Vigil (14 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Marie’s computer went down. The last thing it had shown was seven armour vehicles rolling in from the east. She’d booted up the defensive systems and then there had been a massive explosion above ground, whiting out all monitors for a moment, followed by nothing.

             
‘Run a diagnostic.’

             
‘Jean, it’s dead. I can’t do anything.’

             
Jean wheeled himself over to the main computer and typed for a few moments. The central view of all turrets came up.

             
He hit replay.

             
They watched as the turrets came up out of the ground. It was an automated response to a threat. Then all monitors went down for a second. When they came back on line the turret was a steaming wreck in the centre of a huge crater.

             
‘What the hell could do that?’

             
‘A missile.’

             
‘From a tank?’

             
‘No. Long range. They’re learning. They came within range so that the turret would raise, then they hit it with a long range missile. We’re totally unprotected from the east.’

             
Samson swore and stood up.

             
‘Stay at your station, Samson.’

             
‘They’re coming in, Jean. The security team needs me. They know our systems. They know the way they work. They did this smoothly. We can’t fight from the safety underground. We need to retreat from the first floor.’

             
‘Not yet, Sam. There might yet be some good we can do from here.’

             
‘Well I’m not wasting my time.’

             
‘Shit,’ said Jean, looking at central monitor. 'Incoming. Tanks. A lot of them.’

             
Sam waited while Jean held his head in his hand. When he looked up there was fear in the leader’s eyes. He saw none in Samson’s eyes.

             
‘Go, then. Get the teams ready. Marie, help me.’

             
Marie took the second’s chair next to Jean and they began typing in commands, setting the ground level defence systems to fully automatic.

             
When they were finished Jean turned to Marie and took her hand.

             
‘God help us, Marie. Sound the alarm. We’re going down to level two. Abandon the surface. We need to put our trust in Kappa and his men now.’

             
Marie squeezed Jean’s hand.

             
‘There’s nothing else we can do, Jean. We knew it might come to this. Come on. Close it down.’

             
‘I’m staying.’

             
Marie shook her head and grabbed the handles of his wheelchair. She pulled him away from the consol.

             
‘No, Jean. You’re not. We need you.’

             
‘Leave me be!’

             
‘No.’

             
Marie ignored their leaders protests and pushed him toward the elevators. If the first floor fell they would have to blow the elevators.

             
They had long known it might come to this. Fighting in their home. Fighting for their lives. But nobody had believed.

             
Except Tom and Marie.

             
She wished they had been wrong, but there was no time for recriminations. Even if they had been better prepared for a well-equipped attack from the vampires, they could not stand against someone who knew their defensive capability and planned an attack so well.

             
It was up to Tom, now.

*

Chapter Thirty-Two

Tom carried compound IH237 in his left hand and a syringe in his right. 

              There was only one way to test the theory. He didn’t have time to check with Jean, and it wouldn’t matter what he said anyway. Tom planned on carrying out this experiment with or without permission.

             
The klaxon sounding throughout the complex only confirmed what he’d feared before long. It was the signal to abandon the entry level. It was only a matter of time before the vampires made it down to the lower levels and the slaughter began.

             
He knew there was no saving them now. But he had to know. He had to be sure. There was only one chance, and he meant to take it if he could. But he wouldn’t run blindly into the future, not while there was a glint of hope, no matter how dim.

             
They brought out frozen samples of the compound and took it up to the isolation ward where the vampire was being held.

             
It was a sad sight. Tom knew their hearing was extremely acute. The klaxon’s wail must have been torture for it. Tom felt pity for the creature, but he could not stop. Was he any better than his father? Was he driven to cruelty, too, for altruistic goals?

             
It didn’t bear thinking about.

             
The creature struggling against the silver chains holding it down against the bed. Its eyes rolled wildly. It snarled and slavered as they came close to it.

             
'Do you think we can inject it? The way it’s moving around, the needle will just break.’

             
‘You’ll have to hold it down,’ he told the young men on the science detail he'd brought with him.

             
‘We’re not security detail.’

             
‘I don’t fucking care. You know as well as I do what that alarm means. Kappa and his crew are likely busy elsewhere. There’s only us. Hold it down.’             

             
There was no more argument. Tom stepped forward and swiftly hooded the vampire. The rest of the scientists strained against the vampire, keeping clear of its head which snapped from side to side. They had all taken the precaution of wearing face masks, but the chance of infection was still high.

             
But there was no time. No time for caution.

             
Tom loaded the syringe and without checking for a vein or a kind word to his patient he plunged the needle into the writhing vampire’s arm.

             
‘Back!’ he shouted and they jumped back, staring at the creature, waiting for something to happen. 

             
The vampire began screaming. It was the most pitiful and frightening sound Tom had ever heard.

             
Then it began to convulse, crying out in German at the top of its voice. Tom didn’t know much German, but he understood that the beast was pleading for its life.

             
The pleading went on for a minute, then the pain became too great and the vampire reverted to screaming again, but it didn’t last long. Soon, it fell quiet, its limbs shaking. As Tom watched the skin began to mottle, darkening in spots. Where there was whiter flesh, wounds that FE616 had healed, the flesh began to fall away. Then blood began to leak from the old wounds. Everyone took a step back. Nobody wanted to get anywhere near the blood.

             
The vampire’s breath hitched, once, twice, then it fell silent.

             
Tom approached the creature, carefully avoiding stepping anywhere near the blood, and pulled the hood from the creature’s head.

             
The face had melted away, down to the bone. Where the eyes should be were only sockets, dark and full of a slick substance that must have been dissolved eyes. The teeth were crumbling as they watched. Then the rest of the skin began to peel away, slewing off onto the bed.

             
One of Tom's team was noisily sick on the floor.

             
‘Jesus. What the hell happened?’ said another, a young man with a pock-marked face. Tom could not remember his name right then. He stared in shock at the ruins of the vampire on the table before them.

             
‘An adverse reaction to the serum, I would imagine,’ he said without humour.

             
Were they reaping what they had sown?

             
‘Why did he melt? He just melted, for God’s sake. What is that? Acid?’

             
'I assumed that there were too many changes for the cure to reverse them.'

             
‘Well , what does that mean for us?’

             
‘The cure won’t work on an old vampire. It might work on someone newly infected.’

             
‘But you don’t know?’

             
‘Of course I don’t bloody know,' said Tom to the man. 'I only know what we read, that this was a cure.’

             
Tom fell silent for a moment, thinking. It was difficult, but he had been thinking of it for days now. He didn’t really need to see the cure on the vampire.

             
It just cemented the idea in his head.

             
‘OK, everyone out.’

             
Tom clicked on his walkie talkie and called Jean.

             
‘Jean…Jean…’

             
Just static.

             
He would have run, but he couldn’t afford for his heart to give out. Not yet.

*

Chapter
Thirty-Three

The first elevator had been shut down already, so Tom took the stairs, slowly, all the way up to the second floor. It was a long climb.

             
He planned what he was going to say in his head.

             
Part of him knew it was folly to even try. Part of him thought it was stupid in the extreme. But then his father had known. His father had believed.

             
His father still believed?

             
Tom shut down that line of thought.

             
He opened the stairwell door onto the second floor and was greeted by turmoil. People ran too and fro in panic. They knew the drill should the complex fall but in their panic people had forgotten the most basic of rules.

             
Tom pushed his way through to the second floor command room. The computers here were all linked. He knew he would find Jean there. And, he hoped, Marie. She would fight his corner.

             
Never had he faced such pressure. He needed to get Jean’s attention straightaway. If the first floor had fallen then there was no time for long explanations. He could not show Jean any data.

             
He just had to hope he had not exhausted any good will the council might hold for him during his long years in the facility. He knew he had rubbed plenty of people the wrong way, but if they didn’t listen to him now everything they had learned would be for nothing.

             
Jean was where he expected him to be, with headphones over his head, in constant contact with the security team who would be holding the first floor.

             
Tom spared a nod for Marie, who was at his side, and went and took a seat in front of Jean.

             
‘Jean, I need to speak to you.’

             
‘Not now, Tom.’

             
Tom resisted the urge to shout.

             
‘Now, Jean. There isn’t time. This is more important. The security team can buy us time, no more. You know that, Jean. What I have to say might make the difference.’

             
‘I can’t leave them, Tom!’

             
‘You can,’ said Tom, patiently. ‘You must.’

             
‘Two minutes. Marie, monitor communications. Let me know if they break through. Two minutes, Tom, and this had better be good.’

             
‘Oh, it is. Now, just don’t interrupt. Listen well.’

             
Tom took a breath and prepared to make the most outlandish pitch of a lifetime.

             
‘There are four dimensions. Length, Breadth, Height are the simplest. Time is the fourth. No, just wait. Let me speak.

             
‘Four dimensions, Jean. That was all there ever was. But my father was a genius. He discovered a fifth. People had theorised about a fifth dimension before, but it was always a kind of deus ex machine, used by mathematicians and physicist to explain properties they didn’t understand. My father was a visionary. He made it real.’

             
‘Tom, what the hell…’

             
‘Just shut up and listen to me, because it might be the last thing you ever do. Make it count. Now, this fifth dimension – it doesn’t matter if you believe me, although it would help, is a gateway. Through it, you can step into time. It recreates the moment of the big bang. That is where the doorway is. An infinite moment of infinite density that contains the universe. Is it possible that a man could look through that moment and see the universe as it is, was and would be? I don’t know, but my father did. And he knew more about this than I ever could. He had a lifetime to study it.’

             
‘Tom…’

             
‘They’re at the east entrance,’ said Marie.

             
‘I can’t listen to this anymore.’

             
‘Jean! Damn it. They can step through time! That’s what this is about. They can step through time! Through time. They did it. They sent people through time. But they died. It is all documented here. A quantum singularity - a moment outside time when the whole universe was contained within a single point of infinite density. From within that point is it possible that you could see the universe as it will be, as it was...?’

             
Jean’s attention was now fully on Tom. ‘Jesus, Tom. If what you’re saying is true…’

             
‘They did it, Jean. It’s true. My father did it. But nothing could survive. How could anything survive? The big bang, for Christ’s sake. Nothing living, at least…’

             
‘Are you saying that something else could get through?’

             
Tom nodded. He was still unsure, but his father would not have risked everything on a whimsy. It was his life’s work. If anyone could have found a way, he could have.

             
‘The particle accelerator is only one of many. It’s the last one. The rest are all online. The only person who could have managed that since the fall is my father.’

             
‘You’re saying your father is out there?’

             
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, Jean. And he wants in. I don’t think we can stop him. But we can beat him to it.’

             
‘Jean,’ said Marie. Her face was white with fear. ‘They’ve broken through.’

*