Last Gasp (56 page)

Dan set the mug down on the white cloth with studied care. “I could take you,” he said, his voice ragged.

“What? Don’t be silly.”

“I mean it.”

She went still, looking at him, guarded, a little less sure. “Don’t say things like that, Dan. You’re just trying to scare me.”

“Are you scared? Or more excited?”

As he knelt up she noticed that his pupils were dilated, his nostrils flaring and closing with each breath. She’d never seen him like this before. He reminded her of an animal, without conscience or reason, at the mercy of pure instinct. And now, to tell the truth, she did feel scared, because the Dan she knew and liked and trusted had been taken over by this other creature, alien to her, which had desires and lusts it meant to satiate.

“Dan, no, don’t—please,” Jo said, trying to break through to the person she knew. At the same time she began edging backward on her elbows, which had the effect of pushing her breasts upward against the taut material so that her nipples were clearly defined.

Dan’s bleary gaze moved from her soft red mouth to her provocative breasts and down along the length of her thighs and legs molded tightly in jodhpurs and boots. A pulse was beating behind his eyes, jolting his brain. He was enveloped in a pulsating red misty heat. His heart pounded thickly.

Jo rolled away from him. She tried to scramble to her feet, digging the toes of her boots in, but the turf was like glass and she slipped, tried again, getting frantic now, and finally succeeded as Dan’s hand clamped fast to her ankle and with brute force brought her crashing down and dragged her backward across the white cloth through the remnants of chicken and salad and untasted chocolate cake, which smeared itself the full length of her body. Lumps of chocolate stuck to her chin and cheeks, got in her nostrils and eyes and hair, and she could taste it vilely on her lips.

She opened her mouth and screamed, the scream muffled by chocolate icing and the crumpled white cloth.

Then she felt his hands tearing at her shirt, ripping it in shreds from her shoulders. He was hauling at her jodhpurs, attempting, impossibly, to drag the leather belt from her twenty-two-inch waist over her thirty-four-inch hips. In the red misty madness there was no plan or logic, only an aching stiffness that had to find release.

Jo let out a choking, suffocating scream. “Oh, God no, please don’t! No, please! No! No! No! No!”

But he was working with mechanical mindless intensity now, kneeling astride her, clawing at the belt and getting it undone, the sight of her pink rounded buttocks marooned between the tanned lines at waist and legs driving him into a frenzy. While he was unfastening his own belt and pants Jo tried to squirm free and he slapped her down with a stinging blow that left five white imprints in the glowing pinkness. His hand was between her legs, searching, probing, and he lifted her powerfully until she was open and vulnerable, a sacrificial offering, his outspread fingers stretching her wide while he guided himself forward and plunged solidly, satisfyingly home.

Jo didn’t cry out again. In the quiet glade she whined softly and the tears washed the encrusted chocolate from her face and lips. It was the taste of indignity, of hurt, of disillusion, this salty chocolate, and her throat burned with a mush of chicken and salad vomit.

Dan’s body thumped like a piston while his head roared redly in a blast furnace of deafening heat.

“You mean you haven’t noticed anything? Nothing at all?” Nick Power said. He sounded incredulous.

“What in hell are you talking about except a few high spirits, for God’s sake? Jesus, you damn English are all the same,” Tom Brannigan complained. “Skittish as kittens.”

Either Brannigan was playing dumb or he was dumb, Cheryl thought. Nick was right, she knew it, as did a lot of others in the community. Yet she trusted Brannigan about as far as she could have thrown his rugged 210-pound frame. There was a crafty slyness about him hiding behind his honest-as-the-day-is-long blue-eyed stare. The down-to-earth all-American patriot, that was Tom Brannigan, or so he liked to make out.

“It’s like a disease,” Nick said. “Don’t ask me whether it’s physical or psychological because I don’t know—but believe me, something’s happening to us and it’s getting worse. Especially the young people.” He looked around at the other council members, nine in all, who carefully avoided his and one another’s eyes, none of them prepared to support him. Or, more likely, afraid of disagreeing with Brannigan.

“What is this?” Cheryl demanded hotly. “Are we afraid to admit it to ourselves? Nick’s right and we all know it, or most of us do. The rest must be walking around with their eyes shut. It isn’t only the climate and vegetation that’s gone haywire—there’s something deeper and more fundamental that’s affecting us all, every single one of us.”

“Hey now, let’s not get hysterical,” Brannigan said indulgently. The fact that this was a woman’s opinion dredged up the latent male chauvinism that was only millimeters beneath the bluff, jovial exterior. It was only to be expected, his manner suggested, that nervous and highly strung females were prone to such outbursts.

Cheryl recognized the ploy and choked back her anger.

“I’m no psychologist, I’d be the first to admit,” Brannigan went on reasonably. “I’m just a simple guy, you all know that. The last thing Tom Brannigan is, is some kind of intellectual. Sure I’ve read a book or two, but I believe at bottom in good old-fashioned common sense. Isn’t that why we joined the community in the first place, to get back to the simple, basic issues and not get mixed up with all that nonsense outside? Look, set me straight if I’m wrong, but we have a good life here at Goose Lake. We’ve built it up from nothing and made it work by the sweat of our brow. We grow our own food and see to our own needs.” His blue eyes in their brown crinkles were so sincere it hurt. “Is anybody seriously telling me that something is wrong with us? Because, to be honest, I don’t see it. What I do see is a community with—yeah, okay—one or two problems, but you’re always gonna get that. It’s only to be expected.”

Nick was staring at the wall, his face stiff and tight. His eyes didn’t flicker when Brannigan said:

“Now Dr. Power here, who we all know ain’t a medical doctor—and Dr. Detrick likewise—in my opinion are getting uptight over nothing at all. And judging from the rest of you I’d say you go along with me. Am I right or am I right?”

“You’re not only blind, Tom,” Cheryl said. “You’re stupid as well—” Nick held up his hand. “Tom, listen to me. If you don’t wake up to what’s happening you’re heading for trouble—and you’re going to drag the rest of us with you whether we like it or not.”

“Aw bullshit—this is a load of crap and you know it. Godammit, we’re
safe
here. Nothing can touch us.”

“What about your son, Tom?” Nick said quietly. “Are he and some of the other young men behaving normally in your opinion?”

If someone had stabbed a pin into Brannigan he couldn’t have reacted more sharply.

“What’re you getting at? What d’you mean?”

“You haven’t noticed his influence over the others and the way they’ve been acting?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re going on about,” Brannigan said coldly. Those crinkly blue eyes had turned to arctic ice.

Nick glanced at Cheryl and released an audible sigh. Then he turned and looked Brannigan straight in the face. “I didn’t want this to get personal, Tom, but it has to be said. Baz leads the other kids into all kinds of troublemaking and everyone but you seems to know it. I hate saying this—”

“Then don’t say it!” Brannigan’s voice was flat as a whipcrack. “I don’t make remarks about your kid, so don’t start on mine. It’s none of your fucking concern.”

“It is if it disrupts the life of the community.”

“Jesus,” Brannigan snorted, “you goddamn English.” He’d flushed a darker brick red. “Like to think of yourselves as everybody’s conscience, don’t you, you and your prissy high-minded ways.” He pointed a thick forefinger like the barrel of a gun. “Let me tell you, what Baz does is my affair, not yours, and don’t forget it. Do you think I need you to tell me about my own son? You can go to hell!”

“That means you don’t know,” Nick said in the same quiet voice. Brannigan’s square jaw jutted. “Know about what?”

“Baz and his friends are on a big drug kick. They’re eating them like jelly beans.”

A pulse throbbed visibly in Brannigan’s temple. His neck swelled. He swayed forward in his chair, a fist half-raised.

But it was Cheryl who said blankly, “The kids are on drugs? Nick, are you certain?”

Nick nodded without speaking, watching Brannigan.

“How many of the kids? All of them or just a few?” Cheryl said. She really wanted to come straight out and ask if Dan was one of them, but daren’t. Had she been as stupid and blind as Tom Brannigan? If it was true it explained quite a lot that had been puzzling and worrying her about Dan. His attitude. His moods. His erratic behavior.

“I’m warning you, Power.” Brannigan was trembling, his voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you come making accusations about my boy. I see your game all right. You’re out to cause trouble. Well I’m telling you here and now for the first and last time to keep your fucking nose—”

The door crashed open and Nick’s wife stood wilting against the light. Her face was in silhouetted shadow, but they didn’t need to see it to know that something was badly wrong. Cheryl felt the nausea churn in her stomach.

Nick was on his feet, staring at his wife. “What is it, Jen?”

Her voice sounded like an ancient gramophone record, indistinct and scratchy, periodically fading so that some of the words were lost.

“It’s Jo ... please come, she’s been ... horrible and I can’t believe ... please come now ... oh please ...”

She would have fallen to the pine floor if Nick hadn’t caught her in time.

The genetically adapted virus containing tetrachlorodibenzo-paradioxin, developed in the Zone 2 laboratories on Starbuck Island, had been spectacularly effective in contaminating the most densely populated areas of Africa, Asia, the subcontinent of India, China, and the Far East.

Burrowing its way into the gut of animals—from small rodents to man—the virus attacked the cellular structure of its host, causing cancer, disruption of blood-cell function, deformation of the liver and other organs, leading eventually and inevitably to death.

It was deployed via the water supply and thence by the contaminated hosts themselves, which passed it on to other animals and humans by means of direct contact, infected feces, and by the rotting corpses, each of which was a bacteriological factory in miniature. A single contaminated corpse, for instance, could wipe out a village or small town. It was the modern version of the Black Death, which swept Europe in the Middle Ages; only this time the plague was man-made, scientifically deployed, and a hundred times more virulent.

No one had been forewarned. No one—not politicians, scientists, business leaders, nor even military personnel—could be trusted not to reveal the existence of the Primary Plan before its inception, and therefore everyone without exception in the Designated Areas was included.

Contamination squads—specially trained units operating under orders from Advanced Strategic Projects—dumped canisters of the TCDD virus in streams, rivers and reservoirs. Only a few parts per million were required. Even had the authorities suspected that some form of toxic contaminant was being added to the water supply they would have needed highly sophisticated detection equipment, which they didn’t have, to verify the fact. As it was they were in total ignorance that the covert operation had been mounted and put into effect.

The virus had been bred from various strains and was capable of retaining its effectiveness over a wide temperature range. Once ingested by the population it went immediately to work, and by C Day + 7 (one week after Contamination Day) had infected nearly 50 percent of those in the Designated Areas. By C Day + 12 the first deaths were reported, and thereafter the red line on the graph rose steeply to the vertical as millions perished in writhing agony.

Once begun, the process was self-perpetuating. The mounds of rotting corpses, left where they lay because there was no one to bury them, spread the contamination to the soil. Rainwater washed it into sewers, streams, and rivers. A black stain spread across continents, killing every form of animal life it encountered. The numbers of dead and dying went rapidly from hundreds of thousands to millions, to tens of millions, and then to hundreds of millions. Statistics were meaningless. Megadeaths became the standard term of measurement.

It was the Chinese who tried most desperately to find an answer. They managed to isolate the virus, but their centuries of experience in “natural” medicine were worse than useless when dealing with a chemical substance that hadn’t existed until man invented it. They were vainly seeking an antidote to the most deadly poison on earth, and no such antidote existed.

Three weeks after C Day it was estimated that over one and a half billion people had died. This was still a long way short of the projected target of 4.3 billion, but it was an encouraging start. The poison would carry on doing its work because there was no way it could be stopped. Even the most remote regions with their own independent water supply weren’t safe, thanks to cloud seeding: God’s rain falling from the skies brought death in parts per million.