‘An actual conversation?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did he ask?’
Sicknote shrugged.
‘How should I know? Obvious questions, I guess. Who are you? Where are you from? What do you want?’
Lupe picked up the notebook.
‘And you think he wrote down answers?’
‘That’s why the notebook is so precious. It’s mankind’s first and only communication with this disease.’
‘I don’t buy it. It’s a germ. A bug squirming in a Petri dish. It doesn’t have thoughts. It doesn’t make plans. You can’t talk to it, any more than you can interview syphilis.’
‘No,’ said Sicknote. ‘You’re wrong.’
Lupe gestured to the crude radio.
‘So you’re listening to it right now? Is that what you think? Monitoring its thoughts?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So what does it say? What’s it trying to tell you?’
‘It’s from somewhere cold and dark. It’s travelled a long way. Unimaginable distances. It slept, thousands, millions of years. It dreamed. And now it’s awake.’
‘Crazy,’ said Lupe. ‘You’re not listening to the radio. You’re listening to the voices in your head.’
‘It’s all true. Swear to God.’
‘You don’t believe in God. And he sure doesn’t believe in a loser like you.’
A warm glow of light from the throat of north tunnel.
Lupe stood at the water’s edge.
‘Donnie?’ Her voice echoed from the tunnel walls. ‘Donnie, is that you?’
Faint oar splashes. Donahue paddled into view. She was sweating with effort. The dive helmet propped at the prow projected the weak orange glow of a battery burned dry.
She guided the boat to the foot of the stairwell and threw the tether line. Lupe caught the rope, pulled the boat close, and lashed the line to the stairwell balustrade.
‘I brought company,’ said Donahue.
Faint splash from the tunnel mouth. Churning water. Lupe trained her flashlight. A rotted skeletal thing. It flailed and thrashed. It nudged plates of ice aside. A vagrant with a long beard and matted hair, trying to stay afloat, fighting the waterlogged overcoat that threatened to drag it beneath the surface.
A stack of paint tins on a step. Lupe picked up a tin and loosened the lid. She hurled it towards the creature. The tin hit the water with a cannonball splash. The lid popped loose as it sank. Water surrounding the flailing revenant was filled with shimmering globules of oil. A wide chemical slick shone greasy rainbows.
Lupe pulled a slat from the fire bucket and hurled it spinning into the cavern darkness. The burning shard executed an elegant, flame-fluttering arc, then hit the water.
Ignition.
Blue fire washed across the surface of the flood. Ice fizzed and dissolved. Flames danced high and scorched the tunnel roof.
The creature thrashed and cooked. Burning arms, burning head. Matted beard hair shrivelled to nothing.
The creature fixed its gaze on Lupe and Donahue standing twenty yards away at the water’s edge. It strained to reach them from a lake of fire.
Face burned away. No lips, ears or nose. Eyeballs boiled, burst and evaporated.
Convulsions. Slow death. The vagrant sank beneath the surface. Skin crisped and popped as the corpse slowly submerged.
The fire dwindled and died. Blue smoke hung over steaming, fizzing water like swamp gas.
‘Any more of these fucks heading our way?’ asked Lupe.
‘There were three. I killed the others.’
Donahue was bleeding. A gash to the forehead. She released lock rings and pulled off her gloves. Lupe gave her a bandana. She dabbed the wound on her forehead.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Lupe.
‘Yeah.’
‘You didn’t get bitten, did you?’
‘No.’
Donahue sat on a step next to the bucket fire. She rubbed tired eyes.
‘Look at me.’
Donahue looked up.
‘Swear to me. Tell me that’s not a bite.’
‘It’s not a bite. And by the way, screw you.’
Donahue wearily got to her feet. She unzipped and stripped out of her drysuit. She pasted a dressing over the gash on her forehead. She dressed and pulled on boots.
She pointed at Sicknote, sat on the step listening to the radio apparatus.
‘What happened to his head?’
‘A little elective brain surgery.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Communing with the virus. Let him be.’
A couple of backpacks leaned against the stairwell wall. A couple of rolled NBC suits. Lupe threw them into the boat.
She pointed at crooked planks nailed over the south tunnel entrance.
‘Guess we just pull those aside and see how far south we can get.’
‘If the water rises any higher we’ll drown.’
‘This city is dreaming up new ways to kill us every hour. We’ve got no choice. We got to move out.’
Donahue checked her watch.
‘Still a couple of hours before the scheduled pickup.’
Lupe glanced at her watch.
‘They’re due at seven. At one minute past, we climb in that boat and paddle like motherfuckers, all right? Seven. We don’t wait a second longer.’
‘I hear something,’ said Sicknote. He gestured to the little speaker cone. ‘A voice.’
‘No shit.’
‘Listen.’ He held out the speaker. ‘A human voice. For real.’
Lupe crouched beside Sicknote and put the speaker to her ear.
‘Holy shit. The chopper. It’s in range.’
She snatched the Motorola from her waistband. She upped the volume and switched to vox.
‘Rescue Four, this is Air Cav Charlie Charlie Foxtrot, do you copy, over?’
Donahue grabbed the radio from Lupe’s hand.
‘This is Rescue Four, good to hear your voice.’
She leaned against the wall, weak with relief.
‘Do you have the objective, over?’
‘Ten-four. We have Ekks.’
‘Rescue, we estimate ten minutes to touchdown, five minutes to reach your location. Prep the doctor. Get him ready to move.’
‘Copy that. Can’t wait to get out of here.’
Donahue turned to Lupe.
‘See? Told you they wouldn’t leave us behind.’
65
Seventy knots. A slow, ten degree bank into headwind.
Byrne twisted in the pilot seat.
‘Check it out.’
Chief Jefferson unbuckled his harness. He adjusted headphones.
‘What am I looking at?’
Nothing to see but instrumentation reflected in black cockpit glass.
Byrne pointed to a distant orange glow.
‘Fire. Miles of it.’
‘The city?’
‘The refineries. Burn for months. Maybe years.’
Chief turned back to the passenger compartment.
His team:
Craven, chewing gum, cradling a belt-feed SAW.
Bingham, unfolding a stretcher, laying it on the cabin floor. She hung a couple of saline drips from a drip rack.
‘The guy will be heavily irradiated,’ said Chief, shouting to be heard over rotor roar. ‘Don’t forget. He’s a patient. And he’s a valuable asset. But he is also radioactive waste. Don’t touch him with bare hands.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Bingham. You all right?’
‘I’m fine, sir.’