Children Of The Mountain (Book 2): The Devil You Know (35 page)

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

*

H
AMISH SHOWS EVEN LESS
resistance than Angus did. His eyes narrow when I step through the blast door and then widen again at the sight of the gun. He reaches for the club on his hip and for a moment it looks like he might try something but then he sees Hicks. When Mags and the kid step out from behind me his mouth drops open and he stumbles backwards against the wall and slides to the ground.

The spot Hamish has picked out for himself’s as good as any so I tell Angus to take a seat next to him. I start digging in my pocket for cable ties to bind them both but Hicks just says to get Mags to the scanner; he’ll take care of it. Behind me the electric motors continue to whine, still working the four tons of carbon steel out into the darkness. I point him to the large button on the wall that starts the close sequence but he just nods.

‘Go on now. I got it.’

I follow Mags and the kid through the locker room and the showers to the scanner. She’s already killed the lights and it waits in the darkness, the faint glow that follows me in reflecting dully off its polished metal skin. From its hollow center a narrow platform extends, like it’s spent the long winter months just sitting there hoping for my return. I look up at the camera mounted high on the wall. The red light’s blinking but if what Angus has told me is true there shouldn’t be anyone in the control room looking at the screen.

She sits on the platform and beckons the kid over. He looks at her dubiously and then sniffs the air around the machine, but eventually he takes a seat next to her. She unzips his parka then wraps an arm around his narrow shoulders and lays back down, pulling him close. He struggles a little at first and I step forward, ready to pry him off her if I need to but she holds a hand out and shakes her head. He seems to calm down after that. She gives him a moment to settle and then nods at me to begin.

There’s a big red button on the wall that will stop the scan in an emergency, but to start it you have to go next door, to the control room. I’ve never actually been in there, but I figure operating the machine can’t be that difficult; Kurt managed it for years after all. I step through into a small, windowless room. A desk with a bank of screens and a keyboard built into it sits in the center, a microphone on a long angled stalk jutting from its surface. I flick the switch on the side and all three screens come to life. The one on the right shows a grainy black and white feed from the camera next door, but with the lights off it’s hard to tell what’s going on in there. On one side of the keyboard there’s a row of switches and on the other a large green button with the word ‘Start’ written on a piece of tape above it. The plastic around it looks grubby, like it’s the only part of the apparatus that ever got touched. I press it and the switches light up all at once and then start flickering in seemingly random order. Lines of information scroll up the center screen, too quickly for me to read. A digital counter next to the button I’ve just pressed blinks to life and displays nineteen minutes and thirty seconds.

On the screen showing the feed from the camera I can just make out the platform retracting, drawing Mags and the kid into the machine’s interior. She’s holding him tightly to her, keeping his arms pinned to his sides inside hers. He doesn’t struggle, almost like he finds the close darkness soothing. The platform slides in the last few inches and another light on the panel comes on. The digits on the counter flash several times and then it starts counting down.

There’s a long pause and then from the next room I hear it, like someone’s started up with a jackhammer on an oil drum. It’s loud, even in here, and I wonder how the kid’s taking it. As he sat next to her on the vinyl I heard Mags explaining there was nothing to worry about; that this was the machine that would fix him. He seemed calm, but the child that got that explanation only a few moments ago may not be the one who’s in there with her now.

I watch as the display slowly counts its way down. After a minute of nothing happening I figure the scanner’s on its version of autopilot and doesn’t need my help anymore. I get up from the console and step back into the corridor. The banging sounds even louder out here. I was going to head out to the tunnel but now I look towards the cavern. There shouldn’t be anyone in there. Kane and Quartermaster are the only ones left, and they’ll be asleep. But it’ll only take a second to check, and I figure better safe than sorry. As I walk along the corridor the sounds from the scanner recede. When I get to the end I stop and strain for anything that might suggest our presence has been detected, but there’s nothing. I step out onto Front Street. It’s long after curfew and the arc lights are off, but the dim glow cast by the handful of bulkhead lamps that remain on is enough to see by. The blind, windowless metal boxes; the narrow concrete streets, the domed, brace-wired roof; it all seems familiar and yet somehow strange. We’ve only been gone a few months but after a winter in Mount Weather this place seems small, cramped. I wonder how we ever spent ten years here.

I take one last look then turn around and walk back to the scanner room. I don’t need to check the control panel to tell me how many minutes are left on the scan. The timer inside my head’s done that count often enough, and it’s been running since I pushed the button to start it. The volume builds as I approach, once again becoming deafening. I shout in to Mags to check she’s okay. There’s no answer but I know what it’s like in there; I doubt she can even hear me. I peer into the machine’s dark interior. It’s no use, though; with the lights off I can barely make out the soles of her boots. It doesn’t seem like she’s having any difficulties with the kid, however; there’s no sign of him struggling.

I take one last look and then make my way back out towards the tunnel to check on Hicks. As I step into the shower room I suddenly realize how exhausted I am.

But that doesn’t matter. We’ve done it. The scan’s already almost halfway through; in a few minutes Mags and the kid will be free of the virus. I have no plan for getting us out, after, but I’m not sure I need one. With Eden locked down we’re safe. Truck won’t be able to pull the same trick Gilbey did to get into The Greenbrier. The blast door’s electrified, and even if it weren’t it’d take a long time for the virus to eat through that much metal.

We can just sit it out.

He can’t wait out there forever.

*

I
N
M
OUNT
W
EATHER’S MAIN CAVERN
, nestled between the infirmary and the gym, there’s a building that stands head and shoulders above those around it. The plaque on the outside says ‘Command, Control, & Communications’. I checked it out when I first arrived, but I don’t think it got much in the way of visitors after that. In Eden that building was off limits to anyone but Kane, Peck and Quartermaster, and even though we were miles away and they were stormbound I guess to most of the Juvies it still felt wrong to go inside.

We were all pretty busy those first few weeks anyway. When Mags started the generators up it got crazy for a while. I guess when the order had come the facility had been evacuated in a real hurry, because a lot of stuff got left on. For a few days after the power came back we did nothing but run around switching everything off. We ended up getting most of it, but Mount Weather’s not small and inevitably things got missed. If it was a hair dryer or something with an electric motor it’d run for a few days before it’d burn itself out and then maybe a smoke alarm would sound. But that was the worst of it. We were lucky.

I guess nobody thought to check Command though.

Once things settled down I brought Mags over there. I remembered a staircase from the top floor landing that led to the roof. I figured we’d take a blanket and look up at the mesh of brace wire and rock bolts spread across the cavern’s huge dome, and maybe it’d be like when we’d sneak up on the roof of the mess in Eden.

But as we stepped inside we were met by a pulsing red glow, coming from behind the door to the Situation Room. When we went to investigate we found a large glass and metal sign, the kind that lights up from within, mounted high on the wall. It blinked slowly, flashing a single word: DEFCON1. Neither of us knew what that meant so we started trawling through the user manuals that had been left behind in case it might be warning of a problem with our new home. Turns out it wasn’t that at all.

DEFCON stands for Defense Readiness Condition, apparently. DEFCON1 means maximum readiness; that sign was only meant to light up when nuclear war was imminent. I climbed up on one of the desks and tried to disconnect it but the box was sealed and so we just closed the door behind us and left. I didn’t go back, afterwards, but I used to think about that sign from time to time. At some point the bulb will give out, but as far as I know it’s still blinking away in there, letting us know things have gotten pretty much as bad as they can and we’re probably all screwed.

As I make my way through the showers a draft of cold air hits my face and spidey dials it up to DEFCON1, so suddenly that it stops me in my tracks. This isn’t a faint twinge, that vague walking-through-cobwebs scratchiness I sometimes get inside my head when something’s not right. It’s like somebody’s just poured ice water down my spine.

I’ve done the walk out to the tunnel often enough to know what’s wrong, but I don’t want to believe it. So instead I just stand there, straining to hear. It’s no use, though; the racket from the scanner drowns all other sounds. I take a deep breath and creep forward, slowly making my way into the next room. Narrow metal lockers stand in weary rows around me, their surfaces dented and scarred. But it’s no good; I still can’t hear a thing.

Ahead there’s the door that leads to the antechamber where I left Hicks with Angus and Hamish. It’s still ajar from when I came through earlier but from here I can’t see past it. I inch towards it, hoping to catch a glimpse of what’s waiting behind. As I get closer a sliver of the tunnel’s darkness finally shows itself, enough to confirm what the draft I felt in the shower room had already told me: the blast door’s still open. I’m about to stick my head around to get a better look when something impossibly large, clad in the gray-green of a camouflage parka, steps into view on the other side and then disappears again.

Cold fear floods through me and I take a step backwards.

Jax.

The soldiers are inside.

Behind me the scanner’s still banging away. I need to turn it off, immediately; the sound will draw them. I seize that idea, mostly because it involves fleeing, and before I know it I’m running back towards the showers.

But then I stop. I have to be smarter than that. I need to think this through.

There’s no way they haven’t already heard it. And there’s only one way into Eden anyway. They’ll be there soon enough, whether or not I let the scanner run.

Besides, I can’t shut it off. The scan needs twenty minutes. Mags has been in there for less than half of that.

I need to buy her some time.

But how? There’s only one door between the blast door and the scanner room: the one I was just standing behind. I don’t need to check the handle to know it doesn’t lock.

I turn around and head back into the locker room, looking for anything I might use to brace the door. But there’s nothing. The lockers are empty and the only other thing in here’s a stack of plastic crates our clothes used to go in when we came back from the outside.

From the next room I hear the sound of boots and I duck behind the door, pressing myself up against the wall. Through the gap between door and frame I see Truck step into the doorway, only feet from where I’m hiding. He pokes at the wad of tobacco he’s got tucked behind his lip for a while before he speaks. He has to shout to make himself heard above the racket from the scanner room.

‘Hey Huckleberry, what’s with all that bangin’? You back there? If you are Weez here wants a word with you. He’s mighty pissed at you for bustin’ his nose like that.’

I don’t give myself time to think, I just take a deep breath and slam the door in his face. There’s a startled curse from the other side but before he has a chance to open it again I grab the nearest locker and tip it over. It pitches sideways and crashes to the floor. I send the one next to it the same way; I’m already reaching for the one after before it’s even got itself settled. There’s not much in the way of method to it; I’m just trying to put as much metal in front of that door as I can. One by one they topple, bouncing off each other, occasionally popping their locks, until the last of them comes to rest. When I’m done my heart’s pounding, threatening to drown out the racket behind me. I step back and examine my handiwork. It’s as good as I could have hoped for: the door’s mostly hidden under a haphazard heap of metal. Lockers pile on top of each other all around it, three and four deep.

From behind the carnage I think I hear the handle dip. The door shifts a fraction as someone on the other side tests it, but then it stops. Whoever’s there tries again but when it moves no further they let go.

The next thing I hear is Truck’s voice.

‘Is that it? You done in there, Huckleberry? You’d better have something more than that. Because we’re coming for you now, boy.’

There’s another pause. And then without warning something crashes into the other side of the door. There’s the groan of hinges about to part company from frame and then the screech of metal on metal and I stare in disbelief as my entire barricade shifts back a couple of inches.

I bend down to brace the locker nearest me just as Jax slams into the door again. This time I feel the impact in my arms. There’s another shriek and I’m pushed backwards, my boots scrabbling for purchase on the smooth floor.

He hits the door again and this time I stand up and back away from it. I can’t hope to hold them here. The gap’s already almost wide enough for someone to squeeze through.