Terminal (8 page)

Elliott came alongside Will. ‘We don't know what we're walking into here,' she whispered. ‘This could be a trap.'

Will was dismissive of the suggestion. ‘But they need us more than we need them, don't they?' he replied.

‘Werner says we have to bring you inside to take your blood under sterile conditions,' Jürgen said, breaking into their conversation. ‘That means you have to be decontaminated, and this is how we're going to do it. Karl and I will go through first, then it's your turn. On the other side of these doors you'll find the primary sterilisation chamber, where we
wash down our suits and go under the banks of UV light before we remove them. In the next room is the secondary chamber where we shower again and dress before we can enter the quarantine ward.'

‘But are we really able to go in there too? We can wash, but what about any virus
in
us? Will asked.

‘My brother's an expert in these procedures, and he thinks we can minimise the risk,' Jürgen said. ‘Just remember that you have to leave all your clothes and equipment in the sealed boxes in the primary chamber before you go through the rest of the procedure I've described to you. Once you're finished, you should don the gowns I'll put out for you. And you should wear face masks to ensure that you don't exhale any virus into the ward.'

‘Got it. Okay,' Will replied, pretending to be comfortable about the process.

‘We'll let you know over the intercom when you can enter,' Jürgen said, hesitating before swivelling his cylindrical helmet in Will and Elliott's direction. They could see his eyes as he added, ‘And thank you for helping us. I can't tell you what this means to us … to me … it means Karl has a chance.' Then he put his hand on his son's shoulder, guiding him away. There was a hiss of air and the polythene sheeting around the room stirred as he pulled on the heavy door, and they both went in.

Twenty minutes later Jürgen's voice came over the intercom, telling them it was their turn. As Will came to the door, there was a clunking sound as solenoids drew back the bolts in the heavy steel door and he was able to open it. There was another rush of air – a higher air pressure was clearly being maintained in the quarantine ward to stop any air from leaking in.

Although everything was made of stainless steel, the interior of the first decontamination area had the feel of a changing room, with lockers and showers down either side of it. Will squashed his Bergen into one of the lockers, followed by his Sten. He began to unbutton his shirt, but then twisted around to Elliott, who was standing quite still in front of another locker. She'd been about to deposit her weapon inside a locker beside the other two Limiter rifles she'd been carrying.

‘What's wrong?' Will asked.

‘We're going into this completely empty-handed. No weapons … that makes me very uncomfortable,' Elliott whispered.

‘You stay here then. I'll go in by myself,' Will suggested. ‘They only need to take blood from one of us.'

‘No way! We stick together – at all times,' she replied quickly, then sighed. ‘But we don't need to put ourselves in this position in the first place. If we make a run for it, they'll never catch us. And we can make sure they never find us again.'

‘Don't we owe them?' Will replied. ‘Whatever you say, we're partly to blame for what's happened. How long can they go on living like this until someone screws up and they get infected? Or they run out of power or water or something?' As Elliott didn't speak, Will added, ‘You're not very trusting, are you? Don't you think if Drake had been here, he'd have tried to help them? Help save the life of that little kid?'

Elliott seemed taken aback by this. ‘I honestly don't know,' she said, biting her lip as she thought. ‘I suppose so. But if we do this and it goes wrong, it was your call, and it's on your head.'

‘Righty-ho,' Will said, then added hesitantly. ‘Um … one thing though …'

Elliott was unbuckling her belt. ‘What's that?' she asked.

Will waved his hand at her side of the chamber. ‘No peeking, okay? You keep your eyes to your side, and I'll do the same. Deal?'

‘Er … yes … deal,' she confirmed, realising what he was saying.

They went through the decontamination procedure in bashful silence, stripping down and washing, then standing under the banks of ultraviolet light as they faced away from each other. And all the time fresh air was being pumped into the chamber – they could hear it rushing through the vents.

Then, at the very moment the banks of ultraviolet lights went out, a voice spoke to them over the intercom by the entrance to the second chamber. ‘Move through to the next area now, please,' it directed.

‘Ladies first,' Will said, keeping himself turned well away from Elliott.

They showered again in the cubicles on their respective sides, dried themselves down and then put on the gowns and masks Jürgen had provided for them.

‘Are you dressed now?' Will asked.

‘Yes, all ready,' Elliott replied, and only now did they make eye contact.

Still a little embarrassed by the situation, Will flexed his shoulders under the white gown. ‘Been a while since I washed in hot water like that. I feel all itchy.'

Elliott nodded, trying to hide a smile. ‘Yes, I noticed you've got a rash on your back.'

‘Huh!' Will exclaimed, as the solenoids clunked on the door and they followed the order from the intercom to walk through into the quarantine ward itself.

‘How do you know that? You cheated – you bloody well looked, didn't you?' Will hissed at Elliott as they stepped into the corridor on the other side of the door. He knew his face was burning; the problem with his milky complexion was that even the slightest degree of embarrassment showed itself.

Elliott giggled. ‘And you're really quite muscly, aren't you?'

A man appeared from a doorway further down the corridor, and began striding towards them. Jürgen, Will assumed.

‘Yeah … well … you have great dimples,' he whispered back at Elliott, grinning mischievously.

‘Dimples? Where? Wha—!' Elliott burst out, but was forced into silence because the man was now close enough to hear.

‘So we meet in the flesh. I'm Jürgen,' the man said, giving them each a formal bow, but not offering to shake hands with them again, maybe because he still had a concern about making physical contact despite the thorough cleansing they'd undergone.

Dressed in blue overalls, Jürgen was a slight man, not much taller than Will. His blond hair was still damp from his own decontamination procedure, his long fringe hanging lankly in front of his blue eyes. He now brushed it to one side self-consciously. ‘I hope your skin isn't too sore after all the washing,' he said, smelling the back of his hand. He indicated a rack of what resembled fire extinguishers by the base of the wall, but they were painted green with German lettering on them. ‘The showers you've just had contain germicide, same as in those tanks. It's an added precaution against the virus, but it can cause a skin reaction.'

‘Yes, Elliott noticed I had a rash,' Will muttered, giving her a pointed look.

Trying her best not to smile, Elliott asked, ‘So what do we do now?'

‘Werner's waiting for us in the laboratory. Please come this way,' Jürgen said, turning on his heels.

As they set off down the corridor, Karl ran up and threw his arms around his father, hiding his face against him. With his fair locks, the child resembled his father, although he had dark smudges under his eyes as if he hadn't slept for a while. Still with his face pressed against his father, he was sneaking the occasional look at Will and Elliott.

‘Hi,' Will said, but the boy didn't reply.

Jürgen began to walk slowly, his son still hanging on to him. ‘Karl doesn't speak. In fact, he hasn't said a single word since the day of the plague. You see my wife, his mother, didn't make it into this shelter in time. We know she was on the way here … but maybe the invaders picked her up for more brainwashing. They were in the habit of doing that to anyone who appeared to be in a hurry.'

‘I'm sorry,' Will mumbled.

Jürgen continued to walk slowly, his voice unsteady at the memory. ‘Anyway, we couldn't wait for her any longer. We had no choice. We had to close the main door … or we'd have been overwhelmed by all the other people in here.'

‘You said
brainwashed
? You mean the Styx Darklit her?' Elliott asked gently.

‘Darklit?' Jürgen said, repeating the unfamiliar word. ‘With the purple light?' He squinted and pretended to shield his face from a bright light. ‘Yes, we all had that. The people you call the Styx went through the city quarter by quarter, forcing us out of the buildings. Then they made us look at the purple lights, even Karl here.' He ruffled the boy's hair.

Will exchanged a glance with Elliott, who was frowning.

‘That's not good news. We need to deal with whatever they've implanted in you,' she said, putting into words precisely what Will was thinking.

‘You can do that?' Jürgen asked. ‘How? And why?'

‘I've got a piece of kit in my Bergen that was developed to neutralise the Dark Light,' Will replied, referring to the Purger. ‘What they put in your head might be dangerous for you, or anyone with you. I was programmed to chuck myself off anything high enough to kill me.'

‘I see,' Jürgen said with a nod. ‘Then we should deal with that later, but first there's a more pressing matter to address.' He steered Will and Elliott into a room crammed with medical equipment. A man looked up from his microscope. ‘
Guten Tag,
' he said.

‘English, Werner, you need to speak in English,' Jürgen reminded him.

Although Werner had his brother's blue eyes and similar features, he was taller and far thinner. He was obviously the elder of the two, his blond hair very patchy on his scalp.

‘Okay, in English,' he said.

‘You need some of our blood?' Will asked.

‘That's right. I've been working to identify the viral bodies so I can isolate them,' Werner explained, inclining his head at the microscope. ‘So far I haven't been successful.' Then he got to his feet and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. ‘You see, this ward you're in was established because there was always the spectre of a new bacterium or viral strain seeping into our world from the surface. And because we would lack any natural resistance to it, it was feared that it might rip through the population. This plague that struck us was too virulent for
our doctors to do anything in time.'

‘But you know how to prepare a vaccine from our blood?' Will asked.

Werner nodded. ‘The antigens in you will mean that I have a ready-made vaccine to inoculate us, and any other survivors we find, against the plague.' He asked Will and Elliott to sit down, then used syringes to extract samples of blood from each of them. He told them that once he'd prepared the vaccine, either he or his brother would test it out first because if it went wrong then they couldn't both afford to be incapacitated at the same time.

‘That'll be me then … the guineafowl,' Jürgen said, nodding sanguinely.

‘I think it's
guinea pig
,' Will corrected him.

‘So you don't need us any longer? Elliott asked.

‘No, but if you're agreeable, would you mind staying until we know the vaccine is viable? I might need some more samples,' Werner said. ‘What's the English expression – better safe than sorry.'

‘Okay … but how long do you want us to stick around?' Will asked, eager to leave the city and return to their base in the jungle.

‘Forty-eight hours maximum,' Werner replied, already taking their blood samples over to a centrifuge as he began his work.

Jürgen escorted Will and Elliott from the laboratory and down a corridor, past several doors. ‘We have some rooms for you along here.' He indicated the right-hand side of the corridor. ‘These are all isolation rooms, self-contained living quarters with their own distinct air filtration so you can remove your masks in them to eat and drink.'

They'd passed several of these isolation rooms when Will caught sight of something through the inspection window in one of the doors that made him pull up sharply.

‘I don't believe it!' he exclaimed as he saw the figure perched on the edge of the sleeping cot, its skin rough and whorled like the bark of an old tree. ‘That's a bushman, isn't it? How did you get him to come here?'

‘I've never seen one alive before,' Elliott said, going to the window to peer in.

The bushman had his head towards her, his small brown eyes the only recognisable human feature until he opened his mouth and she saw his pink tongue. He appeared to be saying something.

‘But why is he here?' Will pressed Jürgen.

‘I was one of a small team in the Institute of Antiquities that have been working with the indigenous population – or the tribespeople, as we refer to them – for the last decade,' Jürgen replied. ‘We established contact on an expedition and kept it from the military, who had it in their minds that they were hostile. Actually they had no idea
what
was in that sector of the jungle, but if they had known, they would most likely have mounted an operation to round them up.'

Jürgen took a breath. ‘It was regrettable that several servicemen lost their lives when they were mistakenly considered to be a threat to the pyramids. We were able to prevent any further deaths by talking to the tribespeople and making them understand.'

Will was shaking his head as he realised something. ‘So that's why they left me and my father alone,' he said.

‘That's correct,' Jürgen confirmed. ‘As for this tribesman, he was smuggled into my institute several weeks before the
plague hit, and I couldn't just abandon him. I didn't know if he was vulnerable to it too.'