_______________________
A.R.Yngve
PARRY'S PROTOCOL
_______________________
Chapter 48
Parry was the first to crawl up from the half-buried basement -- grimy, sore, and shirtless.
He squatted down in the brick-piles and coughed up dirty phlegm, breathing hard. The two grenades had blown off some rubble from the top of the staircase, and had killed three blue-clad men. Another few feet off, a giant hole was gaping through the window wall: on its opposite, the same explosion had scorched the wall. All windows were blown out, and the indoors sentry-booth had been smashed to pieces.
Parry skimped over to the hole in the wall. He watched cautiously across the open place; it was quiet out there. The tripod rocket launcher was still standing over by the fence.
"Come on out!" he wheezed to the others.
Coughing, wearing rags wrapped around their mouths and eyes, the dirtied group crawled up one by one: Abram, Joyce, the door guard Mark, and the surviving nurse. As soon as she got to her feet, Joyce stumbled over the rubble to the open, blackened cell doors. She peered inside one of them, screamed, turned away in disgust.
Parry gave her a fierce look: "Quicker and easier than lobotomy, huh?" he snapped.
Joyce's round face twisted in despair; she kneeled convulsively and vomited over the fallen wall pieces. Parry gestured at the others to follow him quietly. They carefully jumped out through the breached wall and sneaked along it toward the entrance.
The gravel field in front of the entrance steps was empty; glass shards cracked under their feet. The four-man group rushed on a line toward the open gates. Parry shivered in the chilly autumn air.
By the sentry-booth, a blue van stood parked; it was empty. They looked in through the open booth: the guard lay dead on the floor with a bullet-hole in his head. Abram opened the rear doors of the van and checked its insides; he found a working apparatus with a miniature parabolic antenna, aimed through a small side window. Parry and the others came looking.
"Jamming equipment, " Abram said. "That's why Joyce couldn't get through to the sheriff. The Company's latest stuff!"
"Doc!" Parry waved him closer. "If this was the work of the Company, do you think they'd leave in the van, after waking up the entire county with all that noise?"
"No, you're right. And where's the traffic gone?"
Everyone could see it: the road from town was completely empty.
Abram suddenly seemed struck by insight: "Parry! They must have blocked the road. And that could only mean one other escape route..."
A shout from the nurse interrupted him: "Look!"
The nurse was pointing to the south. From a point low in the sky a growing dot had appeared, and with it an increasing buzz; then no longer a buzz, but the staccato beating of rotorblades. Parry looked up in fear, and dashed back toward the Institute.
He turned as he ran, screaming hoarsely: "FBI Blue and Kevlar Black are the colors to wear this Fall!"
Abram ran after him, followed by the door guard. Only the nurse remained, waving enthusiastically at the approaching helicopter.