PART THREE: THE LAST STAND

Chapter Six: Biting The Hand That Feeds

The doctor's office was on the floor above, a small expensive block, all varnished wood and brass. The name on the door read Dr Neil Fisher. He was in.

As I slid the door shut behind me, I entered a quiet haven from the nightmare outside. Dr Fisher himself glanced up at me with weak, red-rimmed eyes. He was unshaven. His tie hung limp on the seat behind him. Even with the hum of the steel office fan, he was sweating profusely.

Outside a storm was brewing.

"Can I help you?" Dr Fisher asked.

I dropped the briefcase on the desk. "In this case is the prototype for the Miasma vaccine," I said calmly. "It's the only one in the world at the moment, far as I know, and a lot of people have died for it. I need it sent to the Virus Centre tonight."

"The vaccine?" Fisher exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. "Are you sure?"

"There's no time to test," I replied. "Just get it down there. They can produce more. Start experimenting then."

Fisher smiled wearily. "Thank god…" he whispered.

Then he looked up, and his eyes widened, and with a sinking in my stomach I knew what was about to happen.

The office door slammed open. There were three loud gunshots. I ducked and Dr Fisher's body was thrown back in his seat. He cried out briefly, a clot of blood flew up in the air, and then he died, still clutching the briefcase.

"And you were so close," Troy Novak chuckled from behind me. "Stand up, Payne. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."

Hot rage was roaring up through me now, stronger than it ever had been. I was sick of Novak and his shark smile, sick of him escaping into the night, sick of his brilliant New World Order. I turned to face the grinning Federal Agent. He was pointing a silenced pistol at me. Two more goons blocking the door.

"Mr West was very upset about what you did to his house," Novak sneered. "Very upset. Put quite a damper on his little party in the bay. So upset, in fact, that he ordered your termination." Novak slammed back the safety trigger. "Stay still, Payne. It'll only be the failure that hurts."

I reached for my Beretta. I'd taken enough off Novak and his big shark smile.

I leapt forward as he let off a shot and fired a bullet. It whacked home in Novak's leg.

He screamed out. "You bastard!" he cried, turning to his goons. He clutched his leg. Blood was flowing through his black trousers. "Kill him, you idiots!"

The two goons were chaff, nothing. They reached for their guns. I shot the nearest squarely in the face and he slumped back against the wall. The other took a bullet in the gut and slumped down in a heap.

I grabbed the briefcase and ducked out into the corridor.

Towards the end of it, trailing blood like a broken ketchup bottle and shoving nurses and the sick out of his path, was Agent Troy Novak.

I began to run after him, following the streaks of blood down the corridor. A nurse took a glance at me, a lumbering, bloodied black figure with a gun, and threw her files into the air before running off down the corridor. Sick eyes glanced up at me as I turned the corner to the staircase, steadying myself on the wall.

Someone called for security behind me. I started running again.

As I stumbled down the stairs I passed a stunned junior doctor. Without thinking I thrust the briefcase into his hands. "Take it!" I cried. "Get it sent to the Viral Centre! It's the Miasma vaccine!" He stared at me blank for a few seconds, until I cried, "Go, damn it!"

He nodded weakly and ran. I followed the trail of blood.

It led to the exit.

Outside the storm had started. The black clouds had rolled across the thick summer sky, dark and angry. Drops of rain as sharp as knives were hitting the black car park, sending drifts of steam up into the bright white hospital lights.

Rain, I thought with a smile. Rain makes it perfect. A purifying downpour from the heavens themselves, washing away the sin in the dark city.

I turned my attention to Troy Novak. He was climbing into his black Mercedes, a look of utter terror on his usually calm face. I opened fire on him.

Bullets chipped away the paint on the car, sparks flying out into the mist and leaving reflective streaks of fire on the slick black surface. There was a banshee roar as his car came to life and tore out of the car park.

I ran for my stolen car, hotwired the engine into life and followed the flashing red lights of Novak's Merc, riding out of the hospital and on to the rain-soaked freeways of the city. The pounding beats of Queens of the Stone Age throbbed through the car speakers as the city flew past in fast-motion, all flickering white lights and gaudy neon in the summer rain.

Novak was driving like a mad-man, spray from his back tyres trailing behind like the wake of a ship. He swerved around a station wagon at sixty miles an hour as we hit the Brooklyn Expressway, nearly colliding with an oncoming truck. I heard the deafening growl of the truck's horn as the Merc slipped back into the right lane, it's tyres skidding dangerously away beneath it.

I yanked the wheel hard, taking over the station wagon through the left lane, just catching the dull glow of the Merc tail lights as they hurtled unsteadily down the highway towards the glittering city skyline.

Without thinking I wound down the window with one hand, steadying the car with the other, and reached for my gun. One shot, Max. That's all you're getting. One shot.

I leaned one arm out the window, rain slashing cold and hard against my exposed hand, washing away the grit and the blood.

Focussed.

Pulled the trigger.

Novak's back tyre exploded, raining rubber shrapnel on the slick asphalt. As I watched the Merc skidded wildly, doing a full hundred and eighty degree spin, and I caught for just one fleeting second Novak's pale, horrified face as he wrestled with a tonne of out-of-control steel, before the car hit the crash barrier and hurtled down a short gravel banking to the road below.

I pulled over carefully on the side of the highway and stepped out of the car, letting the rain wash away the cold sweat. For the first time my mind was clear, everything focussed to a razor point.

I climbed over the crash barrier, my eyes following the trail of devastation wreaked by the Merc's final journey. The crash barrier hung out like a broken jaw, two jagged edges hanging over the sheer drop. The Merc had crashed down the gravel banking, leaving a large trench in the mud. Small trees had been crushed by its path to the road, where it now lay in a heap of steel wreckage, smoke rising from its crumpled engine like the fires of hell were boiling within it.

Carefully keeping an eye on my footing, I hopped down the muddy banking, holding on to those trees still standing, and came to rest on the road below.

Troy Novak had forced the door of the Merc open and now sat in the pavement. He was a mess. The rain had soaked his suit through. The impact had left a deep gash on his forehead and his leg jutted out at an unpleasant angle, blood welling in the crack. He rested against the open door and gazed up at me hopelessly.

"Well, then, Payne," he choked. "Looks like you've won this one, huh?"

I pulled my Beretta on him. "Shut up," I balked. "And I might even make this quick."

"It's futile," he chuckled, and I knew right then there was a part of him that I could never break. He'd gone a little insane, but it was keeping him going somehow. "You can't win, Max. It's too late to stop the virus. You have no idea how powerful West is. You can't touch him."

"We'll see," I replied calmly, releasing the safety. "Shame you'll never know."

"Then," he said, grinning at me madly. "Should I be making my last requests now? Are you going to tell me that you're doing this for Bravura and all those other poor bastards who didn't know what toes they'd gone and stepped on? For poor Dr Fisher? For Sax?"

"No," I said. "For me."

I pulled the trigger three times. Novak barely flinched. His chest gave one last heave before slumping forward in the driving rain. As I watched raindrops swelled in his cold, dead eyes, and I knew it was over.

Above us the night watched on with cold, uncaring eyes, breaks in the eternal black clouds above.

Then, one more trip, I thought. To end it all. One more voyage into hell, one last stand.

I returned to the car as the rain washed away Novak's blood until there was barely a sign he had ever existed.

To be continued…