Terminus

by Adam Baker

  ‘We were forty feet below ground.’

  ‘Not deep enough.’

  ‘But I feel good. Apart from my eyes. I feel fine.’

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  Wade opened his mouth. Cloke peered inside.

  ‘Ulcers. Bleeding gums.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ve got a sweet taste in your mouth right now, don’t you?’ said Cloke. ‘Kind of like honey.’

  Wade nodded.

  ‘You’re exhibiting the typical symptoms of acute radiation poisoning. The prodromal stage lasts a couple of days. Nausea and vomiting. Dry throat, hacking cough. Burns, blisters. Random neurological effects, like blindness. Then there is a latent phase, the illusion of recovery. The initial symptoms abate for a while, but remission doesn’t last long. Day or two at the most. You’ll go downhill fast. It’ll be bad. Brain swelling. Congested lungs, internal bleeding. You may shit your guts out, literally excrete your own stomach lining. That’s the reality of the situation. So if you’ve got any thoughts about hijacking the chopper and heading south to the Caribbean, put them from your mind. You’d never make it.’

  ‘Can we beat this thing? Me and Sicknote? Do we have a chance?’

  ‘The dose you took? No. Nobody has received that kind of exposure and lived. You’re going to die. You should be dead already.’

  ‘Take us back to Ridgeway. Send for the chopper.’

  ‘If the world were still intact, if there were hospitals and surgeons, then we might have options. We could put up an oxygen tent, isolate you from infection. We could transfuse blood, maybe find a marrow donor. But we don’t have much equipment back at base. A few bandages. A few antibiotics. Enough to fix a broken arm, maybe pull a tooth. Basic first aid. But we’ve got morphine. We can manage the pain. That might not matter much right now. But in a day or so you’ll be screaming for a shot. At that moment you’ll need us more than you’ve needed anyone in your life.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘There’s an alternative.’

  Cloke unzipped the trauma bag. He took out a cardboard box. The box looked like it had sat on a shelf for a couple of decades. Faded serial number. Faded radiation emblem.

  He opened the box. Little brass cylinders in rows, like a pack of rifle bullets. He put a cylinder in Wade’s hand. Wade held it to his ear and shook it. Faint rattle.

  ‘What’s this? Lipstick?’

  He uncapped the cylinder and shook a glass ampoule into his palm. He rolled it between his fingers.

  ‘Cyanide,’ said Cloke. ‘We all carry one. My advice? Keep that capsule in your pocket. Hold out as long as you can, then use it.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Like I said. Forget about fleeing south. You got bigger problems.’

  Wade stroked cold glass.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Cyanide? I hear it’s a pretty quick way to go. Takes effect within seconds. Shuts down respiration. You might convulse a little, fight for breath, but not for long. Your world will be over in less than a minute.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Better than the alternative.’

  ‘You should have just put it on my tongue,’ he said quietly. ‘Told me it was a painkiller or some shit.’

  ‘If I were dying, if I had hours to live, I would want to know. I would want to choose my moment, make my peace.’

  ‘Sorry man,’ said Nariko. ‘Guess you reached the end of the line.’

  22

  Wade turned the cyanide cylinder between his fingers.

  ‘Do you think he’s lying?’

  ‘About the radiation?’ said Lupe. ‘About the bomb? I doubt it.’

  ‘You trust him?’ asked Wade.

  ‘Yeah, I guess. Broom up his ass, but he’s on the level.’

  ‘We were below ground. Me and Sicknote. Miles from the blast site. We didn’t set foot outside. We didn’t breathe fallout. Maybe we’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lupe. ‘Asi es, asi será. Some people beat the odds. It’s like cancer. Someone has a big-ass tumour. Melanoma the size of an apple lodged in their lung. Next time they take an X-ray it’s gone. It happens. Don’t bite that capsule just yet.’

  She looked towards Sicknote. He sat on the street exit steps, staring into space, lost in waking nightmares. His lips moved. He whispered to himself. He pulled strands of hair out of his scalp and watched them drift to the floor.

  ‘Is he cool with this truce?’

  ‘He’ll do whatever I say.’

  ‘So what do we tell him?’ asked Lupe.

  ‘Nothing. When the time comes, I’ll feed him the capsule myself. Say it’s vitamins or some shit. Let him bite down and fall asleep.’

  Nariko and Cloke stood in the IRT supervisor’s office. They leaned over schematics spread on the table.

  Cloke uncapped a Sharpie and scribbled a break in a Liberty Line tunnel.

  ‘One of the buildings flanking Broadway must have pancaked, crushed the tunnel flat. And I’m guessing there was another collapse, further north.’ He scribbled a second break. ‘It’s created an air pocket. That’s how this Ivanek guy, the young man you heard on the radio, survived. The subway train must be sitting in a sealed section of tunnel, cut off from rising flood water.’

  ‘We haven’t got equipment to shift that much concrete aside,’ said Nariko.

  ‘We brought scuba gear,’ said Cloke. ‘We could check beneath the waterline. There might be a gap between some of those big slabs. Some way to worm our way to the other side.’

  ‘The flood water is tainted with fallout,’ said Nariko. ‘You said it yourself: if anyone dives in that water, they will get seriously irradiated. It’s potential suicide.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Cloke. ‘This is a military mission. I brought you here. It’s my responsibility.’

  Nariko wearily shook her head.

  ‘How long since you pulled basic? Twenty years? Thirty? You’re a lab tech. You spend your time behind a microscope. I trained for this shit. Confined space operations. I do it every day.’

  ‘This is a little bit worse than a neighbourhood house fire. A whole different league. If you get in that water you’ll pay for it. Maybe not right away, but somewhere down the line.’

  ‘Comes with the job.’

  ‘You need to keep your exposure to the absolute minimum. Make a brief survey. Be thorough. But don’t hang around.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If there’s a route through the rubble, some kind of crawl-space to the other side, we’ll send a team.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Like I say. Do it quick, but get it done. We can fail but we can’t quit, understand?’

  ‘Yeah. I know the score.’

  Lupe and Donahue pushed the Coke machine across the tiled floor of the ticket hall, inch at a time. Metal shriek. Flaking rust. They hauled the Coke machine up the stairwell. Donahue called a breathless three-count each time they hefted the heavy cabinet a step higher.

  ‘Hold on.’

  Donahue wiped sweat from her forehead. She winced as she touched her bruised and swollen cheek.

  ‘Sorry about your face,’ said Lupe.

  ‘Sorry about yours.’

  They reached the top of the stairs and paused for breath.

  Donahue bent double, like she was about to vomit.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Lupe.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘Is it the sickness?’

  Donahue clapped a hand over her mouth and fought back rising bile. She waited for nausea to subside.

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  Clawed fingernails raked polythene. The plastic bulged as hands tried to pull it aside and reach fresh meat.

  ‘Got to admire their persistence,’ said Lupe. ‘This virus, this parasite, whatever the hell it is pulling their strings. A single driving purpose.’

  ‘You prefer it to humans?’ asked Donahue.

  ‘Darwinism in
action, baby. This bug wants the world more than us. You can’t win against that kind of enemy. Trust me. I’ve seen it. On the street, in the yard. Some guys have their own dark purpose. Spooky fuckers with a weird, Charles Manson charisma. They’ve got an aura, like they’ve seen further, deeper than anyone else. They’re driving headlong to hell, and nothing better get in their way. You can’t beat that intensity. All you can do is back off.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Donahue. ‘Give me a hand.’

  They put their shoulders to the Coke cabinet and shunted it against the curtained entrance gate.

  They stood back. The vending machine gently creaked and rocked as hands clawed it from behind.

  Donahue leaned against the tiled wall for support. She held her head like she was waiting for pain to pass.

  ‘Sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Stop asking.’

  Lupe unslung the Remington and handed it to Donahue.

  ‘You better take this.’

  ‘Thought you’d want to hang on to it,’ said Donahue.

  ‘Galloway is itching to start a war.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘The guy is totally transparent. He wants to snatch Nariko’s nine milli and provoke another stand-off. Me against him. Not what we need right now. You look after that thing, okay? Keep it close.’

  Donahue took the gun. She checked the safety. She checked the chamber.

  ‘Don’t be pointing that thing at me, though,’ said Lupe. ‘I’m done being a prisoner.’

  Nariko flipped latches and threw open the lid of an equipment trunk stamped MARINE DIVISION. Folded drysuits and three full-face diving helmets. She lifted a heavy steel helmet, pulled away its protective polythene sleeve and examined the neck ring.

  ‘Used this stuff before?’ asked Cloke.

  ‘Fished plenty of bodies out the river. Jumpers. Flew upstate and helped a mine rescue one time.’

  ‘A mine?’

  ‘Half-assed coal operation. Seven guys trapped in a flooded tunnel. Local cops thought they might have found an air pocket.’

  ‘Find any of them alive?’

  ‘No.’

  Cloke snapped open a lock knife. He sliced through nylon rope and pulled tarp from a wooden pallet. A stack of fibreglass air tanks.

  Nariko kicked off her boots and dropped her pants. She stripped to underwear, tied loose hair in a ponytail and pulled on a heavy trilaminate drysuit. Tight neck seal, tight cuffs. Cloke helped check the chest zipper. He hefted a weight belt and buckled it round her waist.

  ‘Give me the gun.’

  Cloke handed her the Glock.

  ‘Will that thing fire underwater?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Nariko. ‘Hope I don’t find out.’

  She tucked the pistol into her weight belt.

  Cloke popped two tabs of IOSAT potassium iodide from a foil strip.

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  ‘I’ve had my dose,’ said Nariko.

  ‘Have some more.’

  He put the pills on her tongue and held a bottle of water to her lips. She swigged.

  ‘Don’t hang around down there. Ten minutes, at the very most. Make a swift survey of the site, then get out the water and back in the boat quick as you can.’

  She nodded.

  ‘But don’t rush. Poor visibility and a lot of snarled metal. Don’t get caught up.’

  Cloke laid the aluminium rebreather frame on the floor. A snarling rat sprayed on yellow fibreglass. He unclipped the cowling. Two AL80 diluent tanks strapped to the back. Black marker on duct tape: NITROGEN and HELIUM. A small green liquid oxygen cylinder between them, alongside a lithium hydroxide CO2 scrubber cartridge.

  Final check of the breathing loop. He checked psi gauges. He checked valves. He clipped the protective cowling back in place.

  He helped Nariko shoulder the heavy trimix pack and adjust nylon harness straps.

  Gauntlets secured by lock rings. She held out her arm while Cloke buckled an LCD depth gauge to her wrist.

  Nariko bent forwards as Cloke lowered a steel helmet over her head. A pig-snout manifold. Halogen lamps at each temple, visor secured by heavy hex bolts. He clamped the helmet to the neck ring and span lock nuts. He equalised pressure and adjusted oxygen. Faint hiss and rubber-crackle as the suit filled with air. Nariko’s ears popped.

  Cloke gave a good-to-go fist knock on the helmet.

  Nariko checked her wrist screen. Green. Gas mix and tank pressure flashed nominal. Five hours of breathable air.

  She gestured A-OK.

  Cloke clipped a Motorola radio to her weight belt. He ran the jack cable up her back to a socket in the helmet.

  He stepped back and spoke into his radio.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Five by five.’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She lumbered across the ticket hall and headed for the stairs. She walked hunchbacked, centre of gravity thrown by the tanks strapped to her back. Cloke walked beside her, holding flippers, offering a guiding arm.

  She walked past Donahue. She walked past Lupe, Wade and Sicknote. They watched her pass, silent and solemn like she was a shackled death row inmate making their final journey to the execution chamber.

  Tombes spoke into his radio.

  ‘God bless, Cap. Stay safe.’

  Cloke took Nariko’s arm and helped her descend the steps. She gripped the handrail and leaned forwards so she could see her feet over the visor rim. Her breathing rasped loud inside the helmet.

  She reached up and triggered the headlamps. The twin halogen beams lit the dark stairwell noonday bright. Grime-streaked tiles, chipped concrete steps.

  She was spooked by black water waiting to receive and engulf her. She rolled her shoulders, told herself to shape up.

  Cloke knelt and helped her step into flippers. He tightened ankle straps.

  He spoke into his radio.

  ‘You set?’

  Thumbs up.

  ‘Let’s get this done.’

  23

  Lazy flipper strokes. Nariko enveloped in amniotic silence, as if she were drifting at the furthest edge of the solar system, the point where the light of a pinprick sun yielded to interstellar darkness.

  She was sheathed in a deep-water drysuit, but could still feel an insidious chill, the gentle squeeze of water pressure.

  She spooled a white paracord guideline.

  She reached behind and adjusted the knurled knob of the buoyancy dump valve. Urethane bladders tethered to her back-mount bled shimmering bubbles like globules of mercury.

  Her breath roared loud and hot inside the helmet. A steady Vader-rasp of exertion. She heard the reassuring solenoid click of the rebreather apparatus inject fresh oxygen into her suit.

  Helmet lights lit the tunnel floor. Quartz-halogen beams shafted through the sediment haze. The lamps illuminated a vista of concrete dusted with ochre rail silt, the sleeper-sill of the track bed, the inert third rail that used to hum with a death-dealing six hundred volts.

  Scattered garbage. Crack pipes. Pennies. A dead rat.

  She checked her wrist gauge. VR3: a crude dive computer strapped to her left wrist. An LCD screen encased in pressure-proof acrylic and steel. A depth/oxygen/psi readout. The screen winked green. Three bars charting gas levels within the suit:

  FHe 17%

  FN2 57%

  FO2 26%

  A soothing computer voice gave a thirty second update.

  ‘Depth: three metres. Atmosphere: good. Four hours, fifty three minutes remaining.’

  The green light and voice alert were a redundancy designed to cut through the stupor of hypoxia or nitrogen narcosis. A warning for a diver succumbing to the lethal euphoria of a failing nitrox mix. Even if they could no longer read gauge numbers, even if their vision narrowed and they headed for blackout, a flashing screen and urgent voice would urge them to act on instinct and head for the surface.

  ‘What’s my time?’

  ‘Coming up on eight
minutes,’ said Cloke. ‘How’s it going down there?’

  ‘I’m doing okay.’

  Nariko’s voice, tight and intimate within the confines of her helmet.

  The rockfall. Tumbled slabs of ferro-concrete bristling with rebar. Twisted girders. The splintered stump of an ailanthus tree.

  Yellow metal near the tunnel floor. Nariko ducked beneath a girder to get a closer look. A school bus, half crushed beneath a titanic block of masonry.

  She gripped the twisted fender. She pulled herself over the hood and shone her flashlight into the buckled cab.

  A bus driver. He was still lashed in position by his safety belt. Eyeless and mummified, like he died at the wheel and sat parked in the street for weeks before the bomb brought an office building down on his head.

  She looked past the driver. She peered into the dark interior of the bus. Silt and shadow. Rows of empty seats. The roof had crumpled and bowed.

  She trained her flashlight down the centre aisle and focused the beam on rubble beyond the rear window. Tumbled masonry seemed to form a crooked tunnel, a tight passageway that snaked into darkness.

  ‘I think I’ve found a way through.’

  The IRT supervisor’s office.

  Nariko towelled her hair with a bandana. She had a foil blanket draped round her shoulders.

  ‘This crevice. This worm hole. It is passable?’ asked Cloke.

  ‘Yeah. Pretty gnarly. A narrow sump. Doesn’t look too stable, but I reckon we could make it to the other side.’

  ‘A three-man team?’

  ‘Ideally.’

  ‘What about survivors, Captain?’ asked Tombes. ‘We have three diving suits and a limited supply of oxygen. How do we bring them back?’

  ‘We’ll find a way,’ said Nariko.

  Cloke shook his head.

  ‘We’re here to retrieve research. Papers, disks, hard drives. That’s the priority. We scour the site, harvest whatever information we find, then leave. That kid we heard on the radio? Offer whatever help you can. But, ultimately, our job is to locate and rescue Ekks. We need him alive, long enough to tell us what he knows. Anyone else is a secondary concern.’