Last Gasp (66 page)

They came en masse.

The fastest and greediest shrieked as it took the slug in its snarling mouth. Bits of pink tongue and bloody splinters of teeth exploded as it twisted in midair and crashed onto the metal shelving. Chase continued to jerk the trigger mechanically in a reflex action of sheer terror, pumping shot after shot into the squealing mass of furry bodies, seeing lumps of flesh fly off, seeing an eyeball transformed into a ragged red hole, seeing a shredded stump of paw whirl away and strike the ceiling, leaving a spattered bloody star. Seeing every detail with perfect precision and clarity before he emptied the gun and flung himself sideways through the door.

At the bottom of the stairs Ruth stood holding the rifle at her shoulder, squinting through the sight. Ducking low to avoid her line of fire, Chase scrambled on hands and knees to their spread-out belongings and rummaged in a canvas carryall and snapped a fresh clip into the Browning.

Together they waited, side by side, for the rats to emerge from the black rectangle at the top of the stairs. Almost certainly he’d killed two and severely wounded another one. That left two of the bastards, always supposing there weren’t more of them in the roof. Reinforcements. A whole fucking battalion of them. He felt light-headed, euphoric almost, his body charged up like a generator running at peak power. He knew that later he’d probably collapse in a quivering whitefaced heap.

Minutes passed and the darkness at the top of the stairs remained empty, and when Chase probed it with the flashlight there were no slitted yellow eyes watching them.

Ruth cocked her head. “Can you hear that?”

They both listened as from above came the muted sounds of tearing, chewing, and snuffling: the slack salivatory sounds of animals feeding.

Knees drawn up, arms laced across his bloated belly, the man in the bunk moaned continuously and monotonously. His mouth was pulled back in an awful grimace of pain. His face was the color of moldy cheese.

“Come on, man, you must have some idea!”

Frank Hanamura swung around and glared at the medical orderly, his tolerant good nature sorely tried. This was the third case in the past fourteen hours. Stomach cramps, vomiting, fever, swollen abdomen. And would you believe it, not even a qualified doctor on board! He calmed down a little; it wasn’t fair taking it out on the kid, and besides it wouldn’t do much good. The young orderly was frightened and way out of his depth.

“Are you sure it isn’t food poisoning?”

“I don’t know. It could be. But they’ve eaten the same food as the rest of us, haven’t they? How come we’re not affected?”

Hanamura turned back impatiently and leaned over the bunk, his glossy blue-black hair reflecting a sheen of light from the frosted globe on the bulkhead. “Gorsuch, can you hear me? Gorsuch!”

The man moaned, eyes creased shut, rocking himself.

“Gorsuch, what did you have for your last meal before the pains started? Can you remember? Can you tell me?”

A froth of some dark viscous substance had formed on the sick man’s lips, like an oily scum. Hanamura drew back sharply at the smell. It stank of putrefaction, as if the man’s intestines were rotting.

Without a word Hanamura left the cabin, his dark eyes clouded, and went up to the bridge. According to the chart the
Nierenberg
was 233 miles off the coast of California. At top speed that translated into eleven sailing hours from the Scripps Institution in San Diego. In that time the three men could be dead. Worse, the disease—virus, or whatever it was—might spread and affect other members of the scientific team and the ship’s crew.

Even so, he was reluctant to abandon the trials, especially as the results up to now had been extremely promising. Installed in the lowest hold near the stern, the pilot plant was operating at maximum capacity, producing a yield of twenty tons an hour at 95 percent purity. From the bridge window Hanamura could see the huge flexible silver tube snaking over the side, sucking up seawater. After filtration to remove fish, marine plants, and all but microscopic sea life, the brine was heated and pumped below, where it passed through a series of electrolysis cells. The constituent gases given off, oxygen and hydrogen, were then analyzed and measured before being released into the atmosphere via ducts on the afterdeck.

Hanamura had discussed the men’s sickness with Carter Reid, his chief assistant, who held a doctorate in marine physics. Their first assumption was that hydrogen film forming on the anodes was the culprit, which if allowed to build up gave off corrosive and poisonous fumes. But Reid’s tests so far had all been negative: The anodes were clean, no film had formed, and the confined space in the hold adjacent to the pilot plant was free of noxious gases.

Additionally, as Reid had pointed out, two of the three men affected weren’t on duty anywhere near the plant. They were out on the open deck, supervising the intake tube and venting ducts. So what else did that leave? Food poisoning? A mystery virus? A transmittable disease? What else? He couldn’t think; it was pure blind guesswork.

“I’m going to radio for a chopper,” the captain said as they stood together on the port side of the bridge. The vessel rolled gently on the dark green swell. Thin layers of haze lay close to the water, like vaporous ribbons. “We can have one here within an hour. Winch the men off and get them to hospital.”

Hanamura nodded absently, not really listening.

“What’s on your mind?” asked the captain, following the scientist’s gaze to the jumble of equipment in the stern.

“Three down ... how many more?”

“Will there be any more?” the captain said, tight-lipped.

Hanamura shook his head thoughtfully. “There has to be a common factor, but I can’t see it. Two of my team, Gorsuch and Davies, and one of your deckhands. We’ve checked the plant thoroughly and can’t find anything wrong. They’ve eaten the same food as the rest of us, so what else can it be?”

He nearly went on to mention the dark froth on Gorsuch’s lips, the breath that smelled of rotting flesh, but he didn’t. Possibly it might make the captain decide to return to port, and Hanamura didn’t want the trials jeopardized on account of three men—or fifty, for that matter.

The bridge telephone beeped and the first officer stuck his head out of the door. “Dr. Reid asks if you’ll go down to the stern hold right away, sir,” he said to Hanamura.

Carter Reid was waiting for him at the bottom of the companionway, his bifocals winking dully in the dim light from the overhead caged globes. Beyond, in the darker recesses of the hold, the pounding rush and swirl of seawater could be heard as it was pumped through the banks of cells. The air was heavy and cloying, with a tang of acridity.

“In here, Frank.”

Reid bustled across the steel-plated deck and into a windowless cubicle, its steel walls running with condensation. His agitation was plain, which caused Hanamura to feel a sickly foreboding; usually Carter was bland to the point of fading into the woodwork.

“Well?”

Reid stepped around him and pulled the door shut. His round, pink-cheeked face shone with sweat. He gave Hanamura a grim look and nodded to the gas analyzer with its row of tracing pens performing squiggles on the broad band of graph paper. “Take a look.”

The three main curves were the readings for oxygen, hydrogen, and chlorine. Several other tracings, registering smaller peaks and troughs, indicated other products being given off in minute quantities.

“What are they?” Hanamura asked stonily.

“These are trace elements, hydrogen salts, the usual stuff.” Reid sucked in a shaky breath and pointed. “This one is tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin. I’ve taken four samples and checked them independently. There’s no mistake. It’s TCDD.”

Hanamura looked at the tiny squiggle. His face had drained of color and yet his eyes felt hot.

“It’s very small, only a fraction of a percent,” Reid told him, “but it’s definitely there, mixed in with the oxygen product.” He looked bleakly into Hanamura’s eyes. “That’s the cause, Frank—Gorsuch and the others. They were on deck and must have got a whiff from the 0
₂
duct. Only it’s oxygen spiked with a lethal dose of dioxin.”

“But where? Where’s it coming from?”

“The ocean, where else?”

. Hanamura stared at the one offending line. He couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t accept it.
Dioxin? Not
possible. How? Where? Why?

“We have to shut the plant down right away, Frank.”

Hanamura shook his head woodenly.

“Frank, we have to! We can’t go on pumping dioxin into the atmosphere!” Carter Reid clutched his arm. “We’re supposed to be saving the human race, not killing it off!”

Hanamura shook him off roughly, reached out, took hold of the broad band of paper, and wrenched it from the machine and started tearing it to shreds.

The pens jittered on, aimlessly tracing peaks and troughs, recording the same message onto nothing.

Of course they knew the name. His book was their bible. It was Gavin Chase who had started Earth Foundation—but the photograph on the dust jacket and the face on TV bore scant resemblance to the disheveled middle-aged man with dark circles under his eyes who sat haggard from lack of sleep behind the wheel of the jeep.

The tall broad-shouldered young man with fair hair and thick white eyebrows had a kind of leering smile on his face, as if secretly amused by something. “You really Dan’s father? No shit?”

It wasn’t the most welcoming of arrivals, to be waved down by four young men with rifles as they approached the settlement along the western shore of Goose Lake. About a mile away was a cluster of wooden buildings, set among fir trees. Chase held his irritation in check. They were young and excitable, fingering their weapons as if itching to use them, and there was a feverishness in their eyes that disturbed him.

“Yes, Dan is my son. Are you going to let us through now?”

The one with fair hair glanced at the others, who copied his smirk.

Ruth’s patience was even more depleted than Chase’s. She exploded. “Listen, you bunch of pricks! Either let us pass or find somebody with some real authority. We’re in no mood to be messed about by fucking morons!”

The fair-haired young man didn’t take kindly to her attitude. His ruddy face flushed even darker.

“Do you want me to go get your father, Baz?” asked one of his companions.

“Shut up,” Baz Brannigan said to no one in particular.

“I received a message from Nick Power telling me that Cheryl Detrick was ill,” Chase said, doing his best to retrieve what was left of the situation. “If you want to ride along with us, Nick Power will confirm that, okay?” He smiled tiredly. “After what we’ve seen between Utah and here I don’t blame you for taking precautions.”

It was just enough, it seemed, to save the young man’s face. He. debated for a moment and gave a surly nod, then gestured with his rifle to one of the others, who climbed onto the back of the jeep. As Chase drove on he could see the fair-haired young man in the mirror, standing in the middle of the road and watching them all the way.

Nick was pleased and relieved to see them. He’d been afraid they wouldn’t get through. Over the past year, and the last six months in particular, things had got to be very bad. They’d had trouble with the refugees from the south, many of whom had set up camps in the woods nearby. The morale at Goose Lake was in pretty poor shape.

“We noticed,” Ruth said, lying back exhausted in the living room of Nick’s cabin. It was a pine-clad, single-story building with a shingled roof, plainly yet comfortably furnished. “Is that why you’ve got those gun-happy teen-age hoodlums guarding the road?”

Nick and his wife, Jen, who was pouring tea, exchanged looks. “That’s Baz Brannigan and his mob. Baz is Tom Brannigan’s son. Tom’s the council leader—or he was until he got a dose of megalomania and set himself up as dictator.”

“Today Goose Lake, tomorrow ...” Jen said, handing around the tea, though she wasn’t smiling; clearly it wasn’t a joke.

“Well, I suppose it’s necessary to have someone watching the road,” Chase said.

“You miss the point, Gav. These kids are Brannigan’s personal militia. They’re bombed out of their skulls most of the time—and they’re there to keep people in as well as out.”

Chase paused with the cup halfway to his lips. “You mean you’re not allowed to leave here? In heaven’s name, why?”

“Ask the Brannigans,” Nick shrugged. “Either of them, because I’m not sure who’s in charge anymore, father or son, and neither are they.” He looked at Chase, his expression deadly serious. “I wasn’t kidding about the megalomania. Tom Brannigan’s developed a king-size power complex; he sees Goose Lake as his own private empire. And with Baz around, things get kind of complicated because he thinks he’s running the show.”

On top of everything else Chase couldn’t take this in. Where he’d expected to find a stable, tightly knit community, there was instead fear, resentment, and suspicion, as if a potent nerve gas had seeped under their doors while they slept. Goose Lake wasn’t a refuge anymore, a haven from the crazy world outside: It reflected in microcosm the chaos and disintegration that infected the rest of the country. There was no escape.