State Of Fear

by Michael Crichton

Page 59

 

  He pressed the down arrow.

  With a rumble, the winch began to lower the submarine into the water.

  An alarm began to sound.

  He heard running feet.

  He ducked back into a doorway and waited.

  From the beach, they faintly heard the sound of an alarm over the rumble of the generators and the cavitation hum. Evans looked around. "Wheres it coming from?"

  "It must be from the ship, over there. "

  Out on the beach, the men heard it, too. They were standing in pairs by the entrance to the tents, pointing. Wondering what to do.

  And then, from the jungle behind them, a sudden burst of machine-gun fire opened up. The men on the beach were alarmed now, swinging their guns, looking this way and that.

  "Screw it," Jennifer said, taking Evanss rifle. "This is it. It wont get any better. "

  And firing, she ran out onto the beach.

  The crocodile had charged Kenner with frightening speed. He had little more than a glimpse of huge white jaws open wide and thrashing water before he fired with his machine gun. The jaw smashed down, just missing his leg; the animal writhed, twisted, and attacked again, jaws closing on a low-hanging branch.

  The bullets hadnt done anything. Kenner turned and ran, sprinting down the streambed.

  The croc roared behind him.

  Jennifer was running across the sand, heading for the nearest tent. She went about ten yards before two bullets struck her left leg and knocked her down. She fell onto hot sand, still firing as she fell. She saw the guard at the entrance to the tent drop. She knew he was dead.

  Evans came up behind her and started to crouch down. She shouted, "Keep going! Go!" Evans ran forward, toward the tent.

  On the ship, the men halted the descent of the submarine, stopping the winch. Now they could hear the gunshots coming from the beach. They had all rushed to the starboard side of the ship, and now they were looking over the railing, trying to see what was going on.

  Sanjong went down the deck on the port side. No one was there. He came to the cabin. There was a big board there, dense with electronics. A man in shorts and a T-shirt was crouched over it, making adjustments. At the top of the board were three rows of lights, marked with numerals.

  The timing board.

  For the undersea detonations.

  Sarah and Morton were sprinting along the edge of the beach, staying close to the jungle, as they headed for the second tent. The man outside the tent saw them almost at once and was firing bursts of machine-gun fire at them, but he must have been very nervous, Sarah thought, because he wasnt hitting them. Branches and leaves snapped all around them from the bullets. And with every step, they were getting close enough for Sarah to fire back. She was carrying Mortons pistol. At twenty yards, she stopped and leaned against the nearest tree trunk. She held her arm stiffly and aimed. The first shot missed. The second one hit the man outside the tent in the right shoulder, and he dropped his gun in the sand. Morton saw it, and left the forest, running across the sand toward the tent. The man was struggling to get up. Sarah shot again.

  And then Morton disappeared inside the tent. And she heard two quick gunshots and a scream of pain.

  She ran.

  Evans was inside the tent. He faced a wall of chugging machinery, a huge complex of twisting pipes and vents, ending in a flat, round plate eight feet wide, set about two feet above the surface of the sand. The generator was about seven feet high; all the metal was hot to the touch. The noise was deafening. He didnt see anybody there. Holding his rifle readypainfully aware that the magazine was emptyhe swung around the first corner, then the second.

  And then he saw him.

  It was Bolden. The guy from the Antarctic. He was working at a control panel, adjusting big knobs while he looked at a shaded LCD screen and a row of dials. He was so preoccupied, he didnt even notice Evans at first.

  Evans felt a burst of pure rage. If his gun had been loaded he would have shot him. Boldens gun was leaning against the wall of the tent. He needed both hands to adjust the controls.

  Evans shouted. Bolden turned. Evans gestured for him to put up his hands.

  Bolden charged.

  Morton had just stepped into the tent when the first bullet struck his ear and the second hit his shoulder. He screamed in pain and fell to his knees. The movement saved his life because the next bullet whined past his forehead, ripping through the tent cloth. He was lying on the ground next to the chugging machinery when the gunman came around, holding his rifle ready. He was a twentyish man, bearded, grim, all business. He aimed at Morton.

  And then he fell against the machine, blood hissing as it splattered on hot metal. Sarah was standing inside the tent, firing her pistol once, twice, three times, lowering her arm each time as the man fell. She turned to Morton.

  "I forgot you were a good shot," he said.

  "You okay?" she said. He nodded. "Then how do I turn this thing off?"

  Evans grunted as Bolden smashed into his body. The two men stumbled back against the tent fabric, then forward again. Evans brought the butt of his gun down on Boldens back, but it had no effect. He kept trying to hit him in the head, but only connected with his back. Bolden, for his part, seemed to be trying to drive Evans out of the tent.

  The two men fell to the ground. The machinery was thumping above them. And now Evans realized what Bolden was trying to do.

  He was trying to push Evans under the plate. Even by being near the edge, Evans could feel the air vibrating intensely. The air was much hotter here.

  Bolden hit Evans in the head, and his sunglasses went flying across the ground, beneath the flat plate. Instantly, they shattered. Then the frames crumpled.

  Then they pulverized.

  Vanished into nothing.

  Evans watched with horror. And little by little, Bolden was pushing him closer to the edge, closer, closer amp; Evans struggled, with the sudden strength of desperation. Abruptly, he kicked up.

  Boldens face mashed against hot metal. He howled. His cheek was smoking and black. Evans kicked again, and got out from beneath him. Got to his feet. Standing over Bolden, he kicked him hard in the ribs, as hard as he could. He tried to kill him.

  Thats for Antarctica.

  Bolden grabbed Evanss leg on the next kick, and Evans went down. But he kicked once more as he fell, hitting Bolden in the head, and with the impact, Bolden rolled once.

  And rolled under the plate.

  His body was half under, half out. It began to shake, to vibrate. Bolden opened his mouth to scream but there was no sound. Evans kicked him a final time, and the body went entirely under.

  By the time Evans had dropped to his hands and knees, to look under the plate, nothing was there. Just a haze of acrid smoke.

  He got to his feet, and went outside.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Jennifer ripped her blouse with her teeth and tore a strip of cloth for a tourniquet. She didnt think an artery had been hit, but there was a lot of blood on one leg and a lot of blood in the sand, and she was feeling a little dizzy.

  She had to keep watching because there was one more tent, and if the guys from that tent showed up amp; She spun, raising her gun as a figure emerged from the forest.

  It was John Kenner. She lowered the gun.

  He ran toward her.

  Sanjong fired into the glass in front of the control deck, but nothing happened. The glass didnt even shatter. Bulletproof glass, he thought in surprise. The technician inside looked up in shock. By then Sanjong was moving toward the door.

  The technician reached for the control switches. Sanjong fired twice, once hitting the technician, once aiming for the control panel.

  But it was too late. Across the top of the panel, red lights flashed, one after another. The undersea detonations were taking place.

  Automatically, a loud alarm began to sound, like a submarine claxon. The men on the other side of the ship
were shouting, terror in their voices, and with good reason, Sanjong thought.

  The tsunami had been generated.

  It was only a matter of seconds now before it would hit them.

  Chapter 84

  RESOLUTION BAY

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14

  4:43 P. M.

  The air was filled with sound.

  Evans ran from the tent. Directly ahead he saw Kenner lifting Jennifer in his arms. Kenner was shouting something, but Evans couldnt hear. He could vaguely see that Jennifer was soaked in blood. Evans ran for the jeep, jumped in, and drove it over to Kenner.

  Kenner put Jennifer in the back. She was breathing shallowly. Directly ahead, they saw Sarah helping Morton into the other jeep. Kenner had to shout over the noise. For a minute Evans couldnt understand.

  Then he realized what Kenner was saying. "Sanjong! Where is Sanjong!"

  Evans shook his head. "Morton says hes dead! Rebels!"

  "Do you know for sure?"

  "No!"

  Kenner looked back down the beach.

  "Drive!"

  Sarah was in the car, trying to hold Morton upright and drive at the same time. But she had to let go of him to shift gears, and as soon as she did hed flop over against her shoulder. He was wheezing, breathing with difficulty. She suspected that his lung was punctured. She was distracted, trying to count in her head. She thought it was already ten seconds since the landslide.

  Which meant they had fifteen seconds to get up the hill.

  Sanjong leapt from the ship to the trees on the shore. He grabbed a handful of leaves and branches. He scrambled down to the ground and began to climb the hill frantically. On the ship, the men saw him, and they jumped, too, trying to follow him.

  Sanjong guessed that they all had half a minute before the first wave struck. It would be the smallest wave, but it would still probably be five meters high. The runupthe splash on the hillsidecould be another five meters. That meant he had to scramble at least thirty feet up the muddy slope in the next thirty seconds.

  He knew he would never make it.

  He couldnt do it.

  He climbed anyway.

  Sarah drove up the muddy track, the jeep slipping precariously on the incline. Beside her, Morton was not saying anything and his skin had turned an ugly blue gray. She yelled, "Hold on, George! Hold on! Just a little!" The jeep fishtailed in the mud, and Sarah howled in panic. She downshifted, grinding gears, got control, and continued up. In the rearview mirror, she saw Evans behind her.

  In her mind, she was counting:

  Eighteen.

  Nineteen.

  Twenty.

  From the third tent on the beach, two men with machine guns jumped into the last remaining jeep. They drove up the hill after Evans, firing at him as they drove. Kenner was firing back. The bullets shattered Evanss windshield. Evans slowed.

  "Keep driving!" Kenner yelled. "Go!"

  Evans couldnt really see. Where the windshield wasnt shattered it was spattered with mud. He kept moving his head, trying to see the route ahead.

  "Go!" Kenner yelled.

  The bullets were whizzing around them.

  Kenner was shooting at the tires of the jeep behind them. He hit them, and the jeep lurched over onto its side. The two men fell out into the mud. They scrambled to their feet, limping. They were only about fifteen feet above the beach.

  Not high enough.

  Kenner looked back at the ocean.

  He saw the wave coming toward the shore.

  It was enormous, as wide as the eye could see, a foaming line of surf, a white arc spreading as it came toward the beach. It was not a very high wave, but it grew as it came ashore, rising up, rising higher amp; The jeep lurched to a halt.

  "Why did you stop?" Kenner yelled.

  "Its the end of the damn road!" Evans shouted.

  The wave was now about fifteen feet high.

  With a roar of surf, the wave struck the beach and raced inland toward them.

  To Evans, it seemed as if everything was happening in slow motionthe big wave churning white, boiling over the sand, and somehow keeping its crest all the way across the beach, and into the jungle, completely covering the green landscape in white as the water boiled up the slope toward them.

  He couldnt take his eyes off it, because it seemed never to lose its power, but just kept coming. Farther down the muddy track the two men were scrambling away from their fallen jeep, and then they were covered in white water and gone from sight.

  The wave rushed up the slope another four or five feet, then suddenly slowed, receded, sweeping back. It left behind no trace of the men or their jeep. The jungle trees were ragged, many uprooted.

  The wave slid back into the ocean, farther and farther away, exposing the beach far out to sea, before it finally died away, and the ocean was gentle again.

  "Thats the first," Kenner said. "The next ones will be bigger. "

  Sarah was holding Morton upright, trying to keep him comfortable. His lips were a terrible blue color and his skin was cold, but he seemed to be alert. He wasnt talking, but he was watching the water.

  "Hang on, George," she said.

  He nodded. He was mouthing something.

  "What is it? What are you saying?"

  She read his lips. A weak grin.

  Wouldnt miss it if it was the last thing I did.

  The next wave came in.

  From a distance, it looked exactly like the first, but as it neared the shore they could see that it was noticeably bigger, half again as large as the first, and the roar as it smashed into the beach was like an explosion. A vast sheet of water raced up the hill toward them, coming much higher than before.

  They were almost a hundred feet away. The wave had come a good sixty feet up the slope.

  "The next one will be bigger," Kenner said.

  The sea was quiet for several minutes. Evans turned to Jennifer. "Listen," he said, "do you want me to"

  She wasnt there. For a moment he thought she had fallen out of the jeep. Then he saw she had fallen on the floor, where she lay curled in pain. Her face and shoulder were soaked in blood.

  "Jennifer?"

  Kenner grabbed Evanss hand, pushed it back gently. He shook his head. "Those guys in the jeep," he said. "She was okay until then. " Evans was stunned. He felt dizzy. He looked at her. "Jennifer?"

  Her eyes were closed. She was hardly breathing.

  "Turn away," Kenner said. "Shell make it or she wont. "

  The next wave was coming in.

  There was nowhere they could go. They had reached the end of the track. They were surrounded by jungle. They just waited, and watched the water rush up in a hissing, terrifying wall toward them. The wave had already broken. This was just surge rushing up the hillside, but it was still a wall of water nine or ten feet high.