet to his right, ruptured and smoking. Adrenaline poured through my veins, making me shake so bad that several moments passed before I realized what had happened.

Damaged by my earlier shot, and set to full automatic fire, the action of Edgars’s gun must have backfired, jammed, and exploded, sending chunks and slivers of metal back into the coder’s face and neck.

Edgars tore off the gas mask. His left eye was punctured and weeping blood. His cheeks and forehead were gashed horribly, flayed open, and gushing blood.

My head swooned from the gas. Throwing my jacket sleeve across my mouth again, I kept my gun on him and moved forward fast, meaning to subdue and handcuff him.

But when I got close, Edgars lashed out with his steel-toed boot and connected squarely with my bad ankle. I felt something snap. A bolt of fire shot through me; my leg buckled, and I went down on my side.

My ankle felt like someone had set a torch to it. My stomach turned over from the agony and the gas, and my head swam; I thought I was going to pass out.

“The gas!” Gretchen Lindel cried weakly behind me. “The gas!”

I shook my head, saw Edgars struggling, trying to get to his feet. I aimed my gun at him but didn’t shoot because he seized up before he could fully stand, looked at me puzzled, and then felt his neck.

Something had ruptured, probably the carotid, pumping out blood. He staggered, moving his lips but making no sound, and then fell for the last time.

The gas, I thought through a building daze.

Forcing myself up onto all fours, I turned my back to Edgars and crawled toward the tanks. I reach

ed the post they were chained to and, holding my breath, used the post to pull myself to my feet.

I grabbed the knob to the hissing gas valve, tried to twist it shut. But it wouldn’t budge. Neither would the other one. They were locked open somehow.

My stomach roiled. I fought the urge to puke. But then I looked to Gretchen Lindel and the other six women hanging from the cables. Heads down. Bodies slack. They were dying.

Dying.

My head spun again, and I almost went down for a second time.

You’re dying, Alex.

It was Bree’s voice. It was Nana Mama’s voice. And my children’s voices. All at once, telling me to fight.

In a haze I raised my head, looked around, saw the door where I’d entered the building. Open it, Alex.

Not enough air.

I saw the window I’d looked through. Break it too, I thought.

Not enough, the voices said.

Turning my thickening, spinning head, I looked past the dying women and spotted my only hope.

Do it, my family said.

My love for them surged up inside me. I used it to steel myself and push away from the post and the gas tanks. The pain in my ankle felt electric, and it jolted me, made me more alert and more determined.

My head started to pound. Every step was brutal. With every breath I wanted to stop, lie down, and surrender. But my family’s voices kept urging me on, telling me that pain was temporary, but death was not. Death was …

I reached the long wall of the steel building and fell against it, gasping, tasting the gas, and feeling like my ankle and my head were going to burst at the seams and split apart. Dark dots danced before my eyes, gathered, and threatened to blind me.

Dad!