Mark Abernethy - Double back

Turning, Mac saw that Didge’s eyes were like saucers through the mask.

‘You okay?’ barked Mac through his breather cylinders.

‘Yep,’ came the rasped reply, unconvincing.

Mac wasn’t feeling too flash either.

Mac followed Didge’s gaze and saw they were standing on what looked like an internal road on the pale green lino, the car-width tyre tracks clearly marked in dull black on the pale background.

Pushing through the next doors – these ones twice as wide as the side entrance to the room – they followed the indoor ‘road’ down a long corridor with intermittent engineer’s lights. Turning his flashlight on again, Didge led the way for fifty metres before coming to an internal loading-bay area with a truck parked in the dark. The entire far wall was a steel door with a set of electric controls at the side as well as a chain-loop manual function.

‘Loading bay,’ rasped Mac, looking at the twenty-tonne Hino flatbed with the Lombok AgriCorp signage on the side.

The radio crackled again, and both of them heard a couple of snippets of what sounded like Robbo yelling. Then it was dead air again. Mac decided to hurry it along, but he wanted more from this facility.

Hurriedly stowing his SIG Sauer, Didge pulled the chain loop hand-over-hand and the door started to inch up slowly.

Switching off the flashlight, Mac ducked to the side of the door as it slowly rose. When the door had gone up twelve centimetres, Mac motioned for Didge to stop it and got his head into a position where he could peer through to the other side. There was a conveyor belt four metres wide, which led upwards at a thirty-degree angle to another door at the top of the belt, the same as the one they’d just opened.

As Mac tried to get the camera in line to take a shot, a beeping sounded and the door at the top of the conveyor belt chute started to rise.

‘Fuck,’ said Mac, ducking back instinctively. Slowly putting his head around the corner again, the opening door revealed another set of steel doors, these ones side-opening with manually operated levers. A person in a white biohazard suit walked past at the top of the conveyor belt, and as the door opened further, Mac realised the second door also had warning signage on it.

‘What’s that?’ asked Didge, kneeling behind him. ‘That fire?’

‘Sure is,’ whispered Mac.

A roaring noise was followed by a thump, and the area above them shook as the roaring built to a crescendo.

‘That a furnace?’ asked Didge, raising his voice.

Looking down at his G-Shock, visible through the rubber gloves, Mac saw it was 6.51 pm. ‘Getting ready for the evening burn,’ said Mac. ‘We’ve found the incinerator.’

Suddenly the lights flickered and went on. Diving to the side of the conveyor-belt door, Mac scanned the tunnel and loading-bay area, both now flooded with light.

‘Let’s move,’ said Didge, as the conveyor-belt door started moving up.

Heart thumping, Mac jogged out of the loading bay and along the tunnel, sweat running down the backs of his legs as he struggled to keep up with the soldier. His breathing was becoming ragged and hot.

Didge slowed down and waited for Mac when he reached the air-lock door they’d come through two minutes ago. Stealthing through they stopped, turned back and cased the tunnel through a gap. Four figures in white biohazard suits walked through a door into the loading bay, one yelling something up the conveyor-belt chute before scrambling into the crew-cab truck with the other three. The truck took off and then it was heading towards Mac and Didge.

Pulling back into the room, Mac raced after Didge through the next set of doors and into the space filled with inhalation chambers. Didge crept towards the door leading back into the labs, but Mac stopped him. He wanted to see where the truck was going and to check if there was an easy way to get samples from the incinerator.

‘Gotta get outa here,’ crackled Didge through the breather cylinders as the double air-lock doors automatically opened, allowing the truck to drive through.

‘Back to the labs,’ said Mac, heading for the doors that would allow them to escape through the venting system.

The air-lock doors to the lab area did not contain glass panels, and Mac held back to observe where the truck was going and what the workers were doing. The point of a recon exercise was to see or hear what was going on.

‘Mate – no glass,’ said Mac, pointing at the door. ‘I need to take some snaps, okay?’

Reluctantly, Didge followed Mac across the internal lino road and they made for one of the inhalation chambers where the internal lights had not been activated. Pulling the grey steel door back on themselves, they stood in the shadows of the inhalation chamber, breathing hard. The throb of the truck’s diesel engine sounded outside the area, and then intensified as the doors were opened. Craning his neck, Mac saw another double air-lock door at the end of the chambers which was also being opened.

Struggling for air, Mac realised they’d stumbled into the heart of the operation. Whatever was burned in that incinerator at such high heats, on a daily basis, was probably waiting on the other side of those doors. What was it, he wondered. Bad vaccines? Killer heroin? Monkeys who didn’t like what they were inhaling?

‘We’ve got to get in there, okay?’ rasped Mac, pointing towards the truck as it slipped through the opened air-lock doors.

Didge nodded, though his face was grim and his breathing was laboured.

‘You okay, mate?’ asked Mac as the Hino moved on, bringing some quiet again to the inhalation chambers.

‘Yeah, bra,’ said Didge.

‘Let’s get our breathing right, okay?’ said Mac.

Working together, they brought each other down to long deep breathing and then Mac pushed back the door to the inhalation chamber and they snuck out. Didge went in front with his SIG Sauer and they crept along the wall of inhalation chambers until they got to the door the Hino had just disappeared through. Sticking his head around the corner of the opened door, Didge checked their situation, hesitating a split second.

‘Okay, mate?’ asked Mac, as Didge groaned and sagged against the wall.

‘Holy shit,’ he hissed, staring into the mid-distance.

Mac angled himself around Didge and peeked around the corner to see for himself.

Taking it in, Mac’s breathing seized. The Hino was fifty metres away at the end of a long room, with people in biohazard suits moving around like ants in a colony. Large, glass-sided inhalation chambers ran the length of the space, all of them filled with naked humans. Most looked dead, but some of them were still alive.

Pulling back, stunned, Mac thought fast – he needed to manage Didge out of the situation without both of them being made.

‘Okay, we’re gonna do the gig and get out, right, mate?’ said Mac, who used his body to block Didge from walking into the room of inhalation chambers.

‘But, there’s people -’ started Didge, his eyes far away.

‘Don’t worry about that, mate,’ said Mac, feeling quite nauseous himself. ‘Let’s just focus on the gig, okay?’

‘Robbo – let’s call Robbo,’ said Didge, sounding as if he might be in shock.

Things balanced on a knife’s edge as Mac tried to catch the soldier’s eye. Didge was bigger and stronger than him, and by the way the other 4RAR commandos treated the big Cape Yorker, Mac suspected he was their wet-work guy: the one who took out the sentries, who slit the throats and made stealth entries possible. If Didge decided on a certain course of action, it would be hard to stop him.

‘C’mon, Didge – there’s nothing we can really do here,’ said Mac, trying to get Didge beyond his immediate desire to walk into that hall of horrors and start killing bad guys.