Douglas Preston - Reliquary

Kneeling, she opened the jars and upended them, making a small mountain of white pills on the tiled floor. “What’s the concentration, Greg?” she found herself saying out loud. No way of knowing: I’ll have to guess high. Using the bottom of one of the jars, she smashed the pills to powder, then scooped several handfuls into each of the liter bottles. She topped off the bottles with water, shook them vigorously, checked the suspension: a little coarse, perhaps, but there was no time for anything better. It would soon dissolve.

She stood up and grabbed her carryall, scattering the empty bottles noisily down the corridor.

“Who’s there?” came a voice. Too late, she realized she’d forgotten about the guard on duty outside. Quickly, she stuffed the bottles into her carryall and slung it over her shoulder as she headed for the exit.

“Sorry,” she said. “Daydreaming.” She hoped she sounded sincere.

The guard frowned, putting his magazine aside. He began to stand up.

“Which way did Agent Pendergast go again?” she said hurriedly. “He mentioned something about C section.”

Mentioning Pendergast’s name had the desired effect; the guard sat back down in his chair. “Take Elevator Bank Four up two flights and make a left,” he said.

Margo thanked him and hurried to the wall of elevators at the end of the corridor. She checked her watch as the doors closed, then cursed: no time. Savagely, she punched the button for the lobby. As the door opened, she gathered herself for a sprint. Then, noticing the numerous guards, she settled for walking quickly across the lobby, turning in her visitor’s pass, and stepping out into the humid Manhattan night.

Outside, she sprinted toward the curb and the nearest taxi. “Fifty-ninth and Lex,” she said, jumping in and slamming the door behind her.

“Okay, but it ain’t gonna be a fast ride,” the cabbie said. “There’s some kind of march or riot or something going on near the Park; traffic’s snarled up tighter than the hairs in a dog’s asshole.”

“Then do something about it,” Margo said, tossing a twenty into the front seat.

The driver raced east, then swung north on First Avenue, dodging traffic at a breakneck pace. They made it as far as 47th Street before lurching to a stop. Ahead, Margo could see a veritable parking lot of cars and trucks, engines idling and horns blaring, six parallel lines of brake lights stretching unbroken down the dark thoroughfare. In an instant, she grabbed her carryall and tumbled out the door, sprinting northward through the pedestrian traffic.

Seven minutes later she reached the Bloomingdale’s subway entrance. She took the steps downward two at a time, dodging the late-evening revelers as best she could. Her shoulder ached from the weight of the carryall. Over the noise of the engines and the frantic horns, she thought she could hear a strange, muffled roaring in the distance, like ten thousand people all yelling at once. Then she was underground and all sound was blotted out except the squealing of the trains. Fishing in her pocket for a token, she went through the turnstile and raced down the steps to the express track. A small crowd was already there, huddled near the lighted staircase.

“You see those guys?” a young woman with a Columbia T-shirt was saying. “What the heck was that thing on his back?”

“Probably rat poison,” said her companion. “They grow ’em big down here, you know. Just last night, at the West Fourth Street Station, I saw one that must have been the size of a full grown—”

“Where’d they go?” Margo interrupted breathlessly.

“They just jumped on to the express tracks and ran uptown—”

Margo dashed to the north end of the platform. Ahead, she could see the subway tracks stretching into the darkness ahead. Small, stagnant pools lay between the rails, shimmering a faint green in the lights of the infrequent switches. She looked back down the track quickly to ensure no train was approaching, then took a deep breath and jumped down onto the track.

“There goes another!” she heard someone shout behind her. Hoisting the carryall to a more comfortable position, she began to run, trying hard not to stumble on the gravel bed or the uneven surface of the railroad ties. She squinted ahead into the distance, trying vainly to make out shapes or silhouettes. She opened her mouth to shout Pendergast’s name, then abruptly closed it again: it was farther up this very line, after all, that the subway massacre had occurred not so long before.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, she felt a puff of wind raise the hair at the back of her neck. She turned, and her heart sank: behind, in the darkness, she could see the circular red symbol of the number four express, distant but unmistakable.

She ran faster, gasping the dense and humid air into her lungs. The train would only stop a moment to load and unload passengers, then it would be off again, gaining speed as it raced toward her. Frantically, she looked around, searching for a workmen’s cutout or some other place she could take shelter. But the tunnel stretched smooth and dark into the distance.

Behind her now she could hear the chimes of the closing doors, the hiss of air brakes, the whirring of the diesels as the train gathered speed. Wildly, she turned toward the only shelter available: the narrow gap between the northbound and southbound lanes. Stepping gingerly over the third rail, she cowered between rusting girders, trying to make herself thinner than the track switch that stood beside her like a dark sentinel.

The train neared, its whistle shrieking a deafening warning. Margo felt herself blown backward by the concussive blast of its passing, and stretched out her arms, grasping desperately at the girders to keep from sprawling onto the southbound tracks. The cars passed in a flash of bright windows, like a reel of cinema film trailing horizontally in front of her, and then it was receding northward, rocking slightly to the left and right, spitting a shower of sparks.

Coughing from the mushrooming clouds of dust, her ears ringing, Margo stepped back onto the tracks and looked quickly in both directions. Ahead, in the red glow of the receding train, she could make out three figures, emerging from a distant break in the tunnel wall.

“Pendergast!” she shouted. “Agent Pendergast, wait!”

The figures stopped, then turned to face her. As she sprinted forward, she could now make out the narrow features of the FBI agent, staring motionlessly in her direction.

“Dr. Green?” came the familiar drawl.

“Jesus Christ, Margo!” the voice of D’Agosta snapped angrily. “What the hell are you doing here? Pendergast told you—”

“Shut up and listen!” Margo hissed, coming to a stop before them. “I figured out what Kawakita was doing with the vitamin D he was synthesizing in his lab. It had nothing to do with the plant, or glaze, or anything. He was making a weapon .”

Even in the dark, she could make out the disbelief on D’Agosta’s features. Mephisto stood behind him, silent and watching, like a dark apparition.

“It’s true,” she panted. “We know the Wrinklers hate light. Correct? But it’s more than hatred. They fear it. Light is deadly to them.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Pendergast said. “It’s not the light itself, actually. It’s what the light creates. Sunlight falling on skin activates vitamin D. Right? If this were poisonous to the creatures, direct light would cause them great pain, even death. That’s why some of my inoculated cultures died. They were left under the lamp overnight. And that might even explain how the Wrinklers got their name. Skin lacking in vitamin D tends to have a wrinkled, leathery appearance. And vitamin D deficiency causes osteomalacia, softening of the bones. Remember how Dr. Brambell said Kawakita’s skeleton looked almost as if it had suffered a nightmarish case of scurvy? Well, it had.”