Matthew Reilly - Area 7

Are you out there? This is Scarecrow. I'm back inside. Can

you hear me?"

IN A DARK PLACE SOMEWHERE INSIDE AREA 7, LIBBY GANT

stirred, a voice invading her dreams.

"--you hear me?"

She'd been unconscious for nearly an hour now, and

she didn't have a clue where she was or what had happened

to her.

Her last memory was of being inside the control room

upstairs and seeing something important and then suddenly ... nothing.

As she blinked awake, she saw that she was still wearing

her bright-yellow biohazard suit, except for the helmet.

It had been removed.

It was only then that she became aware of a pain in her

shoulders. Gant opened her eyes fully--

--and an ice-cold chill rippled down her spine.

Her entire upper body was bound to a pair of steel girders

434

Matthew Reilly

that had been arranged in the shape of an X. Her wrists

were held high above her head--crucifix-style--affixed to

the arms of the cross with duct tape, while more thick tape

held her throat tightly up against the junction of the X. Her

legs--duct-taped at the ankles--were laid out flat in front

of her.

Gant began to breathe very very fast.

What the hell was this?

She was someone's prisoner.

AS SHE HUNG HELPLESSLY FROM THE CROSS, EYES WIDE AND

terrified, she slowly began to regain her senses. She took in

the area around her.

The first thing she noticed about this place was that

there was no electric lighting. Three small fires illuminated

the immediate area.

It was in this grim firelight that she saw Hagerty.

Colonel Hot Rod Hagerty sat immediately to her right,

similarly "crucified"--his legs stretched out on the floor in

front of him, his arms outstretched on his own cross. His

eyes were shut, his head bent. Every few seconds he

groaned.

Gant looked at the room around them.

She was sitting underneath an overhang of some sort, in

dark shadow; a stagelike structure stood out in the open

space in front of her. Some children's toys lay scattered

about the stage, amid shards of glass.

It looked as if--once--a glass cube of some sort had

encased the stage, but now only half of that cube remained

standing.

Gant realized where she was.

She was in the area that had contained Kevin's sterilized

living area. Right now, she must be sitting directly underneath

the observation lab that had overlooked the cube, beneath

the overhang it created.

And then Gant saw the third crucified figure in the

room, and she gasped in revulsion.

It was the Air Force colonel, Jerome Harper.

area 7 435

Or what was left of him.

He lay to Gant's left, also under the overhang, his arms

taped to a cross high above his head, his head leaning as far

forward as the duct tape around his throat would allow.

But it was his lower body that seized Gant's shocked

attention.

Harper's legs were missing.

No, not just missing.

Hacked off.

Everything from the Air Force colonel's waist down had

been brutally carved away--like a carcass in an abattoir--leaving a gigantic slab of raw hacked flesh around his hips.

Indeed, Harper's whole waist region was just a foul bloody

mess that ended at the curved bony hook of his spinal column.

It was the most disgusting thing Gant had ever seen in

her life.

Her eyes swept the room, as the full extent of her

predicament became clear.

She was the prisoner of a monster. An individual who,

until today, had been a guest here at Area 7.

Lucifer Leary.

The Surgeon of Phoenix.

The serial killer who had terrorized hitchhikers on the Vegas-to-Phoenix interstate--the former medical student

who would kidnap his victims, take them home, and then eat their limbs in front of them.

Gant looked about herself in horror.

Leary--a big man, she recalled, at least six-eight, with a hideous facial tattoo--was nowhere to be seen.

Except for Hagerty and herself, the whole observation

area was completely and utterly empty.

Which, in a strange way, was even more frightening.

SCHOFIELD MADE FOR THE STAIRWELL AT THE EASTERN END OF

Level 6.

He had to get to the control room overlooking the main

hangar--to enter the termination codes before 11:05; or if

he couldn't do that, to capture Caesar and get him out of

Area 7 before the nuke went off at 11:15.

He threw open the stairwell doorway--

--and was instantly confronted by an enormous black

bear, caught in the beam of his small flashlight, rearing up

on its hind legs, baring its massive claws and bellowing

loudly at him!

Schofield dived off the edge of the X-rail platform as

the family of bears ambled out of the stairwell--papa bear,

mama bear and three little baby bears, all in a row.

Nicholas Tate had been right.

There were bears on the loose.

Papa bear seemed to sniff the air for a moment. Then he

headed westward, toward the other end of the underground

railway station, followed by his brood.

As soon as they were a safe distance away, Schofield

dashed into the open stairwell.

dave fairfax was tapping feverishly at the keyboard of

his supercomputer.

After five minutes' work, the computer had found a

source number that represented Area 7's self-destruct release

code.

Not bad progress, really. There was only one problem.

Area 7 437

The number had 640 million digits.

He kept typing.

10:52.

Schofield bounded up the stairwell, in near pitch

darkness, his flashlight beam wobbling.

As he ran, he tried to get Gant on the airwaves. "Fox,

this is Scarecrow. Can you hear me?" he whispered. "I repeat,

Fox, this is Scarecrow ..."

No reply.

He ran past the firedoor to Level 5--the door with the

thin jets of water shooting out from its edges--then came to

Level 4, the lab level, hurried past its open door, heading

upward.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LEVEL 4, GANT HEARD THE VOICE again. It sounded tinny and distant.

"--repeat, Fox, this is Scarecrow--"

Scarecrow ...

The voice was coming from Gant's earpiece, which

now hung loosely from her ear. It must have been dislodged

when her captor had knocked her unconscious.

Gant looked up at her left wrist, duct-taped to the cross

high above her head.

She still had her Secret Service wrist mike attached to

it. But there was no way she could bring it to her mouth, and

the mike only worked when you spoke into it at close range.

So she started tapping her finger on the top of the microphone.

schofield came to the floor door that opened onto

Level 2 and suddenly stopped.

He'd heard a strange tapping in his earpiece.

Tap-tap-taap. Tap-taap-tap. ...

Long and short taps.

Morse code.

Morse code that read, "F-O-X. F-O-X ..."

438 Matthew Reilly

"Fox, is that you? One tap for no, two taps for yes."

Tap-tap.

"Are you okay?"

Tap.

"Where are you? Tap out the floor number."

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

10:53.

Schofield burst through the Level 4 firedoor, scanning

the decompression area down the barrel of his gun.

It was dark.

Very dark.

This end of the floor was completely deserted--the decompression

chamber was empty, as were the test chambers

opposite it, and the catwalks above. The sliding horizontal

doorway in the floor--the one that led down to the Level 5

cell bay--however, was still open.

The water level down on Level 5 had risen considerably