Scorpion [Scorpions 01] (20 page)

    ‘That’s the main problem,’ Allan said. ‘And it’s giving me one hell of a headache. Anyway, Miles, thanks for your help.’

    ‘If I come up with anything useful I’ll give you a call.’

    Allan put down the phone. He realized Duncan was watching him from the other side of the desk.

    ‘I never said there was an easy answer.’

    Duncan sighed. ‘There never is. So we’re stuck with the bloody things, are we? Damn! What’s so bloody appealing about Long Point that a bunch of insects walk in and take over?’

    ‘It’s an ideal situation for them. Plenty of dark corners, heating systems to keep them warm. That’s the attraction. They got into the supermarket hot-air ducts, likewise the factory. The bakery was the same. Ordinary homes - they all offer what the scorpions need. Warmth
and
food! At least we’ve deprived them of that now the population has moved out.’ Allan tapped the pile of reports on Duncan’s desk. ‘All these incidents point to the same conclusion - the scorpions are using Long Point as their new nesting ground. They have everything they need for the next breeding cycle.’

    ‘You think they’ll lay their eggs - or whatever they do?’ Duncan asked.

    ‘The environment’s inducive.’

    Allan caught sight of Chris as she wrapped herself more tightly in her coat.

    ‘Cold?’ he asked.

    ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘It really is chilly.’

    ‘Sorry about the temperature,’ Duncan apologized. ‘I’ve had all the heating switched off. The last thing we want is to encourage those damn things to come crawling round here.’

    ‘Don’t worry about apologizing,’ Chris said. ‘I’d rather freeze than have one of those things on me.’

    ‘Stupid idiot!’ Allan said suddenly.

    Chris frowned at him. ‘Pardon?’

    ‘How dumb can I get!’ He almost shouted. He snatched up one of the phones, knocking Duncan’s reports flying in his haste. He was shaking his head in self-disgust, dialing a number. ‘It’s been there all the bloody time! We’ve even been talking about it! I…oh, hello, Miles? It’s Allan. Listen - tell me what you think about this…’

    

    

    Allan took a quick swallow of hot coffee. He glanced at his watch. It would be light in another hour or so. He gazed out of the office window. Long Point lay in total darkness, shrouded in silence. He let the coffee trickle down his throat, spreading warmth through his chilled body. Duncan’s office was like a fridge. Allan’s breath hung in the air. The only illumination was an oil lamp standing on a corner of the desk, casting a baleful yellow glow across the room. Allan could just make out Chris’s sleeping form; she was huddled up on a chair, covered with a blanket.

    One of the phones on the desk rang with a muted sound. Allan snatched it up. Duncan’s weary voice reached him.

    ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

    ‘Fine,’ Allan said. ‘I’ve had final checks from everyone. We’re set, so all we can do now is wait.’

    ‘Comfortable in my office?’

    ‘No,’ Allan said. ‘It’s bloody cold up here!’

    ‘I did have those flasks of hot coffee sent up to you,’ Duncan chuckled.

    ‘For that you have my undying gratitude. I always said the police are wonderful.’

    ‘Oh, I almost forgot - you’ve a visitor on the way up.’

    ‘Who?’

    Duncan coughed. ‘Your boss - Camperly!’ He rang off.

    Damn! The last person Allan really needed to get involved with was Camperly. Not that he’d seen much of the man since the scorpions had moved into town. Camperly, in between his affair with the media, had been taking full control of the search for the anti-toxin - though it was proving a difficult problem.

    The office door opened and Camperly’s shadowy figure entered.

    ‘This is the first chance I’ve had to get away,’ he said. He joined Allan by the window. ‘I had a hell of a job getting into town. The police have put up barriers and they’re not allowing anyone in. I had to do a little weight-pulling.’

    Allan handed him a cup of hot coffee.

    ‘This idea of yours - do you think it will work?’

    We’ve nothing to lose by trying - and everything to gain.’

    Camperly dragged up a chair and sat down. ‘Do you mind explaining it fully?’

    ‘The main reason the scorpions deserted the previous nest was because the heat from the drainage pipe was cut when the reactor shut down. No heat meant a drop in temperature, a condition the scorpions can’t tolerate. It’s one characteristic the mutations still retain - cold irritates them, makes them sluggish. It won’t kill them but they’ll do anything to avoid it. Anyway, they abandoned the previous nest and went looking for a fresh one. Long Point offered ideal conditions, which was fine for the scorpions but not for us. The problems were one, how to get all the scorpions together, and two, the swiftest way to immobilize them. The penny took a long time to drop. First, we deprive them of all heat sources. The simplest way was to get the gas and electric supplies to the town cutoff. We did that late yesterday afternoon. That has meant an overnight period without heat of any kind - the weather’s done us a favor and stayed cold and wet.’

    Camperly nodded. ‘So, you create a situation that, hopefully, will force the scorpions out of doors. And then?’

    ‘The intention is to get the things in one place. So we needed an attraction.’

    ‘A heat source?’

    Allan nodded. ‘If the scorpions find the whole town has withdrawn its heat, that’s what they’ll be looking for.’

    ‘Do you have it?’

    ‘Yes. Portable blow-heaters. They run off ordinary paraffin. They’re used in industry, garages, workshops, anywhere that doesn’t have its own heating. Electrodes provide a constant spark to ignite a spray of paraffin and a fan drives air through the flame and out into the required area.’

    ‘And where have you located this heat source?’

    ‘We were stuck over that - until Chris suggested the old swimming baths. The place has been closed since they opened the leisure centre on the other side of town. We’ve arranged the heaters at the deep end of the baths, with the blowers directed down into the pool - which is empty of course.’

    ‘And if it works, what then? When you have a swimming pool full of scorpions?’

    ‘We freeze them.’

    Camperly’s face, illuminated by the oil lamp remained impassive. He drained his coffee.

    ‘Freeze them?’ His question was tinged with incredulity.

    ‘Liquid oxygen,’ Allan explained. ‘In a pressurized container - almost like a gigantic thermos flask - to keep the temperature down. I’ve already got a tanker backed up behind the baths. A hose has been fed into the building. At a pre-arranged signal the liquid oxygen will be released. The moment it comes into contact with the air it freezes, and will do the same to anything it comes into contact with.’ Allan smiled in the darkness. ‘That’s the theory of the exercise - it should work, but we may have missed something.’

    Camperly remained silent for a while. When he did speak his voice was edged with concern.

    ‘I hope it does work, Allan, because at the moment all our efforts to find an anti-toxin have failed. We need time, more time than the situation allows. You’ve got to make this plan of yours work!’

    Allan glanced at his watch. He picked up the phone that connected him to Duncan, who was in a mobile-operations vehicle parked beside the old baths. Behind the police vehicle was a mobile generator to provide electricity for the blow-heaters.

    ‘Allan?’ Duncan’s voice.

    ‘Switch on the heaters. Run them for half an hour to build up the heat and then have your people open all the windows and doors in the building.’

    ‘Okay.’ Duncan paused. ‘Good luck to us all,’ he said.

    

    

    They had sat for hours in the confines of the mobile-operations-vehicle, watching, waiting, sweating not through warmth but because of tension. It was quiet inside the vehicle, the only sound coming from the open radio channels, the volume turned down so that there was a constant grumble of voices.

    Allan stood beside one of the armored-glass windows, looking out across the deserted main street. He glanced at his watch; the minutes were dragging so slowly, as if time was deliberately taunting him. Come on, he begged silently, where are you? Right at that moment he would have been downright relieved to have seen a scorpion. He knew only too well that his plan was a last-ditch gamble, a wild attempt to save the day based on pure speculation. For all he knew the bloody scorpions might have already left Long Point by another route, maybe losing themselves in the heavily wooded country on the far side of town. Yet despite his mood of depression a small voice at the back of his mind kept telling him he was right. The scorpions needed the conditions he’d simulated. Hadn’t they sought out Long Point from an even greater distance, using their body sensors to pick up the heat radiating from the town? Okay, he argued with himself, it’s a gamble. But what else was there? Nobody had come up with any alternative suggestions. He had to be right.

    ‘Hi!’ A soft voice murmured close to his ear.

    Allan glanced round. ‘Great way to spend a day,’ he grinned.

    ‘How many other girls get to spend their dates in a police van with a mad scientist?’ Chris said.

    ‘That’s no way to refer to Doctor Camperly.’

    Chris giggled softly.

    ‘Well, maybe you’re right anyway,’ Allan said. ‘I think I was mad to expect this to work.’

    ‘Hey, you can cut that out. I don’t like quitters.’

    ‘Allan!’

    Duncan’s voice cut across the silence. He gestured violently. Allan and Chris moved to join him at a window further down the vehicle.

    ‘I don’t believe it!’ Chris exclaimed. ‘Can you see them?’

    Allan watched in utter silence.

    Moving across the wide, empty street was a thin line of scorpions. No more than a dozen or so, but they were crossing the street, their line of travel taking them towards the swimming baths. They were moving slowly, and Allan knew that this was the effect of the long, cold night and the early morning frost that was barely starting to thaw. He watched one scorpion falter. It paused, raising itself on its front legs, casting to left and right. Then it set off again, crawling in the wake of the others.

    ‘Let’s hope the others follow suit,’ Camperly said.

    Over the next two hours a constant stream of scorpions converged on the old building. They emerged from shops, appeared from behind buildings, crept from every crevice and dark shadow. An increasing tide of moving insects, flowing jerkily across the deserted streets and pavements. The first few built up to hundreds and these were increased by the thousand.

    ‘Look at the variation in sizes,’ Chris said. ‘From four inches up to at least eight.’

    ‘Is it my imagination,’ Duncan asked, ‘or are the biggest ones almost herding the others along?’

    ‘They are,’ Allan said. ‘The larger ones dominate the others.’

    ‘Not all that much different to our world,’ Duncan said quietly.

    Allan moved to a microphone, flipped a switch and spoke urgently. When he’d finished he returned the switch to its original position. A voice came over the speaker.

    ‘We can see them. They’re well inside the building now. Some of the first ones in have located the pool. They seem to be undecided about going in.’

    ‘What’s the temperature like in there?’ Allan asked.

    ‘Terrific. It’s overpowering.’

    ‘I think we’d better switch off the heaters,’ Allan said. ‘The temperature will stay up for hours now. If it’s too hot they might not go in.’

    ‘Will do.’

    There was a long silence while the man stationed on the roof of the building relayed the message to the generator operator. When his voice came back over the speaker it was tinged with excitement.

    ‘It’s working, Doctor Brady! It’s bloody working! I think it was the force of the blowers that made them hesitate. But they’re going in now - dropping into the pool. More of them shoving in from behind. It’s incredible. The whole damn place is alive with them.’

    Allan rushed back to the window. The stream of scorpions, though still thick, seemed to be trailing off. A few groups of stragglers were scuttling across the road to join the tail-end of the stream.

    ‘What do we do, Allan?’ Duncan asked. ‘Assume that’s it? Or risk waiting?’

    ‘I think we let the last ones go in and close the doors,’ Allan said. He glanced round to see if anyone had any objections.

    His eyes met Camperly’s. ‘Go ahead, Allan,’ Camperly said.

    Allan moved to the radio again. ‘Make sure none of our people are inside.’

    ‘Are you releasing the oxygen?’

    ‘Soon!’

    Without a word Allan crossed to the door and let himself out. It was cold after the long hours in the vehicle’s controlled atmosphere. Walking to the front of the vehicle Allan watched the scorpions disappearing inside the building. He didn’t move until the last one had crawled over the step and had gone inside. Then he ran across to the front of the building and dragged the heavy double doors shut. Making his way to the rear of the building he caught the eye of the driver of the big tanker and gave a quick nod. The tanker was backed up to the door of the old boiler room, a reinforced hose snaking its way inside. The hose had been fed up the metalwork of the diving board support, the nozzle hanging down over the pool, fixed in a rigid position so that the force of the escaping oxygen didn’t push it off centre.

    ‘Ready when you are,’ the driver said, his hand on the valve-release controls.