Deep Down (Sam Stone Book 1) (12 page)

It seemed to take far less time to drive the tram back down the tunnel than it had to drive it away.  Jenny thought that perhaps that was due to the fact that they knew the path ahead of them now, when they hadn’t before, and also that she was really in no hurry to see Stone put his life in danger once again.

  Stone turned off the tram lights when the faint glow of the museum’s track lighting appeared ahead, then slowed the vehicle to a crawl until they were within walking distance.  He stopped the tram and leapt out easily, fit and lithe, and, to Jenny’s extreme relief, seemingly healthy as an ox once again.

“Twenty minutes,” Paul reminded them. “Don’t be late.”

“We won’t be, but if we are, don’t wait for us,” Stone said over his shoulder as he strode down the tunnel toward the lights, his long stride covering ground twice as fast as Jenny’s shorter legs.  She practically had to sprint to keep up.

Stone withdrew Sam’s gun from the left side of his waistband, and then pulled another from the right side.

“Here, take Harry’s gun.  I took it from Stan after I punched him in the face on the way out of the dining cavern earlier.”

Jenny took the offered gun and Stone dug the magazine for the weapon out of his pocket and handed that to her too. 

Then, he wasted no time in launching into instructions, “When we get to the lights, stay behind me.  You’ve got a gun now, but if someone starts shooting, you let me take care of it and be my back up.  Remember what you learned in your handgun classes and don’t panic.”

Behind his back, Jenny resisted rolling her eyes.  She knew he was just trying to protect her, but really!  She was an excellent shot, something she’d proven time and again on the gun range.   Still, she’d never seen “action” as Stone often called it, so she didn’t completely disregard his instructions, knowing that Stone had seen plenty of action during his time as an MP. 

She checked the magazine to make certain that it contained bullets, counting nine remaining, and then quietly slid the magazine into the gun.  She chambered a round and then checked to make sure the safety was off.

As they drew nearer to the lights, her heart began to pound in earnest, and she fervently hoped she’d not have another asthma attack in the middle of a shoot out with Stan or John.

Stone slowed his stride and moved nearer to the tunnel walls as they ventured into the first pool of light cast by the track lighting.  

Jenny had been expecting at least one security guard to be there to look for any returning stragglers, but there was no one.  No one at all.  An eerie chill gripped Jenny, shivering gooseflesh up her arms.  Something didn’t feel right.

“This isn’t right,” Stone whispered, echoing her thoughts.   “There should be
someone
around.  It isn’t a good tactic to leave the approaching tunnel to the lifts unguarded.”

Jenny nodded silently.  As they hugged the tunnel wall, venturing ever closer to the museum, she’d squeezed up next to his side as close as she could get. 

Silence reigned in the dusty air as they quietly moved fully into the light.  As they neared the entrance to the dining cavern, and the small alcove that held the entrances to the restrooms, Jenny had to focus hard upon their objective, because her mind’s eye kept returning to the last few moments that she’d spent in the restrooms, helplessly watching Tammi die.

As they drew abreast of the cavern entrance, Stone stopped momentarily, craning his neck just right so that he could view a thin slice of the cavern at an angle.  He drew back almost immediately.

“Someone’s been very busy here. They’ve set up a bunch of cots and taken down the tables and chairs. At least they’re finally doing something to help these people,” Stone whispered, then jerked his head toward the lift and started out again in that direction.

Minutes crept by as slowly as their stealthy progress, and Jenny felt her nerves stretch tight with stress.   So far, they’d encountered absolutely no one.  Jenny silently prayed that their luck would hold and there would be no one at the lift either.

Ahead, the tunnel funneled into a smaller area where the visitors to the museum were to wait for their turn to board the lift. There was no outlet there.  Once they went into that area, the tunnel that they now crept down would be at their backs, and it would be their only avenue of escape, other than going up to the surface in the lift. 

The gooseflesh upon her arms grew larger and she shivered in dread.  She longed to tell Stone to be careful, but the words froze in her throat for fear that anyone guarding the lift would hear her. 

She looked down at the gun in her hand and double-checked the safety to make sure it was off.  She had the nervous urge to pull back the slide and view the bullet in the chamber again, just to make sure that she hadn’t imagined the first time she’d done it.  Her hands felt clammy with nerves, so she carefully wiped one and then the other on her jean clad thighs to dry them, palming the gun in the opposite hand as she dried each one.

Behind them, an agonized scream erupted from the dining cavern.  The raw sound of pain sent an icy blade of dread skittering down Jenny’s back. She glanced back toward the cavern.  Stone turned too, and in that moment, their adversaries struck.

Two men, dressed in black protective suits, burst out of the blind spot just around the edge of the cavern’s excavated wall and were upon them in the blink of an eye.  Jenny barely had time to notice that each held a stun baton at the ready before she felt a shocking burn upon her neck, then immediately felt her muscles seize up.  Before she blacked out, she heard another sizzle of the baton and then a pained grunt from Stone, followed immediately by the sound of two rapid-fire gunshots.  Her fingers clenched tightly before they relaxed without her permission.  Her gun fell from her slack grip onto the saltcrete.

Her mind struggled to stay conscious, but her body lost the battle and slumped into darkness. The sound of the metal barrel of her gun clattering loudly against the floor was the last thing she heard.

Jenny regained consciousness what seemed to her as only a few minutes later, but in that time she’d been moved to a cot in the dining cavern.  Both of her hands were now bound to the metal tubing of the cot upon which she lay, and a man in a bulky, white quarantine suit was taking a large vial of blood from the vein just under the skin in the crook of her left elbow.

“Hey!” Jenny said.  “I didn’t say you could do that.”

She’d intended to shout at him, but the words had come out softly, mumbled and a little slurred.  Her brain was still recovering from the effects of being stunned.  Her mind, and her tongue, felt like rubber, and she was having a hard time marshaling her thoughts.

The man didn’t stop what he was doing.  He didn’t respond to her at all.  She was tempted to try to yank her arm away from him, but as her thoughts cleared, she thought better of the idea.  She didn’t want to forcibly rip his needle out of her arm, or worse, break it off inside the vein.

Her second lucid thought was of Stone and the sound of the two gunshots she’d heard right before she lost consciousness. 

Oh God, please let him be okay!

She frantically looked around for him and found him stretched out on an identical cot just feet from her own, his hands also bound at his sides, fastened to the metal tubing by thick plastic zip ties. His eyes were on her, and he held her gaze as she glanced at him.  He seemed to be much more lucid that she’d been a moment ago.  The stun baton must not have affected him as much as it had her, probably due to the fact that her body mass was so much smaller than his. 

When she met his gaze, he nodded silently at her, but he didn’t speak.  She raised an eyebrow at him, and his gaze moved to the man at her side, then back to her face.  She understood.  He didn’t want the man to know that he was awake yet, so he wasn’t going to speak.

Jenny gave Stone a slight nod, a barely perceptible movement of her head, so he’d know she understood, then she turned her attention back to the man at her side.

“I said I didn’t say you could take my blood,” Jenny said, this time quite satisfied with the volume of her voice.  “Stop it right now.  I gave a sample earlier, voluntarily, I might add.”

The man looked up from his task at her arm, his gaze meeting hers through the clear plastic of his hood.  “I know, but we need more.  We’ve finished testing the others, and you and your fiancé are the only two who have completely inert bacteria.  All of the others are actively infected.  We need more of your blood in order to try to find the reason that you seem to be immune, so that we might be able to find a cure for anyone else who becomes infected.”

Relief swam through Jenny in a wave.  They were
finally
going to do something to help the other visitors.  Perhaps she had been wrong about the CDC all along.

“How are the others?” Jenny asked, seeing no more reason to object to the man taking her blood.  If they needed her blood to find a cure, then they were welcome to it, but it would have been nice to have had a choice in the matter.

“There have been twenty-eight casualties from the infection so far, with forty-two others in critical condition. I don’t expect them to last more than another hour or two.”

Jenny couldn’t hold back her horrified gasp.

“Twenty-eight people have died since we left?  How can that be?  We weren’t gone more than thirty minutes!”

“Yes, well, the toxins that are produced by this bacteria are like nothing I’ve seen before.  They’re very fast acting and produce a vast array of symptoms. They have mutated rapidly as well, and we’re not sure what is causing the mutation.  It is all very puzzling.”

“Perhaps they’ve mutated because they, and all of the people down here, have been exposed to a chemical agent that was released into the mines?”

The man gave her a disbelieving look.  “While that’s plausible, there is no way to test that theory.”

“It isn’t a theory.  Why do you think we returned?  It wasn’t for our own safety, that’s for sure,” she pointedly stared at one of the zip ties shackling her arm to the cot, as if to emphasize the fact that both she and Stone were now no longer safe.  “We found some sort of canisters, marked with toxic chemical warnings, that had been opened. There were vapors rising from the liquid that was leaking from the canisters.”

The man nodded, then very efficiently disconnected the vial that he’d been collecting her blood in, and deftly removed the needle from her arm. She had to admit, he was very good at what he did, because she hardly felt the needle slide from her flesh.

“You’re the specialist that the CDC was waiting on, aren’t you?” Jenny asked.

The man nodded, frowning at her through his hood. “Yes, my name is Dr. Shean. And, if what you say is true, it could certainly explain the rapid onset of infection and the amazingly fast mutations of the bacteria. However, it still does not explain your immunity.  Or your fiancé’s immunity.”

Jenny shrugged, or she tried to.  With her motion restricted by her bound arms, she wasn’t sure the gesture was very effective. “I honestly don’t know why we alone are immune.  If I did, I would tell you so that you’d be able to help these people.”

The man shook his head, “Oh no, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood.  There’s absolutely no hope of developing a treatment before these people die.  None at all, I’m afraid.  The toxins are working very quickly. I estimate that all of these people will be dead in the next eight hours.  Any treatment developed will be to treat others who may accidentally become infected in the future.”

Dr. Shean didn’t look very upset by his prognosis, but Jenny felt dread settle over her like a cold mantle.  Surely that couldn’t be true?  Over a hundred people, dead in in under ten hours? 

“But, don’t worry my dear, the oxygen will run out before most of them will go through the final agony as the toxins kill them.  Furthermore, Dr. Fasstine has developed a merciful solution. He will be administering a strong sedative to each victim so that none of them will feel any further pain.  They’ll all just fall asleep peacefully.”

Jenny was flabbergasted.  They planned to
kill
everyone down here, instead of finding a cure?  In effect, to euthanize them all, as if they were sick animals to be put down? 

“But, why did you take my blood then?” Jenny asked, aghast.

“As I said, for a future cure, should one be needed.  In addition to that, your blood is just too much of a mystery.  I can’t possibly let the chance to study it slip through my fingers.”

Jenny found that she could think of nothing more to say to the man.  She was utterly speechless.  How could he be planning to end the life of over eighty people, yet talk about it as if he and Dr. Fasstine would be doing everyone a favor by not allowing them to feel pain in their final moments?  Once sedated, the others wouldn’t have even the chance to try to escape what would soon be their airless tomb.

“Dr. Fasstine will be by your cot momentarily with the sedative for both you and your fiancé.  Until then, do behave yourself.  I’d hate to have to resort to violence in your last few remaining conscious moments.”

Dr. Shean turned and walked away.

Jenny was stunned speechless.  They’d be by
her
cot to administer a sedative too?  She and Stone weren’t even sick!  What they were planning to do was outright murder.

“Like hell
that’s
going to happen,” Stone hissed as soon as the man was far enough away not to hear him.