The Nightworld - Jack Blaine [59]
Lara looks as defeated as I feel. She scuffs at some loose papers on the floor. Tank barks from one of the back offices.
“What’s he into now?” I start toward the office. Lara follows.
There’s a large walk-in closet in the office. The door is ajar, and Tank is frantically scratching at the carpeting. He stops every few seconds and sniffs all around, and then he starts digging again, trying to make a hole where there is no dirt.
“Tank. Come on, buddy, stop.” I walk to the back of the closet to get him. He’s got a corner of the carpeting up, and there’s wood flooring underneath it. There’s something else too, something I just get a glimpse of before the corner of the carpet flips back down to cover it.
It’s a hinge.
“Lara.” I grab the corner of the carpeting and start yanking it up. Lara sees what I see, and she helps. When we’re done, we’ve exposed a three-foot-by-three-foot trapdoor with a round handle set into it. Tank sniffs at the edges, as excited as I’ve ever seen him. Lara and I exchange a look.
“Should we?” I think we’ve got nothing to lose, but I want her opinion.
“Duh.” She grins.
I grin back. “Okay, you hold Tank.” Lara grabs his collar and tugs him away from the door. I take hold of the handle and pull. Slowly the door inches upward, and then suddenly it lifts itself. I spot pneumatic lifts on the underside as it rises. A staircase leads down to . . . somewhere.
“Crap!” Tank lunges, and Lara loses her grip on his collar. He’s down the stairs before either of us can stop him. We both start down the stairs at the same time, which results in a crash.
“I’ll go first, okay?” I don’t want to sound sexist, but I also don’t want anything to happen to Lara. She nods, and I start down.
The stairs end in a huge room lit with fluorescent bulbs set into the ceiling. It’s mostly empty, and there are two doors on the far wall. Tank is scratching at the bottom of the left one. I try the handle. It opens. Tank runs in ahead of us.
Inside, there’s what looks like an observation booth—a glassed-in room with a counter and what looks like a closed-circuit security system. There’s nobody in the chair behind the counter. Past the booth there is another door. Tank looks back, waiting for me to open it.
I do.
Chapter 33
They all died. It was a virus, a sort of a spore that settled in their lungs, and grew, and killed every one of them. We found the bodies of the last two, a man named Dan and Robert Langley, CEO of Geothermal Systems, himself. He was the last to die.
It’s all in the computer log. Langley detailed the course of the virus, and how it killed over half of the colony before they even knew what was happening. They developed a vaccine, but it was too late. The spores had already floated into people’s nostrils and attached to their lungs, where they were dormant for three to seven days.
Then the cramping began. Langley described it as similar to what he’d heard tetanus started out like, before people could get inoculated against it. Stiffness, progressing to cramping muscles. But where people with tetanus used to die from being unable to breathe, people in the colony died because their muscles spasmed and cramped so severely that they broke bones. Patients went through excruciating pain as their muscles contracted so strongly that femurs and tibias snapped. Organs were crushed and death finally came, but never soon enough. Survivors hauled bodies to the incinerator on the far end of the complex. There was no other way to dispose of them. The log for the date three days before we arrived was gruesome.
Dan will be dead within the hour. I don’t think I can get him to the incinerator; the cramps have started. From what I can tell, the antivirus is effective—just too late for us. I’ve left several batches in the lab freezer. I hope it helps whoever finds this log.
If you’re reading this, everything you need is here. We worked out all the kinks before the virus hit. There are instructions for all of the various factories.