Terminus (12 page)

‘Come on,’ said Donahue. ‘Give me a hand.’

They put their shoulders to the Coke cabinet and shunted it against the curtained entrance gate.

They stood back. The vending machine gently creaked and rocked as hands clawed it from behind.

Donahue leaned against the tiled wall for support. She held her head like she was waiting for pain to pass.

‘Sure you’re okay?’

‘Stop asking.’

Lupe unslung the Remington and handed it to Donahue.

‘You better take this.’

‘Thought you’d want to hang on to it,’ said Donahue.

‘Galloway is itching to start a war.’

‘You think?’

‘The guy is totally transparent. He wants to snatch Nariko’s nine milli and provoke another stand-off. Me against him. Not what we need right now. You look after that thing, okay? Keep it close.’

Donahue took the gun. She checked the safety. She checked the chamber.

‘Don’t be pointing that thing at me, though,’ said Lupe. ‘I’m done being a prisoner.’

Nariko flipped latches and threw open the lid of an equipment trunk stamped MARINE DIVISION. Folded drysuits and three full-face diving helmets. She lifted a heavy steel helmet, pulled away its protective polythene sleeve and examined the neck ring.

‘Used this stuff before?’ asked Cloke.

‘Fished plenty of bodies out the river. Jumpers. Flew upstate and helped a mine rescue one time.’

‘A mine?’

‘Half-assed coal operation. Seven guys trapped in a flooded tunnel. Local cops thought they might have found an air pocket.’

‘Find any of them alive?’

‘No.’

Cloke snapped open a lock knife. He sliced through nylon rope and pulled tarp from a wooden pallet. A stack of fibreglass air tanks.

Nariko kicked off her boots and dropped her pants. She stripped to underwear, tied loose hair in a ponytail and pulled on a heavy trilaminate drysuit. Tight neck seal, tight cuffs. Cloke helped check the chest zipper. He hefted a weight belt and buckled it round her waist.

‘Give me the gun.’

Cloke handed her the Glock.

‘Will that thing fire underwater?’

‘No idea,’ said Nariko. ‘Hope I don’t find out.’

She tucked the pistol into her weight belt.

Cloke popped two tabs of IOSAT potassium iodide from a foil strip.

‘Open your mouth.’

‘I’ve had my dose,’ said Nariko.

‘Have some more.’

He put the pills on her tongue and held a bottle of water to her lips. She swigged.

‘Don’t hang around down there. Ten minutes, at the very most. Make a swift survey of the site, then get out the water and back in the boat quick as you can.’

She nodded.

‘But don’t rush. Poor visibility and a lot of snarled metal. Don’t get caught up.’

Cloke laid the aluminium rebreather frame on the floor. A snarling rat sprayed on yellow fibreglass. He unclipped the cowling. Two AL80 diluent tanks strapped to the back. Black marker on duct tape: NITROGEN and HELIUM. A small green liquid oxygen cylinder between them, alongside a lithium hydroxide CO
₂
scrubber cartridge.

Final check of the breathing loop. He checked psi gauges. He checked valves. He clipped the protective cowling back in place.

He helped Nariko shoulder the heavy trimix pack and adjust nylon harness straps.

Gauntlets secured by lock rings. She held out her arm while Cloke buckled an LCD depth gauge to her wrist.

Nariko bent forwards as Cloke lowered a steel helmet over her head. A pig-snout manifold. Halogen lamps at each temple, visor secured by heavy hex bolts. He clamped the helmet to the neck ring and span lock nuts. He equalised pressure and adjusted oxygen. Faint hiss and rubber-crackle as the suit filled with air. Nariko’s ears popped.

Cloke gave a good-to-go fist knock on the helmet.

Nariko checked her wrist screen. Green. Gas mix and tank pressure flashed nominal. Five hours of breathable air.

She gestured A-OK.

Cloke clipped a Motorola radio to her weight belt. He ran the jack cable up her back to a socket in the helmet.

He stepped back and spoke into his radio.

‘Can you hear me?’

‘Five by five.’

‘Ready?’

‘Yeah.’

She lumbered across the ticket hall and headed for the stairs. She walked hunchbacked, centre of gravity thrown by the tanks strapped to her back. Cloke walked beside her, holding flippers, offering a guiding arm.

She walked past Donahue. She walked past Lupe, Wade and Sicknote. They watched her pass, silent and solemn like she was a shackled death row inmate making their final journey to the execution chamber.

Tombes spoke into his radio.

‘God bless, Cap. Stay safe.’

Cloke took Nariko’s arm and helped her descend the steps. She gripped the handrail and leaned forwards so she could see her feet over the visor rim. Her breathing rasped loud inside the helmet.

She reached up and triggered the headlamps. The twin halogen beams lit the dark stairwell noonday bright. Grime-streaked tiles, chipped concrete steps.

She was spooked by black water waiting to receive and engulf her. She rolled her shoulders, told herself to shape up.

Cloke knelt and helped her step into flippers. He tightened ankle straps.

He spoke into his radio.

‘You set?’

Thumbs up.

‘Let’s get this done.’

Lazy flipper strokes. Nariko enveloped in amniotic silence, as if she were drifting at the furthest edge of the solar system, the point where the light of a pinprick sun yielded to interstellar darkness.

She was sheathed in a deep-water drysuit, but could still feel an insidious chill, the gentle squeeze of water pressure.

She spooled a white paracord guideline.

She reached behind and adjusted the knurled knob of the buoyancy dump valve. Urethane bladders tethered to her back-mount bled shimmering bubbles like globules of mercury.

Her breath roared loud and hot inside the helmet. A steady Vader-rasp of exertion. She heard the reassuring solenoid click of the rebreather apparatus inject fresh oxygen into her suit.

Helmet lights lit the tunnel floor. Quartz-halogen beams shafted through the sediment haze. The lamps illuminated a vista of concrete dusted with ochre rail silt, the sleeper-sill of the track bed, the inert third rail that used to hum with a death-dealing six hundred volts.

Scattered garbage. Crack pipes. Pennies. A dead rat.

She checked her wrist gauge. VR3: a crude dive computer strapped to her left wrist. An LCD screen encased in pressure-proof acrylic and steel. A depth/oxygen/psi readout. The screen winked green. Three bars charting gas levels within the suit:

A soothing computer voice gave a thirty second update.

‘Depth: three metres. Atmosphere: good. Four hours, fifty three minutes remaining.’

The green light and voice alert were a redundancy designed to cut through the stupor of hypoxia or nitrogen narcosis. A warning for a diver succumbing to the lethal euphoria of a failing nitrox mix. Even if they could no longer read gauge numbers, even if their vision narrowed and they headed for blackout, a flashing screen and urgent voice would urge them to act on instinct and head for the surface.

‘What’s my time?’

‘Coming up on eight minutes,’
said Cloke.
‘How’s it going down there?’

‘I’m doing okay.’

Nariko’s voice, tight and intimate within the confines of her helmet.

The rockfall. Tumbled slabs of ferro-concrete bristling with rebar. Twisted girders. The splintered stump of an ailanthus tree.

Yellow metal near the tunnel floor. Nariko ducked beneath a girder to get a closer look. A school bus, half crushed beneath a titanic block of masonry.

She gripped the twisted fender. She pulled herself over the hood and shone her flashlight into the buckled cab.

A bus driver. He was still lashed in position by his safety belt. Eyeless and mummified, like he died at the wheel and sat parked in the street for weeks before the bomb brought an office building down on his head.

She looked past the driver. She peered into the dark interior of the bus. Silt and shadow. Rows of empty seats. The roof had crumpled and bowed.

She trained her flashlight down the centre aisle and focused the beam on rubble beyond the rear window. Tumbled masonry seemed to form a crooked tunnel, a tight passageway that snaked into darkness.

‘I think I’ve found a way through.’

The IRT supervisor’s office.

Nariko towelled her hair with a bandana. She had a foil blanket draped round her shoulders.

‘This crevice. This worm hole. It is passable?’ asked Cloke.

‘Yeah. Pretty gnarly. A narrow sump. Doesn’t look too stable, but I reckon we could make it to the other side.’

‘A three-man team?’

‘Ideally.’

‘What about survivors, Captain?’ asked Tombes. ‘We have three diving suits and a limited supply of oxygen. How do we bring them back?’

‘We’ll find a way,’ said Nariko.

Cloke shook his head.

‘We’re here to retrieve research. Papers, disks, hard drives. That’s the priority. We scour the site, harvest whatever information we find, then leave. That kid we heard on the radio? Offer whatever help you can. But, ultimately, our job is to locate and rescue Ekks. We need him alive, long enough to tell us what he knows. Anyone else is a secondary concern.’

‘We’re a rescue squad,’ said Tombes. ‘We save lives. That’s what we do.’

‘We didn’t come here to save one life,’ said Cloke. ‘We came to save thousands. That’s the bottom line.’

‘Maybe I’m old school,’ said Tombes. ‘But there are people on the other side of that rock pile and they need help. Count me in.’

‘Damn right,’ said Nariko. ‘We help anyone we can.’

Cloke picked the Geiger counter from the table. Steady background crackle. He slowly swung the handset to point at Nariko’s chest. He switched the counter to silent so she wouldn’t have to hear Geiger clicks rise to a sputtering hiss, like frying bacon. He watched LCD digits. Escalation blur as the handset approached a hot source.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’ll be okay for the next few hours, right? Long enough to complete the mission?’

‘At your current level of exposure, you’ll get sick, but you’ll probably recover.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I wouldn’t lie to you.’

Donahue stood with Wade and Lupe at the foot of the entrance stairwell. She cradled the shotgun.

‘What time is it?’ asked Wade.

Donahue checked her watch.

‘Ten.’

‘In the morning?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can’t tell day from night down here,’ said Lupe. She cocked her head and listened to the torrential roar. She held out her arm. ‘See? Goosebumps. Beautiful. I spent so long in segregation, cold is a luxury. Locked up all day. One hour of exercise on an indoor basketball court. They kept the heat way up. Reckoned it would keep the inmates placid or some shit. Make them dozy. Fuck Ridgeway. Soon as we get off this island, I’m heading north. Alaska. Canada. Some place with snow.’

Donahue looked up the stairwell to the street entrance. The Coke machine shook and rocked.

‘We should keep watch,’ she said. ‘If those bastards get down here, into the ticket hall, we’re in real trouble.’

Lupe shook out a Marlboro. She lit and passed it around. Donahue took a drag.

‘Fire department, huh?’ said Wade.

‘Yeah,’ said Donahue.

‘Running into the flames. You and your buddies.’

‘We’ve been down a few hallways.’

‘Bet you’ve seen some gnarly shit.’

Donahue took another drag on the cigarette. She coughed.

Lupe held up the matchbook.
Juggs XXX Bar.
She gestured to Galloway. He sat on the bench, dabbed his broken nose with tissue.

‘Classy son of a bitch.’

She blew rings.

‘You better keep a close watch on that guy,’ said Donahue. ‘Seriously. Better not turn your back. You broke his nose, took his gun, took his smokes. You folks all but cut off his dick. He won’t forget. Somewhere along the line, he’ll want payback.’

The lights flickered. They looked up at the fluted glass dome above their heads.

‘How long will the generator keep running?’ asked Lupe.

‘A gallon of gas gives us four hours’ light. A couple of refills should give us power for the duration.’

Donahue gestured towards Sicknote.

‘What’s the deal with that guy? Can we trust him?’

Sicknote crouched barefoot on the tiled floor, scratching patterns with a nugget of concrete. Fierce concentration.

Lupe shook her head.

‘Batshit crazy. He doesn’t belong in jail. He belongs in an asylum. Category J. In an honest world, if the prison system actually gave a shit, he’d be making macaroni art in the TV room of a sanatorium somewhere, drooling on psych meds. Look at him. Look at his eyes. Skull full of madness. Someone should shoot the poor bastard as a mercy.’

‘Maybe we should tie him up.’

‘Seems pretty placid right now. I’ll keep watch. We can lash him to a pillar if he starts to weird out.’

‘What was he doing at Bellevue?’

‘Ekks kept him in his Special Management Unit. Had him dosed on Haldol, Largactil, all kinds of shit. See that pink thing behind his right ear? Beneath his hair? An implant. It’s supposed to zap his brain each time he goes manic.’

‘Does it work?’

‘No.’

Lupe took a last drag on the cigarette and flicked it into shadows. The dying butt glowed like a hot coal.

Sicknote pricked blood from his thumb with a sliver of glass. He squeezed droplets, and smeared them across floor tiles. Broad strokes. He painted swirling astral bodies. He sat back once in a while, contemplated his work and composed his next addition. Orbital rings, moons and comet tails. And behind it all, the outline of a massive sun, a flaming aurora at the centre of the planetary alignment.

‘So what the hell is that supposed to be?’ asked Galloway.

‘The chasm between stars.’