End of the End

by Paul Kane, Simon Guerrier

  “I guess that’s to keep the radiation from escaping,” said Jack. “We must be in a hot part of the site.”

  “Oh, good,” said Jane.

  There wasn’t the same stale smell as in the accommodation block. Jack tried the light switch and the lights blinked on. There were more details to be gleaned about the staff who’d worked in the place before The Cull—a politely furious note about putting money in the tin for the coffee pods. All the windows they passed had been covered in black felt.

  They made their way towards the services unit, continuing to test each other on physics. Suddenly Jane stopped, grabbing Jack’s arm and dragging him through a side door. They hid in an abandoned office, the computers buried under dust and cobwebs. Jane flattened herself against the wall. Jack followed her lead, and they remained perfectly motionless.

  Nothing happened.

  “Now who’s jumpy?” said Jack. Jane flinched at the loudness of his voice, watching through the crack in the door—but watching what? Gingerly, he edged round the door to look.

  The corridor stretched off ahead of them, ending in double doors inset with windows, reflecting the lights he’d turned on back at him.

  Then he saw something move. A shape, far down the end of the corridor, slowly coming towards them. He ducked back into the office, then dared to peep again. Definitely something approaching, a blobby, roughly human shape.

  Jack watched in wonder as the figure came slowly nearer. The double doors creaked open, revealing a person in a faded yellow radiation suit. He or she—there was no way to tell in the suit—looked left and right, as if lost.

  “Anyone there?” the suited stranger called, a man’s voice. “Hello?” He had an accent—German, maybe.

  Jack didn’t dare to answer. What the fuck was going on? Beside him, Jane raised her rifle.

  The man took a few steps forward, and called out again. “Hello? Someone there?”

  “What is it?” called a woman’s voice from behind the man. She, too, had an accent. In the darkness up the corridor, Jack saw another blobby shape, a figure in a protective suit.

  “Lights are on down here,” said the man.

  “Ack,” said the woman. “Then turn them off.”

  The man reached out a gloved hand to the wall, and the lights went out. Again he twisted round, left and right, scanning the now dim corridor. Then he shrugged and lumbered back through the double doors after his friend.

  “What,” said Jane after a moment, “the actual fuck?”

  “Just what I was thinking,” said Jack. “The felt on the window: it’s to hide the lights when they’re on, so no one knows those two are here. This could be good: they’ve got the right kit, so they must know what they’re doing.”

  “We don’t know anything of the sort. How did they get in here? They can’t have come through the community—they’d have been strung up.”

  “There must be another route in. Do you think it’s just the two of them? Or are there more people here?”

  “Fuck,” said Jane. “What do we do?”

  Jack considered. “We can’t just walk away. We find out who they are and what’s they’re up to, and whether there’s anyone else.” He smiled. “They might be friendly, and on top of things here. This might turn out okay.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Jane. “And we’ll all get to have cake and a sing-song.”

  THEY CHECKED EACH doorway as they made their way down the murky corridor—but there was no sign of the man and woman in protective suits. According to the cutaway diagram they’d seen before, they would soon reach the turbine hall, where they were likely to be exposed to a huge dose of radiation. Jack felt tired and itchy already.

  Jane skidded to a halt, pointing ahead to a line of light, blinding in the darkness. They crept closer: the light emerged from the gap under a door. They could hear rumbling through the wall, like some kind of machinery. There was no sign or marking on the door to tell them what lay beyond. Jane raised her gun—she would cover Jack as he went inside. There was no handle, he just had to push the door inwards. Gingerly, he did so.

  A cloud of smoke erupted from the doorway. Jack fell back, clamping his hands over his mouth and nose so he’d not breathe in the toxic fumes. The door swung shut again, cutting off the steam. Jane grinned at him.

  “Know what this is?” she whispered. Jack shook his head. “Shower rooms. Decontamination.”

  “So?”

  “So, they’re knocking off work for the day. Which means they’ll be off guard. We can handle two of them. And then we can ask them what they think they’re playing at.”

  “If there’s only two of them in there,” said Jack. But he pushed the door anyway and stepped through the wall of steam.

  He found himself in a square-tiled room, dazzling white in the glare of electric lighting. The air was hot and moist. Steam curled thickly from a doorway in the far wall, through which he could hear running water.

  Jane followed him, gun on the doorway. With Jane covering him, Jack made his way over for a better look. His clothes stuck to him as he moved, soggy in the heat. Now, under the sound of running water, he could just hear the man and woman, calling out to one another as they washed. A tiled wall cut off his view of the washing facilities—he couldn’t tell if the man and woman were alone.

  Beside the doorway stood a plastic bin with a lid. A handwritten sign pointed down to the bin with the words Kern Strahlenschutz Anzug, and a pretty good sketch of a radiation suit. A box on the wall bore a green cross symbol, and beneath it—reachable from the floor—was a red emergency button. There was nothing else.

  Jack mouthed “Okay?” at Jane and she nodded. He took a step towards the shower room and the merry chatter of the two Germans. Then he stopped, glancing back round the room. Jane met him with a look of puzzlement, and he held up a finger: they couldn’t make a sound. She nodded her understanding, so he moved to the plastic bin and removed the lid.

  The visor of a radiation suit stared sightlessly up at him. Carefully, quietly, Jack extracted the suit from the bin. It was surprisingly heavy, especially the visor and the mask that fitted beneath it. He tried to hand the suit to Jane, but she still held her rifle. So, to her surprise, Jack started to pull on the suit.

  It was warm and damp, with a strong whiff of its previous occupant. The face mask fitted tightly round Jack’s eyes and nose and mouth, the thick plastic making him gag. Jane had to help him with the zip that reached up the side of the suit and then over, across the top the visor. His breathing echoed around him, he felt hot and trapped and dizzy. But there was also a heart-racing excitement. They had a protective suit! There might yet be a chance of surviving.

  He nodded his head towards the door out of the room, but Jane shook her head and handed him the gun. Jack couldn’t argue without making noise, so could only watch as she clambered into the second protective suit, pulling on the mask with more skill than he had shown. The mask obscured her features, and reflected his own anonymous visor back at him.

  He pointed back to the door they’d come in by. Jane nodded, took the machine gun from his hands and they lumbered stiffly back out into the corridor.

  “Go on, then,” said Jane, her voice muffled by the suit. “Why didn’t we question those two in the shower?”

  “There can’t just be two of them here,” said Jack. “The lights are working, they’ve got showers. This is a big operation.”

  “We’d know for sure if we asked them.”

  “Did you see the alarm button on the wall? What if there was one in the shower room, too? They’d have called for help before we got to them.”

  “You don’t know that. And they might still call for help when they miss the suits.”

  “They don’t come back that way. There were no towels, no clothes to change into. You must go out a different way.”

  “They’ll notice eventually.”

  “Then we’ll have to be quick. But wearing this, we can have a good look round and no one will challen
ge us.”

  “And we might just get away.”

  “There’s a chance, isn’t there? Come on.”

  They wanted to see the main reactor, and there were two options. They could head through the turbine room and round, a long and circuitous route where they would potentially meet lots more people working on the site, or they could duck outside and cut across to that part of the building.

  The cold night air pinched at their suits. It was difficult to see much more than straight ahead in the suits; Jack had to twist his whole body left and right to get his bearings. A path led across a strip of roadway to the Reactor B building, another huge fat cylinder on top of a cube-shaped block. The windows above them looked dark, but they could feel the thrum of huge machinery inside.

  A series of concrete blocks and low walls in the road had, Jack assumed, been put there to prevent vehicles getting too close to the reactor buildings. He’d seen similar defences outside the Parliament building in London.

  They crossed the road, heading for a pair of doors. Suddenly, the doors burst open in a blaze of light. Jack shielded his eyes. People emerged from the glare, at least ten of them in protective suits. Light glinted on their visors, and on the assault rifles in their gloved hands.

  “Play it cool,” said Jane under her breath and continued to lumber onwards.

  Jack kept by her side. The armed personnel spreading out in a line to block their path. Jack and Jane had no option to stop as well, just a few metres in front of what looked very much like a firing squad.

  “Excuse us, please,” said Jane, mildly.

  There was no response—the armed personnel might not have understood. Or they understood too well. They were raising their guns…

  Jack grabbed Jane’s arm and dragged her away down the road as the shooting began.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JACK THREW HIMSELF round the side of a concrete wall and landed on top of Jane. She swore at him and hit and kicked him as bullets flew over their heads. He rolled off, badly jarring his shoulder and the wound in his chest. Jane was on her feet, edging round the concrete wall to return fire with her own rifle. The concrete echoed the sound, deafening Jack. Without a gun of his own, he couldn’t help Jane, he could only keep out of the way. Back against the concrete, knees bent so his legs were against his chest to present the smallest possible target, he cast around for anything he could use, or any way to escape.

  They were trapped between two large chunks of concrete that barely gave adequate cover. Between them and the next bit of a wall was a gap of at least five metres where they would be exposed to the firing squad. There was nothing else, just some stones at the side of the road. Well, Jack could throw those at the armed personnel, it was better than nothing. But as he grabbed the stones another thought struck him.

  Jane stopped shooting. A tense silence hung in the air, just the hiss of steam from the gun.

  “Did you get them all?” whispered Jack. “Pretty helpful if you did.”

  “I can’t see,” said Jane. “There’s a wall in my way.” She glanced back behind them, quickly assessing their chances of escape. “Fuck.”

  A Germanic voice cut through the silence. “If you are still alive, if you lay down your weapons and step out into the open, we will let you live.”

  “What do you reckon?” whispered Jack to Jane.

  “We don’t have any choice. If they capture us, they have to tell us what they’re up to. And they might not be quite as homicidal as everyone else we’ve met in the past few days.”

  “I suppose—” began Jack, but his words were cut off by a hail of gunfire, blasting chips of concrete from the wall just above his head.

  “I say again,” called the Germanic voice. “Lay down your weapons and step out into the open.”

  “I don’t trust him,” said Jane. “He’s enjoying this. Fuck.”

  “Get ready to run,” Jack told her. She didn’t question him, but nodded.

  “Five,” called the soldier. “Four. Three…”

  Jack threw the stones in his hand up over the wall in the direction of the armed personnel. He heard a yelp and hurried bootsteps on tarmac, by which point he and Jane were already racing for the next wall, diving down behind it as the armed personnel realised he hadn’t thrown grenades. Bullets battered the wall beside Jack, and a chip scored across his visor like a blade.

  “Go,” said Jane, covering the way they’d come with her assault rifle. He didn’t argue, he didn’t look—he half-ran, half-crawled to the next section of wall, keeping his head low. Bullets spanged off the road and concrete ahead of him, blocking his path. Then, behind him, Jane was on her feet and firing, a huge volley of bullets clattering on stone. Senses dulled by the noise, Jack threw himself round the next chunk of wall, tucking himself up tightly to leave space for Jane. He realised that he was crouched on a metal hatch, the surface pitted with ridges. A hefty padlock secured the hatch.

  “Jane!” he shouted—but she couldn’t hear him over the noise of the gun. He dared to duck back round the side of the wall, where Jane knelt in the open, spattering bullets at the gap in the concrete ahead of them.

  “Jane!” called Jack again. She didn’t turn, but she must have heard him because she got to her feet and quickly made her way back towards him, gun still trained on the gap in the wall.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to the padlock. She swept bullets across the metal surface and the padlock flipped up and broke apart. Jack hurriedly wrenched open the hatch, revealing a ladder down into darkness. He started down the steps.

  He found himself in a narrow passageway, the walls on either side lined with pipes and ducting. Lights on the floor revealed a passageway gently curving in each direction—it seemed to make a circuit round the main reactor building. There were the familiar warnings of radiation and reminders to wear a protective suit, with the number to call in case of emergency.

  Jane slid down the ladder to join him. He couldn’t see her face through the mask and visor, but her breathing was ragged and she stood hunched and exhausted. Jack could feel the heat of the gun in her hand.

  “Okay?” he asked her.

  “Not really,” she said.

  They raced down the passageway, bashing their shoulders against the thicker pipes. Jack found a grille in the wall that they might have been able to get through if they’d not had an army right behind them. They went on, and he had the awful thought that soon enough they’d be back where they’d started. Then he found the door.

  It was a huge, heavy door with a tiny window in one side; it appeared to be a good hand-span thick. Levers and a wheel had to be released before it would open. A series of pictures beside the window explained the process, and Jack and Jane worked together to get it done—not easy in their gloves. The door sighed as if pressurised, opening into another passageway—this one in total darkness.

  They hesitated before plunging into the gloom, but somewhere off—behind or ahead of them, it came to the same thing—they heard clanging footsteps on the ladder. Jane went first as she had the gun, and Jack used his shoulder to heave the door shut behind them. Hefty locks clunked into place as it sealed. The tiny window created a feeble spotlight that reached less than a metre into the room, illuminating a small patch of floor.

  Something bashed into Jack’s arm. He recoiled—but it was Jane, reaching out to grab him by the wrist. Gingerly, they made their way forward through the total darkness. The floor was smooth concrete under their feet.

  They crept onwards for what seemed an age. Then Jack could see something—a patch of brightness ahead. It was another spotlight created by a window in a door, though the light beyond seemed far brighter than that in the passageway they’d just come from. Still clutching Jack’s wrist, Jane knelt to peer through the small, square window. Jack glanced back the way they’d come but couldn’t see anything in the dark. Surely the armed personnel couldn’t be that far behind them.

  Then Jane was on her feet again. Without enough light to read t
he instructions, they fumbled over the levers and wheel, trying to remember the process. The last lever wouldn’t shift, no matter how much they forced it—and then there was a noise behind them, the door opening and admitting booted feet.

  “Fuck,” he heard Jane say.

  “Try again,” he said. “From the start.”

  They raced through the levers and the wheel—and this time the tumblers turned and with another sigh the door heaved open towards them, letting in dazzling light. A shout went up from some way behind them and they heard running footsteps, but by then they were already hauling on the door to close it again.

  Jack and Jane found themselves looking up at huge, rumbling machines. It was hot, too, Jack’s skin already clammy with sweat. They hurried along the side of one huge machine, searching for a door.

  “What do you think?” he asked Jane.

  “Gas circulator,” she said, pointing up to a gantry overhead supporting a vast mechanism, stretching across the room. “Leads to the reactor. After you.”

  He led the way, scrambling up the ladder to the gantry. Behind them, Jack could hear the door shushing open and armed personnel spilling out into the room. Jane still had hold of her assault rifle, but he couldn’t imagine her using it inside the reactor building itself. Perhaps she wouldn’t need to—just the threat of her firing it would mean everyone else would have to back off.

  They reached the gantry, ducked round the side of the huge gas circulator apparatus to keep out of sight. The gantry didn’t offer them any escape route: it stopped abruptly, looking out over a huge open space from which they could see the enormous, cylindrical structure of the reactor itself. Jack let out a gasp of surprise. Around the reactor, at myriad control desks and stations, there were twenty or thirty people working, all in yellow radiation suits. Jack almost wanted to laugh. What could they possibly do against an organisation like this?

  “They’ve got it under control,” said Jane in astonishment, leaning back to stare up to the top of the reactor core. Beyond it, many levels above them, a long window looked in on a control room, computer banks staffed by men and women wearing lab coats instead of protective suits. “Look at them,” said Jane. “They’re running the place! Like there was never a problem.”