Dr. Akimwe takes the invitation, arms and legs pumping. Foss sights on him then ranges left because that’s where the undergrowth is thickest. She sees the movement and gooses the trigger. One. Two. Three.
She thinks she hit what she was aiming for, and she sure as hell didn’t hit Akimwe. Whatever takes him down takes him at foot level and trips him hard. He’s winded but still conscious, still moving, so why the hell doesn’t he get up?
Because there is something knotted around his ankles. They got him with a bolas of some kind.
But the colonel is on it. He backs towards her, towards Akimwe, firing as he goes. McQueen is out of sight, which Foss hopes means he’s found a good hide somewhere up on the hillside. She can see Sealey and Penny but they’re not moving.
Nothing is moving now. There isn’t a sound and the grass is finally in some kind of consensus with the wind. Maybe it’s over.
The stone that whips past her face comes from above, rings against Rosie’s armoured flank like a dinner gong. That’s what the lull meant. While she was watching the weeds the kids have taken the high ground. More stones slash and punctuate the air, punch the ground and the trees all around her.
Could this get any more fucked up?
Foss switches her aim to the leaves overhead and lets off a long, meandering volley. Sorry, squirrels. Anything off the ground is fair game.
And here’s some good news at last. The turret rotates and the flamethrower kicks in, drenching the canopy overhead with yellow-white flames. When they get out of this she’s going to have to kiss Sixsmith on the mouth, even if people will talk. The fire catches and the rain of stones drops off sharply, presumably as the kids find some vantage point where they won’t be roasted.
Something big and shapeless comes blundering towards her down the slope and she almost cuts it down before she realises what it is. It’s the Robot, weaving like a drunk, carrying Dr. Khan over his shoulder. She looks like she’s already dead but you do what you can.
The pelting rain of stones resumes as Greaves lurches past her towards the airlock. Foss locks the SCAR-H on full auto and gives him a 51 mm umbrella.
Greaves makes it to the airlock, but then he has to put Khan down so he can cycle the door. Further up the slope McQueen is on the move again, taking the same route she did. He’s walking at a steady, deliberate pace, turning the rifle in a bendy figure-of-eight to take in the grass and the trees from his nine o’clock to his three.
Now Colonel Carlisle is coming in too, on Foss’s right-hand side. He stops long enough to get Akimwe upright, although the scientist isn’t walking properly.
Two dead, maybe three. The science team fucking decimated. The colonel was right about staying indoors and she should have backed his call. None of this had to happen.
Greaves has got the door open, thank God. He stoops to gather up his burden.
Foss fights the urge to run straight for the door. She still needs to give the others some cover as they come. She backs towards Rosie’s mid-section one step at a time, while the colonel and Akimwe converge with McQueen to form a ragged but effective skirmish line. The kids may be wicked little wizards with their stones and their penknives but that doesn’t mean shit if they can’t pop their heads up without getting them blown off.
She reaches the airlock, steps up onto the plate.
And the door slams shut in her face. She hears the scrape and smack of the latches sliding into their grooves, the hiss of the cycling air.
Greaves has locked them out.
38
Every second counts, so Greaves has been counting them. He is up to seventy. He has set a metronome ticking in his mind. He trusts its accuracy, has no need to check a watch. And no time. No time at all.
Seventy seconds from the moment when Rina was bitten, and two minutes is the average time—not the shortest, only the arithmetic mean—that the Cordyceps pathogen takes to cross the meningeal barrier and set up house in the brain.
Fifty seconds, then, before Rina is gone.
Set her down. Close and secure the airlock door. Forty-nine. He can’t let anybody see this. Forty-eight. Nobody. Forty-seven. The lock is still set to respond to the day code if it is correctly keyed in from outside. Reset the day code. Forty-six. Forty-five. He has to choose a number he will remember, so he can let the rest of the team back in once he has done what needs to be done. He chooses pi to ten places. Too obvious? He cheats and rounds the final five down instead of up.
Forty-four. Forty-three. Forty-two. He kneels and picks Rina up again. She is convulsing, twisting in his grip. He staggers, almost loses his balance, but manages to right himself again.
Forty-one. Forty. Sixsmith is in the turret, directly above his head. Busy. Greaves walks on by without even looking up.
The lab can be secured from the mid-section by a sliding bulkhead of interlocking plates. But he has to put Rina down again, on the workbench this time, scattering racks and retorts and equipment trays, pushing everything else aside to make room for her. Thirty-nine. Thirty-eight. And then before he can deal with the bulkhead Dr. Fournier comes striding out of the engine room, full of panic and righteous fury.
“What’s all the noise? Greaves, what are the soldiers firing at? Why—?”
Thirty-seven.
Greaves charges him full on. Before Fournier knows what’s happening Greaves’ lowered head has slammed into his face and Greaves’ forward momentum has pushed him back into the engine room where he falls and sprawls.
Thirty … six? Allow one for a skipped beat, lost in that painful impact. Thirty-four.
Fournier is looking up at him in dazed horror, his face smeared with his own blood. He is mouthing Greaves’ name in a slurred and bewildered tone, interrogating the impossible thing that just happened.
The engine room isn’t really a room, fortunately. It bolts and locks from the outside. Greaves steps back quickly into the lab, slams the door and slides the bolt. Thirty-three. Thirty-two.
Footsteps on the mid-section platform. He races across the lab and closes the bulkhead door across, just in time, as Sixsmith comes down the turret ladder, dropping the last few feet onto the platform.
Thirty-one. Thirty. Twenty-nine. The metal reverberates to her pounding. “Greaves, are you fucking insane? What have you done to the door?”
No time. No time. He shuts out the noise, concentrates on the tick of the metronome.
Twenty-eight draw Rina’s blood
Twenty-seven try to
Twenty-six try to draw Rina’s blood but she’s
Twenty-five struggling, fighting him doesn’t
Twenty-four recognise him so he has to
Twenty-three lean his weight on her
Twenty-two pin her down as her hands
Twenty-one find his face. Push. Claw at his face.
Twenty Draw Rina’s blood. Twenty cc.
Nineteen With one hand uncap the test tube
Eighteen the wrong test tube, he needs
Seventeen the latest batch, unlabelled, this one. Here.
Sixteen Insert the hypo, still one-handed.
Fifteen Drop the plunger. Rina’s blood mixing
Fourteen so slowly