Adam Baker - Terminus

‘ This stuff could collapse on our heads any moment,’ said Nariko, wind-rush of exertion captured by the helmet mike. ‘If this were a standard street rescue, I would tell my guys to hold back. At least until we got proper structural support.’

Cloke psyched himself to enter the buckled hull of the bus. He gripped the tether line and pulled himself past the dead driver. His helmet lights briefly illuminated empty sockets and a yellow-tooth grin.

He called to Tombes at the rear of the bus:

‘How’s it looking? A clear route?’

‘Looks that way.’

Cloke’s left foot snagged. He squirmed. He tried to shake free. He was stuck fast.

He turned and looked back. The bus driver had twisted in his seat and sunk teeth into the fabric of his drysuit. He could feel the tight vice-pressure of teeth grinding into his suit lining, trying to break flesh.

Cloke screamed.

‘What’s up?’ shouted Nariko. ‘What’s going on?’ She grabbed seat backs and hauled herself towards the front of the bus. ‘Cloke. What’s going on?’

Cloke kicked at the cadaver’s eyeless face. He balled a fist and pounded the creature’s skull. Water pressure slowed his arm, softened every movement like he was battling monsters in a helpless fever-dream.

Rising panic. He thrashed and flailed. He lost a flipper. His helmet and gas pack slammed into the roof as he tried to wrench lose.

‘Keep still.’

Nariko pushed past him. She gripped the back of the driver’s seat for support. She pulled the Glock from her weight belt.

She clubbed the creature with the butt, hammered its forehead and temple until the driver’s teeth reflexively parted and released the fabric of Cloke’s suit.

Nariko deactivated the safety with a gloved thumb.

The skeletal driver strained against the seat belt, snapped and lunged.

Nariko jammed the gun between gaping jaws, twisted the barrel deep into the creature’s throat and pulled the trigger. Muffled thump. A slow-blossoming burst of brain tissue and skull fragments. The bullet streaked out the windshield into darkness, fast-decelerating trajectory delineated by a plume of gas bubbles shimmering like globules of mercury.

The dead thing slumped, head flung back, and was still.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Nariko. ‘Are you bitten? Did it puncture your suit?’

She turned Cloke’s helmet to face her. He was sweating, eyes wide with fear.

‘Get it together. Control your breathing.’

He nodded.

‘Focus. Be calm and focus.’

‘I’m okay,’ he said. Each panting exhalation roared over the open radio channel.

She checked the leg of his dive suit. Deep gouges in the trilaminate fabric, but no tears.

She gripped his arm and checked his wrist screen. An amber oxygen depletion warning.

‘Hey. Breathe slow. You’re burning too much air.’

‘How the hell was that thing still alive? How long had it been submerged?’

‘The virus never quits. Come on. Get it together. We have to get out of here.’

Cloke replaced his right flipper and tightened straps. He swam towards the back of the bus using seatbacks for guidance, gas tanks scraping the roof.

He helped Tombes lift the equipment bier and manoeuvre it towards the jagged burn hole in the rear bulkhead.

Lupe took a last look at the dead driver. She leaned close. Her helmet lamps lit his shattered face. His head was thrown back, mouth open in a grotesque yawn. Wisps of blood curled from between his teeth and out his nostrils like cigarette fumes. Eye sockets bristled with metallic splinters.

The roof began to collapse.

The rasp of shifting concrete, the grind of abrading cement. Roof panels creased and bulged. Torsion and metal shriek.

The cab began to crumple and cave. Pillars started to bend and fold. The remaining side windows frosted and shattered with a muffled crunch. Serpentine clouds of silt curled through the vacant frames and began to fill the passenger compartment. Visibility dropped like the bus was filling with smoke.

‘Fucking move,’ shouted Nariko, voice deafening loud inside her helmet.

She lunged for the guide line. Her gauntlets scrabbled at the fine, nylon rope. Too insubstantial. Too smooth. The cord danced between her fingers, like a wisp of gossamer.

She caught the line, twisted for grip, and began to haul herself hand-over-hand.

The three divers scrambled down the centre aisle, grabbed seatbacks, kicked up a silt-storm. The buckling hull closed around them like the piston-walls of a compactor. The roof kinked and crumpled, pressed lower as the steel frame of the bus folded in a series of sudden capitulations. They could hear the torque of stressed metal, deep howls and moans, like whale song.

Cloke and Tombes struggled to haul equipment from the rear of the bus. A narrow crevice. Their headlamps danced as they shifted and contorted, tried to wrestle equipment in the confined space.

Crack and grind. Titanic blocks of masonry shifted and settled. The water around them began to fill with a swirling blizzard of stone dust.

‘Go,’ yelled Cloke, shouting to be heard over the rubble-roar that filled their helmets. Tombes continued to tug at the stretcher. ‘Forget the gear. Just go.’

‘We need this shit.’

Cloke seized the grab-handle on the back of his tank frame and pulled.

‘Move. Just fucking move.’

They abandoned the equipment and struggled to kick clear of cascading debris.

Cloke alone, disoriented, spinning in sub-aquatic darkness.

He tumbled through space, no sense of up or down. His wrist screen flashed an amber warning: elevated oxygen consumption.

Stop struggling, he told himself. Be still. Be calm.

He slowly spun to a halt. He sank and gently hit bottom, kicking up a silt-plume.

Occluded vision. He reached up and tried to clear his visor. A jagged crack running the width of the Lexan. A blot of blood on the glass. Ear-whine concussion.

His helmet lights lit a tennis shoe lying on the tunnel floor. Grey with dirt, been there years. He stared at the shoe, tried to regain his balance, willed his head to stop spinning.

He fumbled the radio clipped to his weight belt. He checked the jack was still plugged to his helmet.

‘Nariko. Captain. Come in, over.’

No reply.

‘Captain. Captain, can you hear me? Sound off, if you can hear my voice.’

Nothing.

‘Tombes. What is your status, over?’

No response.

‘Tombes. Captain. Guys. Speak to me. Sound off.’

Something tendrillar coiling round his feet. He grabbed it. A loose length of safety line. He pulled hand over hand. The end was frayed and torn.

He peered into a fog of swirling rock dust. He slowly turned around, tried to figure north from south, tried to locate the rockfall.

‘Captain. Tombes. Come on, guys. Where are you? Talk to me. Tell me you’re alive.’

Cloke surfaced. He broke through a crust of floating garbage. He gripped a ledge in the tunnel wall for support.

He wiped water droplets from his visor with a gloved hand. He studied the cracked Lexan, anxious to see if irradiated flood water were leaking into his helmet.

Twin lamps lit the tunnel walls. He looked around. Crumbling brickwork arched overhead. Old gang graffiti. DEF CON MUTHAFUKAS. A flaking portrait of Malcolm X.

Tombes surfaced beside him.

‘Where the hell is the Captain? Did she get out?’

‘She was right behind us,’ said Cloke. ‘Right at my back.’