Another explosion. The other reactor?
The smoke was getting too thick to see anything now.
Talking, in the distance. “Sir, we have to evacuate, there’s a problem—”
“Fine. Give me your gun.”
Gunshots, everywhere. The walls, the floor. David froze. He held his head dead still against the ground as if listening, waiting for some sign. In the few inches above the floor, he saw bodies dropping here and there, Sloane’s own men falling from his last desperate attempt to put one more round in David.
“Sir, we must—”
“Alright!”
David heard people running around him. He tried to push up with his good arm, but he couldn’t. He was too weak. Too cold. He watched his breath blow the white dust on the ground. Every breath blew a few grains of white powder. All around him the white was being eaten by the red. It reminded him of something, a thought or memory; what was it? Shaving. It was like the blood from a shaving cut consuming a white tissue. He watched the red crawl over the white dust toward his face as the sirens moaned.
CHAPTER 59
Kate thought the masses of people in the room were falling, but she realized in horror that they were melting, or disintegrating, from the ground up. Lights flashed across the room and she caught glimpses of the waves flowing through, like violent tides delivering death, one boom at a time.
But the booming was different now. And the light— the flashing was getting dimmer, not nearly as blinding. She could see it now — the device suspended from the walls. It was shaped like a bell or an oversized pawn with windows in the head. She squinted to see something else. It was… dripping. Iron tears fell, draping the unlucky people below it in a molten blanket of death.
More people were dropping, but there were survivors — scattered across the room, some looking confused, as if waiting to be picked in an execution lottery, others were running, some to the corners, three or four beating on the door.
Kate looked down, seeing her body for the first time since waking up. She was covered in blood, but it wasn’t her blood. Aside from the throbbing in her head, she was unharmed. She had to help these people. She knelt down and examined the man at her feet — what was left of him. It looked like his blood had swollen, bursting his blood vessels from the inside, causing a massive body-wide hemorrhage that tore his skin and erupted from his eyes and nails.
The Bell was changing — the light flashed on again, brighter than ever. Kate shielded her eyes with her hand and turned away from the light. Ahead, she saw Naomi, who must have waded through the bodies toward the door. Kate crawled over to her.
The boom was now a constant low-pitched wail, like a ‘goooong’ sound that wouldn’t end. Iron stretching?
Kate rolled Naomi’s head back and pushed the hair out of her face. Dead. Beautiful. The blood hadn’t reached her face.
Bodies swarmed around Kate — the living. They crowded the door, beating and screaming. She tried to rise to her feet, but couldn’t; they were all over her, waving arms in the air and shoving.
The blast deafened Kate and flattened the crowd, pressing a half dozen people into her. She sucked hard for a breath, but none would come. They were crushing her, suffocating her. She punched, twisted, and heaved her head back. It was raining. No — debris falling. And then water, a huge flood of water into the room, and she was free, floating, drifting with the massive tidal wave that swept her over the jagged half wall that had sealed the death room.
Kate inhaled sharply. The breathe hurt but it was a relief. At that moment, she had two thoughts: I’m alive, and David must have saved me.
CHAPTER 60
Dorian Sloane motioned for Dr. Chang to put on one of the helicopter’s headsets.
Below them, another explosion rocked the complex, causing the helicopter to shudder then bank slightly away from it.
The second Chang’s headphones covered his ears, Dorian started in. “What the hell happened?”
“The Bell, some kind of problem.”
“Sabotaged?”
“No, or, I don’t think so. Everything was nominal, power, radiation output, but it… malfunctioned.”
“Impossible.”
“Look, we still don’t completely understand how it works, and it’s, you know, old, over 100,000 years old, and we’ve been using it non-stop for about 80 years—”
“This is not a warranty issue, Doctor. You need to figure out what happened—”
Another man broke onto the line. “Sir, there’s a call from the facility, the security chief, he says it’s urgent.”
Dorian tore off his headset and grabbed the sat phone. “What?”
“Mr. Sloane, we have another problem.”
“Don’t call me and tell me we have a problem. It’s quite apparent we have problems. Tell me what the f**k the problem is and quit wasting my time.”
“Oh course, I’m sorry—”
“What? Tell me!”
“The Bell room. It exploded. We think radiation could have escaped.”
Dorian’s mind raced. If the bodies — or even radiation — had escaped from the Bell room, he could still salvage Toba Protocol. He just had to sell it to the people on the ground.
“Sir?” the security chief said tentatively. “I’m initiating a quarantine per our SOPs, I just wanted to confirm—”
“No. We’re not establishing a quarantine—”
“But my orders—”
“Have changed. As has the situation. We need to rescue our people, Chief. I want you to devote all your resources to getting everyone onto the trains and away from the facilities. And put the bodies on the trains too. Their families deserve the right to bury them.”
“But won’t there be an outbreak—”
“You worry about getting those people on the trains. I’ll take care of the rest. There are factors you’re not aware of. Call me when the last train is away. Immari is a family. We don’t leave anyone behind. You understand me?”
“Yes sir, we won’t leave a single soul behind—”
Dorian disconnected the line and put his headset back on. He turned to Dmitry Kozlov, the Immari Security officer sitting across from him. “Did Chase get out with the nukes and children?”
“Yes, they’re on their way to the coast.”
“Good.” Dorian thought for a moment. They would get bodies from the Bell — that was the good news. But the explosions at the facility would draw attention. If the world found out what was at the site… 5,000 years of their work, of well-kept secrets… would all be lost, as would the Immari. “Launch drones from Afghanistan. As soon as the last train leaves, blow the facility.”