The Tomorrow Code (39 page)

There was a crack of a gun, and the windshield shattered. Xena and Rebecca screamed in unison.

She dived across the seat of the Jeep, catching the door handle on her first try and falling out of the door of the vehicle. She grabbed Xena by the hand and slung her up around her neck, running toward the edge of the breakwater, instinctively putting the Jeep in between herself and the guards to give herself time to get some distance before they could fire again.

It helped for only a few seconds. There was another crack then and a whistle past her ear. Xena squealed again.

Rebecca raced down the road leading into the small cluster of buildings that was the naval base. Old, weather-boarded buildings with tin roofs, dating from the 1940s or earlier.

There were no more shots, and when she glanced back, she saw why. The guard hut and the Jeep were shrouded in mist, and where the second guard had been, the white shape of a macrophage stood silently, motionless.

The first guard was lying on the ground, screaming noiselessly, with a dozen antibodies covering his arms, legs, and face.

The fog was rolling in over the dark buildings to her right, but she had no option except to follow the road.

And there it was. Moored to the side of a long jetty. The familiar, bulbous, warm-yellow shape of the
Möbius.
It was barely a hundred yards away, out along the jetty.

The fog clouded around her and she stumbled, tripped and fell, Xena rolling away from her across the tar-seal with a squawk.

Rebecca tried to get back up, but her leg didn’t seem to be working properly. Confused, she looked down to see a glutinous shape, with short fibrous tentacles, latched onto her thigh.

She screamed in fear, and then screamed again in pain as the sting of the needlelike fibers reached her shocked brain.

Somehow she hauled herself to her feet and hopped forward, dragging the useless leg behind her.

“Come on, Xena!” she called, but the little chimpanzee just sat there, quivering with fright, and looked at her.

There was a stinging in her left arm now as two of the antibodies attached themselves to it; then her arm, too, went numb and useless.

“You come if you want to,” she yelled at the chimp. “I ain’t waiting for you!”

She had no chance of making the submarine—she knew that now—but if she could just make the edge of the jetty and the waters of the harbor…

She collapsed again, just a yard or so from the edge, from safety, and looked down at another antibody digging its way into the shin of her good leg.

“Get off me!” she screamed, and crawled forward as best as she could with one good arm and only a little movement in her right leg.

The fog swirled around her, and a shape moved in front of her. She raised her head to see a macrophage, tall and white in the early light before the dawn, standing between her and the ocean. Waiting for her.

“Leave me alone!” she screamed, and crawled forward another few inches.

The shadow of the creature approached, and Rebecca screamed one last time, except the scream wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her voice; it wasn’t even a human voice. There was a blur of brown hair and the sensation of small feet on her back, and Xena leaped up from her shoulders straight at the macrophage, clutching around its neck, bending it backward, overbalancing, and then there was no macrophage in front of her, only a rising spout of seawater, and it seemed to be minutes later that she heard the splash.

“Xena!” she cried as the fog continued to make ghastly, ghostly patterns all around her.

The voice of his flight controller sounded in his headset, and Ramirez pulled his jet around in a tight bank. As far as he could see, there was only fog.

“Roger that,” Ramirez replied. They wanted one last low-level pass to visually confirm the status of the ground troops.

He circled around once again and descended. Beginning his run from the north. Toward the tall spire of the Skytower, jutting up through the clouds in the distance in front of him.

He dropped down out of the sky and skimmed across the top of the mist like a stone skipping across water. He tried to peer down through the fog, but it had thickened and was now impenetrable.

He shook his head and keyed his radio to call base, but the words never left his mouth. The fog itself seemed to rear up in front of his aircraft.

The world went white, and there were banging noises against the cockpit and the body of the plane.

He hauled back on the stick and lifted the jet out of the rising mist, but it was already too late. There was a cough from his right wing and the jet flamed out. Something had been sucked through the engine. The left engine went two seconds later.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” Flight Lieutenant Ramirez said urgently, but with professional calm, into his radio, “I have a double flameout. I am about to eject.”

He kept the stick back, gaining as much height as he could, and then punched out of the cockpit with the two-handled ejection lever. The ejector seat kicked like a horse, and the jet hurtled onward in the sky, pilotless, toward the dark tower in the distance.

Ramirez’s parachute opened with a grab on the back of his spine that wrenched at his insides. He felt sure he had broken something. But it didn’t matter. By the time the parachute had floated gently to the earth, the harness and the flight suit were empty.

H
OBSON
S
TREET

The shaft was clear of
mist. Free from antibodies and macrophages. They descended slowly, step by step, then faster.

Fatboy wore his full motorcycle leathers, but Tane had on just jeans and the fashionable leather jacket he had bought with Rebecca on their Lotto spending spree, a hundred and fifty years ago.

He thought the leather might be strong enough to keep out the antibodies, but he wasn’t sure about the jeans.

At the very base of the tower, they had stowed their helmets, both full-face. It felt comforting to slide it on. It was at least some protection.

They emerged into a silent world at the top of the long staircase. The main foyer of the casino. The huge, weather-proof glass doors of the casino remained shut. Keeping the world, and the fog, at bay.

Fatboy moved toward the elevators but Tane put a hand on his arm.

“We’ll never make it on the Harley,” he whispered. “We need some protection from
them.
”

“What are you thinking?” Fatboy asked.

Tane nodded toward the huge glass doors of the foyer. Even as he did so, a shadow moved through the mist outside, silhouetted by the flashing red lights of the fire engine farther down the street.

They crouched hurriedly down inside the circular security desk near the casino entrance.

“The fire truck?” Fatboy asked with a frown. “They’ll see us coming for miles.”

“It’s big and strong,” Tane said. “And from here to Princes Wharf is all downhill, straight down Hobson Street.”

Fatboy nodded his agreement. “It’s worth a go.”

More shapes moved past the doorway in stark contrast to his hopes. There was a sudden bang from one of the glass panels, and they both instinctively looked up but saw nothing.

Then came another loud bang, this time accompanied by the sound of cracking glass.

“I hope Rebecca is waiting for us when we get there,” Tane said.

Fatboy smiled tightly in the mist. “How are we going to reach the fire truck?”

Outside, the intermittent red flash seemed like a bait to lure them out into the clutches of the macrophages.

“I say we make a run for it,” Fatboy said. “Make a break for the fire truck, try to get inside before they can get to us.”

“We’ll never make it,” Tane said doubtfully.

“Can’t stay here forever,” Fatboy countered.

Tane nodded. “Okay, but I think I need something a bit thicker than just a pair of jeans covering my legs if we’re going out there.”

He glanced around the foyer. There was a long reception counter on one side. A concierge desk in the center and on the other side a large café and a gift/souvenir shop. That seemed the most likely.

The shop door was locked, but the window surrendered easily to a blow from a trash bin, and they picked their way gingerly through the broken glass.

“A few plastic tikis are not going to keep those things away,” Fatboy said.

There were baseball caps with New Zealand symbols, scarves, belts, woolen beanies, and T-shirts on a clothing rack in the center of the room. Tane was experimenting with the T-shirts, wrapping them thickly around his legs, when Fatboy said, “Over here.”

Piled in a corner of the shop were sheepskin rugs, thick, woolly, and whiter than white. A popular souvenir for tourists of a country with 80 million sheep. Tane ran his fingers over the thick leather backing and nodded. “That should do it.”

He wrapped a thick sheepskin around each leg, strapping them on with expensive leather belts. Another went around his midriff.

He pulled up the collar of his leather jacket and then tied a thick woolen scarf around his neck for further protection. A pair of leather gloves covered his hands.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Baa,” Fatboy replied.

Tane stopped what he was doing and considered that. He took another large sheepskin and draped it around his shoulders, fastening the corners around his neck with a large metal safety pin.

“Shape recognition,” he said. “The antibodies recognize shapes. Remember Dr. Green’s diagram with the circles and triangles and stalks? If we can change our shapes, then maybe they won’t recognize us.”

A moment or two later, Fatboy also was covered in fluffy sheepskins. If nothing else, they reasoned, it was more protection against the creatures.

They looked at each other for a long moment, then both burst out laughing, despite, or perhaps because of, the danger they faced.

The banging and crashing was constant now, from the toughened glass of the entranceway, and the ominous cracking noises were getting louder.

“We can’t go that way,” Fatboy said. “Maybe if we go back down in the elevator and come out through the car park on the side of the—”

Two of the huge glass panels shattered simultaneously, and fog poured into the atrium of the casino. With it came a terrible hissing sound, and the front of the fog came alive in front of them. Antibodies, hundreds of them, and behind them the larger shapes of macrophages.

“Get back,” Fatboy yelled, spinning around and racing back into the interior of the casino.

Tane risked a glance backward. The casino was already full of a light mist, and it was thickening with every second. The macrophages were following them, but slowly, as if moving through water.

“They’ve slowed down,” he shouted. “They can’t move as fast where the fog is thin.”

Tane looked over at the central row of elevators. The doors were open on the one they had used earlier.

They ran to it and Tane pressed the button for the first parking level. Nothing happened.

“Oh crap!” he said.

Outside the lift, the macrophages turned the corner of the central lift well and floated toward them, almost as if in slow motion.

Tane jammed his finger on the button again, and Fatboy stabbed at the
CLOSE DOORS
button.

The white shapes moved closer, blocking their exit. Tane cowered into the back of the elevator, holding his arms in front of him as if that would somehow protect him against
them.
Fatboy pulled himself up to his full height, folded his arms, and faced the approaching creatures. The closest of the creatures was just about at the doors of the lift when they slid smoothly shut.

The doors opened again with a
ping
on a misty, murky, gray concrete parking level. Only a small stream of fog flowed slowly down the ramps from the upper levels and was swiftly dealt with by the heavy air conditioners, used to dealing with car exhaust fumes.

“This way,” Fatboy called, pointing to a sign marked
EXIT
.