Terminal (16 page)

‘Bleeding gums … hair loss … I'm afraid they're all symptoms of chronic radiation sickness,' Jiggs said. He inflated the cuff around Drake's arm, then let out some of the air as he listened with a stethoscope before taking a reading on the meter.

Drake wasn't paying any attention to what Jiggs was doing, instead staring into the middle distance. ‘The choices I've made in the past have meant that I've had some pretty close calls, and I'm not blaming anyone for the way things have turned out.' He wasn't looking for a response from Jiggs, and Jiggs knew it. ‘I never anticipated a retirement trout fishing in the Cairngorms, but …'

‘Are there any trout in the Cairngorms?' Jiggs put in.

‘You know what I mean,' Drake replied. ‘Where was I …? But … but I always figured when my number was up, it would be quick.' He clicked his fingers. ‘I thought I'd catch a bullet, or be blown up. So, tell me, is this how it's going to
play out for me, quietly and painfully? A repeat to fade?'

‘First the easy bit; the slug that caught you in the shoulder broke your clavicle but it's only a minor fracture. So it's nothing serious.' Jiggs sighed and began to put the antiquated meter back into its wooden box. ‘As for the radiation exposure, you'll have good and bad days. But you'll grow weaker as the nausea and the vomiting become more frequent, and the internal bleeding intensifies. I'm afraid it's all downhill from here.'

‘No, please tell me the worst, won't you, doctor?' Drake said wryly. He picked up an old bottle of iodine tablets Jiggs had also found in the medical stores. ‘Will these have made any difference?'

‘They'll have helped to flush out some of the isotopes, but you were exposed to a massive dose of ionising radiation. Even if we were on the surface with all the facilities there, not much more could be done for you.' Jiggs shook his head. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘So it goes,' Drake said resignedly, taking in a breath before he continued. ‘I suppose, sooner or later, we're all drawn to the big light, like a moth. It's just that my big light happened to be a nuke, and it fried me.' He began to laugh, but it turned into a coughing fit, and it was a moment before he could speak again. ‘If I'd known it would come to this, I would never have paid so much attention to my diet.' He leant back in his chair and let out a long sigh. ‘Jiggs, old friend, really – what's the point of carting me all the way Topsoil again? You may just as well leave me here.'

Jiggs gazed around the main area of the fallout shelter, a place constructed deep in the Earth that Will and Dr Burrows had originally discovered, and which Drake himself had been to before when he'd come to rescue Will and Elliott. ‘A very
long time ago,' Jiggs began, ‘I promised your father that I'd look out for you. I intend to keep that promise.'

He gestured towards the kitchen where he'd been preparing their meals from the fifty-year-old tinned food. ‘And, in any case, I can't leave you here. The diet of corned beef in this place is enough to see off the strongest of us.'

‘But why take me back?' Drake asked. ‘What difference does it make if I pop my clogs on the surface or down here?'

Jiggs wasn't to be swayed. ‘Against all the odds and with those damned animals snapping at our heels, I've got you this far.' Jiggs paused for breath. ‘So let me tell you one thing for sure; there's no way in hell that I'm just going to desert you. We are setting off up that river
together
.'

After Jiggs had managed to resuscitate Drake in the wrecked Short Sunderland and stabilise him sufficiently to move him again, he'd set off for Smoking Jean. He only had the weakest signals from the radio beacons that Will and Drake had left on previous occasions to guide him, but when combined with his phenomenal sense of direction they were enough. Burning almost every last drop of the fuel in the booster rockets, Jiggs had managed to get Drake up Smoking Jean and through into the inclined seam. Once there, Drake had been so weak that he'd been only able to travel short distances under his own steam. However, the low gravity allowed Jiggs to carry both him and their kit on his back.

But then they'd received unwanted attention from the Brights and monkey-spiders, which were highly sensitive when it came to detecting wounded prey. Drake's blood was like a magnet to them, and he'd had to pull himself together and help Jiggs fight them off time after time.

And just when they thought they'd travelled far enough up
the seam to escape all the local predators, Jiggs had nearly walked into the first of the anti-personnel devices left behind by Limiters. He only spotted it because a more regular-sized spider had spun a web on the very fine tripwire strung across the route. Its presence in the seam was bad news as it meant that a patrol had been sent to the fallout shelter, and that there would doubtless be more devices planted along the way. So progress had been excruciatingly slow as Jiggs was forced to check every inch of the passage for more tripwires, and once they arrived at the shelter he'd had to conduct a complete sweep of that too.

‘You heard me, didn't you?' Jiggs asked Drake, who appeared to have drifted into a reverie. ‘We're going up that river together. Okay?'

‘Yes, okay, whatever you say,' Drake replied. He languidly raised his eyes to Jiggs, as even that small act was an effort. ‘At least I'll be able to report back to Parry that, as far as we know, our mission was a success. And find out how he's got on with the other Styx female.'

Jiggs nodded, as Drake turned his head slightly towards the entrance corridor where the communications room was to be found. Both Will and Chester had used the ancient telephone there to make contact with the surface before.

‘No way,' Jiggs said instantly. ‘If you're seriously considering using that phone through there to make a call, you can stop right now. If they haven't cut the line, the Styx will be monitoring any traffic over it – you even as much as pick up the receiver, they'll suss that we're down here.' His voice became gentler. ‘Drake, really, don't go near it. You're not thinking this through, are you?'

‘No, maybe not, but I haven't got the luxury of time any
longer,' Drake said, as he rose to his feet. ‘The thought of dying is enough to make one impatient.'

‘Why don't you catch some shut-eye while I finish the repairs to the boat?' Jiggs suggested.

‘No, I want to give you a hand,' Drake replied, holding up his good arm with a smile. ‘Even if it's only one hand.' He glanced in the direction of the bunk beds. ‘I'm not quite ready for the scrap heap. Not while I've still got
some
life left in me.'

‘No question that he's going straight to it,' Elliott observed, as she sought out the small form of Woody trudging deliberately towards the tower. He wasn't the only thing moving in the place as flies and insects with bizarre appearances buzzed furiously in the air, and an army of birds had already ventured back after the tumult. These birds were clearly having a heyday as they flocked to the fields of newly turned soil to gorge themselves on the exposed grubs and worms.

Elliott, Will and Jürgen had wasted no time in following after the bushman, but it wasn't that easy to move at any speed over the ground. Not only was it very uneven, but as the sun dried out the clods of earth, they were crumbling away and shifting like sand under their feet.

Shielding his eyes, Jürgen squinted as he tried to see the other pyramids through the sun-hazed air. ‘It's incredible when you think that this was all solid jungle only moments ago,' he said.

But Will's mind was elsewhere as he tried to make sense of what they'd just witnessed. ‘So the pyramids must have been covered in the stones with the carvings on them at some point
after
the basic structures had been built,' he reasoned out loud, turning to Jürgen.

‘But the oldest of the carved stones were at least three thousand years old,' Jürgen replied.

‘Right …' Will said thoughtfully. ‘But my dad's theory was that the Lost City of Atlantis has been in this world all along, and he could still be right. The Atlanteans might have built on top of the original structures?'

‘That's a possibility,' Jürgen agreed, giving a small shrug.

‘And so the bushmen, the descendants of the Atlanteans, continued the tradition of recording their culture and history on the pyramids,' Will went on.

Elliott was forging ahead, as if she wasn't the slightest bit interested in the discussion the other two were having. Will had still been talking, but trailed off as he and Jürgen caught up with her. She'd come to a stop where a fifteen-foot-deep trench blocked their way.

‘Incredible. One of the giant trees must have been ripped out here,' Jürgen said, as they all regarded the bottom of the depression where there was a jumble of roots, some of them huge.

‘You both think you're so clever, but you're actually unbelievably stupid,' Elliott said sourly.

‘Huh?' Will said.

‘Well, who gives a toss about the Atlanteans now?' she snapped. ‘Why aren't you asking yourselves what could tear out a bloody big tree in the blink of an eye, and chuck it and the rest of the jungle so far away we can't even see it?'

Will was surprised by her outburst, but made no comment as he lowered himself down into the hole where he began to kick at the roots and dirt.

‘Some form of traction beam?' Jürgen answered when Will remained silent.

‘Traction beam?' she repeated. ‘Where would you find one
of those – whatever it is – round here? Was it left by whoever built the original pyramids? Who was that, then?' she asked. ‘And, tell me, why did that pyramid underneath look so new?'

Nobody replied, Will continuing to scrape away at the dirt with his toecap. ‘There's something solid down here,' he said after a moment.

Jürgen slid down into the depression too, and together they worked at uncovering a whole series of thick conduits or pipes running side by side. Roots were growing between them, and Will squatted down to tug out handfuls of the smaller ones. ‘Look at this,' he said, as he brushed the dirt from one of the pipes. ‘They're made of the same stuff as the pyramid. And they look so new, too.'

‘Despite being buried here for what must be many millennia,' Jürgen said. He raised a hand to indicate the direction of the pipes. ‘And it appears that they start at the pyramid and …' he swung around to face the opposite direction, ‘… run all the way over to the tower.' He paused for a second. ‘It could be that the other pyramids are connected too?'

Rather than climb down into it, Elliott was circumventing the trench in the ground. Will noticed that she sounded quite frightened as she spoke. ‘So neither of you can explain to me what happened back there when I touched that panel? That wasn't electricity, or an explosion, so what was it? And can't either of you feel it – the power?'

‘Huh?' Will swallowed, peering up at her. ‘What power?'

‘In those pipes … in the pyramid … all around us,' she went on.

Will and Jürgen exchanged glances.

‘Elliott?' Will called, but she'd gone, moving even faster towards the tower.

 

 

 

Chapter Six

^‘
Y
ou've got yourself a real situation over there,' the US President was saying. ‘Our bases in England are on full DEFCON and we're already well down the road of recalling military personnel and assets, particularly our fighter planes. We can't have those Styx getting their paws on them.'

He pronounced Styx as
Stikes
, which prompted Chester's eyebrows to jump up for a moment, but he'd already upset the Homeland Security woman when he'd tried to correct her. And this was the President after all, so he could pronounce it how he liked.

‘We've implemented full body monitoring and Purger checks on all arrivals at our airports and seaports, and anyone entering our borders,' the President was saying. ‘After the atrocity on Capitol Hill, we were already on the lookout for body bombers, but now we're also screening for Darklit passengers too. Bob tells me that we owe you one for supplying us with the schematics for the Purger. Also, and more importantly, you gave him the heads-up about the Stikes' activity early on, Commander, so we had a contingency plan ready to
roll out when all this flared up last year. America is deeply indebted to you for that.'