Micro - Michael Crichton [71]
“I’ll meet your men outdoors. Parking lot B, twenty minutes.”
The raindrops were pounding down, exploding, hurling gouts of water mixed with soil. Peter vanished in a cloud of spray as a raindrop hit him. The raindrop knocked Peter through the air and left him sprawled and coughing. The others ran, slipping and sliding, while more raindrops landed around them. Then came a sound like a freight train.
It was a flash flood running down a cleft in Fern Gully. It burst around a rock and past the base of a tree fern, and hit the people with a wall of brown water, sending them swimming for their lives. Karen was carrying Jenny along, when suddenly, as the flood hit, Jenny was torn from her back with a cry.
“Jenny!”
The water took Karen down. She couldn’t see Jenny. She found herself clinging to a leaf, which was spinning around and around in the current. Rick was kneeling on the leaf in front of her. “Grab my hand!” he shouted to her. Rick caught Karen by one hand, and hauled her onto the leaf. She coughed and gasped. The leaf spun and ran along with the current. “I’ve lost Jenny!” Karen shouted, looking around frantically. With her broken arm, Jenny would not be able to swim.
Danny Minot had climbed up onto a rock. It poked out of the floodwaters ripping around it.
A drowned earthworm floated past, rolling over and over in the water. Jenny Linn struggled in the water, trying to swim, but her sling interfered and her broken arm flopped in a frightening way. Her head went under. And came up.
Rick lay flat on the leaf. “Jenny!” he shouted. “Reach out! Jenny!”
“Hang on, Rick!” Karen shouted, and she grabbed Rick’s feet, and held on, trying to keep him from sliding off the leaf as he reached out to try to save Jenny.
Jenny rolled on her side, and reached out with her good hand, but she passed by Rick, her fingertips just brushing his. He lost her, couldn’t get a grip on her fingers, and he shouted in frustration.
Jenny was approaching the rock where Danny huddled. “Danny, please!” she screamed, putting out her good hand. The current shook her body, threatening to drag her under.
Danny Minot reached out for her. He touched her hand. Her fingers closed around his fingers. He reached farther with his other hand, and managed to get his fingers under the sling. He pulled Jenny toward him. Then he felt himself slipping off the rock.
Jenny screamed in pain as he wrenched her broken arm. But she welcomed it. “Don’t let go of me, please!” She reached with her good hand…caught Danny’s shirt.
A drowning person will take you down with them. Danny knew about drowning people. They were very dangerous.
He looked around. Was anybody watching? Then he locked eyes with Jenny Linn. “Sorry,” he said. He opened his hands and let her go. He was going to be pulled into the water and drowned by her, for sure…
Danny turned away. He couldn’t bear that expression on Jen’s face. He had done everything he could to save her. If he hadn’t let her go, she would have pulled him in, certainly…they both would have died…Jenny was doomed anyway. I’m a good person…He huddled on the rock while the water rumbled around it. Nobody had seen what he’d done. Except Jenny. That look in her eyes…
Karen screamed as she saw Danny lose his grip on her. “No! Jenny! No!” They glimpsed Jen’s head bob once more in the current, and she went down, and they didn’t see her again.
Chapter 19
Nanigen Headquarters
29 October, 2:30 p.m.
Vin Drake crossed the parking lot, moving toward Telius and Johnstone, who waited between two cars at the edge of the lot. Better to talk outdoors. Anything you said could be heard, recorded, preserved. He had to keep track of the details. Details are evidence. Evidence could escape. Evidence could fly out into the world; you could lose control of it.
“We’ve had a breach of security,” Drake said to the two men. Telius stood with his shaved head bent, listening, a short, wiry man with fierce, restless eyes that darted over the ground as if he was searching for some small object he’d lost. Johnstone, much taller than