Legends

Almagul called his name and spoke soothingly to him in the strange language of the scavengers. The giant, his arms and shirt drenched in blood, crawled through the door of his cage and staggered to his feet. The other prisoners were all talking to him at once. Almagul spoke quietly to the giant. Martin noticed that mucus was seeping from his nostrils as he lurched across the basement to the stainless steel table, snapped off one of the legs and came back to the cages. One by one he slipped the narrow end of the steel leg through the padlocks and, using the bars for leverage, snapped open the locks. Martin was the last to emerge from the cages. The giant collapsed at his feet—Martin, reaching to help him, found he was burning with fever. “There is nothing we can do for him,” Almagul said. The other scavengers backed away from the fallen man until Almagul snapped angrily at them. One of them came forward and brought the stainless steel table leg down on the giant’s head to put him out of his misery. Then, armed with steel legs from the table and the wooden legs broken off chairs, the scavengers made their way up the stone steps. Almagul, leading the way, carefully opened the steel door leading to the biowarfare laboratory and stepped aside to let the others through. Two Russian scientists napping on cots were strangled to death by the desperate prisoners. Three other scientists were working with frozen anthrax spores in a walk-in refrigerator. Martin thrust one of the stainless steel legs through the door handles, locking the Russians inside, and then turned up the thermostat. The three scientists, realizing they were trapped, began pounding on the thick glass window in the door. One of the prisoners found a plastic jerry can in a closet filled with kerosene for the heating unit. He splashed kerosene over the shelves filled with petri dishes and filing cabinets. Almagul struck a match and tossed it into the spilled kerosene. A bluish fire skidded across the floor. In a moment the laboratory was awash in flames.