“No! No, goddamn you! You can't be the only way out! You can't!”
All at once something banged into the door behind her.
She yelped, her hands shooting up to cover her mouth. She pushed herself back a pace. It sounded like… like one of the Black Shadow team, throwing himself at the metal.
Seconds ticked by in the blackness.
And then it came again, louder this time. Something large and powerful slammed into the door, something that wanted in. Scrambling along the ground, Kate found the screwdriver again. She knocked it away with a brush of her hands and then chased it down, her knees scabbing against the concrete.
Hands threw the lock on the other side of the door and then cast it open. The metal banged against the outside of the bunker, letting in the last rays of daylight. Though it was gray and miserable, she was still blinded by the sun.
A figure loomed in the passage, hulking and silent. In those first seconds, Kate thought it was Bruhbaker back to finish her off.
Then it spoke, and its voice sounded just like AJ. “There you are,” it said. “I thought I'd lost you.”
4
“How did you find me?”
AJ noticed she was clutching at him like a security blanket, and he pulled her close. “I heard a noise. I thought it might be one of those things, but when you screamed, I knew I had you.”
“I didn't scream. You just startled me. But anyway, that's not what I meant. How did you get here to the island?”
As they walked across the grounds, AJ recounted their run-in with the Black Shadow team and their escape down the platform. It all sounded improbable to his own ears, but he didn't leave anything out. He couldn't afford to leave anything out, not if they were going to get through this. She had to know everything.
When the tale was done, her eyes darted to the mass of tendrils beyond the gate. There was no doubt in her eyes. “So that's where they went… all of them, even the ones who were here before.”
“That's a good guess.”
Her mouth quivered. “That means they're gone. Over two hundred men and women… nobody survived.”
“Just Gideon.”
“Just Gideon,” she said. Her eyes were brimming. “We have to destroy these things, whatever they are, wherever they came from. You know that, don't you?”
“Somebody does. But I think I'm going to need some pants, first.”
She looked down and laughed. It was good to hear that laugh. How strong she was, this girl.
What he said was funny, but it was also true. They needed supplies, and not just clothes. Protection would have to come first, food and water second.
“Kate, before we get into this, I want to show you something.” He reached into one of his boots and pulled out the paperwork from the platform. Keeping it had seemed like an unnecessary gesture at the time, but he was glad of it now. “You said your job was how to report this to the shareholders, and earlier, I bet you were questioning the board, wondering if they were the ones responsible for this.”
“I don't know what to think. I must have been alone in the dark there for hours. I kept trying to turn it around in my head, and I couldn't. I couldn't see how the company could do this to another human being. And not just me, but all of the people here, they…” She shook her head, unable to finish.
“I don't think it was the board. They certainly didn't create those things, whatever they are. Anyway, I think it was a handful of people who thought they could use it. I don't know what for.” He held out the paper, and she took it.
“You doing my job for me?”
“You hired me for my expertise. I guess I always was good at sticking my nose where it didn't belong.”
She stared at the folded piece of paper as if it were a puzzle, and she didn't know how to open it. At last, she tucked it into her jeans. “Now's not the time, Angus. I don't know what this shows, but I can't imagine any of them will get away with it.”
AJ shrugged. “Arrogance. Know anybody like that?”
“Many someones.”
“That may be true, but I have a feeling this paper will mean more to you than it does to me. As for their motive, I can't answer. I've seen a lot of strange things in a lot of strange places, but I've never seen anything to make me think growing tentacles that eat people would be a good idea.”
Dutch would have laughed at that, but she didn't. AJ didn't either.
“Then, I guess we'll need to protect ourselves.”
“You guess right.”
She pointed to a bunker in the center of the compound with an open door. AJ remembered poking his head in earlier and seeing a pair of corpses, but the shelves and boxed goods hadn't registered; he had been too preoccupied with finding her at the time.
“I know a place with guns,” she said. “A lot of guns.”
5
Less than an hour later, the fires on the platform finally achieved a temperature hot enough to ignite the unprocessed crude in the storage tanks. The remaining canisters burst like balloons, spattering flame and debris a hundred feet into the air. It was the final stage in the destruction of the platform.
The last crane collapsed when the tanks burst, annihilating the top level and wreaking destruction through the other floors as it fell. The helipad toppled. The catwalks buckled. All that was left was a smoking ruin, a skeleton of a metal titan on the water. The Carrion, what was left of them, burned with it. They melted and fell into the sea, dropping like insects in a forest fire.
Kate and her new friends were resting when it happened, she herself nearly collapsed from exhaustion. They did not see the great monument fall into the water. They did not see the four shapes dive from the lowest level just before the last of it disintegrated.
Chapter 18: Aphelion
1
Dominik stopped just outside of the laboratory bunker, unable to walk through. Jan and Gloeckner came to a halt behind him.
“We've done everything we could, Mister Kaminski,” the doctor said. “She's resting now.”
She was down there beyond the door, his little girl. Dominik remembered they had ripped her body from his arms the day before, and now she was here. Here, of all places. It was fitting somehow, the consequences of his failure ending in the place it had begun. There were logical reasons for her to be in the lab, of course. The medical equipment was there, and it was one of the only rooms that could be called private, at least from a soldier's eyes. But as much as he wanted to see her again, to hold her, he didn't know what he would find. The cages were broken, and those things from the crater had been given free reign. They may not have grown far when her body was carried below, but now, a day later…
“We will give you leave to bury her tonight,” Gloeckner said. He had mentioned this on the walk over but repeated it now. “You can sit with her as long as you like until then. She was quite far along by the time she was taken from you, Mister Kaminski. The smell was… well, it was not very good. She has been embalmed.”
“Embalmed?”
“Yes. We do have the means to give our dead a proper burial here. The Führer saw to that. Our burial practices really aren't so different, your people and mine. Are they?”
Dominik had a vision of the chasm, thinking of the stories Ari had been telling him about their new commander. He wondered if the other prisoners would be afforded such a proper burial. But no, he was different from them; he was special. And so Zofia had been a punishment, swift and merciless, and then they would all be friends again. Like chopping off a limb and then cauterizing it so the victim would not die.