Instinct (2010) (25 page)

‘Get them through the other side!’ screamed Bishop.

Terror shot through the office. Laura held Andrew closer and he gave a weak cough as he awoke.

Webster ran to one of the moving wasps and squashed it with a firm tread of his massive black boot, then he kicked the twitching corpse in the direction of the glass and moved across to do the same to the others.

‘The shield’s comin’ down!’ yelled Garrett. But the motor was slow, and there was still work to be done.

It was impossible to know how alert the wasps were, but with the shield still not low enough to cut them off completely, Bishop had to make a decision.

‘Fall back to my office, now!’

The three soldiers ignored him. They were so close to total safety that the little extra effort seemed worth the risk.

Carter crushed another wasp, leaving just one to go. Garrett ran towards it, but they could now see a writhing scrabble of movement on the other side of the shield.

Her boot came down just as several more wasps
crawled into the corridor looking for heat. A few were even flying, rising awkwardly like newborn birds.

Bishop, Garrett, Carter and Webster ran for the office.

The roaring, spattering noise behind them pushed them forward like a strong gust of wind. They didn’t look back. With the volume increasing, they didn’t have to.

They were within a couple of feet of the door when a wasp rose up behind them and landed on Bishop’s shoulder. He dropped the phone, smashing it on the floor, and flailed wildly as the insect climbed round to his neck.

Then they were face to face, and Bishop was consumed by horror, his senses drowning in tar.

The dark, latticed eyes searched Bishop’s dilated pupils as the wasp became more and more conscious and remembered how useful its sting could be.

It pulled its abdomen away to give the barb room to drive home.

Bishop tried to squash it against the wall but turned too hard and slammed his shoulder instead. The wasp bucked its rear to lock the stinger fast, only to find Webster’s concrete forearm smashing against its side.

It hit the wall by Bishop’s head and landed on the ground next to him. Webster’s boot came down, but too late: the insect buzzed aside and lost only a leg before whirling around to aim for his throat. Bishop quickly slipped into the office, leaving Webster to it.

Meanwhile, the other wasps were coming.

Webster had no time to work out how to repel the five-legged wasp, get into the office and avoid a situation that would make an agonizing death inescapable.

His hesitation cost him, allowing the single wasp to snatch a rasher of skin from his right arm as it tried to find enough purchase to bring its sting into play.

Before he had time to fully register the pain, he was already pulling his knife from its sheath and stabbing through the wasp’s head.

Meanwhile, fifty thrashing wings roared to life behind him.

He looked back to see the swarm closing with single-minded purpose. The sound drove him to the door.

Turning, he lunged into the gap, which was just big enough for him to scrape through, and collapsed on to the floor of the office.

The door slammed shut.

A second later, an irregular beat of soft, insistent thuds could be heard from the other side.

The survivors were spread throughout Bishop’s office. Some had found space on the floor, while others sat around his meeting table, trying not to look at each other. Bishop himself was slumped in the seat behind his desk, a migraine pounding through the side of his skull.

Laura was facing him, in one of his leather armchairs, still holding Andrew in a blanket. The other chair had been used as a soft place to deposit the explosives. With nobody moving or speaking, the only sounds in the room were the ticking clock and the butting of wasps against the wooden door.

‘So what’s happening out there?’ asked Mike, his words competing with that invasive
thud-thud-thud
.

‘Even if the shield has come down, there are now so many wasps on this side of it that we can’t leave here safely. Eventually, the wasps will get through that door,’ said Webster.

‘Jesus,’ muttered George, crossing himself. Mike shut his eyes, and Laura held Andrew tighter. That close-up they had all had of the wasps ten minutes earlier was the image in everyone’s mind. It allowed them to see through the door to what was trying to get in, and that sent something raw and awful through their guts.

Susan looked over at Garrett’s scars and the burgundy handkerchief that covered the wound on Webster’s wrist.

‘So … what are we going to do?’ she asked. ‘Wait here to die?’

‘Taj will know something has gone wrong,’ said Bishop unconvincingly. ‘He will get help to us.’

Wainhouse stepped towards him, his face furious.

‘Oh yeah! Fucking right he will! What’s he going to do, send some people who don’t know what they’re doing down an elevator that doesn’t fucking work? Jesus Christ! It’ll be days before anyone gets sent down here – to find our goddamn
corpses
!’

Even though he knew Wainhouse was right, Webster didn’t want him talking like that, but before he could reprimand him, Garrett jumped right in.

‘Well, I’m going to go out fighting,’ she said, loading ammo into the weapons Wainhouse and Webster had stacked in the corner.

‘There has to be another way,’ said Laura quietly.

‘Well, judging by how solid that door is, I’d guess we’ve got about a half-hour to think of one,’ said Garrett.

The silence that followed was dense, gently punctuated by those muffled knocks. They were soon accompanied by a hard scratching that scraped through the wood and down into the nerves of those who were listening. It reminded them that this time of waiting was not indefinite, and that every second that ticked by brought the inevitable a little closer.

At last, almost in a whisper, Webster spoke. ‘We have to do it, Bishop. There’s no choice.’

‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Garrett.

Bishop and Webster looked as if they were both standing on the edge of a precipice and each needed the reassurance of the other to jump off.

‘The Abdomen,’ said Bishop at last.

He hadn’t used the word in fifteen years – not in this context, at least.

‘The admin centre is the Head, the labs are the Thorax and, through there’ – he pointed towards his bookshelves as the saliva in his throat thickened to cake mix, – ‘is the Abdomen.’

‘A way out? Why didn’t you say? Why are we sitting here?’ asked Garrett.

‘It’s been sealed off since ’99.’

‘Why?’ Laura asked.

‘Hey, can we just hurry up and get in there?’ said Garrett. ‘Who gives a shit what it is? It’s got to beat waiting to die in here.’ She grabbed at the books, pulling them off the shelves.

‘Let him speak,’ said Lisa. There was surprise at her talking over Garrett.

Bishop took in the pregnant pause, then his eyes met Webster’s. They both knew that time wasn’t something they could use indulgently, but the others had to know what they were getting into.

‘Through there is the first MEROS lab. We had to seal it off when the insects took over.’

‘What insects?’ asked Mike.

‘All kinds,’ said Bishop. ‘It was before we began concentrating on wasps. There were roaches, flies, spiders, centipedes, millipedes … you name it. All big, aggressive and under the kind of control we had ten years ago.’

‘What do you mean, “took over”?’ asked Laura.

‘Heath kept trying different things, even though he had no real idea what the consequences would be. Eventually, he admitted that he was trying to dial up the rage as far as he could. It all went wrong when some flies killed a wasp. Of course, with their alarm pheromone, all the other wasps just went haywire. It was carnage. The lab technicians lost control. Mayhem. In those days, the facility wasn’t set up like this, with contingency plans and glass shields.’

‘He got us out,’ Bishop said, looking at Webster, acknowledging the debt he still owed. ‘Me and Heath. The insects were in charge. The electrics shorted and we couldn’t even see what was happening beyond twenty feet. All we had to go on was the buzzing and the screams. I got this’ – he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a six-inch scar of mottled purple – ‘from a mosquito the size of a football. Major Webster came up behind me and shot it. We turned around to see Heath on the floor. He was using a scalpel to defend himself against two moths that were flapping around him like a couple of crows. We kicked them off and dragged him through the door.’

‘What about the others?’ asked Susan.

‘We waited on this side for people to reach the door
so we could help them get out, but nobody else made it.’ Webster was distracted by the memory.

Bishop’s mind had replayed these scenes at least once a day ever since. Returning to the Abdomen was something he had never contemplated. Now his imagination churned with possibilities.

Had the insects died? There had never been even the slightest indication there was anything alive on the other side of that wall. The two or three times Bishop thought he’d heard noises – well, that was almost certainly just the weight shifting in one of the bookcases. And if the insects behind the wall were anything like these wasps were now, they’d have made their way through years ago.

But what
were
they like now? The genetic modifications had been primitive and the environment was artificial and without natural light – so what could survive? But that was just it: there was no way of knowing without going in.

‘So we’re talking about a potentially self-sustaining bio-environment,’ Laura thought aloud.

‘Something like that, Dr Trent. In your opinion, could anything survive ten years in a place like that?’

‘Two days ago, I’d have told you that you couldn’t get wasps the size of rats. Down here, I suppose anything is possible. I’d hope they’d all be dead through lack of oxygen or moisture, but that depends on how it’s all set up through there. In theory, they could all be alive. But what’s happened to them over the years, we can only guess. From what you told me about the early
days of the juvenile- and ecdosyne-hormone application, anything is possible.’

‘So our choice is the killer fucking wasps or the killer fucking giant insects? Is that what you’re saying?’ asked Mike.

‘Maybe,’ said Bishop quietly.

‘Great. That’s just fucking great! So we’re fucking dead.’

‘Hey, cool it. That talk won’t help,’ said Carter.

Garrett turned to Webster. ‘OK, giant insects or no giant insects, what are we looking at terrain-wise when we get through there? ’Cos we’ve got to face it, whether it’s disaster-movie shit or not.’

Webster sketched a map on the back of a Pentagon memo as he spoke. ‘It’s big. Three floors, each about the size of a football pitch.’

‘Through there is a space as big as three football pitches?’ asked Takeshi, incredulous.

‘Maybe bigger,’ said Webster. ‘And the floors aren’t normal height. They’re more like twenty feet up. So we’ve got … yeah … I’d say maybe a hundred yards long and fifty wide. It’s kind of like a warehouse with a couple of basements.’

‘And where are we heading?’ asked Garrett.

‘Best-case scenario? We enter here. The point we are aiming for is here.’ He marked the opposite corner. ‘Now, that’s the whole floor we’ve got to cover. If – sorry –
when
we get there, we’ve got a door leading to a staircase that’s going to be five hundred feet to the surface.

‘Simple, really, but between here and there, assuming no bugs, you’re going to have to expect there to be all sorts of stuff in the way: upturned chairs and tables, broken glass, maybe holes in the floor, and about a third of the way in, we’ve got the room divided with thin walls, all in the dark. Hopefully, we won’t have to know about the two lower levels but, just in case, their layout is the same as the first. If anyone ends up there, it just means that the escape stairs are that bit further to climb.’

‘And
with
bugs?’ asked Susan.

‘With bugs? Anything. Any mutation you could imagine occurring in any insect could have happened in there – they could be super-sized and super-aggressive. Like those wasps and beyond. Let’s hope they’re all dead.’

Andrew let his imagination run a little before fear reined it back in. The wasps had been bad enough. If there was anything worse than them through there, then he didn’t want to think about it.

He wasn’t the only one. Susan and Lisa looked at each other with fearful pessimism.

‘And why aren’t they dead? Why didn’t you just nuke the place and open up another lab elsewhere?’ asked Mike.

‘Money,’ replied Bishop. ‘The Head and Thorax used to be just the living quarters; all the research took place in the Abdomen. We had a lot more people in those days, because we were still feeling our way. This office was the way into the labs, nothing more. Rather than
digging a whole new facility, it was cheaper and easier to downscale and reboot it all through here.’

‘Now that everybody knows what we could be in for, I assume this looks like the best course of action to all of you,’ said Webster.

However much they wanted to, no one could disagree.

‘OK, Garrett, we’re going to need a hole in that wall. I’d estimate there’s a couple of feet of concrete. In an enclosed space like this, I suggest a tremor device to weaken it without causing too much of a blast. Nothing that will blow that door off.’ He pointed to where the bumping noise continued. ‘And maybe a few netspreaders across the blast points to minimize the fallout.’ Netspreaders were guns which fired weighted adhesive nets to stop insects in flight. They were made of a flexible Kevlar composite that was virtually unbreakable, so they could also be used to provide temporary support and protection if required.

‘Now, after the concrete, there’s a polycarbonide hatch door with a circular window, about thirty feet of steel-lined corridor, then the final door to the Abdomen. When the tremor device weakens the concrete, we don’t want anything that’s going to make the corridor collapse, so use small charges.’