But I can’t summon a trained takedown team. These elaborate rescue fantasies are a product of impotence and frustration. Tetsell is barricaded behind a heavy door. I have limited men, limited ammunition. Best to avoid a confrontation. I must be patient. Maintain a dialogue. Starve him out.
In the meantime, I have a grim task to perform. Rosa’s body is still lying beneath a blanket in the plant room. I suppose I must carry her deep into the tunnels, far enough that we won’t breathe the stink of decomposition.
There is a niche in the tunnel wall several hundred yards north near Canal Street. A branch of track aborted during the initial construction of the Liberty Line. It is little more than a cave. A brick arch framing rough walls of schist scarred by chisels and dynamite cartridges.
It is where I laid the remains of Knox, days ago.
I carried a garbage bag full of offal and bone deep into the tunnel. All that was left of him, all that wasn’t suspended in jars. No sound but the steady drip of water.
Foolish to travel alone. Plenty of infected stumbling round the passageways.
I dumped the bag in the wall niche, doused it in kerosene and set it alight. The tunnel was filled with smoke, meat-stink, the pop and fizz of boiling body fat.
I don’t know why I went to such lengths to destroy all trace of Knox. I could have put his carcass out in the alley. Or I could have dumped the bag a few yards into the tunnel near Fenwick and let rats gnaw the marrow from his bones. His death was necessary, legally sanctioned. No reason to feel ashamed.
No one gives a damn about Knox. He was a non-person long before this disease stalked the earth. No one will mourn him, no one will care. There will be no judge, no tribunal. He has been erased. It is as if he never lived.
Cloke folded the notepaper.
‘Donavan. Wasn’t he the soldier we found floating in the tunnel? That guy turned to rat food?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lupe. ‘Sorry bastard succumbed to infection.’
‘How old do you think he was?’
‘Young, at a guess. One of those blue-eyed, god-and-country types.’
‘Seems the lad walked into the dark rather than become a threat to his companions.’
‘Is that what you want to believe?’
‘Why not?’ said Cloke. ‘A good soldier. Took action rather than jeopardise the people around him. Some people do the right thing.’
‘You got kids?’ asked Lupe. ‘Family?’
‘No. You?’
She shook her head.
‘Times like these, it’s good to travel light.’
Cloke stuffed the notepaper back in the bag.
‘There’s nothing in these letters. Nothing of use. A dozen goodbyes. It seems indecent to read this stuff. Prurient. Eavesdropping on their final hours. Ought to put a match to them all.’
‘Then you’re back where you started,’ said Lupe. ‘Ekks. You’ve got to get inside his head, find out what he knows.’
49
Donahue sat in the dark, back to the office wall. She closed her eyes and rested her head against cement. She blanked her mind and tried to sink into hibernation.
She put herself on a wooded hillside. Dappled shade. A trickling stream. Silence and solitude. She lay in long grass and sipped from her canteen.
She expanded the daydream, added detail and backstory.
She had fled the ruins of civilisation and found safety in deep wilderness. She was camped in a forest, far from the horror. A dome tent draped in camouflage netting hidden among trees. Maybe, when noonday heat gave way to evening cool, she would fish from the stream. Lower a hook and line, snag a couple of trout.
Dread crept over her. The hillside dissolved. Summer heat was replaced by bone-chilling cold. Sunlight turned to darkness. The smell of forest pine was supplanted by the stink of mildew and decay.
Back in the IRT office.
She stared into absolute black. Her optic nerves projected fleeting monster shapes.
She couldn’t escape a skin-crawling, preternatural sense she was not alone. Something else in the room, inches away, hidden in darkness.
She fumbled her watch and pressed for the face-light. She half expected to see a rotted visage leaning over her, arms outstretched.
Nothing.
She held her wrist and monitored her pulse. She breathed slow, tried to calm her jack-hammer heart.
How much time had passed? It felt like an hour. She checked. Eight minutes.
‘Christ.’
She stood. She stretched. Toe touches and back twists.
She crouched and grunted through a dozen half-assed press-ups. She lay on her back and tried a couple of knee-to-elbow crunches. She gave up and lay on cold tiles, fighting a wave of fierce nausea. She suppressed a dust-sneeze.
She heard a soft thump, then the rasp of fingernails dragged across wood.
Something on the other side of the office door. The Dunkin’ Donuts guy.
More scratching. The faint creak of body weight pressed against wood.
Donahue got to her feet. She crept across the room, arms outstretched. She felt for the door. She stroked wood and found the peep hole. She put her eye to the lens.
The rotted, skeletal thing staring back at her. Jet black eyes. Blood-matted hair. Skin like ripped parchment.
Donuts sensed her presence. It leaned close to the door. Sniffed the lens, like it caught her scent.
Donuts was suddenly pushed aside. A bald Hare Krishna, mouth smeared with blood, pushed his face to the peep hole.
The infected creatures jostled for position in front of the door. They craned towards the lens, stared back at Donahue in fish-eye distortion.
They leered. They hissed. They began to punch the wood.
Donahue jumped back.
Pounding fist strikes. Again. And again. A determined fusillade of blows. Oak split with a gunshot retort. Donahue heard the splintering rasp of fissures extending through wood grain.
She backed away. The pounding increased as a third pair of hands joined the assault and began to batter the door.
She unclipped her radio.
‘Tombes? Can you hear me, over?’ She shouted. No point masking her voice. ‘Pick up the damned radio.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Need some help over here.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Bastards want in. They mean business.’
‘Can you hold them off?’
‘Negative. I need help. Right now.’
‘Throw stuff against the door. Anything you got.’
‘I’m on it.’
‘We’re coming, Donnie.’
50
Lupe grabbed the radio.
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know. Two. Maybe three. Hammering like crazy.’
‘Is the door secure?’
‘It’s started to bow. I can hear it crack each time they hit. It’s slowly giving way.’
‘How long can you hold out?’
‘This kind of sustained assault? Minutes. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less.’
‘I’m going out there,’ said Tombes. ‘Rest of you stay here, okay? Close the door behind me.’
‘You’ll get killed.’
‘Maybe. But I’ll lead them a dance before I do.’
‘Fuck that shit,’ said Lupe. ‘They will tear you to pieces.’
‘I’m not going to sit on my ass and listen to Donnie get ripped apart.’
‘I’ll go with you. If we stand back-to-back maybe we can take a bunch of them down.’
‘There’s another option,’ said Cloke.
‘Let’s hear it.’
Cloke pointed to the jumbled notes in the data bag.
‘One of the Bellevue guys took Ekks hostage. Kept him prisoner in the IRT office. Barricaded the door. The officer in charge planned to use air handling conduits to get inside the room and shoot him dead.’