Ken McClure - Dust to dust

Macmillan shook his head. ‘How would Monk get his hands on something like that?’

Steven shrugged. ‘The old pals act again?’ he suggested. ‘A friend of a friend at Porton thought they might like to see how their latest project worked in practice? The tomb opening at Dryburgh would have been seen as the perfect scenario for a test run.’

Macmillan looked ashen and Steven knew why. Sir John was of the old school and, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary over the years, couldn’t bring himself to believe that the UK would involve itself in such things. He’d never quite embraced the concept that you had to be as bad as the bad guys in order to survive. ‘This is still all supposition,’ he said, without much conviction.

‘Then let’s hope I’m wrong.’

‘What d’you think Monk will do when he comes back and finds us still alive?’ asked Lukas.

‘Trigger the fans,’ said Steven.

‘Stupid question,’ Lukas conceded.

‘As I see it,’ said Macmillan, ‘we’ve no evidence that what Steven is suggesting is right but we can’t take the risk of putting it to the test. We have to find a way of getting out of here without triggering the ventilation system.’

‘Easier said than done,’ said Steven, who was becoming edgy. He was very conscious of the fact that time was ticking by and Monk would be coming back.

‘Surely we could afford to trigger the system as long as we could get out quickly enough afterwards?’

‘We’d have to hold our breath for as long as it took.’

‘What I was thinking of was an explosion,’ said Macmillan. ‘If we could blow a hole in the wall, we could escape to the outside. Do you have the wherewithal to do that, Lukas?’

Lukas looked doubtful. ‘It’s a biology lab, Sir John,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much call for things that go bang…’ He looked to the glass-fronted chemical cupboards without much conviction.

‘What’s in the red cylinder?’

‘Hydrogen. We use it for creating anaerobic conditions for bacteria that don’t like oxygen.’

‘I seem to remember you can get a pretty fair bang with hydrogen gas, can’t you?’

‘You certainly can,’ interrupted Steven, who was losing patience. ‘There’s no doubt we have the ability to blow ourselves to kingdom come, which might be quicker than the fungal route, but as for blowing a hole in the wall, forget it. Unless Lukas can come up with something like nitro-glycerine — or anything else that we could create a controlled, localised explosion with — we can forget the big bang theory.’

‘Sorry,’ said Lukas. ‘No can do.’

‘So where do we go from here?’ said Macmillan.

Steven looked at his watch. ‘We came round about twenty minutes ago. Monk would expect us to have walked into the trap and be fighting each other to the death by now. He’ll probably be back here some time within the next hour to… tidy up loose ends.’

‘Christ,’ said Lukas. Macmillan said nothing.

‘As I see it, there’s no possibility of disabling the ventilation system for the reasons Lukas gave earlier — too many safety mechanisms — so that just leaves one option. We’ve got to remove the spores from the system. Monk and his pals couldn’t have had that much time to set this up so it’s my guess it will be something fairly simple inserted in the trunking above us. I’ve got to get up there to see if I can find it. What d’you think, Lukas? Is there room?’

Lukas looked unsure, glancing first at Steven and then at the grating above them. ‘Could be a tight fit. You certainly won’t be turning round much once you’re in there.’

‘Let’s do it,’ said Steven with an air of finality that spurred them into action, collecting lab furniture to make a platform below the grating. ‘I’ll need a screwdriver, a torch, maybe some wet cloths, wire cutters if possible but scissors or a knife at a pinch.’

‘We’ve got a torch,’ said Lukas, breaking off from platform building to open a series of drawers, one after the other, making them bang on their stops and remind everyone of the urgency of their situation. ‘And a screwdriver… no wirecutters, I’m afraid… shit, where are the scissors?… plenty of scalpels… no cloths; we use disposable towels, but I can rip up a lab coat…’

Steven acknowledged the growing inventory with grunts as he undid the screws holding the grating on the ceiling.

‘What happens if the grating’s wired to the ventilation system?’ asked Macmillan, holding the platform steady while looking up at Steven.

‘We’re fucked,’ replied Steven without stopping.

Macmillan looked away. ‘Can’t complain about a nice clear answer, I suppose,’ he murmured.

Steven removed the grating and lowered it to Lukas, who had returned to the platform with the bits and pieces he’d collected. In exchange, he took the things Lukas handed up to him and put them inside the open hatch. There was no point in putting anything in his pockets because there wouldn’t be room to move his arms behind him once he was inside the trunking. He did, however, slip a couple of the scalpels between his wrist and his watch strap. He’d have to nudge everything else along in front of him. Finally, he took off his sweater and shirt and dropped them to the ground. With a last look below, he gripped the edges of the hatch, bent his knees and muttered, ‘Up we go.’

There was a moment, after heaving himself up through the opening, that Steven thought it was not going to be possible. There had been just enough room for him to launch himself headfirst into the trunking, but he was left with his arms pinned behind him and no means of propelling himself forwards or backwards. He felt trapped like a cork in a bottle.

He had to fight off panic. Panic only ever made things worse. Uncoordinated wriggling was getting him nowhere. He focused only on his right arm, harnessing every bit of movement he could manage into bringing it underneath him and then wriggling it up past the side of his face until he could push it out freely in front of him. This instantly gave him confidence and more room to repeat the procedure with his left arm. With both arms in front of him, he found he could get some purchase. He was on the move.

He switched on the torch and looked at what lay ahead: a stretch of trunking running straight for about six metres but then meeting a T-junction, which would call for his first decision. He turned off the torch to save the batteries while he covered the six metres, something he did painfully slowly, his throat becoming dry and sweat running down his face in the hellish heat of the confined space.

He discovered there was no decision to make at the junction at all. The spur to the right led only to a blank plate about a metre away with bolts protruding through it, suggesting it might be some kind of inspection hatch. Steven’s spirits soared momentarily when he thought that this might actually be a way out for all of them if the hatch led to a different room in the building, but further examination brought him back to reality. He could only see long threaded shafts of the bolts: the heads were on the outside of the plate. There was no way of turning them from the inside.

He turned his attention to what lay to the left and saw the large, motionless fan. It filled the trunking about eight metres back from the junction. The torch he was using wasn’t powerful. It picked out the blades of the fan well enough and he could see its supporting framework, but he couldn’t see what he wanted to see, the mechanism to inject fungal spores into the airflow. Did it exist? Steven felt his confidence wobble.

If the mechanism did exist, it would have to be located on this side of the fan for him to do anything about it. Should it turn out to be on the far side, he would have no way of reaching it. He’d be left looking at it through the mocking blades of the fan. He started wriggling forwards again.