Adam Baker - Terminus

Infinitesimally small letters. A component stamp: LM741.

He checked the list.

‘Hey. Hey, I found something.’

Sicknote leaned over Ekks and shook his arm.

‘Doc. Wake up. I found one of the things on your list.’

No response.

‘Come on. What are we making? What are we trying to build?’

Sicknote was suddenly spooked by the man’s pale, gaunt pallor.

‘Doc? Hey doc, you okay?’

He checked for breath. A faint whisper of warmth from parted lips.

‘Don’t worry, doc. I’ll get what you need.’

Sicknote got to his feet. He shrugged off his coat and carefully laid it on the floor covering the scattered radio components.

‘Hey. Donahue.’

She blinked awake and glanced up.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’ She rubbed tired eyes. She stretched.

Sicknote pulled a burning chair leg from the fire.

‘I’m going to step into the hall. Take a piss.’

‘You shouldn’t go out there alone.’

‘Hell with it. If Galloway shows up I’ll torch his ass.’

‘Even so.’

‘I’ll be okay. I get the feeling I’m last on his kill list. Your head will make a better trophy than my sorry hide. I’m barely worth the effort.’

Fierce cold. The walls and vault-spans of the ticket hall sparkled with frost.

Sicknote kicked through ice-furred debris. His breath steamed the air.

Murmur of voices from the street level stairwell. Lupe and Tombes talking near the entrance gate. He couldn’t make out words.

He held up the burning chair leg. Flames cast dancing shadows. He glanced around. He couldn’t escape the skin-crawling sensation of being watched.

He crouched beside Cloke’s equipment trunk. He brushed ice from the latches and lifted the lid.

Radiological gear packed in a foam bed. A couple of spare Geiger handsets. He picked up a handset. He couldn’t release the battery compartment, so slammed the unit on the lip of the box, cracked the plastic shell like an egg and extracted a 9v power cell.

Sudden, giddy head rush. That old, dread feeling. Reality melting away.

He gripped the edge of the box.

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘Not again.’

He bit the heel of his palm, ground teeth into flesh, hoped pain would pierce onrushing dementia and anchor him in the present.

‘Please, not again.’

He climbed to his feet. He screwed his eyes tight shut.

‘I am Michael Means. I am Michael Means.’

He opened his eyes.

Pristine tiles. Dead ceiling lights restored and blazing bright. Fenwick Street at rush hour. ‘Silent Night’ over the tannoy. Bustle and distant street noise.

Guys in flannel suits shook snow from their umbrellas and queued to drop a nickel fare into the turnstile. Khaki uniforms among the crowd. Duffel bags and bedrolls. GIs headed for embarkation at a liner terminal. Minutes away from a gangplank and a troopship to Europe.

Newsstand, shoeshine, soda fountain. A civil defence fire point: sand buckets and a shovel.

A station announcement echoed from the platform stairwell:

‘Please stand away from the platform edge, especially when trains are entering and leaving the station.’

‘This isn’t real,’ muttered Sicknote.

He tried to seize a guy in a business suit, grip his collar, his silk necktie, but his hands passed clean through the apparition.

‘You’re not real,’ he shouted. ‘None of this is real.’

He stood at the centre of the hall, hands on head. A teeming crowd of ghosts passed through him.

‘Get out. All of you. Please. Just get out of my head.’

Lupe found Sicknote crouched by a wall. She knelt and snapped fingers in front of his face.

‘Poor bastard. Phased out again.’

‘You should have let him take that walk,’ said Tombes. ‘He wanted to die. There was no reason to interfere.’

‘Help me get him back in the plant room. He’ll freeze to death out here.’

They each took an arm and pulled him to his feet.

They sat Sicknote on the floor next to Ekks. They draped a coat around his shoulders.

‘What’s this shit?’ asked Lupe. She crouched and picked through jumbled radio components. Capacitors, resistors and scraps of circuit board.

‘Sicknote put it together,’ said Donahue. ‘He’s been sitting there, talking to himself, messing with wires.’

‘What does it do?’

‘Nothing.’

Lupe threw the clump of components aside.

‘How’s Ekks?’

Tombes knelt and checked for dilation.

‘Comatose. Dying, slow but sure.’

‘How long can he last?’

‘I doubt he will wake.’

‘We better start monitoring radio traffic,’ said Lupe. ‘See if we can make contact with the chopper, once it gets within range.’

Donahue sat against the wall, ignoring the conversation, staring at a sheet of paper.

‘Something on your mind?’ asked Lupe.

‘Look at this,’ said Donahue. She held out the paper. Lupe took it from her hand.

Orders stamped USAMRIID – CLASSIFIED.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘Cloke’s gear trunk.’

Lupe scanned the text.

‘“ You are ordered to locate and rescue Doctor Conrad Ekks of the Bellevue Neurosurgical Department. You are also required to locate and secure any materials, whether in written or digital form, relating to his research. You are further required to locate and retrieve the Vektor artefact.”’

‘What does that mean? That last bit? Vektor?’

‘No idea,’ said Donahue. ‘The guy talked about Ekks so much I’m sick of his name. He never once mentioned any kind of artefact.’

Lupe continued to scan the note.

‘“ The artefact is essential to the continuance of the programme.” The programme?’

Donahue took a sheaf of notes from the data bag.

‘Some of the folks on that train wrote a suicide note before they blew their brains out. An account of their last days below ground. Listen to this: ‘“ … the Centre for Disease Control supplied our team with a sample of the virus in its purest form. It arrived under military escort. A white biocontainment box with a half-skull symbol on the lid…” Maybe that’s what Cloke was looking for.’

‘I saw a box,’ said Tombes. ‘We were in the tunnel. Me and Cloke. We found a pile of burned bodies. He poked around in the ashes. There was a box with a skull on the lid.’

‘What did Cloke say about it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Doesn’t matter much at this point,’ said Donahue.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Tombes. ‘This whole situation. Doesn’t smell right.’

‘Still think you can rely on these guys to save your ass?’ said Lupe.

Deep rumble, rising to a steady thunder roll. The room shook.

‘Shit.’

They looked up. Gunshot cracks. Trickle of stone dust. The Federal Building foundations beginning to shift and fracture.

‘Christ. Cover your heads.’

The walls continued to tremble. The bucket fire spat embers. Water pipes groaned and sang. The ceiling bulb swung like a pendulum.

‘Fuck,’ said Tombes. ‘The whole lot is going to come down.’

The tremor diminished to silence. They stared at the ceiling for a full minute, braced for a bone-crushing cascade of rubble.

‘Is everyone okay?’ asked Donahue. ‘Anyone hurt?’

‘We’re cool.’

She opened the door and shone her flashlight into the hall. A cloud of stone dust washed down the street level steps.

‘Building collapse. Must have been close. Real close.’

‘Has it blocked the entrance stairway?’ asked Lupe. ‘Can we still reach the alley?’

‘I think we’re okay. For now.’

Lupe joined her at the doorway. She inspected the ticket hall ceiling. Her flashlight beam traced the deep fissure in the tiled roof.