Adam Baker - Terminus

Cloke squirmed further beneath the carriage. He leaned over the grille and shone his flashlight downwards into darkness.

‘A narrow pipe. Rungs set in concrete. It goes deep. Way deep.’

‘That’s it. That’s your route out.’

Galloway leaned against a ticket hall pillar. Drugged stupor. He hugged his mutilated arm to his chest. He was pale with blood loss.

His eyelids drooped. His knees began to buckle. He snapped awake, caught himself as he toppled forwards. A stumbled recovery. He glanced around, wild-eyed, disoriented. He looked down at his stump. The events of the last few hours repopulated his mind like a fast reboot.

Something lying at the base of the pillar. Galloway slowly crouched, picked up the blood-caked belt he had used as a tourniquet, and threw it into corner shadows.

Sicknote held up a Sharpie.

‘The pen has run dry.’

‘Only one I got,’ croaked Galloway. ‘Sorry.’

Sicknote scratched his forehead with an inked finger. It left a smear like a soot streak.

‘You don’t think they’ll let you board that chopper and fly out of here, do you?’

‘What?’ asked Galloway.

‘Why are you still here? Hanging round with these guys? They won’t offer you a ride home.’

‘Fuck are you talking about?’

‘You’re bitten. Sooner or later, you’ll turn.’

‘Shut up.’

‘How long before the chopper arrives? Twelve hours? Fourteen? Do you think Lupe will wait that long? Sooner or later, she’ll take steps.’

‘The others would stop her.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Shut up, all right? Just shut your damned mouth.’

Galloway dug an energy bar from a holdall and tore the wrapper with his teeth. He chewed. He looked around.

Wade lay on the bench. He moaned and murmured. His limbs twitched and trembled as he fought monsters in his dreams.

Donahue sat at the head of the platform stairs, antiemetic medication and painkillers scattered on the step beside her. Her shoulders were slumped. She stared down into darkness.

Lupe stood in the office doorway. She was watching him. Backlit. He couldn’t read her expression.

She took a swig of water and turned away.

Galloway searched inside the trauma kit. He found a scalpel capped with a rubber stopper. He tested the blade on the fabric of the bag. It sliced through thick Cordura like it was paper. He re-capped the blade and slipped it into his pocket.

Tombes crawled beneath the subway car. He bit a Maglite between his teeth. He squirmed into position over the drain grate. Steel bars. Hinges. Padlock.

He took the flashlight from his mouth and laid it on the track bed.

‘Pass me the gear.’

Cloke pushed the plasma cylinder between coach wheels.

Tombes grabbed the webbed cylinder and hugged it to his belly. He unbuckled a strap and unravelled the hose. He pulled on leather gauntlets. He balled a fire coat and pushed it between himself and the grate as a partial heat shield.

‘All right. Here we go.’

He twisted the regulator and triggered the handset. The cutting flame burned brilliant white, roared a high, continuous scream.

He shielded his face and held the cutting head at arm’s length. He pressed the exothermic flame to the padlock. Thick smoke. Steel began to sweat and drip. The heavy padlock melted like butter and fell away.

He pressed the cutting head to the grate hinges. The underside of the carriage was lit by flickering arc-light. He blinked sweat. He worked by touch, unable to look directly at the incandescent flame.

He cut through the first hinge, then the second. The grille twisted, detached and dropped into the shaft.

Tombes shut off the cutting flame. Sudden silence. He listened to the grate as it tumbled down the pipe, abrading concrete, slamming tunnel rungs, hitting water with a deep and distant splash.

They examined Ekks.

Tombes checked pulse and blood pressure. He checked the saline drip.

‘How’s his respiration?’ asked Cloke. ‘Any better?’

‘Not great. But better.’

Cloke searched the carriage. He kicked over a couple of boxes. He upturned a suitcase and emptied it over the floor.

‘Forget it,’ said Tombes. ‘I already looked. Nothing in the bags, nothing under the bed.’

Cloke picked up the notebook.

‘Just this?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tombes. ‘Just the book.’

Cloke thumbed pages.

‘Reckon he found a cure?’ asked Tombes. ‘These notes. Reckon they amount to some kind of formula?’

Cloke held up a random page. Dense, urgent text.

‘He spent hours writing this stuff. Days. It’s got to mean something.’

‘Reckon you can hack it?’

‘Given time.’

Cloke dropped the notebook into the document bag, and lashed the bag with tape.

Tombes watched him work.

‘Well, guess I got the short straw,’ he said, looking down at his hands. ‘Three guys. Two dive suits. I’ll cover your back. I’ll make sure you and Ekks get safely into the water. But do me a favour, all right? Achieve something. Get that back to Ridgeway. Crack that damned code.’

Cloke shook his head.

‘You’re not staying behind.’

‘How do you figure?’

‘Nariko. She’s down there, in the water, with a helmet and air supply. We can lash her tanks to an NBC suit. Probably enough residual oxygen to make the journey.’

‘You want to strip her body?’

‘She would want you to live.’

Galloway climbed the steps to the street entrance.

He watched hands claw the opaque polythene that curtained the gate. Fingers daubed blood on the plastic.

He looked down. His bandaged stump was flecked with blood. Spines pushed through the gauze. He breathed deep. Part sigh, part shuddering sob.

‘Are you all right?’

Wade climbed the steps. He gripped the stairwell balustrade for guidance and support.

He listened to ragged fingernails rake plastic.

‘Is that them?’

‘Yeah,’ said Galloway.

‘How many?’

‘Plenty.’

‘They never let up, do they?’

‘No. No, they don’t.’

‘Lupe said there was a bike in the street.’

‘She did?’

‘Chopped. Chromed out. Big-ass ape hangers. Wish I had my eyes, you know? I’d like to see that Harley. The world has gone to hell, but that bike is still out there, sitting in the alley. Something beautiful. Something that makes sense.’

He bent double. He coughed and retched. He hacked and spat.

‘You don’t look so good,’ said Galloway.

‘Getting worse by the hour. Guess I don’t have long. Maybe I’ll head outside, when the time comes. I’d like to feel the rain on my face one last time, know what I mean?’

‘You’d get torn to pieces.’

‘Any of those bastards lays a finger on me, I’ll fuck them up.’

‘Always the rain with you guys.’

‘I did some time in Texas. All the guys on The Row, sealed in the same six-by-nine year after year. Some of those guys were running multiple appeals. State. Federal. Any motion to commute their lawyers could dream up. Pretty much a full decade locked down under artificial light. They didn’t give a shit about sun. They just wanted to feel rain.’

Galloway unclipped a bunch of keys from his belt one-handed, did it slow and quiet. He selected a cuff key with his teeth. He silently released the handcuffs that clamped the gate closed. He let the cuffs hang loose and open.

‘Hell with it,’ murmured Galloway. ‘We all got to die sometime, right? Just got to pick our terms.’

Tombes floated in dark water. He squirmed deep into a crevice between massive concrete slabs.

A half-cut girder. He triggered the plasma arc and touched the cutting head to steel. Metal bubbled, liquefied, ran in rivulets like tears.