I slowed the gators as we approached the door to the microscope room. Kyle and Sorsha drew their guns. I took hold of the door handle, focusing on the gators and what I wanted them to do.
“On three,” Sorsha whispered. “One . . . two . . . three!”
I yanked the door open and stepped aside. Biggie surged forward, with Tupac right on his tail, and Kyle and Sorsha following. I went in behind them, the smaller gators swarmed around my legs as I strode past computer stations and into chaos.
Shouts and curses. Gator bellows. The crash of glass. Within a few frenzied seconds, Fritz, Kristi, Hairy Tech, and Beardzilla were at bay against the far wall, hemmed in by the scanning electron microscope and the gaping jaws of man-eating zombie gators.
“Hands where I can see them!” Sorsha barked. The techs hurried to comply, and even Fritz had his gun drawn, but took his finger off the trigger and slowly lowered it to the floor. Kristi shot him a murderous glare and began rapid-fire texting on her phone.
“Drop the phone, Dr. Charish,” Sorsha snapped.
Kristi made one more tap then set the phone on the counter. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“You’re being detained for questioning, Dr. Charish,” Sorsha said, keeping her gun on the four detainees while Kyle gave them each a quick but thorough pat-down—removing an impressive number of weapons from Fritz’s person.
“This is ridiculous!” Kristi cast
a quick glance at the wall clock. Checking to see how long until her reinforcements arrived?
She sputtered with fury as Kyle zip-tied her hands behind her back, but she was smart enough not to resist. In short order, Kyle had all four detainees restrained and seated in a row in front of their gator guards. He retrieved Kristi’s phone from the counter then passed it to Sorsha with a murmured, “Passcode locked.” Sorsha nodded and slipped it into a pocket.
“I’ll be filing a complaint with the director of the FBI, Agent Aberdeen,” Kristi spat.
“You go right ahead and do that, Dr. Charish.” Sorsha gave Kyle a head tilt toward the hall, and he took up a position in the doorway to keep an eye out for trouble.
“Turn over the cure, Kristi,” I ordered. Gator growls echoed my words.
She widened her eyes in shocked innocence. “The cure? Are you mental? Ari and I are still working to find it!”
“Cut the crap,” I said with a sneer. “I always knew you were evil, but I never thought you’d create a deadly epidemic for your own benefit. You started working on LZ-1 right after Rosario told you about Judd shambling. And you’ve been using a double to throw off the Tribe’s surveillance.”
Kristi gave a little sniff. “Having a look-alike isn’t a crime. But spying on me is! You zombies are the criminals.” She glared at Sorsha. “They’re the ones you should arrest, Agent Aberdeen.”
“I’ll be sure to look into it,” Sorsha replied with zero inflection. She holstered her weapon then stepped back and began texting, managing to keep an eagle eye on the detainees while her thumbs flew over the phone screen.
“Obviously the Tribe had good reason to spy on you,” I told Kristi. “And I know you bugged Marla. It’s how you knew where to go in the swamp, and why you wanted my medical records, as well as a certain person’s blood.”
“I beg your pardon?” Her lips quivered as if holding back a laugh. “Did you seriously just accuse me of planting a listening device in . . . in a dog? Oh my, that is rich!” She met my eyes. “I didn’t bug the dog, Angel. I didn’t need to. I put the pieces together because I’m smart.” She snickered with a nasty edge that clearly said And you’re not. “Pierce Gentry was my informant in Saberton. Then, not only did he suddenly stop sending updates, but he inexplicably defected to the zombies’ side. Because, by some strange twist of fate, he’d actually been a zombie all along? And, by some insane coincidence, this all happened in the same timeframe when Pietro Ivanov miraculously escaped the New York lab—except, oh no, he then died in a plane crash.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m boggled that anyone bought that ridiculous story. I went back to Gentry’s latest physical exam and had no trouble confirming he most definitely had not been a zombie. It didn’t take much for me to conclude that Pietro had the means to change forms—an ability I’d seen no evidence of in all my years of zombie research. Of course I wanted his blood!”
Fuck. That made sense. And now Sorsha knew what mature zombies could do. And that Pierce Gentry used to be Pietro Ivanov. I mentally crossed fingers she’d remain our ally and that the info wouldn’t come back to bite us in the ass. “Well, what about the swamp and the gator hunt?” I asked, scowling. “Sure was convenient y’all found the accident site and made it there before we did.”
Kristi tilted one eyebrow up. “Winds and tides. You know . . . science.”
Crap. Same way Marcus had figured it out. “Yeah, well, how’d you find out about Deputy Connor’s collapse? Or Douglas Horton coming back to life, so you even knew to look for gators?”
She flicked a glance at the clock. “That was indeed via a bug, though not in the dog. It was where your people never thought to scan—in your darling boyfriend’s car.” She gave me a mock-pout. “The poor thing. I hear he’s feeling a bit under the weather. Along with all of his daddy’s little survivalist friends. And Daddy, too, before long.”
I held myself back with sheer force of will, but the gators bellowed and snapped in response to my homicidal fury. I took grim pleasure in how Kristi paled and squirmed back. She was spilling all the beans with an FBI agent present, which meant Kristi felt certain of a timely rescue. I felt certain she was going to lose a few teeth before this was done.
“One way or another, I’m going to wring that cure out of you,” I said through my teeth. “Maybe I should let a gator have one of your hands? Or a foot? Maybe both. I don’t think they’ve been fed yet today.”
Tupac growled deep and ominous. Hairy Tech screwed his eyes shut, and the scent of hot piss hit my nostrils.
Kristi took a long look at the clock then bared her teeth in triumph. “You’ll be far too occupied with other matters very . . . soon.”
A heavy whump shook the building.
“What the hell was that?” Sorsha demanded even as the fire alarm started hooting.