The Aeschylus (25 page)

Melvin leveled the shotgun. “You want to get messy? You look like you thinkin' 'bout it.”

If this were a movie, AJ could hit St. Croix in the head and drop Melvin before either of them could blink. But this wasn't a movie, and Dutch was the marksman, not him.

He lowered his gun. “Shit.”

“On the floor. Kick it over to me.”

The gun skittered across the tile. “What's your boss going to think when he sees what you kids have been up to?”

“I don't know if you heard the boat, buddy-boy, but he's down below. Guess you ain't as sharp as you used to be, huh?”

“Oh yeah, I would have heard it,” St. Croix said.

Dutch spun before the man's mouth was closed, whipping his arm around to strike, but the ape was too fast. St. Croix smacked his attacker in the head. Dutch stumbled, then Melvin booted him in the ass and knocked him over to his friend. AJ grabbed him and hauled him to his feet.

It took a moment for Melvin's words to sink in, but when they did, he felt his face flush. “If Bruhbaker is below, what about the girl? What's she gonna say about all this?”

At that exact moment, Mason appeared in the doorway, his face grim. “She won't be saying a damned thing.”

“What does that mean?” AJ knew Mason could be cold-blooded, but if something had happened to Kate, it would be a
new low, even for him. He told himself Mason couldn't be that brazen. Not an official mission for Black Shadow, not with the girl being who she was.

“I didn't shoot her, but your girlfriend won't be coming back from the island to send any postcards. You can bet on that.”

AJ was about to fire back at him, some pithy comeback that would put the sonofabitch in his place, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.
The girl? All of them?
This had been one hell of a day, but he had never doubted for a second he would see the end of it. He had never doubted that no matter how bad things got, there could be a way out.

“We go back a long time, Mason,” he said quietly.

“That we do.”

“And I guess you're not going to tell us why you're doing this?”

“You've seen what's going on out there. This thing, whatever it is, it's bigger than you and me. It's bigger than all of us. Somebody at the top wants to make sure they have plausible deniability, and I suppose that means getting rid of the people who knew better.”

“I always was a problem.”

The look Mason gave him was almost compassionate.
Almost
. “You still are.”

“Why don't you just shoot us?” Dutch yelled.

“Not today.”

Mason motioned to the door. On his way out, Melvin made a little point-and-shoot motion at them with his thumb and forefinger. It made AJ want to rip his hand off and feed it to him.

“Close it,” Mason said.

Seconds later, the door closed, and a welding torch began to seal them in.

They stared at each other awkwardly. “I guess we're in this together now, whether we like it or not,” AJ said.

Gideon picked himself up and straightened. He was looking better now, the effects of Melvin's little concoction wearing off. At his full height, he was taller than both of his companions. “Who are you people? And what the hell am I doing here? You know that asshole out there hit me? He actually hit me!” he said, looking around like he expected to find a lawyer hiding behind a cabinet.

“We didn't get a chance to meet yet, Doc. I'm AJ Trenton. This here is my friend, Henry Jones. There was another person with us before, a girl. We were brought here to... well, to consult, you might say.”

“Pleased to meet you, I guess.”

“How are you feeling?”

The man shrugged, his orange coat too big on his shoulders. “Aside from being back in here? How the hell are we going to get out?”

AJ looked at the doctor and then over to his friend. If Dutch was freaked out, he was hiding it well. The situation didn't seem real yet, maybe because it all happened so fast. “Well, this place worked once. I guess they figured it would hold people again. How did you survive, anyway?”

The man giggled. It was a strange sound coming from an adult male. “There's plenty to drink, if that's what you're wondering!”

“Not any more,” Dutch said. He was looking through the refrigerator and through the cabinets. “No more bottles.”

Gideon looked over his shoulder, and his face went ashen. AJ wasn't sure he liked that look any better than hysteria.

“They must have moved everything out. I don't think our imprisonment here is a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. They must have been waiting for an opportunity to get us separated.”

“You think it's true, what they said about Kate?” Dutch asked.

“I don't know. I didn't hear any shots, did you?”

“You didn't even hear the boat.”

“But you must have.”

Dutch settled his butt against the counter. “Yeah I did, and I didn't hear any shots.”

“They must have left her there.”

“Or drowned her. They'd have a hell of a time getting you and me underwater, but her?”

Gideon began to pace back and forth, his hands threatening to rip out chunks of his own hair. “Okay, okay, great! So no shots. No shots! But we're trapped in here. Right back to square one, you might say. Not just a chair this time. Can you build a welder? If not, then we'll be eating each others' corpses within the week.”

AJ actually laughed. The guy was nuts but not humorless. “Can
you
make a welder?”

“Me? Hell no. I'm just a biologist, for Christ's sake.”

“I'm sure Bruhbaker was counting on that.”

“Bruhbaker?”

“He's the asshole,” Dutch said, “the one who hit you.”

“Oh.”

AJ started around the room. He was scanning his memory, going over every detail he could remember. He wasn't on the engineering team, but he was well-familiar with the blueprints. It had been part of his job to know the place inside and out.
The kitchen, of all places
. It hadn't exactly been high on the list of security risks.

“Hey Doc,” Dutch said. “Maybe you want to calm down and tell us more about what we're facing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know if you noticed, but it's a freakin' jungle outside. Those Carrion things are everywhere now.”

“They grow fast, don't they?”

“We noticed,” AJ said. He was over in the corner now, looking at one of the big, industrial stoves. Heat was always a concern, so the primary ventilation system ran...

“There are more of them than when I was outside last,” Gideon said. “When I heard the gunfire I expected... I don't know what I expected. I guess I expected hazmat teams and a government quarantine. I should have known VO would be trying to clean up its own mess.”

“With extreme prejudice,” AJ said. He had begun yanking the stove away from the wall. It was heavy, but it had wheels. “Dutch, you got a penny?”

His buddy tossed him a ten-centavos Chilean coin and went back to examining the door. It didn't look like he was having any luck.

“What I don't get is why they didn't shoot us. If they're trying to kill us, I mean,” Gideon said.

AJ knelt down and examined the space behind the stove. He found the screws he was looking for and starting twisting one of them with the coin. “They can't. Sooner or later, there
will
be hazmat teams and a government investigation. If our bodies are riddled with bullets, there will be too many questions. Mason was right about that. It might be the easy thing, but he cares too much about Black Shadow's reputation to risk it. Ever since Baghdad, the private sector has been very cautious when it comes to bodies. You got to imagine that goes double for the vice president's daughter.”

“What? Who?” Gideon asked.

“The girl,” Dutch said.

“They can deny we were ever a part of the investigation to begin with. They can claim we ended up here of our own accord.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Gideon said.

Dutch shook his head. “My buddy's right. Without hard evidence, who's going to prove otherwise? They could make our contract disappear on a whim.”

AJ picked the heavy metal frame off of the wall and tossed it to the floor. It clanged against the counter, snapping everyone's attention back to him. He looked at them. “There's bad news and worse news.”

“Let's hear it.”

“I found the main ventilation system. It goes out the wall here and through the floor,” he said, pointing. “That's actually good news because it goes out of the building. The bad news is that it'll be a tight fit, if we can squeeze through at all.”

“And the worse news?”

“It's a fifty foot drop to the water. I don't see any rope, do you?”

“What about the windows? Have we tried those yet?”

AJ shook his head. “They're shatterproof. You couldn't break one of those with a sledgehammer.”

“I know, I tried,” Gideon said. “I mean, not that I had a real hammer or anything.”

Dutch let out a breath. “Well, there's no waiting it out, I guess.”

AJ looked at him. “I don't know about you, but I'm not counting on the government moving in for another two or three days. If the Shadow team manages to hold off the authorities, we'll be just as dead. In fact, I think that's their plan. Besides, you heard what Doctor Grey here said about how fast that stuff is growing. I'm not sure I want to wait until it drags the whole damned place down with it.”

“You don't think...” Dutch began.

“I don't think it can move, but it could grow heavy enough to topple the platform. This place may look solid, but you got to remember that it entered the water horizontally and was tipped ninety degrees into place. It could tip back if the supports break.”

They were quiet. Every groan of wind became an unbearable din. They could feel the strain of the place all around them, their prison getting smaller by the moment. No one mentioned the cut on Doctor Grey's head. No one mentioned the fact that—if they stayed—he might be as prone to The Carrion spores as the original crew, and it probably wouldn't take a full three days before something happened.

Dutch bent down and examined the hole in the wall. He threw his jacket down and started taking off his shirt. “Well, now or never.”

“Not yet,” AJ said. He knew what came next, and it wasn't pleasant.

“What are you do—”

AJ grabbed Gideon by the scruff of the neck, bending him backwards over the counter.

Gideon flailed. “What the—”

“If we're going out there, I want you tell me one more thing, Doc. It's something you neglected to mention in your little speech to Bruhbaker and company.”

“What... what's that?”

“I want to know what happened to the crew. You see, I know where they
were
. They hunted down your friends and kept you inside this room. That's what you said, right? But what I want to know is where they
are
. Because as you've noticed, it's been awfully quiet, and I have a feeling we're not really alone, are we Doctor?” AJ saw the man's face change, and he suddenly felt a ghost step over his grave. How had Mason not thought to ask him? He had smashed the doc before he had a chance to spill it.

Gideon squirmed.

“You can start talking, or we can toss you down that goddamned vent shaft and let you drown in the water below. What do you say?” AJ released him, and the doctor bounced back to his full height.

“Oh,” the man said, rubbing his throat. “That won't be necessary. Certainly not.”

So, he told them.

The gunk oozing from the arm-sized tentacle stank unlike anything Jin had smelled in his life. The closest approximation was Mama's Canh Chua. Jin's best friend in middle school had been this Vietnamese kid named John Choy. He used to invite him over to his house, but on Sundays, his mom made this stew with fish parts and oils that smelled like rotting pussy. John said it was called Canh Chua, but why he insisted
on putting
Mama's
before it, Jin never knew. He did know he never had the stomach to try it, and on some level, it was responsible for why he detested most Vietnamese people on sight now. They were just so goddamned dirty, maybe because they could eat shit like that without flinching. Old Johnny used
to just love his Mama's Canh Chua.

“You having fun down there?”

Bending over the railing, Jin looked up and saw Peter gazing down from the level above. Christian stood next to him, and the two of them looked unbearably pleased about something.

Jin held up a plastic bag filled with the fungus. It was a viscous black color, full of chunks where he'd chopped at the thing. It looked like he'd been prospecting for hobo shit. “You want to help?”

By way of reply, Peter scrunched his cheeks and let a gob of spit fall down towards him. It was thick with tobacco juice. Jin dodged, pulling his head in and nearly smashing it on a steel pulley. “Now that's disgusting.” He heard laughter above, stuck his head back out, and shot the pair of them the bird. Then he turned back to his gear, making a mental note to add Italians to his list of inferior dirt eaters. “You're a fucking animal, St. Croix,” he yelled. They absolutely howled.

How they could be laughing, he didn't know. They were in the middle of some weird shit, and they were a long way from out of the woods. He supposed they were gloating now that the security specialist was out of the way. What happened to doing a good day's work and going the fuck home? Jesus, you didn't have to gloat, especially when a man's life was at stake. But whatever. One day, he'd be free of these psychos and be able to open his own consulting firm. This bloody field work had to go.

He threw his baggie to the ground and picked up his tool kit.
Good
, he thought.
Back to my real job
. It's not like they couldn't pay some other dipshit to collect the samples they wanted. But of course,
it's Jin for the grunt work... again!
Always the goddamned Asian guy.

Not that he was complaining. He'd rather spend two hours down here than five minutes with those monkeys up top. As far as repairs went though, things weren't as bad as he had thought. With a little elbow grease, he thought he could repair the antenna and restore the short range radio. Mason said there was some kind of interference going on, but he was on his own for
that one. Jin had had just about enough of figuring out other people's problems. At least if he got the radio running, Bruhbaker would be happy. “Well, probably not,” he said to himself. “Jin, fix the derrick while you're it. You got time, right? Oh, and find out what's going on with the cell phones. Just out of curiosity, where are those sub-sea repeaters? Do you think you could get to those? Jesus, you're the smart one. College boy. Hurry it up!” But...