The Furies (29 page)

A moment later the lights went out. Then they heard the siren, high-pitched and deafening.

TWENTY

Sullivan stood at the edge of the woods south of Haven, gazing at the farm through a pair of binoculars. It was a gorgeous morning, much warmer than the past few days, and the sky was a perfect, cloudless blue. Marlowe and Percy accompanied him, each man hidden behind a pine tree. Marlowe rubbed his bandaged shoulder and stared at the farm with livid eyes, while Percy pointed his camera at everything in sight, cackling every time he pressed the shutter.

The FBI's surveillance van was about a mile away, parked on the shoulder of the road that ran parallel to Haven's eastern fence. Sullivan adjusted the focus on his binoculars until he could read the logo plastered on the van's side:
CHARTER CABLE
. The federal agents were posing as cable-TV repairmen. One of them pretended to fix the wiring inside a junction box on a nearby telephone pole. The other agents were inside the van, pointing cameras with powerful zoom lenses at the fenced-off farm. Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much to see. The Elders had laid out the farm in a way that maximized their privacy. The cornfields and hedges and outbuildings at the edge of the property blocked the view of everything at the center. Although the agents could monitor who entered and left the place, they could barely see the farmhouses and barn.

The view from Sullivan's position was equally bad. When he pointed his binoculars at the farmhouses he could see only their redbrick chimneys and wood-shingle roofs. Just beyond them was the barn, and behind that was the barnyard for Haven's sheep and cattle. The barnyard was large, almost four hundred feet wide, and surrounded by twelve-foot-high slat fencing. Like the chain-link fence surrounding the whole property, the barnyard's fence was a little too industrial-looking for an Amish farm, but the Elders had good reason for putting it there. The yard also served as a recreation area for the Furies, and the slat fencing shielded them from view, allowing them to exercise outdoors without pretending to be Amish. You couldn't see them from outside, no matter how powerful your binoculars or camera.

Unless, that is, you were observing the farm from above.

Sullivan tilted his head back and aimed the binoculars at the sky. He wouldn't have been able to spot the drone if he hadn't known which direction it was coming from. The Reaper was only ten yards long, and it was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet. At that distance, the unmanned aircraft looked like a tiny black cross, several times smaller than a commercial jetliner. It crept across the cloudless sky, cruising overhead at the relatively sluggish speed of two hundred miles per hour. The drone had arrived just in time. When Sullivan checked his watch, he saw it was exactly noon.

He didn't hear the explosion or feel the ground shake. He hadn't expected to. The geothermal plant was almost a mile to the north and five hundred feet underground. Even if the blast had been twice as powerful, he wouldn't have felt it. But he would know very soon whether his device had detonated. He trained his binoculars on a ventilation pipe protruding from the roof of one of the farm's outbuildings. Then he waited.

After half a minute a pale wisp of steam rose from the pipe. The flow rapidly strengthened, gathering force and volume. Within seconds the vapor gushed out of the pipe in a thick, roiling plume. Steam surged out of the other ventilation pipes as well, rising and spreading above every outbuilding and farmhouse. The big white plumes leaned toward the east, pushed by the prevailing winds.

Sullivan smiled. He felt the surge in his own body, a sweet upwelling of triumph. But for the people down below, inside the cavern, the gushing steam was anything but sweet. Because the vapor came from deep within the earth, it was laced with hydrogen sulfide, a gas that forms in underground reservoirs when water dissolves certain minerals. The gas was colorless, foul-smelling, and corrosive.

And highly poisonous.

TWENTY-ONE

John lay helpless on the gurney. He could see Ariel in the feeble glow of the lab's emergency lights, but he couldn't move a muscle. The Fountain protein had immobilized him. He was dizzy and trembling and sick to his stomach, and every inch of his body hurt like crazy.

He felt a flash of pain across his chest as Ariel ripped off the EKG's suction cups. Then she grabbed his gurney at the end where his feet were and wheeled him out of her lab, knocking the door aside. She shoved the gurney down the hallway, running like mad, her face red and contorted. John glimpsed the doors of the other labs speeding past on both sides, and his nausea redoubled. He wanted to die.

At the end of the corridor she pressed the button for the elevator but its power had been cut. Ariel shouted, “Bloody hell!” and turned to a nearby door with an
EMERGENCY EXIT
sign. She rammed the gurney through the doorway and stopped at the foot of a flight of stairs. Then she grabbed John's legs and draped them over the side of the gurney.

“You have to walk!” she shouted. “We have to go up the stairway!”

John's legs quivered and wobbled beneath him. He could barely stand up, much less walk or climb stairs. He leaned on Ariel as he moved away from the gurney, but she couldn't support his weight. Before they could reach the first step, he fell on top of her and they collapsed in a heap. John's face slapped against the floor, which seemed to tilt like a seesaw. His ears rang, high-pitched and loud. The noise inside his head was even louder than the siren.

Ariel scrambled to her feet and grabbed his right hand. Clasping it tightly, she pulled with all her might. “Get up, John! We have to go!”

He couldn't get up. He was dead weight.

“Damn it!” She bent over and screamed in his face. “That's the evacuation alarm! We have to get to the surface!”

It was getting difficult to think. The Fountain protein was messing with his mind. He imagined that the alarm was sounding inside his body. His cells were burning. They were exploding, one by one. “I can't,” he muttered. “I—”

“
Yes, you can!
”

Her voice knifed through him. It pierced his skin and slipped into his Fountain-clogged bloodstream. With an enormous effort of will, he raised his right hand and placed it on the first step, palm down. Then he dragged his body forward and started crawling up the stairs.

The first flight of steps was agony. His calves and thigh muscles were on fire. Ariel helped him along, bending over him and hooking her right arm under his left. But the second flight was easier. His nausea and dizziness began to subside. At the foot of the third flight he was able to reach for the railing and stand up. As the pain in his muscles eased he started taking the steps two at a time. Ariel shouted, “Good! Keep going!” and his heart pumped faster. A burst of new energy spread to his arms and legs.

John felt almost normal by the time they reached the top of the stairway. He saw another door with an
EMERGENCY EXIT
sign, but he knew they couldn't be at the surface yet. The laboratories were located below the Pyramid. Dashing ahead of Ariel, he opened the door and found himself on the cavern's floor near the base of the Pyramid, which loomed high above them. Battery-operated emergency lights glowed here and there, but most of the cavern was shrouded in darkness.

The sirens were even louder here. Dozens of people ran along the pathways, heading for the exits that led to the farmhouses and barns aboveground. Many of the people carried flashlights and wore gas masks. A few were dressed in bright yellow hazmat suits. The air in the cavern was humid and smelled like rotten eggs.

John grimaced. “Jesus, what happened?”

Ariel rushed past him and turned left, toward the far end of the cavern, where pale clouds of steam billowed between the rocky walls. “Damnation! It's the geothermal plant!” She looked over her shoulder and gave him a fierce look. “Follow the others to the surface! I'll meet you there.” Then she sprinted toward the billowing clouds.

John didn't hesitate. He raced after Ariel.

She ran fast, but he kept up with her. He wasn't dizzy anymore. He was fully recovered and then some. After running for about a hundred yards Ariel stopped at a small storage shed next to the pathway. She opened the shed's door, reached inside and pulled out a gas mask. She was about to put it on when she saw John come up behind her. She seemed more resigned than angry. “I had a feeling you'd want to come along. Are you sure you're all right?”

“Don't worry about me. Why is there so much steam?”

“There must've been a break in the intake pipe. The steam is under high pressure, so it's hard to shut down the flow. And there are toxic chemicals mixed with the water vapor. The worst is hydrogen sulfide.” Reaching into the shed again, she pulled out another gas mask and handed it to him. “You're going to need one of these.”

“How toxic?”

“At low levels it irritates the eyes and throat. At high levels it causes respiratory paralysis. Okay, look at me carefully.” She demonstrated how to put on the mask and tighten the straps. John did the same while Ariel watched. Then she removed two more masks from the shed and gave one to him. “Take an extra, in case you find someone who needs it. Follow my lead, all right?”

Then, with one mask over her face and another in her hand, Ariel ran toward the geothermal plant. John followed right behind, sweating like crazy. It was like jogging in a steam room, only hotter and more uncomfortable. Within seconds his clothes were soaked. He had to wipe the condensation off the plastic eyeholes in his mask to see where he was going.

The vapor was so thick they didn't see the plant until they were twenty feet away. As they rushed toward the entrance they nearly collided with someone coming out of the building. It was a tall man wearing a gas mask and carrying a woman in his arms. The woman also wore a mask but appeared to be unconscious. John looked carefully at the man, trying to glimpse the face behind the mask, and realized it was Gower. His eyes were wide and frightened behind the plastic eyeholes.

Ariel pointed at the unconscious woman. “Is that Claudia?” she asked. Her voice, muffled by the gas mask, was barely audible under the wailing sirens.

Gower nodded. “She closed the shutdown valve and then stayed behind to make sure everyone left the plant. But the heat was too much for her. She needs a doctor!”

“So the plant is clear? You're absolutely certain?”

“Aye, she said she checked every room. Now please, I must go!”

“What of the asylum?” Ariel turned and pointed in the direction of the old caves, although they were invisible in the fog. “Has it been cleared too?”

“I don't know!” Gower's eyes widened still further. “You have to go there, Lily! You have to see if Grandmother got out!”

“Aye, I'll go right now. Get your mother to safety.”

She slapped Gower's back, pushing him on his way. Then she and John raced to the asylum.

Despite the darkness and vapor, Ariel had no trouble finding the place. After centuries of living in Haven, John thought, she could probably navigate the cavern with her eyes closed. The tunnel that led to the patients' rooms was choked with steam, and the air temperature seemed to rise as they progressed down its length. John felt the heat stinging his arms and the back of his neck. The steam fogged his mask's eyeholes, making it hard to see anything except the emergency lights glowing through the haze.

Then he bumped into someone, a woman, who was staggering down the tunnel in the opposite direction. His heart leaped at first because he thought it was Gower's grandmother, Octavia. But Octavia, he remembered, was tall and solidly built, whereas this woman was petite, even smaller than Ariel. She wore a gas mask but John recognized her right away: it was Constance, the asylum's nurse. She grasped the front of his shirt and clung to him in terror. “Help me! It's too hot! I'm going to faint!”

Ariel gripped the woman's shoulder to get her attention. “Is the asylum clear, Constance? Are all the patients out?”

“I can't find Octavia! She refused to leave her room when the alarm rang and now I can't find her!”

“Calm down, cuz. Could she have left the asylum without you noticing?”

“Nay, impossible! I led the other patients out of the tunnel, then went right back inside to get her. But she's not in her room now! She's not—”

Constance swooned. John grabbed her by the waist to stop her from falling. She wasn't completely unconscious—she muttered and moaned as John held her—but she couldn't stay on her feet, either. Someone would have to help her out of the cavern.

“Take her to the surface,” Ariel ordered. “I'll look for Octavia.”

John shook his head. “Octavia weighs at least a hundred and fifty pounds. If you find her, you won't be able to drag her out.”

“I have to try! I can't just—”

He swung Constance around and draped her limp right arm around Ariel's shoulders. “Take Constance instead. She weighs less than you. I'll find Octavia.”

Ariel lurched a bit but held up under Constance's weight. She took a tentative step forward, and the semi-conscious woman stepped with her. It wouldn't be easy, but it looked like she could get Constance out of the cavern. “Okay, you're right,” Ariel admitted. “But I'm coming back here as soon as I get her to safety.”

“Got it,” John said, and then he ran down the tunnel.

Soon he reached the large antechamber with stone walls and wooden doors. Steam swirled in giant eddies here, thick and scorching. The emergency lights were no use, they could barely penetrate the haze, but luckily John remembered where Octavia's room was. Although the heat was turning his arms an ugly boiled red, his mind was clear and his body felt unusually strong. He moved in an unerring line to the door marked
PATIENT
and burst into the room, yelling “
Octavia!
” as loudly as he could. The steam was even thicker here, so he used his arms and legs to sweep the room, hoping one of his hands or feet would collide with her. He rushed to the bed and rummaged through the heap of sheets and blankets and pillows, all soaking from the steam. But Octavia wasn't there. Haven's oldest woman was missing.