Terminus (36 page)

She helped the stinking revenant climb into the carriage.

‘There you go.’

She drove the splintered oar into the creature’s eye socket. The vagrant jerked rigid like he’d had a high-voltage shock. Donahue twisted the shaft deeper into his head. He convulsed a couple of times then toppled backwards, oar still wedged in his head. Donahue tried to maintain a grip, but the smooth fibreglass shaft slipped through her gloved hands.

The vagrant toppled back through the doorway. He floated for a moment. Donahue made a last snatch at the oar shaft. Then his waterlogged coat dragged him down into black.

‘Shit.’

She stood in the doorway and looked out into the tunnel darkness.

The other two vagrants were gone.

She froze. She listened for movement. She grabbed her helmet from the luggage rack and began to back down the carriage, sweeping halogen light over smooth waters, tensed for an attack.

Sudden lunge. One of the bearded hobos leaned through a window and grasped for Donahue. She gripped his arm and pulled him further through the window, then swung her steel helmet and delivered a skull-shattering blow. The vagrant slid back through the window and sank.

She edged towards the side door, sweeping her helmet lights around the empty, inundated carriage.

She leaned out the door. She gripped the edge of the boat and pulled it close.

Peripheral movement. She looked up. A rotted vagrant crouched on the carriage roof directly above her head. It leaned forwards, matted hair hanging down, and hissed.

Lupe watched the north tunnel mouth. She checked her watch.

‘Donnie should be back by now.’

She turned around. Sicknote sat on a stairwell step. Blood ran down his neck and chest.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ shouted Lupe, vaulting the steps three at a time.

She grabbed Sicknote’s wrist and pulled his hand from his ear. Fingers dripped blood. She pushed his head to one side. The implant port hung out of his head, trailing wire.

‘Christ.’

‘I want it out of my head,’ said Sicknote. Woozy smile.

‘You’ll pull your damn brains out, idiot. I’ll fetch a dressing. Sit there. Don’t move. Don’t touch your head.’

Lupe fetched a first aid kit. She sat beside Sicknote. She brushed blood-matted hair aside and examined the wound.

A small, titanium five-pin socket. Two small screws, threads clogged with blood and bone splinters.

‘Jesus. You wrenched this bastard right out your skull.’

Lupe tore the wrapper from a pair of surgical scissors. She snipped iridium wires, thin as hair.

She held up the socket.

‘That’s the power pack,’ said Sicknote. ‘Some kind of lithium charge.’

‘So what did it do? Zap your brain each time you had one of your visions?’

‘It made them worse.’

Sicknote held out his hand. Lupe gave him the implant. He hurled it into the flood water.

She dressed the weeping hole in his skull. She washed her hands with bottled water. She gave him Tylenol.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Better.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m not a robot. I don’t want to be controlled.’

Lupe checked her watch again.

‘Forty minutes since I spoke to Donnie. She ought to be here.’

‘She’s pretty ill. She might need to stop for a rest. Got any more Tylenol?’

Lupe threw him the pot. He knocked back more pills.

He picked up the tangle of radio components and continued to twist wire. He unscrewed the earpiece of the transmitter headphones and knitted the little speaker to the circuit. He lashed cable round the stairwell’s iron balustrade and used it as an antenna.

‘Take it easy,’ said Lupe. ‘You lost a lot of blood.’

‘I feel good. Honestly.’

‘You’re high. Blood loss. In a minute, you’ll crash.’

He touched frayed cable to the terminals of a nine-volt battery, and adjusted the tuning dial. He sat with the speaker pressed to his ear, frowning with concentration.

He scratched his scalp.

‘I just fixed you up,’ said Lupe. ‘Don’t re-open the wound.’

‘My skin. Itching all the time.’

Lupe pointed at the radio.

‘You won’t reach shit. No power. No range.’

‘I’m not trying to talk. I’m trying to listen.’

‘Listen to what?’

‘The virus.’

Lupe sat beside him. She held the little speaker to her ear.

‘Nothing. White noise.’

‘Listen harder.’

‘There’s nothing. It’s a dead channel.’

‘Can’t you hear it? That pulsing sound beneath the static? I’ve heard it every time anyone used a radio down here. Like a hammer knocking wood.’

‘Interference. Lot of iron in these rocks.’

‘Listen again. Can you hear it? Each click is different. There are variations. Little changes of tempo.’

She put her ear to the speaker once more.

‘It all sounds the same to me. Just noise.’

Sicknote held up the notebook. ‘Ekks transcribed the sounds. That’s what these letters and symbols represent. Not words. More like musical notation. A precise record of the endless tunnel song.’

‘He tuned in to its thoughts? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yeah. That was his big-ass breakthrough. Other labs round the world tried to kill the disease. Nuked it with penicillin and antibiotics. I heard there were a bunch of guys down a missile silo in the Everglades doing all kinds of Frankenstein shit. But Ekks figured out the virus was smart. He tried to communicate. He spoke to the parasite.’

‘An actual conversation?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he ask?’

Sicknote shrugged.

‘How should I know? Obvious questions, I guess. Who are you? Where are you from? What do you want?’

Lupe picked up the notebook.

‘And you think he wrote down answers?’

‘That’s why the notebook is so precious. It’s mankind’s first and only communication with this disease.’

‘I don’t buy it. It’s a germ. A bug squirming in a Petri dish. It doesn’t have thoughts. It doesn’t make plans. You can’t talk to it, any more than you can interview syphilis.’

‘No,’ said Sicknote. ‘You’re wrong.’

Lupe gestured to the crude radio.

‘So you’re listening to it right now? Is that what you think? Monitoring its thoughts?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So what does it say? What’s it trying to tell you?’

‘It’s from somewhere cold and dark. It’s travelled a long way. Unimaginable distances. It slept, thousands, millions of years. It dreamed. And now it’s awake.’

‘Crazy,’ said Lupe. ‘You’re not listening to the radio. You’re listening to the voices in your head.’

‘It’s all true. Swear to God.’

‘You don’t believe in God. And he sure doesn’t believe in a loser like you.’

A warm glow of light from the throat of north tunnel.

Lupe stood at the water’s edge.

‘Donnie?’ Her voice echoed from the tunnel walls. ‘Donnie, is that you?’

Faint oar splashes. Donahue paddled into view. She was sweating with effort. The dive helmet propped at the prow projected the weak orange glow of a battery burned dry.

She guided the boat to the foot of the stairwell and threw the tether line. Lupe caught the rope, pulled the boat close, and lashed the line to the stairwell balustrade.

‘I brought company,’ said Donahue.

Faint splash from the tunnel mouth. Churning water. Lupe trained her flashlight. A rotted skeletal thing. It flailed and thrashed. It nudged plates of ice aside. A vagrant with a long beard and matted hair, trying to stay afloat, fighting the waterlogged overcoat that threatened to drag it beneath the surface.

A stack of paint tins on a step. Lupe picked up a tin and loosened the lid. She hurled it towards the creature. The tin hit the water with a cannonball splash. The lid popped loose as it sank. Water surrounding the flailing revenant was filled with shimmering globules of oil. A wide chemical slick shone greasy rainbows.

Lupe pulled a slat from the fire bucket and hurled it spinning into the cavern darkness. The burning shard executed an elegant, flame-fluttering arc, then hit the water.

Ignition.

Blue fire washed across the surface of the flood. Ice fizzed and dissolved. Flames danced high and scorched the tunnel roof.

The creature thrashed and cooked. Burning arms, burning head. Matted beard hair shrivelled to nothing.

The creature fixed its gaze on Lupe and Donahue standing twenty yards away at the water’s edge. It strained to reach them from a lake of fire.

Face burned away. No lips, ears or nose. Eyeballs boiled, burst and evaporated.

Convulsions. Slow death. The vagrant sank beneath the surface. Skin crisped and popped as the corpse slowly submerged.

The fire dwindled and died. Blue smoke hung over steaming, fizzing water like swamp gas.

‘Any more of these fucks heading our way?’ asked Lupe.

‘There were three. I killed the others.’

Donahue was bleeding. A gash to the forehead. She released lock rings and pulled off her gloves. Lupe gave her a bandana. She dabbed the wound on her forehead.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Lupe.

‘Yeah.’

‘You didn’t get bitten, did you?’

‘No.’

Donahue sat on a step next to the bucket fire. She rubbed tired eyes.

‘Look at me.’

Donahue looked up.

‘Swear to me. Tell me that’s not a bite.’

‘It’s not a bite. And by the way, screw you.’

Donahue wearily got to her feet. She unzipped and stripped out of her drysuit. She pasted a dressing over the gash on her forehead. She dressed and pulled on boots.

She pointed at Sicknote, sat on the step listening to the radio apparatus.

‘What happened to his head?’

‘A little elective brain surgery.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Communing with the virus. Let him be.’

A couple of backpacks leaned against the stairwell wall. A couple of rolled NBC suits. Lupe threw them into the boat.

She pointed at crooked planks nailed over the south tunnel entrance.

‘Guess we just pull those aside and see how far south we can get.’

‘If the water rises any higher we’ll drown.’

‘This city is dreaming up new ways to kill us every hour. We’ve got no choice. We got to move out.’

Donahue checked her watch.

‘Still a couple of hours before the scheduled pickup.’

Lupe glanced at her watch.

‘They’re due at seven. At one minute past, we climb in that boat and paddle like motherfuckers, all right? Seven. We don’t wait a second longer.’

‘I hear something,’ said Sicknote. He gestured to the little speaker cone. ‘A voice.’

‘No shit.’

‘Listen.’ He held out the speaker. ‘A human voice. For real.’

Lupe crouched beside Sicknote and put the speaker to her ear.

‘Holy shit. The chopper. It’s in range.’

She snatched the Motorola from her waistband. She upped the volume and switched to vox.

‘Rescue Four, this is Air Cav Charlie Charlie Foxtrot, do you copy, over?’

Donahue grabbed the radio from Lupe’s hand.

‘This is Rescue Four, good to hear your voice.’

She leaned against the wall, weak with relief.

‘Do you have the objective, over?’

‘Ten-four. We have Ekks.’

‘Rescue, we estimate ten minutes to touchdown, five minutes to reach your location. Prep the doctor. Get him ready to move.’

‘Copy that. Can’t wait to get out of here.’

Donahue turned to Lupe.

‘See? Told you they wouldn’t leave us behind.’

Seventy knots. A slow, ten degree bank into headwind.

Byrne twisted in the pilot seat.

‘Check it out.’

Chief Jefferson unbuckled his harness. He adjusted headphones.

‘What am I looking at?’

Nothing to see but instrumentation reflected in black cockpit glass.

Byrne pointed to a distant orange glow.

‘Fire. Miles of it.’

‘The city?’

‘The refineries. Burn for months. Maybe years.’

Chief turned back to the passenger compartment.

His team:

Craven, chewing gum, cradling a belt-feed SAW.

Bingham, unfolding a stretcher, laying it on the cabin floor. She hung a couple of saline drips from a drip rack.

‘The guy will be heavily irradiated,’ said Chief, shouting to be heard over rotor roar. ‘Don’t forget. He’s a patient. And he’s a valuable asset. But he is also radioactive waste. Don’t touch him with bare hands.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Bingham. You all right?’

‘I’m fine, sir.’

‘You looked spooked.’

‘I’m okay.’

The Chief unzipped his radiation suit, reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a hip flask. He unscrewed the cap and passed it to Bingham.

She took a swig.

Jefferson addressed the pilot.

‘Patch me through to Avalanche.’

‘Forward Team to Flight One, go ahead, over.’

‘How’s it looking?’

‘Pretty good, sir. We’ve done a full sweep of the lodge, covered every floor. The building is secure. Open ground on all sides. Hundred yards to the tree-line. Perfect for claymores. One approach road. Good range of vision. The place will make an excellent holdout.’

‘Supplies?’

‘There’s an extensive dry store behind the kitchens. Good inventory.’

‘Outstanding.’

‘There are a couple of outbuildings near the helipad. We’ll check them out at sun-up. Might be some aviation fuel.’

‘There’s a cabin by the lake, is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir. A log chalet.’

‘That’s where we’ll treat Ekks. Move the medical gear to the cabin. See if you can fire up the generator. And check for running water.’

‘Sir.’

‘He is to be held in isolation, understood? No one goes near him without my permission.’

‘Am I to understand Doctor Ekks will be the only arrival? There will be no other patients?’