Adam Baker - Terminus

‘I’ll put a couple of men on the helicopter. They will provide cover fire during extraction. But you must protect Ekks until we can reach you. Everything in your power, yes?’

‘We need a ride out of here asap, Sir. We need immediate evac.’

‘The helicopter is scouting for a new base. It’s out of radio range. We can’t reach the pilot.’

‘I don’t mean to speak out of line, sir, but ten hours from now we’ll probably be dead.’

‘Problems of our own, Donahue. Hundreds of infected bastards massing outside the perimeter.’

‘Don’t forget us, Chief. Don’t leave us stranded.’

‘I’ll come myself. And like I said, I’ll bring a couple of guys with AR-15s. We’ll take care of you.’

‘Copy that.’

‘Good luck, Donahue. You are in our prayers.’

Sicknote stood at the plant room door. He caressed the wood grain. He rested his hand on the panelling and closed his eyes, like he was trying to commune with the creatures milling in the ticket hall.

Tombes crouched by the wall. He watched through half-closed eyes as Sicknote stroked blistered varnish.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Sicknote jumped back.

‘Nothing.’

‘Then get away from the damned door.’

Sicknote shrugged and gave a dreamy smile. He wandered to the back of the room. He sat beside Ekks and drew patterns in the dust with his finger.

Tombes stood and checked the rack pinning the door closed. He shook it. Heavy iron. Solid. Hadn’t moved an inch.

He checked the door. Sturdy. No cracks. Rusted strap hinges holding firm.

Lupe joined him. She yawned and stretched.

‘No sound from our guests outside,’ she said. ‘I guess they’re automatons. Just kind of shut down if they don’t have an obvious target. Go dormant. Soon as they catch a scent, they perk up and snap into action.’

‘They don’t sleep. I know that much.’

‘Best if we keep our voices down. Don’t remind them we are here. Maybe they’ll leave us alone. Get bored and head back to the surface.’

‘You honestly believe that?’ asked Tombes.

‘Grasping at straws. We could encourage them to leave, I guess. Maybe cut power to the ticket hall, put out the lights for a while. Let them stumble around in the dark.’

‘They like the dark.’

‘What’s the deal with you and Sicknote?’ asked Lupe.

‘I don’t like the way he keeps heading for the door. Can’t take his eyes off it. He’s mesmerised. How long has he been off his meds?’

‘A while.’

‘Look in his eyes,’ said Tombes. ‘Batshit. Pure madness. He’s walking around nice enough, but there are bombs going off in his head. He’ll hurt someone, given a chance.’

‘Think he wants to open the door? Let those bastards inside?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Kind of crazy thing he might do. He’s going to die. Might want to take the rest of us with him. Like Galloway.’

‘You want to tie him up?’ asked Lupe. ‘Lash him to a water pipe?’

‘What else can we do with the guy? They won’t let him on the chopper, that’s for sure. If he gets back to Ridgeway, the Chief will give the order. And if his men hesitate to pull the trigger, he’ll do it himself.’

‘He needs a shrink, not a prison cell. Sure as shit deserves to get out of this dungeon.’

‘I saw him on TV. He doesn’t deserve a damned thing.’

Cloke sat cross-legged in the corner of the room. He thumbed through the battered notebook. He flipped pages patched with tape, studied the dense biro scrawl. He rubbed his eyes. He tried to make sense of letters and symbols.

He lay a crumpled sheet of paper across his knee and began to make notes with the stub of a pencil.

Lupe sat cross-legged beside him.

‘So what is it?’ She gestured to the notebook. ‘The letters. What do they mean?’

‘I have no idea. Ekks had this book in his hands when we found him. Gripping it tight. Must be significant. But look at it. Line after line, page after page. What the hell is it? An insanely long equation? Some kind of epic chemical formula? The whole notebook. Letters and little hieroglyphs. Triangles, circles, diamonds. Symbol clusters. Recurring patterns. The slashes seem to indicate word breaks. If I had to make a guess, I would say we are looking at some sort of crude substitution code.’

‘Can you crack it?’

‘I can try. It’s hardly my area of expertise. Shit, I can barely finish a crossword. Haven’t got the mindset. Sudoku give me a nose bleed. But if this is a classic substitution code we should be able to discern some obvious patterns. ‘E’ is the most frequently used letter in the English language. ‘O’ runs pretty close. Single-letter words will be either ‘A’ or ‘I’. Regular groupings might imply sound-clusters like ‘TH’ or ‘ING’. Nail those recurring symbols, and you could start to turn this gibberish back to actual words.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Guess I could take a section of text and work out the placement. But Ekks is a smart guy. I doubt he would create such a simple code, something so easy to decipher. It’ll be more complicated than that. There will be an additional step. Maybe some kind of weird algorithm. A shifting transposition. A key, that only he can provide.’

‘So he’s the only one who knows what this shit means?’

‘If we had a big-ass computer and the right software we could probably crack the code without his help. Get a couple of chess grandmasters on the case. But we don’t have those kind of resources any more. If we can’t figure out the code with pen and paper, his research will die with him.’

‘But why would he do that?’ asked Lupe. ‘Encrypt his notes? What was he afraid of?’

Cloke shrugged.

‘Maybe he didn’t want to be abandoned down here in the tunnels. He wanted to be indispensable. He made sure the documentation was unreadable without his help. A way of ensuring his ass got flown out of here in one piece.’

‘The man is a fraud. Hundred bucks says there is no code. Those letters? Those symbols? A sick joke. Page after page of bullshit.’

‘We can’t be sure.’

‘That book is pure voodoo. A prop. An illusion. Might as well be a book of spells and incantations. He has no secret knowledge. He doesn’t know anything about this virus. Doctor of Lies. Doctor of Nothing. Happily knife the fucker.’

‘The man is an accomplished neurosurgeon. When he turned up at medical conferences he got mobbed like a rock star.’

‘Doesn’t mean a damn thing.’

‘A Saudi prince had a stroke a couple of years back. A young guy. Champion polo player. A maid found him face down on the marble floor of his penthouse bathroom. They summoned Ekks, sent a private jet to ferry him to the Emirates. Ekks declined to leave New York, said he had too many patients in need of care. They offered him millions. The State Department pressured the hospital board. But he still said no. So they loaded that prince on a Gulfstream in Dubai and flew him to Manhattan. They took over an entire floor of Bellevue. Wouldn’t trust anyone else to work on their boy.’

‘Like I said. The guy’s a control freak.’

‘You’ve barely spoken to the man.’

‘I’ve looked into his eyes. One glance. That’s all it took. He knew me, and I knew him. I’m a connoisseur of evil. On the streets, in the yard. I’ve met monsters, and this guy is off the scale. All kinds of horrors crowding his brain. Sure he never acted on his fantasies. Always kept a perfect facade. Smiled and laughed at cocktail parties, turned up at every charity fundraiser with a speech and a big-ass cheque. All round nice guy. But at night, when the lights are out, you can bet demons dance behind his eyes. You think Sicknote is trouble? You think those fucks massing outside the door are a problem? This guy is a hundred times worse.’