Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (24 page)

48

10:30 a.m.

She made it just two steps before Soter realized what she was doing. “No!” he cried, and then lurched forward, arms thrown wide as if to seize her in his embrace.

At that instant, something cracked against the control room window, smashing the pane into a million glittering fragments. The unexpected destruction caught everyone on the balcony off-guard, even Jenna. She came to a halt almost as abruptly as she had started moving in the first place. There was something familiar about the scene, but it took a moment for Jenna and everyone else on the balcony to grasp the significance of the shattered window.

Noah however, caught on right away. “No, damn it!”

His exclamation jolted Jenna to alertness.
A sniper
, she thought.
Just like Ken on the roof of the bait shop. But is the sniper shooting at Soter or me?

She felt like she knew the answer, and that led to another, more ominous line of questions.

Was Noah lying to me? Was all his talk just a way to lure me out to where the sniper could finish the job?

Jenna wanted to believe that Noah loved her. Maybe they—Cort or whoever was running the show now—had lied to him, promised him that she would be given safe passage, so that he would flush her out.
Or maybe he thinks I’m damaged beyond repair. That I need to be put down, like a rabid pet.

She didn’t want that to be true, but there was no way to know.

A moment later, Soter crashed into her, tackling her to the balcony deck. Cray’s gun was out in an instant, and the report of the distant sniper rifle, only now reaching her ears, was eclipsed by the closer and louder thunder of his answering fire, directed at the only target available.

Noah scrambled away, running for the corner of the building, but even as he broke for cover, more shots began pelting the exterior of the building. Tiny spurts of flame scattered throughout the verdant landscape marked the position of at least half a dozen camouflaged shooters. Noah had not come alone.

Cray dropped into a crouch and lunged toward her. He scooped Jenna up in one hand, Soter in the other, and hustled them through the door as the balcony exploded in a spray of splinters.

Jenna wrestled free of his grip and crawled deeper into the relative safety of the control room. She spied Mercy, huddled behind a desk, and headed toward her. Bullets sizzled through the air overhead, smacking into the walls and ceiling, spraying dust and filling the room with the smell of smoke. But none of the shots came anywhere close to a human target. This was suppressive fire, Jenna knew, designed to keep them pinned down.

Soter seemed to grasp this as well. From his fetal curl on the floor he shouted, “Cray. Get her to safety.”

Cray hesitated, as if torn between his loyalty to the old man and his sense of duty, but he gave a terse nod and reached out to Jenna. “Come on.”

Jenna nodded her assent, then grasped Mercy’s hand and followed Cray’s lead toward the exit to the stairwell. Before leaving the room, he shouted to his partner, Markley. “We’ll try to lead them off. Stay with the doctor, and get the hell out of here as soon as you can.”

“No!” Soter protested. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. You have to save the girl.”

Jenna was not inclined to argue. Cray shook his head and then led Jenna and Mercy from the room, gun at the ready. “Stay close,” he said, not looking back.

Over the mechanical hum of the transmitter, the sound of a pitched battle rolled up from below. Soter’s security detail was putting up a fight, defending the transmitter building, but there were only four of them. Four against at least six shooters. Worse, there was only one way out of the building, and it went right through the middle of the fight. Jenna looked at Mercy, hoping to see some indication that she knew what Cray was doing, but Mercy’s blank look told her otherwise.

Jenna felt a return of the helplessness she’d experienced in Miami when she had boarded Soter’s helicopter. She didn’t even have a gun to defend herself. Her survival depended on Cray’s choices, and that was intolerable.

She was about to tell Cray that when he did something unexpected, turning away from the exit, toward parts of the building they had not visited.

“Where are we going?” It wasn’t simple curiosity that prompted her question.

“There’s another way out,” Cray said. “Through the transmitter room.”

Another way out was good. “Won’t they be watching all the doors?”

“Probably.” Cray didn’t break stride, but kept moving toward the source of the persistent thrumming sound. They passed through a maze of corridors, in and out of rooms lined with strange electronic devices, pieces of machinery and shelves packed with bound books and thick three-ring binders.

Cray stopped at a door that was plastered with signs. There were hazardous materials diamonds and cartoon lightning bolts accompanying a warning of high voltage electrical hazards, the familiar black-on-yellow radiation trefoil and strangest of all: a notice reading ‘Liquefied gas coolants in use.’ Cray turned the knob and shoved the door, but entered cautiously, sweeping the room beyond with his gun barrel. After a moment, he waved for them to follow.

The noise emanating from the room was deafening, drowning out even the sporadic report of gunfire. Jenna scanned the room for the hazards indicated in the signs. Everything she saw was unfamiliar and full of dangerous potential. There were large cylinders marked with more hazmat diamonds, and a machine that looked like it belonged on the weapon’s deck of a star cruiser from a science fiction film. One corner was dominated by an enormous cube-shaped machine that seemed to be the source of the noise. The dull gray metal sheathing the device was adorned with still more warnings of radiation danger. Next to it was yet another door, this one marked with a sign that said ‘Danger: High Voltage.’ Jenna peered through the wire-lined glass window and saw another enormous room and at its center, a strange yellow pillar wrapped in wires, sprouting from a metal donut-shaped base. It looked like a scaled-up version of the Van Der Graaf static electricity generator in Jenna’s science classroom.

“Please tell me we’re not going through there.”

Cray shook his head and moved toward the opposite wall. A large metal roll-up door was set in the concrete, big enough to accommodate a truck. He reached for the pull-chain that would open it, when a loud concussion tore through the room like a thunderclap.

Cray staggered, falling against the door. A bloody Rorschach pattern was left on the metal where he’d hit. But he wasn’t dead. Cray pushed away, turning with his gun raised, and he fired several shots toward the door through which they had entered.

Jenna pulled Mercy down, seeking refuge behind one of the work benches, as bullets creased the air, filling the room with the stench of burned gunpowder. The walls exploded with chips of concrete dust and sparks, as rounds ricocheted off metal surfaces. The gunman pushed into the room, firing as he moved, trying to get a clear shot at his real target. Another man stood at the entrance, firing at Cray to keep him pinned down.

The significance of this was not lost on Jenna. Soter’s security force had almost certainly been defeated by the overwhelming numbers of the assault team. There was no one left to defend her now.

Another round caught Cray, spattering the wall behind him with blood, but he kept firing, chasing the first shooter in a desperate bid to stop him from reaching Jenna.

There was a sound like a bell being rung, followed by a hiss of escaping gas. A bullet had penetrated one of the pressurized gas cylinders. White vapor spewed into the air.

Jenna drew in a breath and held it, knowing it would not be enough. The gas was probably a coolant—liquid nitrogen or maybe helium—more likely to flash freeze than suffocate them. Yet, despite this new peril, the shooting continued without cease. Still gripping Mercy’s hand, Jenna searched the room for a better hiding place, somewhere further from the gas. Before she could find anything, the gunman appeared, right above them, so close that Jenna could see wisps of smoke curling from the muzzle of his pistol. With a grim but satisfied smile, his finger tightened on the trigger.

Jenna attempted to move away, knowing it was too late, but Mercy remained rooted, anchor-like.

Then the world exploded.

49

10:33 a.m.

This is the way the world ends
…

The line from an old poem sprang into her thoughts, which was strange, because even though she recognized it, she also knew that she had never heard or read those words before, had no idea what the poem was called or who the poet was.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper
.

She vividly recalled her teacher, standing at the lectern, summarizing the long litany of evils plaguing the globe. “The world is infected, and the disease is called ‘humanity.’ We are a cancer, devouring the healthy organism of the world, consuming its resources, propagating our own numbers beyond carrying capacity. And when we are warned of the danger, when we are shown that to kill the world is to kill ourselves, we refuse to listen. We will be the death of our world, and we will meet our end with a whimper.”

The prospect filled her with anger. Humanity, so arrogant, so greedy… What better way to describe the species than as a cancer? The Earth, once so full of beauty and wonder, was now choking in filth, its horizons marred by towers of concrete and steel like a malevolent grin full of broken teeth. The night sky was curtained with ugly artificial light, blotting out the stars.

Strange that she couldn’t quite remember when she had heard this lecture. The memory was so vivid, but like the details of the poem, she could not put it in the appropriate context.

No matter. The diagnosis was beyond question. That was the important thing. Humans were incapable of solving the problem because they
were
the problem. If there was to be a treatment for the cancer of humanity—a radical treatment—it would have to come from somewhere else.

And it had.

It all made sense now. The message Dr. Soter had received was a sort of viral therapy, and it had worked. Without even knowing why, Soter had created the antibodies that would purge the world of this plague by accelerating humanity’s own self-destructive impulses. It would take only a nudge or two: a false-flag bioterrorism incident or a subversive cyber-attack, and the superpowers of the world might unleash a cleansing nuclear fire.

Wipe the slate clean
.

But first, the message. Everything was ready. The dominoes were poised to fall. But before the last phase of the treatment was to be initiated, one task remained. She remembered the time, which had very nearly arrived, and the place, which was thousands of miles away. If she was not able to get there in time, one of the others would.

She felt a sublime satisfaction in the knowledge that the cancer of humanity would be purged soon, and her own purpose in life would be fulfilled.

Too bad that Mercy and Noah would be swept away, but radical treatments often damaged healthy cells. It was for the greater good.

No
, she thought suddenly.
There has to be another way. I don’t want to lose them again
.

Don’t be foolish
, argued another voice, her teacher’s voice, but also weirdly enough, her own.
You know it’s for the best. It’s what has to happen
.

I know? How do I know? How do I know any of this?

And then the answer came like a flash of light.

50

10:34 a.m.

Light, brilliant beyond description, painful in its intensity. Then, darkness.

The memory of the teacher’s words slipped away like the last echoes of a dream, as Jenna embraced the physical sensations that were her lifeline out of the void.

Her ears rang, overloaded by the cacophonous detonation. The harsh smell of ozone stung her nostrils, and smoke burned her unseeing eyes. She felt the pain of a concussion—not a bullet slamming into her, but something much bigger, like what she had experienced when the
Kilimanjaro
had exploded. There was also the memory of something else, a tingling sensation that had caressed her exposed skin in the instant before the blast. A crazy thought burbled to the top of her rattled awareness:
I’ve been struck by lightning
.

Crazy, only because she knew that she had not been struck. That she retained the wherewithal to sort that out was proof enough. Nevertheless, the flash and thunderclap could have come only from a catastrophic electrical discharge.

The darkness became a greenish haze. Nothing bore any resemblance to the world that had existed only a few seconds before. A soft whimper reached her ear through the silence.

Silence? Yes.
Her hearing was returning, but the noise of the transmitter and the staccato bursts of gunfire were gone. Her first thought was that the explosion had knocked out the transmitter, but as her awareness returned she realized the exact opposite was true. The transmitter, or rather its power supply, had caused the devastation that now surrounded her. In all likelihood, a stray bullet had penetrated the door to the high voltage room and struck some critical component—the tall yellow pillar was probably a capacitor, storing massive amounts of voltage for use by the radio transmitter. The result had been an artificially produced lightning bolt, as destructive and unpredictable as the real thing.

She was still clutching Mercy’s hand. In the dimness she could distinguish Mercy’s sprawled form, but not much else. “Mercy? Are you okay?”

Another whimper. Jenna took that as a positive sign. Her vision continued to improve, but what she saw was not encouraging. Black smoke poured in from where there had once been a door marked with a high voltage sign. “Mercy, we have to get out of here.”

As Jenna rose to her feet, unsteady, she saw the man who had been about to shoot her, reduced to a charred , vaguely human form. By the look of it, he had been the focal point of the discharge. Another unmoving form was visible at the entrance to the room—the other shooter, stunned, but alive. He had been much further from the discharge than she, and it was a wonder that he hadn’t already recovered. Jenna doubted she could make it past him, and even if she did, there would be others lying in wait. If she and Mercy were going to escape, it would have to be through the roll-up door, as Cray had intended.

Cray!
She looked around and found him, sitting with his back against the wall beside the big door. His shirt was saturated with blood, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain. He just sat there, gazing at her with unblinking eyes. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at
anything
. Cray was dead.

“Wake up. We’ve got to get moving.” She tugged on Mercy’s hand again until the woman stirred. Mercy mumbled something but Jenna shushed her. “We’ve got to get out of here. Come on.”

She pulled away from Mercy. Every second was critical. Mercy would have to recover on her own while Jenna blazed their escape route. She half-crawled to where Cray had fallen, and she found his pistol still gripped in one dead hand. Something looked strange about it. The end of the barrel protruded a full half-inch from the body of the weapon.

It’s empty
, she realized. Cray had fired off his last round.

Steeling herself, she drew back his blood-soaked windbreaker to uncover the shoulder holster tucked beneath his left arm—empty like the pistol—then she checked the other side. There, she discovered two small pouches. Each contained a full magazine. She deftly liberated both, and then returned her attention to the handgun.

It was the same design as the pistol Mercy had given her to use during their futile escape attempt on the Overseas Highway, although it was slightly larger.

Mercy was alert now, staring aghast at Cray’s motionless form. Jenna hurried back to her and offered the weapon. “Here,” she said, hoping that a meaningful task would break Mercy from her daze. “You know what to do, right?”

Mercy tore her gaze from the dead man and nodded. With practiced efficiency, she ejected the empty magazine and slotted a replacement into the pistol grip, released the slide, and then racked it once to advance a round into the firing chamber.

Jenna returned to the door and took hold of the dangling chain. “They might be waiting out there,” she warned, and then without further comment, she started pulling.

The door rose slowly, revealing rain-spattered pavement. Mercy ducked down, training the pistol on the widening stripe of revealed daylight, but did not fire. Jenna raised the door just a couple feet and stopped. She dropped down and peered through the opening.

The half-expected ambush did not occur, but Jenna saw too many places where a gunman might be concealed—parked cars, two small modular buildings that looked like trailers and the terrain itself.

“We have to make a run for it.” She did not add that she had no idea where they would go next. Mercy nodded her readiness.

Jenna wriggled under the door and scrambled toward the nearest car, Mercy right behind her. Still no sign of the assault team—no sign of Noah. An ominous quiet had descended over the area. The transmitter was dead, and the gun battle had ended.

She swept the panorama, looking for a route to freedom. Directly ahead lay the road, and somewhere beyond that, the visitor’s center Soter had mentioned. They might be able to lose themselves in the crowd, or find someone to help them…

No. These men wouldn’t let innocent lives stand in the way of completing their mission, and there was no longer anyone left to help them.

Noah?

The thought stung. Just when she had been ready to believe his declaration of love, his promise to help, the jaws of the trap had snapped shut. Looking to Noah for help was worse than letting the shooters run them down.

“We have to go where they won’t think to look for us,” she told Mercy. “Follow me.”

Staying low, she skirted the parking area toward the corner of the transmitter building. After verifying that the coast was clear, she darted into the lee shadow of the structure. From this new vantage, she saw the bundled cables overhead, snaking from the nearest tower to the suspended antenna assembly far out over the dish.

She considered climbing onto the cable and making her way out to the array. It was definitely the last place anyone would think to look, but it was also a dead end. Even if they could make the precarious journey unnoticed, they would be trapped four hundred feet above the ground.

But the dish was another story. From the control room, it had looked like an enormous empty swimming pool excavated from the surrounding landscape, but Soter had revealed that it was actually made up of aluminum panels, built above the ground. The edge of the dish was only a hundred yards away. If they could make it under the reflector panels, they’d have far more options.

She told Mercy her plan, leaving no room for argument. There was none. Mercy just nodded, looking a little shell-shocked. When Jenna started forward, creeping along the perimeter of the building, Mercy stayed right behind her. They stopped again at the next corner. The dish was visible below, a massive spherical bowl. A narrow tree-lined road ran down to its edge. The slope and slick pavement would make keeping their footing a little tricky, but Jenna estimated that a sprint of no more than thirty seconds would bring them to their goal. She checked the surrounding area for any sign of hostile forces, and then gripped Mercy’s hand again.

“Ready?”

“Not really,” Mercy admitted. “But let’s do this.”

Jenna nodded, and then because she could not think of a better way to coordinate their mad dash, gave the classic track and field prompt: “Ready, set, go!”

As they ran, Jenna expected to hear gunshots or feel the impact of a bullet, but what happened was much worse. Two-thirds of the way to her goal a shout reached her, an all too familiar voice, rolling down the slope, echoing from the surrounding limestone formations.

Noah’s voice.

“Jenna!”