Robin Jarvis - Fighting Pax

Inside the vault, in the room adjacent to the lab, the wand of Malinda began to glimmer once more.

The doctor shook herself and her training regained control. She would record everything: tissue samples, blood, musculature, skeleton. This was a totally new species. A series of photographs would have to be taken before any examination could take place, however, and there simply wasn’t time for that at the moment.

Lifting the box and shying away from the pungent odour rising from the Doggy-Long-Legs within, she carried it to the fridge and deposited it inside. She would attend to this monster later. But first she had other experiments to conduct.

Pulling the mask under her chin, she went to the door and spoke to the guards outside.

“Bring one of the Western children,” she commanded, “immediately!”

The guards bowed smartly and hurried up the corridor.

Doctor Choe returned to the metal trays and began selecting the knives she would need, a razor to shave the child’s head – and a surgical saw.

GERALD HAD HASTENED out on to the terrace to find Martin. The thick fog had lifted a little and the bluish-grey blur of distant peaks could be glimpsed through the shifting vapour. Martin wasn’t wearing a coat. He’d been too wrapped up in his angry thoughts to feel the cold, but now it was beginning to bite. The dense mist drank up the noises of the base, distant voices sounded small and lonely and a truck departing down the rough mountain road was remote and strange. He was astonished to hear a helicopter landing on one of the pads. Even that sounded weirdly unreal and he found himself thinking it was a cretinous risk to fly in this sort of weather.

Gerald hurried past the female guard who was watching at the entrance and took his friend by the arm.

“We have to get out of here,” he told him urgently.

Martin looked at him in astonishment. “What’s happened now?” he asked.

“I know what that doctor is planning. She’s been impatient to do it since we arrived, the sadistic maniac.”

“Slow down. What are you on about?”

“Her argument with the Chief of the General Staff earlier: I understand what got her so irate. She’s done all the tests she can on us and found nothing.”

“So? We knew she wouldn’t find anything.”

“Exactly! Now she wants to take it further. She wants to have a go at some post-mortems. She wants to cut us up, to prove there’s a medical reason for the book not working on us. That’s what the restriction was: they wouldn’t let her.”

Martin almost laughed. “You’re imagining it. Look, it’s been a really bad day; we’re both strung out.”

“Martin! I’m serious. Don’t let your pig-headedness lead you into making another fatal mistake. Look what happened the last time. If you’d have believed Paul when he came to you, right at the beginning… well, that’s in the past, no use dredging it up again. What’s vital right now is we need to get out and quick, before that doctor gets all Sweeney Todd on us with her snickersnee. How long do you think the restriction is going to last after what happened to the Shark today? Those Generals have finally witnessed what that book can do, at close range, and they won’t want to be next. If they can turn on their own, like they did with that poor aide, they’re not going to give us a second’s thought.”

The other man began to listen. Gerald wasn’t one to panic unnecessarily. Throughout all of this he had been the solid foundation that Martin depended on, the one who had stopped him giving in to black despair, time and again, and kept him fighting. If Gerald Benning suspected something then, for him, that was as good as proof. He didn’t question his assessment of their situation again.

“OK…” Martin said. “But you’re forgetting two important things. There’s no way out of here. Even if there was, there’s nowhere to run to.”

“We’ll worry about that second little detail later,” the old man told him, brushing it aside as if it didn’t matter. “Our first priority is escape. I suggest we get the kids out here on the terrace and scramble down the mountain. It’s not as ludicrous as it sounds; it isn’t quite as steep over at the far end there. We might be able to make it to the valley and the shelter of the trees. It’s a bit too like The Inn of the Sixth Happiness for my liking, but there’s no other option.”

Martin spluttered. “What? I thought you meant steal a truck and smash our way out the main entrance. We’ll break our necks climbing down there; not only that, but there’s guards with machine guns stationed all round.”

“And in this fog they couldn’t see the cast of Show Boat promenading underneath their sentry posts. But it’s starting to thin so we don’t have much time.”

“Wait, you mean right now, this minute?”

“Absolutely. These military types aren’t going to mess about any longer. They’ll be more desperate to find this mythical vaccine than ever – and Lee was right: the power of the book has arrived. This place is done for. We’ve seen it time and again everywhere we’ve been. You know how fast it takes over.”

“But how? I mean… what about the guards here in the medical centre? We can’t get past them. They’re not going to let us bring the kids outside en masse. They’ll know we’re up to something.”

Gerald’s jaw tightened. “We could if we were armed, Martin,” he said bluntly. “They won’t be expecting that; we’d take them by surprise.”

“What? Guns! Are you… how are we going to get hold of them?”

“Quite easily. I’ve been thinking it might come to something like this for a long while. I know just where we can lay our hands on four rifles. We’re going to need weapons once we leave here anyway; there’s no knowing what we’ll encounter out there.”

“God, Gerald,” Martin breathed. “You’d have to be prepared to use them. Actually shoot someone.”

“I know. But the alternative is too horrendous to think about. In difficult times there are no easy choices. It’s them or the children, Martin.”

“They’re not kids any more, not after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve seen. But yes… you’re right. So where are these rifles? Have you got them stashed away someplace? You’re amazing.”

The old man gave him a grim smile. “No,” he replied. “Four very generous guards are going to give them to us.”

“Sorry?”

“Our young friend Lee’s entourage. We’re going to snaffle their rifles.”

Martin finally understood. “No,” he said firmly. “That’s madness! He’ll never agree for one thing and, even if he did, we can’t trust him. You know what he’s going to do when he gets there!”

“We need those rifles, Martin. This is the only way. Lee is going to have to perform that special hoodoo he does and go into the world of that evil book, taking the souls, or whatever you want to call it, of his guards with him. What’s left behind of them here will fall down in a faint and all we have to do is relieve them of their weapons. It’s so simple, it’s frightening.”

“No, what’s frightening is what Lee intends to do once he gets there.”

“Let’s deal with one crisis at a time, shall we? What Lee does, or doesn’t do, will be up to him. I don’t believe he’s the vile scum you think he is.”