Fast (71 page)

            It took them a minute to loop everything together. Strapped under Alex, King nodded that he understood what was happening. He wore an air mask and a weight belt to keep his body from interfering with Alex’s fins.

            Fully dressed in her own dive gear, Vanessa set the diving platform to a slow descent and then bent to attach herself likewise to Forest.

            In seconds, all four disappeared under the water.

#

Coleman followed Vanessa’s fins underwater.

            It proved hard work dragging King, but her plan worked. The two incapacitated Marines hung suspended below the divers.

            After a minute’s swimming, Coleman checked his dive gauge. He and King had seven minutes of air remaining in the tanks from the equipment’s last use. The gauge also indicated they swam due west.

            When Coleman looked forwards again, Vanessa was ascending. Coleman followed and broke the surface beside her.

            But the surface of what?

            Coleman lifted up his mask just as Vanessa raised a flashlight from the water.

            A cave. We’re in an underwater cave.

            ‘Roll onto your back,’ she instructed. There’s a beach further in. We can pull them up where the water gets shallow.’

            They quickly found the shallow water and dragged King and Forest onto the beach. The beach made a sandy half-moon crescent on the cave floor.

            ‘This is the closest underwater cave to the pool room,’ she said, breathlessly dragging Forest. ‘I think they’ll be safe here.’

            ‘Okay,’ said Coleman, checking King was stable. ‘You’re going to stay here and look after these two. I’m going to stop the creatures reaching the Quarantine Center.’

            ‘Wait,’ said Vanessa. ‘Before everything got crazy in the pool room, I think I discovered how to stop the creatures.’

            Coleman spun on his knees in the sand. ‘How?’

            ‘Sex. The answer is sex.’ Vanessa raised her hand to cut Coleman off. ‘Just listen. Remember when I explained about linked traits in a genetic pattern? Well, sexual traits are profoundly ingrained in genetic patterns. They override all conflicting traits. Gould couldn’t untangle the need to reproduce from the creatures’ genetic patterns.’

            ‘How does this help us?’

            ‘The creatures are sessile in the reproductive phase. They don’t move when they are trying to reproduce. And their reproductive phase is triggered by an airborne pheromone. If we can release the pheromone, it will be like hitting the creatures’ off switch.’

            ‘Can you synthesize the pheromone?’

            She nodded. ‘In the entomology lab near the rec reserve. I can make as much as we need.’

            Vanessa’s tablet started beeping. She tilted the device on her hip to read the screen. ‘I synchronized the countdown to my tablet. We’ve now got less than fifteen minutes before the containment door to the Quarantine Center opens and lets the creatures in. I’m not sure how I can distribute the pheromone in time once I synthesize it.’

            ‘You’ll think of something,’ came King’s deep voice from behind her. ‘Get going. Save your boy. We’ll be okay.’

            Coleman nodded and moved quickly with Vanessa back towards the water. He hated leaving Forest and King alone in the submerged cave, but they had no choice.

            In seconds they were underwater and swimming again.

#

In the Quarantine Center’s antechamber, Corporal Harrison listened to Sullivan’s report about the containment door.

            Sullivan had led the engineering team trying to lock the heavy containment door from inside the tunnel.

            ‘It can’t be done,’ reported Sullivan reluctantly. ‘There’s no way to jam or sabotage the machinery from inside the tunnel. Maybe if we had more tools and a lot more time, but otherwise….’

            ‘What about welding or bracing it shut at the bottom?’ suggested Harrison. He suspected the engineering team had already considered and dismissed this possibility. For someone untrained in structural engineering, it seemed the logical answer, but the engineering team would have been able to assess the idea for flaws in a heartbeat. They were probably already three or four ideas ahead of Harrison’s thinking.

            Sullivan shook his head and glanced down the tunnel again. ‘We used everything we had to reinforce the top-deck.’

           
That’s my fault too.
Harrison had taken a gamble that they wouldn’t sustain an attack from the direction of the containment door, so had ordered that all their resources be concentrated on sealing the top-deck. His rational was that
If they haven’t broken through the containment door yet, it’s unlikely that they can break through at all.
In truth, Harrison had prayed that any moment a message from Captain Coleman would announce arriving reinforcements and an immediate evac of the wounded.

            Sullivan must have seen Harrison’s thoughts written across his face. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t have known anyone would open the containment door with the creatures out there.’

            Harrison looked towards Dana, hoping for new information.

            ‘Nothing,’ she reported from the workstation, reading his expression. ‘No signals from anywhere in the Complex.’

            Sullivan kept glancing down the tunnel. He held his rifle as though expecting any moment for the creatures to come swarming into sight. ‘You should hear them out there. I mean…they sound like, Christ, I don’t know. They want to get in here real bad.’

            ‘I can hear them from here,’ confirmed Harrison. ‘They’re building up out there. More and more every minute.’

           
They’re going to get in here. That’s a given. So how can we minimize casualties?
Harrison’s mind clicked straight over to damage-control mode. The open-plan design of the Quarantine Center was strategically a defensive nightmare. When the containment door opened, heavy casualties would result in a matter of minutes. His first thoughts were for the children. Alex Coleman might be dead, but Harrison would do his best to keep his son alive.

            ‘Which is the most secure room in this Center?’ he asked.

            Dana thought for a moment. ‘The strongest door in here would have to be to the infirmary store room.’

            Sullivan agreed. ‘It’s at the back of the infirmary. But there’s no way even a fraction of us could fit in there.’

            ‘I’m thinking about the children,’ said Harrison. ‘What if we covered the store room’s floor with mattresses from the bunks to dampen vibrations, and then sealed the children in there.’

            Dana added, ‘We could put one of the school teachers in there with them. Someone all the children know.’

            ‘If all the children can fit inside it might buy them some extra time,’ guessed Sullivan. ‘It might be enough.’

            Harrison felt sick at the thought of the creatures reaching the children. Physically nauseated.

            ‘They’ll all fit in there,’ confirmed Dana.

            ‘I’ll get them started,’ said Sullivan, lifting his walkie-talkie to give the instructions. Sullivan stopped as he sensed something different in the room. ‘Wait, do you feel that?’

            Harrison felt it. The stuffiness of the antechamber was dissipating. A cool air draft touched the back of his neck. They hadn’t had fresh air in the Center since receiving instructions from Coleman to shut down every vibration-causing piece of equipment. That included the mechanical ventilation plant.

            ‘That’s the air-conditioning plant coming online,’ realized Harrison. He looked at Dana for an update on the countdown.

            Dana swallowed hard and spoke with empty syllables. ‘We’ve got four minutes until the containment door opens and lets the creatures in here.’

#

Gould caught sight of Cairns climbing the stairwell above him.

            Cairns had the templates. Gould had the pistol.

            The math seems easy enough.

            Cairns pushed through the stairwell door to the antechamber where he’d used explosives to breach the research labs.

            Why come back here? This is where we tried to steal the templates from in the first place. What the hell’s he doing? Does he realize I’m following him?

            Suspicious of a trap, Gould gripped the pistol in two hands and side-stepped through the ajar fire door. Cairns strode away from the door, unaware of Gould’s presence. The fire door squeaked slightly when Gould’s shoulder brushed past it.

            Cairns stopped.

            Gould kept the pistol aimed squarely at Cairns. Cairns turned slowly on the spot, his expression openly bored.

            ‘Surprised to see me, Cairns?’

            ‘Not particularly. You’re like a rash that keeps coming back. Just when you think it’s gone, it pops up somewhere else.’

            ‘Give me the templates.’

            Cairns looked down at the templates in his right hand. He leveled a deadly stare back up at Gould. ‘Ask me nicely.’

            Gould raised his eyebrow. ‘Ask you nicely?
Nicely
? How about I blow your head off and just take them?’

            Cairns shook his head. ‘You won’t. You want to tell me something. You’ve been itching to do it all day. I’ve seen it trying to eat its way out of your eyes.’

            ‘You shouldn’t have burnt me.’

            ‘You’re right. I should have just killed you, because you’ve been useless to me ever since.’

            Gould realized that he
did
have something to say.
Why else haven’t I shot him already?
‘Okay, Cairns. I hate you. I’ve hated your guts from the first day I met you. You’re an animal, and you don’t deserve those templates. You’re not worthy of them.’

            For the first time, Gould’s comments seemed to have stirred something deep inside Cairns. Cairns growled back, ‘And you are worthy? Worthiness and honor aren’t luxuries that men like you and I are allowed to enjoy. Once you kill an innocent person, those words become arbitrary.’

            Gould suddenly realized something.
I’m going to shoot him. I am actually going to kill this man with this gun.

            In a way, Gould felt like he would be killing everything that he had done wrong. Wiping the slate clean. Strangely, a sense of calmness washed over him as he realized he could do it. He could easily do it. Some part of Gould’s thoughts must have shown through his body language, perhaps his finger on the trigger or the brace of his shoulder, because Cairns suddenly stiffened.

            ‘You know, Dr Gould, I do believe that you actually plan to kill me. I thought you only killed by proxy. It’s not a big step, I suppose. You’ll be an expert in no time.’

            ‘I’ve never killed anyone in my life. That’s your specialty, not mine.’