Terminus (6 page)

Lupe stretched, slow and defiant. She looked around.

‘Take off your gear,’ said Galloway.

‘Freezing in here.’

‘Take it off.’

Lupe unzipped the heavy rubber suit and stepped out of the overboots.

‘Hold out your hands.’

‘What the fuck, dude?’ protested Lupe.

‘I said hold out your hands.’

Nariko re-cuffed Lupe’s wrists. She looped a chain round a pillar and padlocked Lupe’s ankle.

‘Down,’ said Galloway. He prodded her shoulder with the shotgun barrel. ‘Down on the ground.’

Lupe sat cross-legged on the floor.

‘There’ll be no warning shot, all right? If you mess with me, I’ll waste you.’

The freight platform juddered back into view. Donahue and Tombes. Quick decon drill. They stripped off their suits.

They both wore RESCUE 4 – TUNNEL RATS shirts.

They struck a fresh flare and unloaded the elevator. A pallet of holdalls and equipment trunks. Rescue gear, trauma bags, coils of polypropylene rope. They threw them skidding across the floor.

Lupe sat with her back to the pillar and watched them work.

‘Anyone got a smoke?’

They ignored her.

‘Give me a drink, at least.’

Nariko crouched beside Lupe. She held bottled water to her lips. Lupe swigged.

‘So how about it?’ asked Nariko, gesturing to the cavernous shadows of the ticket hall. ‘Where is he? Where’s Doctor Ekks?’

Radio crackle. Cloke’s voice:

‘Anything?’

A light-dome on the ceiling flickered and glowed weak orange. A cluster of sodium bulbs behind an opaque bowl of leaded glass.

‘Yeah,’ said Nariko. ‘We’ve got light.’

She looked around the ticket hall. Palatial dereliction. Cracked tiles. Scuffed dirt. Broken glass. Arch spans draped with a delicate lacework of dust and webs. Ghosts of the jazz age. Plutocrats at the height of their reign. Astors, Morgans, Vanderbilts.

The superintendent’s office.

Nariko shook open a five borough street map and smoothed it over the table.

She blew to warm her hands. Steam breath. She was wearing her Nomex turnout coat, black with hi-viz trim, collar raised against the cold.

‘So where the hell is Ekks?’ asked Nariko. ‘He should be right here. We made brief contact just before the bomb dropped. There wasn’t time to organise an airlift. So we told them to stay below ground, get as deep as they could. Ride out the blast and wait for the rescue party.’

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ agreed Cloke. ‘There’s no way off the island.’

‘How about the Battery Tunnel?’ asked Nariko.

‘Battery. Holland. Almost certainly ruptured and flooded.’

‘The Marina?’

‘Forget it. Anyone with a yacht or sports fisher took off months ago. Packed a couple of suitcases and sailed south, soon as the outbreak began. Must have looked like a big-ass regatta, all those rich fucks heading for the Bahamas.’

‘What are their chances at street level?’ asked Nariko.

‘Nil,’ said Cloke. ‘Ekks and his team weren’t radiologists, but any fool would know time above ground without an NBC suit would be fatal. The streets are dusted with fallout. Strontium, caesium, all kinds of nasty shit. A steady ash-fall, settling on the rubble. If anyone walked north up 5th or Broadway towards the epicentre of the blast, they would be dead in minutes.

Ekks and his boys would know, instinctively, their only shot at survival would be to stay below ground, conserve food and water, and hope Mayday calls summoned a rescue party.

He should be right here. He’s got nowhere else to go.’

Lupe sat chained to the ticket hall pillar.

Galloway sprawled on the bench. He took a state correctional baseball cap from his pocket, flapped it open and set it on his head.

‘Wearing your old uniform. Aim to show me who’s boss, is that it?’

He didn’t reply. He took a soft pack of Marlboros from his pocket. He broke the seal, tore foil and shook out a smoke.

Lupe craned and examined the brand burned into the wooden stock of the Remington twelve–gauge.

‘Sing Sing. Yeah. I figured you were up river. Gun tower, or did you work the galleries?’

Galloway ignored her. He took a matchbook from his breast pocket and scratched a flame.

‘Like your moustache. Got that gay porn star thing going on.’

No response. He brushed ash from his uniform. Grey polyester. Pin holes for collar brass and a name badge. His stars and stripes shoulder patch was a fleck of brilliant primary colour among the shadows and dust of the ticket hall.

He wore a thick leather belt. Loops for chemical spray, radio and latex gloves. An empty holster that looked like it used to sheath a .38 revolver. A baton ring. A cuff pouch. Keys hung from a clip.

His boots were polished to a high gleam. He had rolled the short sleeves of his shirt to emphasise his biceps.

‘Bet you’re a big hit in the leather clubs. I can picture you, standing at the bar in your boots and chest harness, scoping the crowd. Picture it real easy.’

‘Bitch, you got a big mouth.’

Galloway stood. He kicked her in the side. He aimed for a low rib. Lupe grunted and twisted in pain.

‘You live with your mother, don’t you?’ said Lupe. ‘Shitty, train-rattle apartment somewhere. Bet you’ve still got a box of G.I. Joes under the bed. Bet you line them up and have little battles when no one else is around.’

Galloway shook a fresh cigarette from the pack. He lit it, and tossed the burning match in Lupe’s lap. She slapped out the flame with cuffed hands.

‘Don’t think you’ve quite grasped the new reality,’ he said. ‘No laws. Think about it. No Miranda, no recourse to appeal. Just you and me. Shit, I’m not even sure why we keep your tweaker ass alive. You’re a liability. A waste of food. Better off without you. Start the world over. Burn it clean. Let decent folk run the place for a change. You better hope no one puts it to a vote. Plenty of guys back at Ridgeway happy to pull the trigger. They’d draw lots for the privilege.’

Nariko emerged from the office. She sat on the bench beside Galloway.

She thumbed through the dossier. A thick bundle of mismatched documents pinned by brass brads. A picture of Ekks on the inside cover. A smudged scan of his driver’s license. An older guy. Fifties, sixties. Lean, silver hair. His face reduced to a pixel blur. Slavic bone structure. Thin lips. Eyes masked by shadow and printer grain.

She closed the dossier and threw it on the bench beside her.

‘Hey. Galloway. Give me your cuffs.’

‘What?’

‘The spare set on your belt.’

‘Why?’

‘For the gate.’

Nariko held out her hand.

Galloway reluctantly popped a belt pouch and slapped steel cuffs in her palm.

‘I got to talk to Lupe,’ said Nariko. ‘Give us five, all right?’

Galloway stared her down. Nariko met his gaze.

‘Yeah,’ said Lupe. ‘Let the grown-ups talk.’

The guard reluctantly stubbed his smoke, crossed the ticket hall and crouched by a distant wall. He sipped bottled water.

‘Maybe we better take it easy on the guy,’ said Lupe. ‘A correctional officer with nobody to correct. He’s got nothing and no one.’

She picked Galloway’s crushed cigarette from the floor. She examined the stub to see if it could be relit and smoked.

‘Where’s Ekks?’ asked Nariko.

‘Guess he took a walk.’

Nariko retuned her Motorola, checked for signal and held it up. The radio emitted a faint tocking sound, regular and metallic.

‘Hear that? That’s a live transmission. It’s coming from somewhere nearby, right now. Their comms equipment isn’t broadcasting a voice any more, but it’s still emitting a weak VHF signal on maritime one-two-one. It’s like someone is sat at the microphone with their finger on Transmit. The radio is down here, somewhere. It’s still active, still powered up, still singing in the dark.’

‘Who gives a shit?’ said Lupe. ‘Complete waste of time. Listen: Ekks might have been some big-shot brain surgeon, back in the day. He might have had his own parking space, set of golf clubs in the trunk, but I know a stone-cold psychopath when I see one. The look in his eye. I was down here for weeks. Me and three cons from Bellevue. We were guinea pigs. A tissue farm. Don’t let anyone tell you different. He dissected one guy. Kept his brain in a jar. I was next on the list. I’d be dead by now if I hadn’t escaped. Ekks was a sadist. He wasn’t engaged in research. He was torturing the shit out of people because there was no one left alive to stop him, because actions no longer had consequences. End of the world, see. A serial killer’s paradise. Cure? The guy was bullshitting you. Trying to stay alive, trying to get rescued. There is no antidote. This expedition is a bad joke.’

‘I’m here to do a job. I’m going to see it through.’

‘This place is killing us,’ said Lupe. ‘We’re dying by degrees. Every minute we sit here shooting the shit a little more radiation seeps into our bones. Admit it. The mission is a bust. Send for the chopper and get the hell out of here.’

‘No.’

‘You guys volunteered for this kamikaze deal. Jumped at the chance to pull on your boots and run into the flames. But I wasn’t given a choice. I was dragged here in chains. What gives you the right to throw my life away? Answer me that.’

‘Do you understand what’s at stake?’ asked Nariko. ‘Humanity reduced to a few pockets of survivors. Little outposts. Humans are an endangered species. We’re on the edge of extinction, about to join the fossil record, our time on earth reduced to a geologic layer, a vein of compacted garbage. We’re ready to bequeath the world to rats, roaches and scorpions. Get the picture? Maybe Ekks was full of shit. But research teams around the world studied this virus for months, with no sign of a vaccine or cure. If Ekks made progress, if he came close to understanding this fucking disease, then we have to roll the dice. We have to find his documents, his research, whatever the cost. It’s our last chance.’

‘And why should I give a shit?’

‘Flesh and blood, aren’t you?’ said Nariko. ‘Not exactly immune. You might be a hard-ass in the prison yard, but right now you are nothing on your own.’

‘And when we are done here?’

‘We’ll take you back to Ridgeway. That was the deal.’

‘And then what? Think your Chief will shake my hand and send me on my way? His guys will keep me as some kind of pet. A slave. Someone to mop the floors, empty out the latrine bucket. Tie me to a bed and set up some kind of fuck rota.’

‘Not everyone is as sick as you. Some people try to do the right thing.’

‘Unchain me. Let me go. I’ll take my chances outside.’

‘There’s no way off this island. No bridges, no tunnels, no boats.’

‘I’ll swim, if that’s what it takes.’

Nariko stood and began to walk away.

‘I can help you find Ekks,’ said Lupe.

‘You know where he is?’

‘I know exactly where he is.’

‘You can take us to him?’

‘I’ll show you on a map. If you want to chase after the guy, it’s up to you.’

‘He’s close by?’

‘Yeah. He’s real close.’

‘Tell me where he is.’

Lupe held up her ankle chain.

‘Uncuff me. I’ll give you Ekks if you set me free.’

‘Fuck you.’

Lupe shrugged. She leaned back, head against the pillar and closed her eyes.

‘Come on,’ demanded Nariko. She kicked Lupe’s foot. ‘Enough games. Where the hell is Ekks?’

Lupe smiled. A gold incisor.

‘Can’t say I know much about radiation. But you guys are on a clock. All of you. You’ve taken on a shitload of rads already. Few hours from now, you’ll feel the first effects. Few hours after that, the sickness will take hold for real. The longer you stay, the worse it will get. How long before the damage becomes irreversible? How long before you shit yourself blind? Puke your entire digestive system over your shoes?’

‘You’ll get sick too.’

‘Then I guess we’ve got ourselves a standoff.’

‘Want me to talk to Galloway?’ asked Nariko. ‘Maybe I could arrange some time alone, just you and him. Pretty sure he could engineer a little attitude adjustment.’

Lupe smiled and shook her head.

‘You won’t do shit. Haven’t got the cojones. Face it, girl. I’m holding all the cards.’

Cloke’s watch beeped.

‘Meds,’ he shouted.

He distributed potassium iodide and anti-nausea capsules. They passed round a bottle of mineral water and knocked back pills.

He reset his watch and started a four-hour countdown.

Nariko unzipped a backpack and shook out the contents. Toiletries, fresh underwear, fresh T-shirt. Each member of the team had brought personal possessions, stuff they might need for the duration of the mission.

She took out a battered leather fire hat. She polished the captain’s badge with her sleeve and set the helmet on her head.

‘Nice hat,’ said Cloke.

‘Belonged to my stepdad.’

‘They’ll burn it, once we get back to Ridgeway. You know that, right? They’ll have us strip naked for a decon shower. Probably shave our heads. And while we get hosed down, they’ll scrub down the chopper and incinerate our clothes. Torch everything. Your watch, your earrings. They won’t let you keep a thing.’

‘I’m going to wear this hat into the shower. If they give me any shit, I’ll break their arms.’

Cloke crossed the hall. He shouldered the fire exit door.

Jammed.

He kicked until he forced a six-inch aperture, then shone his flashlight into the stairway. Steps and door blocked by massive chunks of concrete.

‘How the hell did you make it through?’ he asked.

‘Whole lot of squirming.’

‘Got to be six, seven tons of debris.’

‘This whole place is a death trap.’

Donahue climbed the steps to street level. She unzipped a backpack. She unfolded a tripod antenna and set it facing the curtained entrance. A mesh dish supported by a skeletal rod frame.

‘Hey, babe.’

Tombes watched her work.

‘Bitch to get a signal down here,’ said Donahue. ‘Schist bedrock capped with reinforced concrete. Smothers any transmission stone dead.’