I started to move toward the firehouse, but hit the ground again as one of the big overhead doors began to open. It seemed as if it was going up in short lurches, as if someone were opening it with a pulley rope, and I figured the electric power was out here. In fact, in the upstairs windows, I saw a flickering light — candle or kerosene.
Anyway, before I had to decide what to do next, a big ambulance without any lights showing came out of the garage bay and turned onto the road, heading east toward the narrow bone of land where the ruined artillery batteries were.
The ambulance had a high chassis and ran easily over the deadfall on the road. Soon, it disappeared in the dark.
I ran as quickly as I could barefoot toward the firehouse, drew my revolver, and dashed in through the open garage door. I could make out three fire trucks in the garage.
I had been in the rain so long that the lack of ram felt sort of strange for about ten seconds, but I got used to it real fast.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a fire pole toward the rear of the garage, and the flickering light from the bunkroom upstairs filtered down through the hole in the ceiling. To the left of the pole, I saw a wide staircase. I went to the staircase and climbed the creaky steps, my pistol out front. I knew there was no danger to me, and I knew what I was going to find.
At the top of the stairs was the bunkroom, lit by kerosene lamps. By the light of the lamps, I saw two men in their bunks, and I didn't have to get closer to see they were dead. That brought the known number of people murdered by Tobin to seven. We definitely didn't need a silly old trial to settle these scores.
Boots and socks sat at the side of each bed. I sat on a bench and pulled on a pair of heavy socks and a pair of galvanized rubber boots that fit well enough. There were lockers against the wall, and on another wall, there were raincoats and sweatshirts hanging on hooks. But I had on about as much of a dead man's clothing as I wanted. Not that I'm superstitious.
There was a small, galley-type kitchen at the rear of the firehouse bunkroom and on the counter was a box of chocolate donuts. I took one and ate it.
I went down the stairs and out to the road that ran east-west in front of the firehouse. I headed east, up the rising paved road in the trail of the ambulance. Broken limbs and branches lay in the road where the ambulance had run over them.
I walked for about a half mile, and even in the dark, I recalled this road from Stevens' tour. The rain was driving hard now, and the wind was starting to rip branches from the trees again. Every now and then, I'd hear a crack that sounded like a rifle shot and it made my heart skip a beat, but the sound came from limbs snapping off and falling through the trees.
The paved road was running with a torrent of water that was coming from the higher ground on both sides of the road. The drainage ditches along the road were full and overflowing as I tried to fight my way uphill against the current and through the mudslides and fallen limbs. This was definitely worse than slush in front of my condo. Nature is awesome. Sometimes, nature sucks.
Anyway, I wasn't paying enough attention to my front because when I looked up, the ambulance sat right in front of me, no more than fifteen feet away. I stopped dead, drew my pistol, and dropped to one knee. Through the rain, I could see that a huge tree had toppled over and blocked the road in front of the ambulance.
The ambulance took up most of the narrow road and I edged around it to the left, knee-deep in the torrent of water from the drainage ditch. I got to the driver's side door and peeked inside, but there was no one in the cab.
I wanted to disable the vehicle, but the cab doors were locked, and the engine hood was latched from the inside. Damn. I crawled under the high chassis and drew my knife. I don't know much about auto mechanics, and Jack the Ripper didn't know much about anatomy. I slashed a few hoses that turned out to be water and hydraulic, then for good measure, I cut a few electrical wires. Reasonably certain I'd committed enginecide, I crawled out from under, and continued on, up the road.
I was in the midst of the artillery fortifications now, massive concrete, stone, and brick rums, covered with vines and brush, looking very much like the Mayan rums I'd once seen in the rain forest outside of Cancun. In fact, that had been on my honeymoon. This was no honeymoon. Neither was my honeymoon.
I stuck to the main road though I could see smaller lanes and concrete ramps and steps to my right and left. Obviously Tobin could have taken any one of these passages into the artillery fortifications. I realized that I'd probably lost him. I stopped walking and crouched beside a concrete wall that abutted the road. I was about to turn back, when I thought I heard something in the distance. I kept listening, trying to still my heavy breathing, and I heard it again. It was a sharp, whiny noise, and I finally recognized it as a siren. It was very far away and barely audible over the wind and rain. It came from the west, a long, shrill sound, followed by a short blast, then a long sound again. It was obviously a warning siren, an electric horn, and it was probably coming from the main building.
When I was a kid, I'd come to recognize an air raid siren, and this wasn't it. Neither was it a fire signal or an ambulance or police car siren, or a radiation leak signal, which I'd heard once in a police training film. So, partly by process of elimination and partly because I'm not really stupid, I knew — though I'd never heard this signal before — that I was listening to a warning siren for a biohazard leak. "Jesus…"
The electricity from the mainland was down and the backup generator near the main building must have died; the negative air flow pumps had stopped and the electronic air filters were breached. "Mary…"
Somewhere, a big, battery-powered siren was putting out the bad news, and everyone who was pulling hurricane duty on the island now had to suit up in biohazard gear and wait it out. I didn't have any biohazard gear. Hell, I didn't even have underwear. "… and Joseph. Amen."
I didn't panic because I knew exactly what to do. This was just like in school when we went into the basement as the air raid sirens wailed and the Russian missiles were supposed to be streaking toward Fiorello H. La Guardia High.
Well, maybe it wasn't as bad as all that. The wind was blowing hard from the south to the north… or was it? Actually, the storm was tracking north, but the wind was blowing in a counterclockwise direction, so that conceivably whatever the wind picked up at the main laboratory on the west end of the island could wind up here on the eastern edge of the island. "Damn it."
I crouched there in the rain and thought about all this — all these murders, all this chasing around through the storm and narrowly escaping death and all that — and after all this mortal foolishness and silly vanity, greed and deceit, then the Grim Reaper steps in and clears the board. Poof. Just like that.
I knew in my heart that if the generators conked out, then the entire lab was leaking everything it had inside into the outside air. "I knew it! I knew this would happen!" But why today? Why did this happen on the second day of my whole life that I was on this idiotic island?
Anyway, what I decided to do was run as fast as I could back to the beach, get Beth, get in the Whaler, get on the Chris-Craft, and haul ass away from Plum Island, hoping for the best. At least we'd have a chance, and the Grim Reaper could take care of Tobin for me.
Another thought passed through my mind, but it wasn't a nice thought — what if Beth, recognizing the warning siren for what it was, took the Whaler to the Chris-Craft and left? I mulled that over a moment, then decided that a woman who would jump aboard a small boat in a storm with me wouldn't abandon me now. Yet… there was something about plague that was more terrifying than a storm-tossed sea.