Spiral (42 page)

Drake tugged the wires to make sure they were firmly attached to the terminals, then nodded to his father.

Parry took a breath, and his voice was gentle for a change. “I don’t think there’s much to say except bloody good luck to every one of us. I sincerely hope God’s smiling on us today.”

“Amen,” said Sweeney.

Parry tapped his walking stick twice on the ground. “Now can we all assume safety positions, please?”

Sergeant Finch was helped out of his mobility scooter and then everyone did as they’d been told, finding a place on the floor. They bowed their heads, their hands clasped behind the napes of their necks.

Will was watching as Drake wound the handle on the detonator to build up an electrical charge. As it went faster and faster, the whirring of the dynamo filled the room.

“That’ll be enough,” he decided, hinging back the safety guard around the push handle.

“OK?” he asked.

“OK,” Parry replied.

“See you on the other side,” Drake said.

He rammed the handle home.

THE ELEVATOR ROSE
through the levels of the Chancellery, the massive, monolithic, arched government building at the very center of New Germania. As it came to a stop, the doors slid open and a pair of Styx Limiters stepped from it. Their boots beat in perfect unison as they marched over the highly polished marble floors.

The Chancellor’s assistant was at her station, a Baroque gilded table with a telephone and a vase of wilted flowers on it. She was brushing her hair as she observed the two soldiers approaching. There would have been a time when she’d have been paralyzed with fear at the sight of these ghoulish men with their skeleton-thin faces and jet-black eyes. Men that reeked of death and destruction.

But now, as they paused in front of her table, she regarded them with a sleepy detachment.

“Is he in?” one of them demanded in a growl.

She nodded with that sheep-eyed look that spoke of intensive Darklighting — along with almost every other inhabitant of New Germania, she’d been subjected to exces-sive amounts of the treatment, and it had all but fried her brain.

And her appearance had changed considerably since the day, several months before, when Rebecca Two and the Limiter General had made their first visit to the Chancellery. She still wore her efficient blue suit, but the dark roots of her platinum hair were showing, and her makeup was carelessly applied.

She watched as one of the Limiters kicked open the large wooden doors to the Chancellor’s office and they both stormed in.

Still brushing her hair, she listened to the commotion inside the room. Then the Limiters emerged, dragging the corpulent Chancellor, Herr Friedrich, between them. They must have caught him during one of his typically lavish lunches, since he still had a napkin tucked into his shirt.

“I’m going out for a while, Frau Long,” he managed to say before he was carted off down the corridor.

With two outriders blazing the way, the official limousine roared down Berliner Strasse, one of the grandest and usually busiest roads in New Germania. But other than this single vehicle, with its old-fashioned swept-back airflow styling and gleaming silver paintwork, there was no traffic now.

As the vehicle drew to a halt near the waiting delegation, the door opened. Placing a dainty combat boot on the chalk-colored road, Rebecca One emerged unhurriedly from the vehicle. And, just as unhurriedly, she made her way toward the delegation, inclining her head to listen to the forlorn drone of sirens resounding across the city.

Then she turned to survey the opposite side of the broad avenue across the central reservation with its palm trees, where a multitude of people were standing in several queues. There were so many New Germanians there that the lines wound up and down the baking surface of the road. And not one of the people spoke or made a sound, simply shuffling forward as the queues moved at an interminably slow rate.

Rebecca One blew through her lips. “Water . . . somebody bring me some water,” she said, flapping her long black coat open to circulate air to her body.

A Limiter soldier in the delegation immediately removed a canteen from his belt and passed it to her. She took several long gulps before handing it back. “This climate — it’s too much,” she said, squinting at the ever-burning sun directly overhead in the sky. She lowered her eyes to the Limiter General, who was waiting for his orders. She frowned slightly as she studied the sand-colored fatigues he and the other Limiters were wearing. “I leave you in charge and this is what happens. I know the heat is the reason you’ve ditched your uniforms, but I’m not sure I approve of the replacement. It’s not really us, is it? A little too
beach party
for my taste.”

There was no change in the Limiter General’s deadpan expression, but he was clearly troubled by her criticism as he looked down at the loose-fitting combat jacket and trousers. “They’re New Germanian Special Forces issue,” he explained.

“Don’t worry about it now,” she said. “But if you’re the Master Race, you’ve got to look the part. Isn’t that right, Chancellor? Isn’t that what your wonderful Third Reich believed w . . .” She fell silent as she sought out Herr Friedrich, who was standing in the midst of the delegation. He was miles away, his head craned back as he watched a lone pterodactyl riding a thermal high in the sky. “Hey, porky boy — I’m talking to you!” she barked.

The Chancellor, the former supreme leader of the nation of New Germania, hiccupped with surprise. He, too, had had his fair share of the Dark Light, with the expected ill effects.

“Hello?” he said, frowning at Rebecca One.

“Oh, forget it,” she snapped. She swung to the Limiter General. “Give me an update. How’s Vane getting on?”

The Limiter General shook his head. “She’s exceeding all expectations.” He pointed at one of the institutional buildings that lined the road, a substantial ten-story edifice of light granite. “As you know, we filled the Institute of Geology with human stock.” He panned his finger along the other, similarly imposing buildings in the row, coming closer to where he and Rebecca One were standing. “Then we did the same with the medical facility, and the universities of antiquities and prehistory. She’s worked her way through the human hosts in all of them. That’s three hundred and fifty bodies for impreg-nation and nearly double that number for sustenance —”

“Wait!” Rebecca One broke in. “You’re telling me that she’s impregnated that many already? She’s just one woman. How can that be?”

“Might I suggest you come and see for yourself?” the Limiter General replied. He and the rest of the delegation fell in behind Rebecca One as she stepped over the central reservation and cut straight through the queues. The people dumbly moved out of her way. One of them, an elderly man, his face bright red from exposure to the unforgiving sun, abruptly collapsed. Rebecca One hardly bothered to look at him as he lay where he fell.

“Yes, through there,” the Limiter General said as she reached the nearest building.

It was a huge botanical greenhouse, its facade nearly a thousand feet in length. “Kew Gardens,” Rebecca One said under her breath as she noted the similarity to the Royal Botanic Gardens she’d driven past with Vane no more than a fortnight before.

The Limiter General held the door of the greenhouse open for her, indicating the stairs just inside. She mounted the cast-iron steps, then she passed through another door and out onto a walkway spanning the entire width of the building. From the abundance of different trees, shrubs, and flowers that Rebecca One could see below, New Germanian botanists had obviously been collecting specimens from the jungle and propagating them here.

The Limiter General and the Styx soldiers, two of whom had the Chancellor hoisted between them, held back as she moved to the middle of the walkway. There she peered down one side and then the other. Through the foliage, she could see the numerous human bodies lying in the soil, already monstrously bloated by the Warrior larvae growing inside them.

“Outstanding,” Rebecca One said. “But how’s she managing to impregnate so . . .” She trailed off as she noticed that one of the bodies had already ruptured and young larvae were crawling in the rich peat of a planting bed. “I don’t believe it! It took almost a week for them to hatch Topsoil. But this has taken . . . what?”

“Twenty-four hours,” the Limiter General answered.

Rebecca One was silent for a moment. “But how can the life cycle have accelerated to that extent?”

“We can only think that Danforth’s pronouncement about the conditions down here was right. Perhaps the environment — the proximity to the sun and the high UV levels — acts to stimulate the process,” the Limiter General said.

“Even so . . . how can one woman be physically able to do this?” Rebecca One asked. “It’s off the scale.”

The Chancellor was also peering over the side of the walkway. Some part of his mind that had survived the Darklighting was registering the carnage below — that his people were dying in the most horrible way. He began to sob.

“Oh, do stop that!” Rebecca One reprimanded him. She returned her attention to the scene below. “Where is she?” she asked herself. Then she shouted, “Vane! Are you there?”

At this the Limiter General and his men drew back. The last thing they wanted was to attract the attention of the Styx woman. They’d already witnessed the unfortunate deaths of their comrades as she’d been conveyed from one building to another.

There was a rustling, and a head popped up between two date palms. Vane’s blond hair was matted with gore, sweat, and the fluid slopping from her mouth. No change there. But the aspect that made Rebecca One’s eyes widen was that instead of the single ovipositor, Vane now had an additional two of them swinging from her mouth. And her abdomen was hugely extended as her reproductive system continued to operate in overdrive to churn out new egg pods.

Vane gave Rebecca One an enthusiastic thumbs-up, then rubbed her belly proudly.

“Go for it, sister! You’re breaking all the records!” Rebecca One congratulated her.

The Chancellor was still sobbing, even louder than ever.

“Oh, Christ, you big baby,” Rebecca One groaned. “Just chuck him over, will you?” she ordered the Limiters. “Juicy fat treat on the way!” she called down to Vane.