The Man Who Sold His Son (Lanarkshire Strays) (16 page)

“Do you want me to?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’ll do it.”

She reached out to grab the corners of two different fire blankets. Pulling hard she cried out in pure joy. Despite the condition he was in – the respirator, his wasted body so thin, his grey colour and how frail he looked – he was here and he was alive.

Frightened to touch him she stood rooted to the spot and soaked in every detail of his presence. Tom fell to his knees and cried.

“My boy, och my poor boy.”

Alex started to convulse. A few eternal seconds passed whilst he shuddered and shook, stiffened and then flopped. He let out a long moan, fighting the respirator. He was slipping away, despite the machines.

Four men burst through the entrance behind them. Each armed with a pistol, they took a firing stance. With no warning, they loosed off some shots in Robert’s direction.

Tom panicked, drew his pistol and shot one of them.

Rob’s determination and his instincts, honed during decades as a field agent, overrode his body’s limitations and he began moving instantly, on automatic pilot. He shoved the Professor to the floor again and rushed at the men. Throwing a massive forearm into the face of one of the men, he crushed his nose. Continuing forward without pause, Robert caught the next man with a hammer-fist to the temple. He wrapped an arm around him and pressed his hand to the back of the man’s head in a choke-hold. Using the man as a shield he walked calmly towards his colleague, covering the few paces quickly, then shoved his human shield at the last guard, knocking him roughly to the floor and seizing his gun from his hand. Rob stood over him and delivered a vicious stomp onto the back of his head.

Sarah stayed calm. Her husband wasn’t going anywhere. Not now. Not after everything they’d been through. She leant to whisper in his ear, “We’ve got you. We’ve got you. Stay with us, Alex. Don’t leave me.”

Rob turned around, wheezing with the effort.

“Used to be a lot easier. Move yer arses, time to go.”

27

Shoving her husband along the corridor behind Rob, with Tom holding his life-saving machinery, Sarah shot out the entrance onto the slick pathway in the main courtyard. A small crowd of sleepy-looking people in pyjamas had begun to gather outside the main lab building. One of them approached Professor Robertson.

“Professor, what’s happened? Is everyone ok?”

Sarah watched, one hand placed on the grip of her Glock, whilst Gayle stood silently. The woman was in shock at what had happened in the lab. The man took her by the arm. “Professor?” he asked again.

Gayle emerged from the fog she’d receded to, took a quick look around, taking in Tom, Sarah and Alex on the Gurney. Finally she looked towards Rob who gave her a wink, making her blush despite the circumstances.

“Oh, we’re fine, Richard.” Gayle put her arm around the younger man and leaned into him a little to talk.

From where she stood it was impossible for Sarah to hear the exchange, but moments later, Gayle marched back towards them, the concerned man in tow.

“This is Richard, he’s a friend,” she said. Richard nodded a hello. “I’ve asked Richard to take us to a lab on the other side of the island. After that, we can leave.”

Sarah stepped forward. “No way. Alex is hanging by a thread, we’re leaving now.”

Gayle turned her eyes sternly to Sarah. “I assure you, Mrs Kinsella, Alex is my top priority.”

“Then let’s go,” Sarah said. “Before more security shows up.”

Tom and Rob nodded their agreement.

Gayle stepped closer to her and took her hand.

“Sarah, Alex’s machines will keep him alive until we get to the mainland. After that, anything that gets left behind in that laboratory will put him in danger for the rest of his life. We have to go there and end this, once and for all.”

Sarah’s certainty wavered. “What’s there?” she asked.

“We’ve been sending duplicates of samples to another lab, Ennis’s private lab, throughout our research. Alex recently discovered that a virus, engineered by Ennis, is what’s responsible for the infertility problem and that Ennis is designing a new version, most likely to induce female infertility. Alex may be immune to all forms of the virus: that’s why he’s sick.”

“You injected my husband with it?”

Gayle looked horrified. “I’d never do that. He did it himself.”

Sarah nodded. It was something her husband would do.

“I hadn’t previously known the location of Ennis’s lab, but Richard here just told me it’s on the other side of the compound. My guess is that’s where he keeps his stock of the pathogen, as well as all of the samples from our research. If we get rid of it, all of it, this’ll be over.”

Sarah stood still and ran through the implications of this action or that. Every cell in her wanted to get off this island with her husband, but if Gayle was telling the truth, Alex would be hunted forever simply because of his potential immunity to Ennis’s pathogen. So would any other fertile men left in the population. Look at how the
Randoms
had been herded up and placed in glorified ghettos. If they really could destroy every sample, then, with the virus extinct, Ennis would have no further need for their DNA or for any of her family.

She turned and marched back to the gurney.

“Rob, Tom, there’s something I need to help Professor Robertson with. I want you to take Alex back to the Zodiac. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes. If I’m not back by then… make sure my son gets his father back.”

“There’s no way that’s happening,” Tom yelled. He stole a quick glance around; people were starting to look at them.

“I’ll go with you,” Rob said.

“No!” Sarah snapped. “You’ve done enough. Besides, you’re more useful in keeping Alex safe. Go.”

Sarah turned back to Gayle and grabbed her roughly by the arm.

“Right, let’s go.”

She and Gayle, with Richard in tow, walked quickly through the compound, in the opposite direction to everyone else, including the security team, who ran right past them towards the burning main lab. As they slipped through the crowd, Sarah stole a glance over her shoulder and caught sight of her family safely moving towards the North Cove and their Zodiac.

Gayle pressed her palm up to the scanner pad and smiled as the main door slid open.

“So far so good,” she said.

The short walk to the second lab had been uneventful. Aside from a few worried-looking colleagues who’d noticed the soot on her face and clothes, Gayle walked unchallenged through the compound.

After they stepped into the building, Richard took the lead, as he was the only one of the three who knew the lab’s exact location. Leading the women down several flights of stairs, Richard made a few twists and turns before approaching a reinforced metal door which resembled that of a safe.

“We’re here,” he said, pressing his palm up to the ID plate. The door slid open.

“You have access?” Gayle had expected to have to tamper with the electronic access pad.

“Yes. Just me and the head of security,” Richard said, not managing to hide the pride he felt.

He looked a little embarrassed, then continued.

“I bring your research samples here, label and distribute them between pre-set incubators and fridges, then leave. When Mr Ennis is on the island, he comes and goes as he pleases. I believe that he spends a significant amount of time in this lab. Whenever I make a delivery, it always looks like he’s been working here recently.”

Gayle shot a look at him. “Let’s burn it,” she said.

Arson was becoming quite a habit today.

A siren began blaring from the wall. “They’ve found the men Rob knocked out,” Sarah said. “Fuck! The door.” She pointed at the entrance to Ennis’s lab. The door was sliding shut in response to the alarms which were ringing all over the compound.

Richard darted through, grabbed a large steel trash can and jammed it between the door and its frame, halting its progress.

“Hurry, we won’t have much time now that the compound is in lockdown,” he said.

Gayle stepped over the bin and through the gap it’d created, followed by Sarah, joining Richard inside the lab. Scanning around as she walked across the lab, Gayle noted that, despite being small, it was incredibly well-equipped. Ennis had access to everything he would need to engineer his next strain of the virus as well as analyse Alex’s sample right here in this room.

“Bastard,” Sarah spat out.

Gayle turned to see Sarah standing at a large glass-fronted incubator. Inside were culture bottles of Alex’s blood, dozens of them, tilting slowly back and forth to prevent coagulation. Realising that she had probably drawn most of the blood they were looking at, Gayle placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. She left the younger woman alone with her thoughts and walked towards a door on the far wall.

Turning the handle of the walk-in freezer, she pulled at the door and called to Richard and Sarah.

“In here.”

The freezer held a single rack of carefully arranged vials. All marked
Biological hazard,
they were labelled with the name of the organism and the date it had been sealed. Gayle scanned along the labels. They ran in sequence from G-ENN-002 through to G-ENN-067. Ennis had been busy: God only knew what each of the strains had been designed to do.

“This is the virus,” she told Sarah and Richard. “We have to get rid of every last vial.”

Gayle’s eyes caught sight of an odd-looking vial at the very rear of the shelving unit. Reaching in, she lifted it out and read the label, hand shaking.

G-ENN-001

Date of Sample: November, 2021

Patient: Garth Ennis

Doctor: J Sinclair

Gayle fought back the surge of anger that threatened to consume her reason. She enclosed Garth Ennis’s legacy in her palm.

“Gather these into the centre of the lab, and hurry.”

Gayle joined Sarah and Richard in piling the vials up. She threw armfuls of files around them, scattering pages around and between the potentially deadly vials. Retrieving any flammable liquids they could find, the three of them splashed the entire lab. When they’d completed their task, Gayle watched the others leave the lab through the jammed-open door. Stepping forward she placed the vial containing the original sample, drawn straight from eleven-year-old Garth Ennis’s spine under instruction of the one person in the world he should’ve been able to trust. His father had made a commodity of him and manipulated billions of people using his remains.

Gayle backed out of the room and sparked a gas lighter belonging to the lab.

“Rest easy, little man,” she said, tossing the lighter into the pile of vials.

Sarah stepped up and kicked the steel bin from between the doors, and all three of them watched as the door slammed shut, sealing the inferno.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sarah said.

Reaching the surface once again, Richard stopped at the exit.

“You guys go ahead, I’m staying here.”

Gayle’s brow furrowed. “Richard, you should come with us. The records will show that you accessed that room last.”

Richard grinned. “No, it won’t,” he smiled. “Right after I lock this entrance to make sure nobody else gets in before the fire guts the lab, I’ll take a casual stroll back to my desk at reception and delete the log. I have the highest clearance, remember?”

Gayle returned his smile. “Thank you for what you did today, Richard.”

He gave her an awkward smile and blushed. “My pleasure, Professor Robertson.”

Sarah took Gayle by the arm. “C’mon. We have ten minutes, let’s go, Gayle.”

Gayle watched Richard leave for a few seconds then followed after Alex’s wife.