With both soldiers dispatched, he exited the test chamber, shut the door behind, and moved out into the complex with the intention of doing great harm.
19
Annabelle Stacy stared at the locked door, expecting — no, hoping — that it would unlock and there would stand Major Gant with a confiscated rifle in his hand and a couple of unconscious guards behind him. He would reach in and say something like, "Time for us to get the hell out of here," or "I've decided to cut our vacation short," or something clever like that. A few minutes later they would be outside the complex, greeting two thousand marines swarming ashore to end this nightmare.
The door did eventually unlock and open. Instead of Major Gant, the woman referred to as Pearl — a little overweight, glasses, and hair tucked in a bun — motioned for her to come out.
Stacy refused. This was not so much as an act of defiance as because her legs seemed immobilized by fear.
Pearl sighed and sent in two guards with clubs and a young man with dark hair dressed in a lab coat. His security card/badge displayed his picture and a title along the lines of "assistant researcher." Stacy did not get a good look at it, as the guards grabbed her arms before she could read all the words.
"We are going to lab seven," Pearl told the escort, and they led the young woman out and to the left to a long hall on the north end of the complex.
"So you're the smart one," Pearl said with a hint of British midlands accent. "I understand you have two doctorates. I have a couple myself."
"Three," Stacy answered as her eyes darted side to side as if she were a mouse waiting for a cat to pounce. Pearl responded with a dismissive snort.
Their trip came to an end at a heavy door. The young technician stepped forward and swiped his identification card, causing the door to unbolt. He then pulled it open and the party shuffled inside.
They entered an observation room overlooking a pure white chamber that very much resembled the place where Costa had met his fate. Due to a lack of light, not much was visible in this room, although Annabelle did see a chair and a desk near the observation window and two silver canisters resembling fire extinguishers against the inner wall.
While Pearl moved to the desk near the window, the young technician opened the inner door by turning a heavy crank; a much more primitive locking mechanism than the keycard, but probably just as efficient for anyone stuck on the other side.
Of course Stacy realized she would be stuck on the other side. Her heart had already been beating fast but now it went into overdrive, to the point that it felt like the organ might just burst out of her chest. She felt sweat drip down her back under the fabric of her black BDUs and she found it hard to breathe.
"Restrain her and put her inside," Pearl ordered. "The results of this test are of the highest priority for Mr. Monroe."
Stacy saw one of the guards approach with a set of metal wrist restraints. She tried to back off but the other guard held her shoulders. She thought about her hand-to-hand combat training with the Seals and raised her elbow with intent to strike, but the technician grabbed her arms.
She cursed, she struggled, but they slipped the cuffs on her.
"Hurry up," Pearl shouted from a seat near the window. "Get her in there. The specimens are standing by."
Despite more kicks and screams, the three men forced Annabelle into the test chamber, where the only fixture of note was a hook hanging from the ceiling. Stacy did notice, however, a second door to her left, this one sporting a big red letter eight.
Suddenly her toes were off the ground as the men hoisted her up, catching her cuffs on the hook overhead. The restraints dug into her wrists like razors, eliciting screams of pain. Stacy kicked her feet and hit nothing but air as her toes dangled two feet from the ground.
"This hurts! Damn it, cut me down!"
Pearl entered the test room holding a syringe.
"Hold still or this will just cause you more pain."
Dr. Stacy had no intention of holding still. She writhed her body, twisted her hips, kicked her legs, and swung her shoulders, but to no avail. The two guards and the technician held her still long enough for the researcher to stick the needle in her thigh.
She expected to die at that moment. Her imagination felt a deadly poison enter her blood stream and crawl through her body vein by vein. Any second now her heart would stop and the world would go dark.
The technician asked his supervisor, "How long until it takes effect?"
Pearl glanced at her watch and answered, "Give it ninety seconds."
At that the group retreated from the room, sealing the door and leaving Dr. Stacy hanging by the hook, waiting to die in ninety seconds. But that time passed and death did not come, although her lungs felt heavy, as if liquid pooled there. She also felt a roughness in each exhale, like the symptoms of slight congestion.
Her sense of relief that the injection would not kill her was quickly chased by the sound of that other door — the one labeled number eight — sliding open. She turned her head to the noise and at that point wished whatever concoction they had pumped into her veins had ended her life.
Four animated units — walking corpses — stumbled into the room from a holding chamber of some kind. Their white eyes could not miss the helpless woman hanging from the hook like a slab of beef waiting for the butcher.
Campion removed his mask so that he could speak clearly to Sawicki, although the thick, hot smoke caused a cough to follow his every other word.
"What do you know about volcanos, Raoul?"
Raoul was the soldier's nickname, as decided by Franco the previous year. This was partly because his real name—"Ralph" — was boring and partly because he was the team engineer, and, as Franco had pointed out, all engineers are Pakistanis or Indians and Raoul is a Pakistani or Indian name.
Franco's myopic view of the world surprised no one, but several soldiers had expressed surprise that Franco understood that an engineer — in this case — did not drive a train.
In the end the name stuck, mainly for the first reason. It just did not sound right to have a high-tech commando named Ralph. As for the other reasons, Franco's point of view when it came to ethnicity and stereotypes was not considered reliable.
"They are big and they spit lava," Sawicki replied without removing his own respirator. "And I don't like being this close to one."
The two men stood on a plateau on the west side of the island, this one much smaller than the one on the east where they had found the bodies. This one also much closer to the source of the lava flows.
He wanted to examine the area of the mountain from which the lava had come, especially now that Colonel Thunder had reported that the U.S. Geological Survey had ruled out a traditional eruption on Tioga Island.
Campion and Sawicki stood one mile from the side of the volcano from which the liquid fire had spewed. Unfortunately, smoke and steam conspired to hide the details from his binoculars, and they dared not get any closer.
While he still felt a strong sense of responsibility for keeping himself alive so as to preserve the chain of command, Campion also knew that if Wells's story was true and if the eruption had been a fake there remained the possibility that Major Gant and Dr. Stacy were alive, albeit most likely under the control of a hostile force.
"Sir," Sawicki said, pulling Campion from his thoughts, "I don't know what you're looking for, but this shit is out of my league. Now, if you want to blow something up, I'm your man. But I'm no Vulcan. Or, I guess, a volcano study guy. What do they call—"