“TNDs?” Will asked.
“Thermonuclear devices,” Parry explained.
“Nukes . . . he’s talking about nukes!” Drake said, staring at the containers. “And he’s got to be bloody joking!”
Parry and Sergeant Finch, armed with his ever-present clipboard, went around both the arsenal and the secondary cache, marking chalk crosses on the crates that contained the most potent explosives. Bit by bit, these were then loaded onto a trolley, which was pushed to the stairwell. Will and Chester took over from there, finding they had the unenviable task of lugging each crate up the eight flights of stairs to Level 2, where another trolley was waiting for them.
It was hard work: The wooden crates were heavy, and the boys were suffering from the lack of air. As they labored up the stairs with the umpteenth crate between them, Chester seemed to be oblivious to the rope handles cutting into his hands. They finally cleared the stairs with their crate and placed it carefully on the trolley with all the others.
Leaning against the wall and breathing heavily, Will caught his friend’s eye. Chester gave him a broad grin as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“You OK?” Will asked him.
“Just pleased to be doing something,” Chester replied. Regardless of the way he seemed to be coping, Will was concerned about him, but there wasn’t much he could do right now.
Chester mopped his brow. “Where’s Drake got to? I say we take this load to him ourselves.”
“Sure,” Will agreed.
With Will pulling and Chester pushing, they wheeled the heavily laden trolley down the corridor. One of the wheels had begun to squeal plaintively. “Reminds me of when we were emptying the wheelbarrow on Highfield Common,” Chester remarked.
As they came to the end of the corridor, they steered the trolley through a doorway and into the utility room Drake had identified. He’d said it was their best bet to punch a way through the mountainside.
The room was already piled high with crates, and Drake was in the process of embedding pencil-sized detonators into each one, which were connected by a skein of cables.
“Cool,” Drake said, glancing at the trolley. “I’ll unload it myself if you want to get on.”
“How many more do you need?” Chester asked, looking at the stacks of crates beside Drake.
“Enough to fill this room, then the one next to it,” Drake answered. “I reckon that’s another twenty or so trips with the trolley.”
“Twenty!” Chester exclaimed, laughing in an exaggerated way. “Cool — we’ll keep ’em coming,” he added as he left the room. They could still hear his laughter as he passed down the corridor, slapping the wall and saying “More, more, more!”
“He’s not himself,” Drake pronounced in a low voice, frowning.
“Are any of us?” Will shot back.
“Well, keep a close eye on him, won’t you, Will?” Drake said.
It took the best part of a day to prepare the two rooms. Finally, Drake walked the distance up the stairs and into the Hub, a drum rotating in his hands as he played out a cable behind him.
Parry had been concerned that even if the explosion blew a way through, it might also bring down the ceiling of Level 2 in the process, sealing their way out and negating the whole exercise. There was no way of closing the blast doors to the level, but at Parry’s direction, everyone piled sandbags around the two rooms in a bid to contain some of the inward force of the blast. Parry still wasn’t satisfied that they were doing all they could on this front, so he oversaw the construction of another sandbag barrier halfway down the corridor.
The time had come. Everyone was waiting outside the small canteen off the Hub, where Chester had first noticed his mother behaving strangely. Drake and Eddie had picked it because they believed it would be a good place for them all to shelter from the blast.
“All systems go,” Parry said, and everyone trooped into the canteen, and the door was shut behind them. They watched as Drake untwisted the two glinting copper wires at the end of the cable, then connected them to the terminals on a detonator.
No one spoke. As Mrs. Burrows stroked Colly, there was a chorus of anxious meows from the row of wicker baskets along the top of the work surface. Stephanie and Elliott had had a devil of a job rounding up Sergeant Finch’s cats from their various hiding places in the Complex, but it was the least they could do for the old man.
Drake had told everyone to stow their Bergens in one corner, so they had their kits close by them. And in addition to the many fire extinguishers they’d brought into the room, Parry had ensured that there was enough food and water to last them a few days.
Drake tugged the wires to make sure they were firmly attached to the terminals, then nodded to his father.
Parry took a breath, and his voice was gentle for a change. “I don’t think there’s much to say except bloody good luck to every one of us. I sincerely hope God’s smiling on us today.”
“Amen,” said Sweeney.
Parry tapped his walking stick twice on the ground. “Now can we all assume safety positions, please?”
Sergeant Finch was helped out of his mobility scooter and then everyone did as they’d been told, finding a place on the floor. They bowed their heads, their hands clasped behind the napes of their necks.
Will was watching as Drake wound the handle on the detonator to build up an electrical charge. As it went faster and faster, the whirring of the dynamo filled the room.
“That’ll be enough,” he decided, hinging back the safety guard around the push handle.
“OK?” he asked.
“OK,” Parry replied.
“See you on the other side,” Drake said.
He rammed the handle home.
THE ELEVATOR ROSE through the levels of the Chancellery, the massive, monolithic, arched government building at the very center of New Germania. As it came to a stop, the doors slid open and a pair of Styx Limiters stepped from it. Their boots beat in perfect unison as they marched over the highly polished marble floors.
The Chancellor’s assistant was at her station, a Baroque gilded table with a telephone and a vase of wilted flowers on it. She was brushing her hair as she observed the two soldiers approaching. There would have been a time when she’d have been paralyzed with fear at the sight of these ghoulish men with their skeleton-thin faces and jet-black eyes. Men that reeked of death and destruction.
But now, as they paused in front of her table, she regarded them with a sleepy detachment.
“Is he in?” one of them demanded in a growl.
She nodded with that sheep-eyed look that spoke of intensive Darklighting — along with almost every other inhabitant of New Germania, she’d been subjected to exces-sive amounts of the treatment, and it had all but fried her brain.
And her appearance had changed considerably since the day, several months before, when Rebecca Two and the Limiter General had made their first visit to the Chancellery. She still wore her efficient blue suit, but the dark roots of her platinum hair were showing, and her makeup was carelessly applied.
She watched as one of the Limiters kicked open the large wooden doors to the Chancellor’s office and they both stormed in.
Still brushing her hair, she listened to the commotion inside the room. Then the Limiters emerged, dragging the corpulent Chancellor, Herr Friedrich, between them. They must have caught him during one of his typically lavish lunches, since he still had a napkin tucked into his shirt.
“I’m going out for a while, Frau Long,” he managed to say before he was carted off down the corridor.
With two outriders blazing the way, the official limousine roared down Berliner Strasse, one of the grandest and usually busiest roads in New Germania. But other than this single vehicle, with its old-fashioned swept-back airflow styling and gleaming silver paintw
ork, there was no traffic now.
As the vehicle drew to a halt near the waiting delegation, the door opened. Placing a dainty combat boot on the chalk-colored road, Rebecca One emerged unhurriedly from the vehicle. And, just as unhurriedly, she made her way toward the delegation, inclining her head to listen to the forlorn drone of sirens resounding across the city.
Then she turned to survey the opposite side of the broad avenue across the central reservation with its palm trees, where a multitude of people were standing in several queues. There were so many New Germanians there that the lines wound up and down the baking surface of the road. And not one of the people spoke or made a sound, simply shuffling forward as the queues moved at an interminably slow rate.
Rebecca One blew through her lips. “Water . . . somebody bring me some water,” she said, flapping her long black coat open to circulate air to her body.
A Limiter soldier in the delegation immediately removed a canteen from his belt and passed it to her. She took several long gulps before handing it back. “This climate — it’s too much,” she said, squinting at the ever-burning sun directly overhead in the sky. She lowered her eyes to the Limiter General, who was waiting for his orders. She frowned slightly as she studied the sand-colored fatigues he and the other Limiters were wearing. “I leave you in charge and this is what happens. I know the heat is the reason you’ve ditched your uniforms, but I’m not sure I approve of the replacement. It’s not really us, is it? A little too beach party for my taste.”
There was no change in the Limiter General’s deadpan expression, but he was clearly troubled by her criticism as he looked down at the loose-fitting combat jacket and trousers. “They’re New Germanian Special Forces issue,” he explained.
“Don’t worry about it now,” she said. “But if you’re the Master Race, you’ve got to look the part. Isn’t that right, Chancellor? Isn’t that what your wonderful Third Reich believed w . . .” She fell silent as she sought out Herr Friedrich, who was standing in the midst of the delegation. He was miles away, his head craned back as he watched a lone pterodactyl riding a thermal high in the sky. “Hey, porky boy — I’m talking to you!” she barked.
The Chancellor, the former supreme leader of the nation of New Germania, hiccupped with surprise. He, too, had had his fair share of the Dark Light, with the expected ill effects.
“Hello?” he said, frowning at Rebecca One.
“Oh, forget it,” she snapped. She swung to the Limiter General. “Give me an update. How’s Vane getting on?”
The Limiter General shook his head. “She’s exceeding all expectations.” He pointed at one of the institutional buildings that lined the road, a substantial ten-story edifice of light granite. “As you know, we filled the Institute of Geology with human stock.” He panned his finger along the other, similarly imposing buildings in the row, coming closer to where he and Rebecca One were standing. “Then we did the same with the medical facility, and the universities of antiquities and prehistory. She’s worked her way through the human hosts in all of them. That’s three hundred and fifty bodies for impreg-nation and nearly double that number for sustenance —”
“Wait!” Rebecca One broke in. “You’re telling me that she’s impregnated that many already? She’s just one woman. How can that be?”
“Might I suggest you come and see for yourself?” the Limiter General replied. He and the rest of the delegation fell in behind Rebecca One as she stepped over the central reservation and cut straight through the queues. The people dumbly moved out of her way. One of them, an elderly man, his face bright red from exposure to the unforgiving sun, abruptly collapsed. Rebecca One hardly bothered to look at him as he lay where he fell.
“Yes, through there,” the Limiter General said as she reached the nearest building.
It was a huge botanical greenhouse, its facade nearly a thousand feet in length. “Kew Gardens,” Rebecca One said under her breath as she noted the similarity to the Royal Botanic Gardens she’d driven past with Vane no more than a fortnight before.
The Limiter General held the door of the greenhouse open for her, indicating the stairs just inside. She mounted the cast-iron steps, then she passed through another door and out onto a walkway spanning the entire width of the building. From the abundance of different trees, shrubs, and flowers that Rebecca One could see below, New Germanian botanists had obviously been collecting specimens from the jungle and propagating them here.
The Limiter General and the Styx soldiers, two of whom had the Chancellor hoisted between them, held back as she moved to the middle of the walkway. There she peered down one side and then the other. Through the foliage, she could see the numerous human bodies lying in the soil, already monstrously bloated by the Warrior larvae growing inside them.
“Outstanding,” Rebecca One said. “But how’s she managing to impregnate so . . .” She trailed off as she noticed that one of the bodies had already ruptured and young larvae were crawling in the rich peat of a planting bed. “I don’t believe it! It took almost a week for them to hatch Topsoil. But this has taken . . . what?”
“Twenty-four hours,” the Limiter General answered.
Rebecca One was silent for a moment. “But how can the life cycle have accelerated to that extent?”
“We can only think that Danforth’s pronouncement about the conditions down here was right. Perhaps the environment — the proximity to the sun and the high UV levels — acts to stimulate the process,” the Limiter General said.
“Even so . . . how can one woman be physically able to do this?” Rebecca One asked. “It’s off the scale.”
The Chancellor was also peering over the side of the walkway. Some part of his mind that had survived the Darklighting was registering the carnage below — that his people were dying in the most horrible way. He began to sob.
“Oh, do stop that!” Rebecca One reprimanded him. She returned her attention to the scene below. “Where is she?” she asked herself. Then she shouted, “Vane! Are you there?”
At this the Limiter General and his men drew back. The last thing they wanted was to attract the attention of the Styx woman. They’d already witnessed the unfortunate deaths of their comrades as she’d been conveyed from one building to another.
There was a rustling, and a head popped up between two date palms. Vane’s blond hair was matted with gore, sweat, and the fluid slopping from her mouth. No change there. But the aspect that made Rebecca One’s eyes widen was that instead of the single ovipositor, Vane now had an additional two of them swinging from her mouth. And her abdomen was hugely extended as her reproductive system continued to operate in overdrive to churn out new egg pods.
Vane gave Rebecca One an enthusiastic thumbs-up, then rubbed her belly proudly.
“Go for it, sister! You’re breaking all the records!” Rebecca One congratulated her.
The Chancellor was still sobbing, even louder than ever.
“Oh, Christ, you big baby,” Rebecca One groaned. “Just chuck him over, will you?” she ordered the Limiters. “Juicy fat treat on the way!” she called down to Vane.
Vane again gave the thumbs-up, then there was a thrashing of the undergrowth as she began to move at speed.
The Limiters hiked the man over the balustrade of the walkway, his arms and legs flailing for the short distance down. His fall was cushioned by the soil in the planting bed, so he wasn’t badly injured when he hit the ground; he sat up and looked around himself dazedly.
“Check him out!” Rebecca One shouted to Vane. “Enjoy!”
The explosion was so loud that several of them cried out. And the tremor so powerful that their teeth rattled and their vision blurred.
Then the concussive wave swept into the Hub. Will’s ears popped. There was a sudden crash as if something large had struck the door from outside.
Saucepans clattered down
from the shelves above. As a crack opened up across the ceiling, sprinkling dust on their heads, the caterwauling from the wicker baskets reached fever pitch.
Stephanie began to cry softly to herself while Sergeant Finch recited the Lord’s Prayer in broken sentences. Will couldn’t help but notice that Chester, his head still down, was trembling violently — the explosion was obviously bringing back unwanted memories of his parents’ death. Elliott had noticed, too, and was holding Chester tight.
As the blast subsided, there was a low groaning sound.
“I hope that’s not the roof of Level 2,” Parry whispered.
Then, except for the confused calls of Sergeant Finch’s cats, all was quiet.
Drake stood up, brushing the dust from his head. “Bring lights and fire extinguishers,” he said.
The Colonel picked up Sergeant Finch, and Drake pushed the door open. The Hub didn’t look any different, but as they went down the stairs and out into Level 2, there wasn’t much left standing — nearly all the interior walls close to the stairs had been blown away.
Drake and Parry were checking the roof immediately above them as they advanced farther into the level, but the dense dust and smoke prevented them from seeing very far ahead. They all covered their noses and mouths with scarves and pressed forward, negotiating the rubble strewn over the ground. Eddie and Sweeney were blasting away with the extinguishers at small fires in their path.
As they made their way around a bath thrown on its side, the smoke cleared a little and Will caught sight of a chair. It was still the right way up, but every part of it was ablaze.
Holding up his fist, Drake came to a stop. He unwound his scarf. “Feel that?” he shouted.
And they all did.
The air on their sweat-drenched skin felt cold. A breeze was coming from somewhere.
Filled with hope, they ventured farther into the floor, where the corridor had previously been. In one place their way was blocked by debris, but Drake and Sweeney heaved aside a partition wall, enabling them to proceed farther.
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