Adam Baker - Terminus

‘Screw that. We have to reach the radio. If we don’t check in, they’ll recall the chopper.’

‘We’ll figure something out.’

‘And we can’t sit on the roof waiting to get picked up. We’d soak up a shitload of rads. We need to speak to the pilot. We’ve got to know when he’s ready for touchdown.’

‘One thing at a time,’ said Tombes. ‘Better rest a while. Give ourselves space to think.’

Cloke and Tombes stripped out of their suits. They shivered in T-shirts and shorts. Sweat turning to chills. They slapped themselves, rubbed their arms and jumped to get warm. They huddled together with their backs to the wall, and pulled scrap paper over their feet and legs to trap body heat.

Tombes pulled Cloke’s weight belt from a nearby pile of dive equipment. He unclipped the Geiger counter. He held the unit in front of his chest. Fierce crackle. He held it beside Cloke. Heavy hiss.

‘Guess we were in the water a while,’ said Tombes quietly. ‘How long before we get sick?’

‘The first symptoms will hit pretty soon.’

‘What are our chances?’

Cloke shrugged.

‘We live or we die. It’s out of our hands.’

‘What about those iodide pills?’ asked Tombes.

‘In the hall, with all the other meds.’

‘This is going to get bad, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Tombes shut off the handset and got to his feet.

‘I’m going to check on Ekks.’

Ekks lay at the back of the room. He was still zipped in an NBC suit and strapped to the backboard.

Tombes knelt beside Ekks. He released straps. He flicked open a knife and slit the suit. He pulled the rubberised nylon aside.

‘How is he?’ asked Cloke.

Tombes lifted an eyelid, checked for dilation. He laid a couple of fingers on the man’s carotid.

‘Stable, I guess. Good pulse. Good respiration. Wish we could reach the medical gear. The guy could do with more saline. And we have to get some nutrients inside him. Blood sugar must be through the floor.’

Tombes laid scrap paper over Ekks, built up a blanket page by page.

‘Should trap a little heat.’

Cloke gestured towards the door.

‘Those trauma bags you’ve got out there. You folks came pretty well equipped, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tombes. ‘We respond to pretty much any 911.’

‘Have you got some kind of adrenaline shot? Something that can shock him awake?’

‘We might have some epinephrine. We keep it for junkies. Once in a while, an unusually pure batch of heroin hits the streets and we get a bunch of OD calls. Always the same. Shitty apartment. Needles on the floor. Sorry-ass kid lying in a pool of piss, respiratory system sedated to a standstill, slowly turning blue. We give them a bump, a little dose of epi, to kick-start their lungs.’

‘Could we give Ekks a shot?’

‘No. He’s pretty frail. Probably kill him stone dead.’

‘But there’s a chance it could work?’

‘Way too risky.’

‘He’s got no life to lose. He’s dying of acute radiation poisoning. Survival isn’t an issue. But could we jolt him back to conscious, yeah? Prep him with painkillers and anti-nausea meds, then zap him awake with a shot to the heart. He’d be lucid for a while, right? Long enough to talk. Long enough to tell us what he knows.’

‘Forget it. Do no harm . That’s the oath. My job is to keep people alive.’

‘Nariko said you did a couple of years in the marines.’

‘I was a kid. I never left the damn base.’

‘But what would a soldier do in this situation?’

‘You’re asking the wrong guy. I’ve never raised a hand to anyone, not in a schoolyard, not in a bar.’

‘These are unusual circumstances. We have to think beyond the old rules.’

‘What’s right is right.’

‘All you got to do is load the hypodermic and give it to me. I’ll do the rest. Whatever happens, it will be my responsibility.’

‘Yeah. Well, the bags are out in the hall. They might as well be on the moon.’

Lupe sat, back to a wall, eyes closed.

Cloke sat beside her.

‘You look strung out,’ he said.

‘I’m in better shape than you.’

‘Nausea? Headache?’

‘Forget it. I’m fine.’

‘Sorry about Wade.’

‘I barely knew the guy,’ said Lupe.

‘But he saved your life, yeah? Drew off a bunch of infected. Took a lot of courage. Nasty way to die, but he did it for you. He didn’t strike me as the heroic type. I guess sometimes people surprise you.’

‘He was a rat.’

‘Rat?’

‘We met at Bellevue. Adjacent cells. Each morning he got led to the shower. Racket used to wake me up. Jangling keys, slamming doors. His escort would march right past my cell. Did you see those tattoos on his arms? All that white power shit?’

‘I guess. I didn’t pay much attention.’

‘First time I saw him, he had a big-ass swastika on his right forearm. It looked fresh. Blacker than black. Couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I saw him again a few days later. The swastika was pale grey, like it had been there a decade. A while after that, it faded almost to nothing. You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out. He was getting his tattoos lasered off. A session every couple of days. That’s why they had him at Bellevue. Witness protection. He wasn’t nuts. He wasn’t sick. He turned rat. Maybe his biker buddies had a meth lab somewhere. Maybe the Texas angels were running stuff across the border. He traded his hombres to the FBI, set them up for some kind of RICO charge. His get-out-of-jail-free. They transferred him to Bellevue on some bullshit pretext. Psych evaluation, blood tests, anything. Quickest way to get him out of the prison population. Snitches get stitches, right? Couldn’t let some Aryan Brother shank his ass then get paraded round the yard on shoulders like a righteous hero. The feds needed a temporary safe house, somewhere to park Wade while they formalised the whole thing with the DA and got him into the witness programme. The Marshals Service arranged the removal of distinguishing tattoos. Bet they were setting him up with a fresh ID, a car, an apartment. A new town, a whole new life.’

‘Jeez.’

‘They offered me the same deal,’ said Lupe. She reflexively touched the tattoo tears etched on her cheek. ‘Sat me in an interview room white as heaven. Laid out the whole thing. I could have walked. Picked a new name. Said they would burn me clean with lasers and let me start over somewhere new. They pushed an amnesty document across the table. It was from the DA’s office. Big stamp, big signature. I tore it in strips and ate it.’

‘Can’t say I ever understood that code-of-silence stuff.’

‘The first time they put me in a cell with Wade, I spat in his face. He could never look me in the eye, even when he had his sight.’

‘He saved your life, though.’

‘Maybe he was trying to redeem himself. Cancel the shame.’

‘You would be dead, if not for him. Leave it at that.’

An unearthly moan echoed from the air handling system. Long, mournful, unutterably sad.

Lupe and Cloke stood and tentatively approached the grille high on the back wall.

‘ Santa Muerte ,’ murmured Lupe. She crossed herself. ‘What the hell was that?’

Galloway crouched in the crumbling brick conduit. He hunched to stop the crown of his head raking mortar.

A faint glimmer of light. If he retraced his steps, if he followed a bend in the pipe, he would find himself back in the plant room.

He pulled bandages from his stump. The wound bristled with spines. Needle-barbs protruding from muscle and bone marrow. Veins and arteries horribly distended.