Spiral

by Roderick Gordon

  Will’s forehead still hurt badly, but he swiveled around and pressed it hard against the wall. Then he began to slam it repeatedly on the unyielding surface, grateful for the stinging relief of the pain.

  “No, no, no, no.”

  Will stopped when blood began to run into his eyes, making him blink. As he did so, he caught shouting from the Hub, then a crash. Drake was yelling something. The thought that someone might need help made Will pull himself together, and he began to feel his way along the passage and then into the Hub.

  Although a few clouds of smoke still hung in the air, emergency lights had been positioned around the area, so Will could immediately see the extent of the damage. A film of fine gray silt coated everything in sight, and many of the desks had been blasted over — those closest to the mouth of the entrance tunnel blackened by flames.

  Stepping over the debris strewn across the floor, Will made his way toward the tunnel. Some twenty feet along, it was completely cut off by massive slabs of rock that had fallen through the reinforced concrete roof. The jagged ends of air-conditioning ducts and wiring conduits hung loosely from the ceiling and walls like slashed arteries. And much of the surviving length of tunnel was mottled with carbon patches where fires had evidently been put out.

  “We’re lucky to have survived,” Parry said, as he appeared beside Will and surveyed the damage with him.

  “Chester’s parents . . . is there any way they could have escaped?” Will asked, staring at the rocks.

  Parry shook his head. “Danforth probably made it out because he was on the right side of the blast door, but not them, I’m afraid.”

  Will was silent for a moment. “Can we dig our way through this?” he said eventually.

  “I reckon it would take a team with specialist excavating equipment two or three weeks to clear it.” Barely pausing for breath, Parry asked, “What sort of shape is Chester in?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Will replied, turning to Parry. “I think he’s still in shock.”

  Parry scrutinized Will’s face. “You’re covered in blood. The Colonel told me he’d cleaned you up,” he said with surprise.

  “It’s nothing,” Will mumbled. He was hardly going to admit that he’d made the injury worse by slamming it against the passage wall. He turned to peer at Drake on the other side of the Hub, ankle-deep in electrical cables where Danforth had been working before. As Drake shouted something across to Sweeney at another panel, he sounded panicked. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” Will said to Parry.

  “Other than the fact that we should be out hunting those Styx twins and their women, yes, we’re in serious trouble down here,” he replied. “Danforth has done a hatchet job on all the Hub systems. Everything’s shut down.” Parry’s voice was so low and grim, Will had a job to hear him as he spoke.

  “Everything?” Will asked.

  Parry sighed. “All we’ve got are a couple of satphones with no means of getting a signal, some industrial batteries, and a single laptop that’s still functioning.” Parry took in a breath, then released it slowly. “Maybe I’m giving Danforth too much credit — and when I see him again, rest assured that I’m going to throttle the filthy traitor — but I don’t believe he wanted us dead. I don’t believe he ever imagined that it would come to Mrs. Rawls detonating the explosive vest.”

  “You don’t?” Will asked.

  “No, he only wanted to contain us long enough so he could get clear. But Danforth’s nothing if not thorough; he set charges to knock out every last one of the backup generators. They’re all down.”

  “So there’s no power at all?” Will said. “Why did he do that?”

  “In case we tried to reroute the supply to the blast doors down there, I suppose,” Parry said with a wave of his walking stick at what remained of the entrance tunnel. “We’ve checked and double-checked — all the generators are crippled and completely beyond repair. Which has the secondary effect that there’s no power for the air recirculation system. And, in any case, the fire ate up quite a chunk of the available oxygen. On a rough calculation of what’s left, I’d say we’ve got a fortnight at the outside. Maybe less, because there are so many of us.”

  “We’re going to run out of air,” Will whispered, trying to deal with this piece of news.

  As Parry began to walk slowly toward Drake, Will went with him. “What about the vents where the air comes in? Can’t we open them up manually?” Will suggested, adding a further thought as it occurred to him: “And couldn’t we climb out through them?”

  “That would be a great idea . . . ,” Parry began, poking at something on the floor with his walking stick, then stooping to pick it up. It was a mug, and as Parry swirled it around, Will could see that it still had some tea in the bottom. “. . . only there aren’t any. The Complex was built on the principle that it can be completely closed off from the outside environment. It’s hermetically sealed . . . not a molecule gets in or out.”

  “So where does the air come from, then?” Will asked.

  “When the DEFCON is raised, the entrance tunnel is locked down, and air is provided from the reservoirs — the pressurized tanks on each level.”

  Will looked hopeful. “Then we’re OK because —”

  “The tanks are empty,” Parry cut across him.

  “This doesn’t get any better, does it?” Will murmured as they came to Sergeant Finch on his mobility scooter. Finch’s head was bowed as he stroked a tiny cloth bundle in his lap. It was one of his dead cats, and a kitten from the looks of it.

  Stephanie was kneeling beside Sergeant Finch. She looked very un-Stephanie-like, her hair all over the place and her face smeared with dirt. She briefly met Will’s eyes, then went back to what she’d been doing. He watched as she covered up the corpse of another cat. There were at least six of the small furry bodies, each with tea towels laid over them. These pitiful little corpses were evocative of television news footage Will had seen following dreadful accidents or terrorist attacks. Blood had soaked into the white cotton of the tea towels, in spite of the fact that these were cats and not people, the sight was still sickening.

  Will kept his voice low as he and Parry continued toward Drake. “Does anyone come to check on Sergeant Finch? I remember you saying something about food resupplies?” he asked.

  Parry shook his head. “Yes, there’s a two-monthly rota when a member of the Old Guard makes a drop-off at a bothy just around the mountain from here.”

  Will frowned at the unfamiliar word. “Bothy?”

  Parry gave a small shrug. “It’s an abandoned stone hut. The Old Guard have no idea who the supplies are for, due to the security restrictions, so the food will just sit there until it rots. And because of budget cuts, the obscure engineering department within MI5 that services this Complex only dispatches a team here once a year. As the next visit isn’t scheduled for seven months, I’m sorry to say, Will, we’re on our own.”

  Will had another idea as he heard a cat howling and glanced over his shoulder at Stephanie. “What about Old Wilkie? Won’t he be beginning to wonder what’s happened to us?”

  “Maybe, but he doesn’t know our location. Again, due to the security restrictions, I blindfolded him when I dropped him some sixty miles away from here. And I also ordered him to maintain radio silence.”

  This led Will to another thought. “Jiggs! What about J —”

  “He’s in here with us,” Parry replied, moving away. Will was left squinting at the shadows in the Hub, asking himself where the elusive man was right now.

  As the days passed, Chester seemed to spend every waking hour simply staring vacantly into space. And on the rare occasions he did fall asleep, he’d wake up screaming for his mother and father. Although Mrs. Burrows sometimes sat with him, Elliott had taken it upon herself to make sure he was never left by himself. To begin with, she’d t
ried to take Chester’s mind off his grief by talking to him, but after he continued to show no interest whatsoever, she just sat silently beside him.

  So Will found himself on his own. He floated around in the darkness of the Complex, feeling like a fifth wheel because there wasn’t anything in particular he could do to help anyone.

  And Chester wasn’t alone in staying awake; Drake and Parry hardly slept a wink as they struggled to come up with a way out of the Complex, or a means to summon assistance. Mrs. Burrows put out canned food in the kitchen for everyone to help themselves, and when Will ventured in there, he would often stop to listen to Drake and Parry’s lengthy discussions. They sometimes had Colonel Bismarck, Eddie, or Sergeant Finch in attendance, but father and son would be doing most of the talking.

  The first initiative Will overheard was Parry’s proposal to blow open the doors to one or more of the other levels, so additional air would be released. When he’d tried to explore them, Will found out for himself that the third, fourth, and fifth levels had each been sealed off by their own autolocking blast doors after the explosion in the Hub. When Will had asked Parry why this was, he’d said it was a measure to protect anyone in them if the integrity of the Complex was compromised.

  Drake had immediately come out against Parry’s idea, arguing that it wouldn’t provide them with an appreciable amount of extra air. And, after many calculations, it was decided that using explosives in the belly of the Complex would be too risky, and probably consume much of the extra air anyway as they went off.

  After more fruitless discussions, Drake and Eddie began to pursue a second initiative. With Sergeant Finch’s help, they had located the microfiche plans of the Complex. Will didn’t know what a microfiche was, so he watched with interest as Drake managed to get Danforth’s document scanner running on a string of industrial batteries. Once Drake had scanned the microfiches — as Will found out, these were postcard-sized transparencies with miniature photographs of various documents — he was able to increase the magnification sufficiently that they could be read on the laptop screen.

  Drake and Eddie took turns scouring this documentation — mostly architects’ drawings of the Complex’s structure, and wiring schematics down to the very last detail. Neither of them had said what they were looking for, but they still spent hours poring over them.

  Another initiative had been to use the radio antennae concealed in the electricity pylon on the mountain outside to send out a Mayday distress signal. However, after firing up one of the Hub radio transmitters, it became clear that Danforth had anticipated this. Despite trying everything he could think of, Drake didn’t get anywhere. Danforth had either used circuit breakers or planted more explosives to put the antennae out of action.

  It all looked pretty bleak, and the discussions between Drake and Parry became increasingly lackluster as the ideas ran out.

  But after hearing Parry refer to an arsenal on Level 6 — the lowest floor of the Complex — Will made up his mind to go down there and have a proper scout around. Besides, he was certain it was already becoming harder to breathe up in the Hub. This may have been all in his mind, but it was beginning to make him feel a little claustrophobic.

  He’d gone via his quarters to collect his luminescent orb and was en route for the stairs when he bumped into Stephanie. She was back to her old self; she’d washed her hair and smelled fresh. Will noticed that she was even wearing makeup. In all the grime and gloom of the Complex, she shone with a radiance that made Will’s heart skip a beat.

  “You look fantastic,” he found himself saying.

  “Thank you, Will,” she said with a small smile. “I think I’ve really done my bit for Sergeant Finch.” Will knew that she’d spent days keeping the old man company because he’d been so distraught following the death of his cats. “He’s a sweetie, but . . .” leaning conspiratorially toward Will, she continued, “. . . he’s a tad smelly. So I thought I totally deserved some time out. Some quality me time.”

  She asked Will where he was off to and insisted that she go, too. Will realized how grateful he was for the companionship.

  “It’s really spooky, isn’t it?” Stephanie said with a mock shivering sound as they reached the very bottom of the stairwell and could descend no farther.

  The start of Level 6 was in stark contrast to the layout of all the other floors because there was no main corridor — just an open space in which the floor, walls, and regularly spaced columns were all of bare concrete, stained in places by streaks of rust water. Will’s luminescent orb created shifting shadows as they passed between the columns.

  “It’s like a goth’s bedroom or something.” Stephanie giggled as she caught sight of a large grinning skull on a cobwebbed warning sign.

  “Yeah,” Will said indecisively, wondering why Stephanie felt compelled to fill any silences between them. “But do you think it’s easier to breathe down here?” he asked as he came to a stop.

  She noisily sucked in a mouthful of air. “Think it might be,” she replied.

  “Drake said carbon dioxide is lighter than oxygen. So maybe there is more oxygen down on this level?” Will thought aloud, trying to remember the outcome of the debate between Drake and Parry.

  Stephanie made a contemplative Mmmm noise as they came to some shadowy structures that reached almost to the ceiling.

  “These are the water tanks,” Will said, playing his luminescent orb on the storage vats on either side of the floor. “Pretty massive, aren’t they?” he said, going over to the nearest one and thumping its side with his open hand. It reverberated like a sepulchral bell. “Sounds full.”

  “So at least we won’t, like, die of thirst,” Stephanie said.

  As Will investigated the areas between the vats with his light, she was uncharacteristically silent for the moment.

  Then, as they moved deeper into the level, passing between the backup generators Danforth had put out of action, she slipped her hand into Will’s. He must have started slightly because she gave a small laugh.

  “Um,” he said awkwardly, careful not to direct the orb in her direction because he didn’t want her to see how uneasy he was.

  “I really like you, Will,” she said softly. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Will was advancing down the walkway, but not at any great speed because Stephanie was still hanging on to him. He didn’t answer immediately, then replied, “I . . . I like you, too.”

  “You’re just, like, saying that to be nice to me. But that’s OK.” She began to take little trotting steps beside him, her high-heeled leather boots rat-a-tat-tatting on the concrete, as if she was about to speed up and wheel around in front of him. Sensing this, Will also sped up slightly.

  “I’d really like to spend more time with you, Will,” Stephanie whispered. “It’s not like Elliott’s around much, is she? She doesn’t have to know anything.”

  When Will didn’t respond, Stephanie lowered her voice even further, almost sounding a little tearful. “And if it all goes badly wrong for us and we never escape from this place, does anything really matter anymore? Except for the time we have left?”

  They came to a series of closed doors, and Stephanie squeezed Will’s hand several times, clearly with no intention of letting go. Although he was pretending to be wrapped up in his exploration of the level, Will’s mind was racing. He couldn’t help but remember how pretty Stephanie had looked back in the stairwell.

  He cleared his throat. “This is the arsenal. It was locked last time I was here,” he said, as light from his orb fell on an open doorway. “Let’s take a look inside.”

  “Sure, let’s,” she said, brightening up. Her other hand was now on his forearm.

  Will was picturing her clear blue eyes and the way her mouth crinkled at the edges when she smiled. His pulse quickened. Maybe she was right — maybe it didn’t matter. Will knew how m
uch Chester liked her, but his friend was hardly in any frame of mind to bother about that now, and probably wouldn’t be for a long time. And Elliott was clearly more interested in looking after Chester than being with him. If they were all going to run out of air in a week or so, then everything was different, and Stephanie was right: Nothing at all mattered anymore.

  Except for whatever time they had left . . .

  Before Will knew what he was doing, he’d increased his grip on Stephanie’s hand and was pulling her into the room with him.

  Once inside, they stopped. Will had dropped the luminescent orb to his side, and Stephanie was in front of him, not much more than a gray shadow. She slid her hand up his arm.

  “You know, you’re very special,” she said.

  “Don’t wha’ever y’do light a mash in here,” a low, slurred voice advised. “Bad bad mishtake.”

  Stephanie squealed.

  Will spun in the direction of the voice, whipping up the orb to see who was there. The room was large, with row upon row of racking shelves, which housed all the weapons and explosives in the Complex.

  “Who’s that?” Will demanded, trying to sound as confident as he could. “Who is it?”

  “Jusht little ol’ me,” the voice rumbled, still slurring. “If you light a mash, we’ll all be blowed up. Cos of the munishuns.”

  Will stepped toward the source of the voice, Stephanie now clinging on to him, terrified.

  The light from the orb fell upon a man slumped lopsidedly on some sacks.

  “Sparks!” Will exclaimed. “What the heck are you doing here?”

  “Shame thing you four are,” he drawled. “I jush wanted to be on my loneshome-woneshome.”

  Will and Stephanie were looking down at him in astonishment. Sweeney’s shirt was unbuttoned to his stomach. What appeared to be two small metal terminals sprouting from his sternum were connected by wires to an industrial battery at his side, which he was hugging. Sweeney followed their gaze to it.