Passage Graves (34 page)

Chapter 85

MONDAY, 2
:19 a.m.

Orkney Island, Scotland

Dust stirred off the ground.

Thatcher sputtered and sat up. Her head wobbled with vertigo. Darkness twisted around her. It was impossible to focus. Everything was black. Her clothes were wet and her skin peppered with sand. After a few deep breaths, she moved her head slowly. This time there was no spinning, just scattered images. A gun to her head. Helicopters. Water, lots of water. 

David?
She sat up in a panic.

There was s
tabbing pain. Her head, her leg. She dropped into the dirt and held her skull.

Where was David?

A faint glow reawakened her focus. She crawled towards it, reaching the stone wall, finding it with her fingertips. It was a spiral of light. 

Maeshowe
.

The
shock rolled over her, and along with it more images. Asor had kissed her. He had forced her into the sinking sands of Wadi Musa. Bodies of the dead had thrashed around them like some hellish spin cycle of a washing machine. She sank into hell, dragged down by Asor. Water turned to sand. Sand became darkness. 

Brenton was right. The graves were portals. People could pass thro
ugh them.

Chills spread acro
ss her body. She commanded her legs to crawl toward the passageway leading out of the chamber. Her hands met something hard and round. She pulled the object from the dirt and set it on her lap. It had a switch along one side. She flipped it on.

A
sudden stream of light blinded her.

She
recognized the soundsuit helmet.

In
side the cracked face shield were the remains of Bailey’s head. She covered her mouth to stifle a cry. The helmet dropped and rolled away.

A hand reached out of the dark and grabbed
her festering leg. 

S
he screamed, scrambling to break free from the grasp.

The helmet light flickered out. The chamber plunged back
into darkness except for the glow of the eternal stone. She forced herself to stand. Her swollen calf buckled. The wound was riddled with infection. She grabbed at her leg, unable to escape. She looked at it in shock. Her blood was glowing white. It was just like David’s description of Brenton’s palm on the night he identified the corpse.

Something grabbed her good leg and flipped her onto o
n her back. She kicked wildly, striking with her wounded leg. Pain exploded through the bone. Scooping fistfuls of dirt, she threw it at her attacker and dragged herself into the passageway. 

A shadow
stumbled in the darkness behind her. She tripped over Bailey’s helmet.

Light from the sound
suit helmet flickered off and on as it spun in circles, illuminating Golke’s corpse. The dead scientist blocked her path.

Thatcher froze against the wall.
She held her legs tightly to her chest.

Bailey’s light flickered out.

She stared into darkness at a beast with glowing eyes. 

Chapter
86

MONDAY, 4:28 a
.m.

Stenness Basecamp

Orkney Island, Scotland

David hunched over on the floor of the cell. He curled into a ball.

It seemed that e
veryone who mattered died because of him.

He was ready to surrender his soul, if hell existed.
But Thatcher wouldn’t have given up. It seemed a dishonor to her memory to quit.

He rolled across the cement and slammed his feet into the door. To his surprise,
it wedged open an inch. He gritted his teeth and kicked the door again, this time breaking it open.

The helm was empty except for the computers. The AVX countdown flashed on all the monitor screens.

00:00:31:21. 

Everything would be gone in thirty-
one minutes. There had to be a way to override the system. David stopped at a keyboard. The monitor displayed the images from several security cameras around basecamp. The corridor, the elevator shaft, the morgue, personnel quarters. He couldn’t see Hummer anywhere. He hit the escape key, but the screen was locked.

Hummer’s reflection appeared in the monitor.
His gun was pointed at David. 

David dropped
as the trigger snapped.

A bullet exploded through the screen.
The glass shattered in a blaze of sparks. Hummer missed his head by a fraction of an inch. The gun clicked empty, and Hummer tossed the spent chamber aside and pulled another from his belt.

“The AVX
discharge in minutes, Dr. Hyden,” he said. 

David slid underneath another broken desk. He wrapped his handcuffs around
the protruding rebar and tried to break them apart. The rebar just bent sideways. There was nothing that could free his hands. There was only shattered concrete and broken electronic equipment.

The helm was
quiet.

He’
d lost track of Hummer.

Lo
wering flat to the floor, he searched for Hummer’s feet. He looked at the countdown clock in agony. 

00:00:30
:10.

What the hell was he going to do?

A broken chunk of cement caught his attention. He tossed it across the room. The debris crashed into a pile of explosives.

Hummer opened fire. Bullets ricocheted off the walls, dangerously close to the ammu
nition. Shrapnel cut through active electrical cord and caught fire. Flames spread along the rubble toward the equipment racks. Papers on the shelves went up in fury.

There wa
s a rapid succession of gunfire, a round of explosions that made David’s ears ring. Hummer was a few feet away behind a burning storage rack. David kept his body low to the ground. The smoke was toxic. Diving under another desk, he slid to the rear of the rack and quietly scooted around the corner. The fire got bigger, smokier. It was hard to breathe, even harder not to cough.  

Hummer stopped shooting and searched the room, rubbing his eyes with his sleeves. He yelled over the fire. “Do you know what it feels like when AVX explode?”

The man was drunk. His words were slurred and his movements slow. That was probably the only reason David was still alive.

“First is the thermobaric explosion,” Hummer yelled. “It happens above your head, midair. It’ll split you in two, turn your
insides bloody out, invert and implode what’s left of your conscious brain.”

David crawled along the back edge of the storage rack behind Hummer.

“And then comes the nanofuel, energetic particles, a nightmare plume from a secondary burster, so whatever didn’t catch fire in the initial explosion lights up what’s left of you like a roman candle. And the vacuum, if you’re unfortunate enough to still be alive for—”

Throwing his entire weight into the rack, David forced the heavy cabinet over. Metal cracked as the huge rack snapped
against Hummer’s back. Equipment spilled across the floor, breaking into pieces, bursting with glass shards as everything slammed into the ground.

The gun toppled out of Hummer’s hand.

It slid beneath another rack, inches from his reach.

David dove for the gun.

A chair broke across his back. His spine flattened and his face bounced off the ground.

Hummer
was lightning quick. He lifted David off the floor and tossed him effortlessly into the wall. 

Ribs met rock. Upon impact,
David’s lungs felt paralyzed. Air vacated his chest. His diaphragm was in intense spasm, a terrible pressure on the solar plexus. The wind was knocked out of him—a condition that would clear in a moment or two, but by then Hummer would have the gun and David would be dead. David toppled to the floor, clumsily wiping blood from his mouth and struggling to his feet. His legs were rubber, his handcuffed arms worthless. Pain exploded in his knee from the Stenness injury.

Hummer attacked, pummeling his ribs. 

David reeled sideways, and Hummer missed, connecting with the cement wall.

There was a solid crack of shattering bone. Hummer’s wrist hung unnaturally to the left. His hand was broken. 

This evened the odds.

Swinging wildly at Hummer’s face with both arms, David knocked the man into the wall. He hit Hummer again, a blow to the ribs then the kidneys.

Hummer caught David’s arm, twisted backwards, and snapped David’s wrist out of joint.

To hell with the odds.

David cringed. He threw an elbow into Hummer’s face. The blow sent the man reeling. David stepped away, looking for the gun, cradling his dislocated wrist. His chest heaved. Oxygen was illusive. There was no catchable breath. His lungs had to start working or he would pass out. It seemed as if he had forgotten how to inhale. The organs inside his chest were throbbing. There was no way he could survive with his wrists cuffed together.

Growling, Hummer came at him again. The brute force of his weight slammed David
into the wall again. Whatever remained of David’s lungs collapsed into his ribcage. Hummer held David by the throat and picked him up off the ground.

Strangled against the wall, David felt his brain burn
ing. He could taste the smoke from the fire raging around them. Sparks fizzled across his vision, blurred the room. Bursts of black popcorn erased portions of the scene, starting in the periphery and working inwards, luring him into unconsciousness. This was suffocation, a crushed trachea from a vice-like grip. There would be no thermobaric death. His legs and then his arms went limp. In one final effort, he smashed his forehead against Hummer’s skull.

They collapsed. Hummer tumbled backwards over the desk.

The seal toppled out of Hummer’s pocket and landed beside David.

There were no thoughts. Only action.

Both men dove for the seal, oblivious to the flames. David snatched it up. Hummer grabbed his leg, reeled him in like a flopping fish. He gripped David’s throat again, pinning him against the floor.

Something caught David’s attent
ion. Less than five feet away, fire illuminated a sharp piece of rebar protruding from cement. He threw his fists into Hummer’s face. There was a scream on impact—his own, following the excruciating crack of his displaced wrist.

Somehow, the blow dislodged Hummer’s superhuman grip. They began to spin, roll
ing across the floor, grappling, clawing, and then suddenly stopping as rebar stabbed through Hummer’s back. His grip loosened around David’s throat.

David slunk backwards, gasping for breath. He held fast to the seal. 

“Please…” Rebar pinned Hummer’s body to the wall. 

Fire reached the pile of explosives at the end of the room.

There wasn’t much time.

Hummer grabbed David by the shirt. “Don’t do it.”  

Smoke choked the room. David’s mind spun with vertigo and dizziness. He squinted at the countdown clock.

00:17
:07:13. 

The night at the church in Boghole Farm. Thatcher was clear. “Postpone the end of the world… Save as many as we can.”

He had to believe delivering the seal to Maeshowe meant something.

David searched Hummer’s pocket for the handcuff keys.

Hummer’s face was pale, his eyes like glass. “Brynne…” he whispered.

David found the key and carefully opened the lock. His right wrist was bulging and swollen. He tossed away the handcuffs and tucked the seal into his pocket.

He had to try.

As the explosives caught fire, he sprinted down the corridor.

Ropes dangled into basecamp from the top of the elevator shaft. He grabbed the line and tried to climb. With a groan he dropped to the ground. It was impossible. His dislocated wrist hung from its socket. Cringing, he popped the bone back into place. He tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt and tied it around the joint. Taking hold of the rope, he pulled himself upward. His legs walked up the vertical rails. His only focus was the dimming light topside.

The tunnel shook as explosives detonated in the helm.

He lost his footing and swung wildly across the shaft.

Another explosion rocked the earth. A wave of fire consumed the corridor. Heat surged up the shaft. The elevator channel was a chimney for the inferno below. An even hotter wave
radiated up the shaft, singeing his eyebrows.

Stenness was ten feet away, barely visible through the smoke.

He climbed the wall as flames spiraled below.

Sparks crawled up the edges of the shaft. They stretched after him, snapping at his legs.

A tremendous boom rocked basecamp as the largest alcove of ammunition caught fire.

David reached for the ledge.

The pressure tossed him out of the bunker. A fireball snarled up the shaft and the neon blaze burst from the ground. The last AVX ignition fuels ruptured 40 feet below.

David stumbled toward Maeshowe, hold
ing the seal in his good hand.