He unclipped his weight belt and began to strip out of his drysuit.
Tombes wiped sweat with the back of a gloved hand.
‘This is fucked. We can’t stay here.’
‘You want to head out there, into the hall?’ asked Lupe. ‘You’d get ripped to pieces in seconds.’
‘Sooner or later we’ll have to make a break for it. Each hour we wait, more of those bastards gather outside the door. We should hit them now, before the odds get any worse.’
‘Any of you guys got a watch?’ asked Lupe.
Cloke checked his G-Shock.
‘Eleven hours until the chopper arrives.’
‘Hey,’ said Tombes, looking around. ‘Where’s Donahue? Anyone seen Donnie?’ Dawning horror. ‘Christ. She must still be out there.’
Lupe tossed Tombes a radio.
‘Donahue, do you copy, over?’
No reply.
‘Come in, Donnie. Do you copy, over?’
No reply.
‘Talk to me, Donnie.’
Dead channel hiss.
‘What happened?’ asked Tombes. ‘Did anyone see what happened?’
No one spoke. No one met his gaze.
‘Come on. Think. Did anyone see her go down?’
Lupe shook her head.
‘Too much going on.’
‘I was with you,’ said Cloke. ‘I was dealing with Ekks.’
Tombes took a tentative step towards the door.
‘I should go out there,’ he said, uncertain, like he wanted someone to talk him out of it. ‘I’ve got to help her.’
The door shook from a fusillade of blows.
‘Forget it,’ said Cloke. ‘She’s gone.’
‘I have to be sure.’
‘I can’t let you go out there, man,’ said Lupe.
‘Who the fuck asked you?’
‘Think it through. There’s a bunch of those bastards massing in the hall. The door has to stay closed.’
The hammering ceased. Sudden silence.
Cloke slowly approached the door.
‘What do you think they are doing out there?’
‘Sniffing around, trying to find another way inside,’ said Tombes. ‘Not much mystery to these roaches.’
‘Maybe we should check our pockets,’ said Lupe. ‘Make an inventory.’
They crouched in a circle and emptied their pockets.
A lock-knife. A bandana. A half bottle of water and a couple of energy bars.
‘Wish we had more water,’ said Lupe.
‘Just got to sit tight,’ said Cloke.
‘Screw that. We have to reach the radio. If we don’t check in, they’ll recall the chopper.’
‘We’ll figure something out.’
‘And we can’t sit on the roof waiting to get picked up. We’d soak up a shitload of rads. We need to speak to the pilot. We’ve got to know when he’s ready for touchdown.’
‘One thing at a time,’ said Tombes. ‘Better rest a while. Give ourselves space to think.’
Cloke and Tombes stripped out of their suits. They shivered in T-shirts and shorts. Sweat turning to chills. They slapped themselves, rubbed their arms and jumped to get warm. They huddled together with their backs to the wall, and pulled scrap paper over their feet and legs to trap body heat.
Tombes pulled Cloke’s weight belt from a nearby pile of dive equipment. He unclipped the Geiger counter. He held the unit in front of his chest. Fierce crackle. He held it beside Cloke. Heavy hiss.
‘Guess we were in the water a while,’ said Tombes quietly. ‘How long before we get sick?’
‘The first symptoms will hit pretty soon.’
‘What are our chances?’
Cloke shrugged.
‘We live or we die. It’s out of our hands.’
‘What about those iodide pills?’ asked Tombes.
‘In the hall, with all the other meds.’
‘This is going to get bad, right?’
‘Yeah.’
Tombes shut off the handset and got to his feet.
‘I’m going to check on Ekks.’
Ekks lay at the back of the room. He was still zipped in an NBC suit and strapped to the backboard.
Tombes knelt beside Ekks. He released straps. He flicked open a knife and slit the suit. He pulled the rubberised nylon aside.
‘How is he?’ asked Cloke.
Tombes lifted an eyelid, checked for dilation. He laid a couple of fingers on the man’s carotid.
‘Stable, I guess. Good pulse. Good respiration. Wish we could reach the medical gear. The guy could do with more saline. And we have to get some nutrients inside him. Blood sugar must be through the floor.’
Tombes laid scrap paper over Ekks, built up a blanket page by page.
‘Should trap a little heat.’
Cloke gestured towards the door.
‘Those trauma bags you’ve got out there. You folks came pretty well equipped, right?’
‘Yeah,’ said Tombes. ‘We respond to pretty much any 911.’
‘Have you got some kind of adrenaline shot? Something that can shock him awake?’
‘We might have some epinephrine. We keep it for junkies. Once in a while, an unusually pure batch of heroin hits the streets and we get a bunch of OD calls. Always the same. Shitty apartment. Needles on the floor. Sorry-ass kid lying in a pool of piss, respiratory system sedated to a standstill, slowly turning blue. We give them a bump, a little dose of epi, to kick-start their lungs.’
‘Could we give Ekks a shot?’
‘No. He’s pretty frail. Probably kill him stone dead.’
‘But there’s a chance it could work?’
‘Way too risky.’
‘He’s got no life to lose. He’s dying of acute radiation poisoning. Survival isn’t an issue. But could we jolt him back to conscious, yeah? Prep him with painkillers and anti-nausea meds, then zap him awake with a shot to the heart. He’d be lucid for a while, right? Long enough to talk. Long enough to tell us what he knows.’
‘Forget it. Do no harm. That’s the oath. My job is to keep people alive.’
‘Nariko said you did a couple of years in the marines.’
‘I was a kid. I never left the damn base.’
‘But what would a soldier do in this situation?’
‘You’re asking the wrong guy. I’ve never raised a hand to anyone, not in a schoolyard, not in a bar.’
‘These are unusual circumstances. We have to think beyond the old rules.’
‘What’s right is right.’
‘All you got to do is load the hypodermic and give it to me. I’ll do the rest. Whatever happens, it will be my responsibility.’
‘Yeah. Well, the bags are out in the hall. They might as well be on the moon.’
Lupe sat, back to a wall, eyes closed.
Cloke sat beside her.
‘You look strung out,’ he said.
‘I’m in better shape than you.’
‘Nausea? Headache?’
‘Forget it. I’m fine.’
‘Sorry about Wade.’
‘I barely knew the guy,’ said Lupe.
‘But he saved your life, yeah? Drew off a bunch of infected. Took a lot of courage. Nasty way to die, but he did it for you. He didn’t strike me as the heroic type. I guess sometimes people surprise you.’
‘He was a rat.’
‘Rat?’
‘We met at Bellevue. Adjacent cells. Each morning he got led to the shower. Racket used to wake me up. Jangling keys, slamming doors. His escort would march right past my cell. Did you see those tattoos on his arms? All that white power shit?’
‘I guess. I didn’t pay much attention.’
‘First time I saw him, he had a big-ass swastika on his right forearm. It looked fresh. Blacker than black. Couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I saw him again a few days later. The swastika was pale grey, like it had been there a decade. A while after that, it faded almost to nothing. You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out. He was getting his tattoos lasered off. A session every couple of days. That’s why they had him at Bellevue. Witness protection. He wasn’t nuts. He wasn’t sick. He turned rat. Maybe his biker buddies had a meth lab somewhere. Maybe the Texas angels were running stuff across the border. He traded his hombres to the FBI, set them up for some kind of RICO charge. His get-out-of-jail-free. They transferred him to Bellevue on some bullshit pretext. Psych evaluation, blood tests, anything. Quickest way to get him out of the prison population. Snitches get stitches, right? Couldn’t let some Aryan Brother shank his ass then get paraded round the yard on shoulders like a righteous hero. The feds needed a temporary safe house, somewhere to park Wade while they formalised the whole thing with the DA and got him into the witness programme. The Marshals Service arranged the removal of distinguishing tattoos. Bet they were setting him up with a fresh ID, a car, an apartment. A new town, a whole new life.’