Instinct (2010) (32 page)

There was a woodlouse on its back. It was about half the size of Andrew, and its pseudotrachea were clearly visible. Laura could barely take her eyes off it. A praying mantis the length of a car poked out from under the foliage, its bristled coax resembling the blade of a hedge trimmer. Beside it were the antlers of a stag beetle. They were the same size as the antlers of a stag. If they were going to encounter living versions of these monsters, she didn’t see how they could possibly get out alive.

A loud cracking sound broke her thoughts. She looked up to see Andrew losing his balance.

‘Mum?’ he yelled.

Mike was closest. He turned towards Andrew.

Another crack.

‘Help him!’ screamed Laura.

She started running.

Mike looked around and suddenly knew this was up to him. He broke forward but there was a table between him and Andrew. He leaped to hurdle it but caught his foot and crashed to the ground.

Shaking off the confusion, he heard another crack. Andrew’s right leg dropped through the floor.

Meanwhile, Laura was vaulting over three upturned chairs, her only focus the boy in front of her.

Mike started running again. He caught the terrified look in Andrew’s eyes as more cracks rang through the air.

‘Andrew!’ Laura was bolting across the floor. Her
only clear route took her round where the others were standing, unsure how they could help.

Webster moved Bishop aside and joined the chase.

Laura was level with him and they were both running towards George. He didn’t know who he should let past, so he turned side on and hoped.

Laura got to him first and shoved him into Webster’s path. They collided in a 400 lb smash that sent George flying backwards through the debris.

One more crack, then the floor broke away completely and Andrew was falling.

He spread his arms out to stop himself. His palms found the verge of the hole, but it was a sharp, jagged edge of concrete.

Scraping through his skin to the blood of his small fingers, the pain shocked him.

He reacted instinctively, lifting his fingers up and losing any grip he had. He tried to stop himself sliding downwards but the momentum and pain were too great.

Mike dived for the hole. Just reaching the edge, his hand stretched out in a desperate grasp. His ribs crushed a rack of test tubes, smashing them beneath him. Broken shards of thin glass stabbed into his chest and stomach, shredding it like the pass of a grater.

Ignoring the pain, he plunged his hand down and into the darkness. The tip of his finger found Andrew’s palm, but for the briefest of moments.

He felt Andrew’s blood-wet fingers closing around his, but he was falling too fast. The moisture made any
contact slide away to nothing, leaving a red smear on Mike’s hand.

‘Muuuuuummmmm!’ Andrew screamed as he dropped through the floor. Mike could hear the ragged thrash of the boy’s weight through trees and branches. It continued, softer and more distant, until it ended in a deadened thud and a shout of pain.

Laura leaped over a glass partition wall. Tripping over her last stride, she landed full and fast on Mike’s back. The pain of the deeper stab of glass shards was like the swipe of a lion’s claw across his chest.

Laura hardly noticed. ‘Andrew!’ she screamed, scrabbling across to where he had fallen.

Mike’s arm was still reaching down into the hole. He used it to pull himself forward and joined his voice with Laura’s as she called Andrew’s name.

There was just enough space for both heads. Although there was still light from the emergency electricity, it quickly dimmed to a green-tinged darkness as the dense leaves blocked the way.

‘Aaaaandrewwwwww!’

‘Ssshh! I think I hear him,’ said Mike.

Laura half-turned her head to point her ear into the hole. The blood was pounding in her skull but she could still make out the sound:

‘Muuuummmmmmm …’

It was surprisingly distant, struggling to reach them through a wall of leaves and branches.

‘Andrew! Stay where you are. I’m coming!’

Laura crouched down and dangled her feet into the hole.

‘Wait. I’ll go,’ said Webster.

Laura ignored him. Another glance downwards then she dropped.

Shhshhshhing
and cracking her way through firm, wide leaves and bending branches, she tumbled to the floor of Level Two with Webster following right behind.

‘Does that sound like something you can all manage?’

Tobias Paine had just finished explaining how to set off the nuclear detonation of MEROS. It involved passing through a series of security checks on the main computer then setting a code that would give them one hour to fly clear of the facility.

‘Yes it does. What if we don’t want to help you kill our friends?’ asked Jacobs.

‘I thought you might ask that. Let me explain the situation they are in. It might give you some idea of how unlikely it is they will get out alive.

‘They are in an area called the Abdomen. It is where the initial research of MEROS happened ten years ago. The experimentation went wrong and the insects killed everyone except for Heath, Bishop and Webster. It was sealed off and the facility was restarted in the area with which you are now familiar.

‘Lady and gentlemen, that area is almost certainly stuffed to the gunwales with giant insects who have had nothing to eat but each other for some ten-odd years; insects that have been bred for size, aggression and appetite, and the genetic compounds used for those purposes have been available to them, possibly
creating mutations that would only otherwise exist in your most disturbed nightmares.’

‘Yeah? And what if all the bugs are dead?’ asked Madison.

‘Was that Mr Madison again? Mr Taj has already told me that the motion sensors have picked up movements beyond those of the humans, but even if he hadn’t, I’m now looking at the same screen as you.’

Jacobs mouthed ‘
the satellite
’ to the others.

‘If you’d been paying close attention to that screen during our conversation, you would have noticed that another of their number has perished. By what means we can only guess.’

‘But we can still get the others out alive,’ said Mills.

‘And you must be Mr Mills. You appear to be English. Congratulations, but I’m afraid you
won’t
be able to get the others out alive. Without my assistance there is no way in, and even if you managed to bypass that inconvenience, I will access the relevant codes here and activate the destruction remotely. The same conclusion will be reached, only with four more corpses.

‘If you have their interests at heart, remember they are in grave danger, scared, hungry and with no means of escape. Let’s get it over with, people.’

All eyes turned to Jacobs. Realizing that a decision had to be made, she leaned in to the phone mike.

‘Mr Paine?’

‘Yes, Miss Jacobs?’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

The landing had been hard. It smashed Laura’s ribcage like a truck, knocking the wind from her. Wheezing to her feet, her only thought was Andrew. His voice had come from the left, so she tore through the plants in that direction.

Pushing and yanking the leaves away, she called for him as she moved, praying for some kind of response.

‘Aaaaandrew!’ She walked more slowly, trying to quieten down the sound of the swishing noises around her and make it easier to hear him.

‘Aaaandreeeeeeewwwww!’

She heard something. It sounded like
Mum
, but faint as a wisp of smoke. Was it off to her right?

No more sound. A moment’s wait then: ‘Aaaandrewww!’

Silence. Or was that a rustle? Andrew or Webster?

More shouts. More movement. Where was she? She turned around. Light squeezed its way from the ceiling through the plants to bathe her in a green glow.

‘Aaaaannndreeew!’

This time she didn’t move. She could hear nothing but her own thumping heart. Her mouth was dry and it hurt to swallow.

‘Oh God Jesus Christ where are you?’ she whispered, looking frantically around her. ‘Jesus where the hell are you Andrew where are you how am I going to find you where are you? Aaaandreeeeeeewwwww!’

Louder this time. ‘Aaaandrewwwww! Aaaandreww!’

Her thoughts raced ahead of her.
Where was he? He couldn’t be gone? He must be safe. Please let him be safe. He can’t be dead. Stop saying that. Not dead. Somewhere down here. Where? Where is he? Where am I? Jesus Christ!

She broke into another run. Although she was fast and determined, she soon reached a twisted knot of trunks and vines she could not pass. She kicked and shoved them, beating them with her fists.

‘Oh no! Oh God! Oh no! Oh God! Oh shit! Somebody! Help me! Where’s Andrew! Help me find my child, my little boy! I love him! Help me, somebody, please!’

The tears were coming now, garbling the words through a web of saliva. She sank to her knees.

‘Please. Somebody! Help me! Help! Help! Oh God, please don’t let him be gone, dead, gone, dead …’

Then a rustle to her left.

She whipped her head round. ‘Andrew?’

Getting to her feet, she moved through the undergrowth.

‘Andrew?’

There was no reply, but another rustle came clear through the leaves.

‘Andrew? Is that you?’

With each leaf she moved aside or bent back, the rustle became louder and firmer.

‘Oh, Andrew!’ Laura sighed, relief flowing through her. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was absolutely certain that it was him; he’d have a few bumps and bruises but it would be him for sure.

Peeling back the leaves and stepping forwards, she smiled through her tears. It was all going to be fine. The panic was over. Just one more …

The screech was deafening and was joined instantly by a scream of utter terror from Laura.

She tried to move away by stepping backwards but stumbled over her feet and fell face-first on to a thick stalk.

And it was upon her. The Jerusalem cricket, as big as a Labrador, flexed its powerful legs to pounce upon her back.

She continued to scream as the mandibles dug into her shoulder and pressed slowly together, scraping and dragging through the flesh on the back of her ribs.

Mills stood with his arms folded. ‘OK, Jacobs, you’ve pissed off the man with the nuclear button – what do we do now?’

‘Let’s start with you shooting out the satellite.’ Mills shrugged and left.

Jacobs continued: ‘Taj, I want to take another look at those blueprints. We’re going to screw that sonofabitch.’

‘Say what?’ asked Taj.

Jacobs rolled the blueprints out across the reception desk.

‘I don’t know about you guys but for some reason killing the others just doesn’t sit right with me. If we’re going to get them out of there then we’ve got to break the remote connection between the Pentagon and here …’

She was interrupted by a burst of gunfire and the sound of the satellite shattering above them.

‘… So now he can’t remote-detonate, which means he’s going to have to send someone to do the job instead. Madison, you’ve had to refuel around here, what are the closest bases?’

‘Uh … Seven Islands in Bermuda, Garra del Aguila in Colombia … and Santa Cruz, North-east Brazil.
They might have others, but those are the nearest three I know.’

‘OK, which is closest, and how long would it take to get a nuclear strike over here?’

‘They’re about the same, but I’d go for Santa Cruz. It’s definitely strapped for nuclear. My man Nathan runs fuel into there, and he’s seen the F-35s. Maybe two, two and a half hours when you factor in a few calls from the Pentagon and an emergency scramble.’

Jacobs set the countdown on her watch and waited for Mills, who strode back into the reception area looking pleased with himself.

‘And what we gonna do with those two hours?’ asked Taj.

‘We’re going to get them out. Something that asshole said made me realize there’s another way in: ‘With no means of escape’. He’s saying that the only way into the new area is through Bishop’s office. That’s the only entrance and exit they ever had for thousands of square feet of lab space? No way. Let’s not forget they only moved everything to our area after the old one went wrong, so there’s not only another way out, there’s got to be another way to the surface.’

‘Great,’ said Mills. ‘And where the hell is that?’

‘Let’s all take another look at the blueprints, we might just find something we’ve missed.’

‘There’s only the stairs at the back of the Abdomen part,’ said Mills.

‘Yeah? Then maybe there’s a clue in this number: 503. Could that mean anything good for us?’ asked Jacobs.

Madison looked as if he was back in school, and in a class he was failing. Mills shook his head just to make sure everyone knew he was thinking really hard. Taj considered Jacobs’ words for a moment before surprising them all.

‘If that’s feet, that’s near as dammit five hundred, and we all know that’s how far the elevator goes down, because we all took the long ride and asked the question. So we just look for where this’d be on the map and I’d say there’s gonna be some kind of door, hatch, whatever, in the jungle.’

He folded his arms and stood back waiting for the others to appreciate his genius.

Mills and Madison were even more confused now. How did Taj beat them to it?

Jacobs smiled. ‘Sounds like we might just have ourselves a plan.’

Webster was lying on his back in a crumpled pile of large green fronds. He had twisted his ankle on landing and the pain was enough to blanch his face and leave him groaning through his teeth.

He sat up on a tree root and pulled his sock down. The ankle was already inflating and had turned an angry shade of scarlet, but Webster had broken bones and taken bullets before; this might slow him down but it wasn’t going to stop him. He grasped the broad stalk in front of him and dragged himself up, taking care to keep his weight on his good foot.

He ran through his choices: the most sensible would be to call for help and get Garrett down to winch him up. But that would mean losing Laura for sure, and he wondered how the sight of him hobbling around upstairs without her or Andrew would affect the others.