Spiral

by Roderick Gordon

  “Yesh . . . don’t really have to charge myshelf up like thish,” he said, his eyes slow-blinking as he spoke. “Butsh I thought I could do with a top up of the old resherve cells. Jush in cayshe.”

  “Sparks, you sound really weird,” Will ventured. “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  “No, shir! Never touch the shtuff! It’sh the extra juice — hash thish effect, shometimes. Makesh me a touch woozy,” Sweeney replied. He attempted to sit up, but didn’t get very far. “Y’know . . . I earwigged everyshing you were shaying.”

  “Everything?” Will said, throwing a quick glance at Stephanie.

  With his free hand Sweeney tried to point at them, his arm swinging wildly. “Yesh . . . and lishen . . . if the worsht comes to the worsht . . . and we cash in our schips” — grimacing, he shook his head with comic gravity — “then we should all throw ourshelves in those water tanksh. Nearly drowned onesh in a shubmarine. Not shush a bad way to go. Better than shuffocation.”

  “But, Sparks, we’re going to get out of this place. It’s not over yet!” Will said, shocked to hear the old soldier talking that way. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “Shure I’m shure. Now take the weight off, shonny. Schtay with me a while. Tell all your friends to join ush, too.”

  “But there are only two of —” Stephanie began, falling silent as Will caught her eye.

  “Of course we’ll stay with you,” Will said. He pulled some of the empty sacks over so that he and Stephanie could sit on them. Although there was plenty of room on the sacks for the two of them, as Stephanie adjusted her position, her leg touched Will’s. And she left it there, while Will tried his best to have an exchange with Sweeney, who was making very little sense.

  “Can I ask what name your booking’s under?” the spritely receptionist in a pink tracksuit inquired.

  She pulled a pencil from her tightly curled hair, allowing herself a curious glance at the confident young girl standing before the desk, a handsome if dopey-looking chauffeur at her side.

  Then, twirling the pencil between her thumb and forefinger as if it was a small baton, the woman used the mouse to scroll through a page on her computer screen. “I assume it’s for a relative? Your mother or father perhaps?” The receptionist had seen the top-of-the-range Mercedes draw up outside, followed by a coach, so it was clearly someone important. And since they didn’t take children, the reservation couldn’t be for the slip of a girl in front of her. “If you can ask them to come in, we’ll make sure their room’s ready.”

  “That’s neat,” Rebecca Two said, watching the trick with the pencil as it helicoptered around and around in the receptionist’s hand.

  “Oh, thank you. It’s something I picked up from an old boyfriend,” the receptionist said distantly. She was intrigued to find out who was about to grace their exorbitantly expensive establishment, but when she reached the end of the booking schedule on her computer and saw that there were only a few regulars yet to check in, she frowned. “We are terribly full at the moment. What was the name of the booking?”

  “Booking?” Rebecca Two repeated as the old Styx strolled into the reception area and then peered around at the photographs of various activities offered at the exclusive health farm in the depths of the Kentish countryside. The photographs were of people swimming in the Olympic-length pool, having massages and facials, and jogging in a group on the extensive grounds surrounding the converted stately home.

  “Yes, the booking. I assume it’ll be for you, sir?” the receptionist asked, directing the question to the old Styx. He’d wandered to the large windows at the rear of the reception area that looked out onto the swimming pool, and was watching the morning aqua-aerobics class, which was in full swing.

  “Sir? Hello?” the receptionist said, as the grizzled-looking man didn’t bother to reply. She bit her tongue. However exasperated she was becoming with the two odd-looking guests, she had to be careful because the chances were that the man was an important new client.

  She studied his profile as he turned to a bulletin board where all the day’s activities had been posted. With his hair raked back, the elderly man was dressed in a black ankle-length leather coat. That made the receptionist think he might be some famous film director — or, as she scrutinized him further, maybe a musician. She tried to recall the names of the members of the Rolling Stones — they all looked as thin and drawn as he did. Yes, maybe this man was one of them. But not the singer with the luscious mouth and the hips — she’d have known if it was him.

  The coach outside could be their tour bus, and maybe his reservation had been made under a pseudonym. That wasn’t uncommon, since celebrities came to the health farm to escape the limelight and get themselves performance-fit again.

  So the receptionist waited patiently, spinning her pencil and quietly humming Ti-i-i-ime is on my side to herself. The last thing she wanted to do was offend whatshisname if she could possibly help it.

  A gaggle of women chatting breathlessly to each other chose that moment to pass through the lobby on their way to a Pilates session.

  “How many people do you have staying here?” the old Styx demanded when they’d gone.

  The receptionist was quite unprepared for the severity of his cold, dead eyes on her. Little black holes that made her want to look away. Made her want to run away. “One hundred and twenty guests at full capacity, but we also have a substantial number of people with day passes coming in for classes and the gym.”

  The old Styx nodded. “And are all your guests chronically obese like those women we just saw?”

  Not unsurprisingly, the receptionist was rather taken aback by this question. “I don’t think that’s —”

  “There’s ample human flesh for our purposes,” the old Styx interrupted, speaking to Rebecca Two.

  “What?” the receptionist exclaimed, now looking at him with incomprehension.

  The old Styx had plucked a walkie-talkie from his coat and was speaking on it in the strangest language the receptionist had ever heard.

  “Sorry. It’s just not your day,” Rebecca Two said without emotion.

  There was a crash as the main doors burst open.

  The receptionist’s pencil went spinning across the room as something slavering appeared behind Rebecca Two and Captain Franz.

  With a rasping roar, Alex cannoned into the desk, bowling it over. The receptionist was thrown onto her back. As she lay stunned on the floor, Alex leaped on top of her.

  Giving a wail of relief as she gripped the sides of the young woman’s face, Alex sunk her ovipositor inside the girl, deep into her trachea, where the egg pod squeezed out.

  Alex’s head was up in a second, gluey saliva spilling from around the ovipositor. “Need another . . . quick,” she rasped. “So many babies in me.”

  Glancing fearfully at Alex, the old Styx had retreated well out of the way. He was at the main doors, where a squad of Limiters had turned up to collect their orders.

  “I reckon we should try through here first,” Rebecca Two said to Alex, making for the door the Pilates women had taken.

  “We might be onto something,” Drake declared, as they all gathered around the laptop. With the exception of Chester, who couldn’t be persuaded to leave the briefing room, and Elliott, who didn’t think he should be left alone, everyone was present.

  It had been nearly a fortnight, and there was no doubt about it any longer — the air was more rarefied and it was becoming harder to breathe.

  Will peered around at everybody. As their eyes reflected the glow of the computer screen, the sense of anticipation radiating from them was tangible. At least here was some hope. Not one of the other ideas had come to anything, and Will had begun to think only a miracle could save them now.

  “Eddie and I have been going over the original construction plans for the Compl
ex with a fine-toothed comb,” Drake said. He scrolled through a succession of pages on the screen. “Here are some cross-section schematics of the mountain to show how this installation sits inside it.” He settled on an illustration and tapped the screen with his finger. “You can see there’s a substantial margin of rock around the Complex, to protect it.”

  “That was the basic idea,” Parry mumbled.

  Eddie took over from Drake. “Nothing jumped out at us at first, but then we cross-referenced these construction plans with a geological survey undertaken in the fifties.”

  Drake opened another window on the screen, which showed more cross sections of the mountain, but without any sign of the Complex. “This report referred to several areas toward the mid-contours of the mountain where the erosion was particularly marked.” Drake indicated one of the drawings. “And we noticed that on the northern face of the mountain — just above the small ledge you can see there — the erosion was quite considerable. Add another sixty-odd years of water action and frost damage, and even more of the rock will have been worn away.”

  “The freeze-thaw cycle,” Will chimed in, then wished he hadn’t as Parry gave him a sharp look.

  “So how does all this help us, exactly?” the old man asked.

  “Time and water erosion wait for no man.” Drake smiled as he went back to the first window and dragged an image from it. “It helps us because if you overlay the geological report with the construction plans, the area of accelerated erosion is” — he pointed at the plan — “right next to the external wall at the end of Level 2.”

  “So it’s the most vulnerable point in the Complex,” Eddie said. “And if we were to plant every last piece of explosive against that wall, there’s a slim chance we could blow a way out for ourselves.”

  Parry whistled. “High-stakes stuff,” he said. As Parry leaned on a neighboring desk and began to tug his beard in thought, Will noticed that everyone’s eyes were on him. Stephanie even had her mouth open and was shaping words as if she was willing him to decide that the scheme was feasible.

  Parry was shaking his head when he eventually spoke again. “I see what you’re saying, but the volume of explosive material in the arsenal will be a limiting factor. And even if we plowed ahead with every last stick, if the plan fails, all the remaining oxygen in the Complex will have been used up. We’d have brought forward the last curtain call.” With a sniff, he crossed his arms. “Besides that, what’s left of the Complex might just come crashing down on our heads.”

  “Er . . . Commander,” Sergeant Finch began. “Aren’t you forgetting someth —”

  “No, Finch, I’m not!” Parry snapped savagely at him.

  Drake was looking from his father to Sergeant Finch and then back again as he tried to work out what their exchange had been all about. “If there’s something you two aren’t telling us, I think we have a right to know.”

  Parry was on his feet in an instant. “No,” he barked. “There are some things that nobody has a right to know. And Finch here has spoken out of turn, when he doesn’t know the whole story.”

  Mrs. Burrows’s voice was quiet and controlled as she joined the conversation. “Parry, we’re the only people in the world who are aware that the Phase might still be under way. And we’re the only ones who can do anything to stop it. So what can be so important that you’re prepared to let us all die in this place?”

  Parry was looking at the ground and tensing a leg as if he was racked with indecision. He suddenly raised his head to his son. “Are you certain that we’ve got a chance with this cockamamie idea of yours? Are you absolutely certain?”

  “Within the tolerances of the drawings we’ve seen, and on the assumption that more erosion has taken place . . . yes,” Drake replied. “The only real negative is that we could do with two or three times the amount of explosive to punch through the reinforced Complex wall and the mountainside.”

  “You boys do like to use brute force, don’t you?” Parry said, then thought for a moment. “OK, you’d all better follow me,” he decided, giving Sergeant Finch a nod.

  As Parry directed, they collected sledgehammers, coal chisels, and mallets on the way. The elevators were out of action, so the Colonel carried Sergeant Finch on his back, while Drake and Sweeney hauled his mobility scooter down the stairs.

  Once they were all on Level 6, Parry led them past the water tanks and to the arsenal at the very end of the floor. He strode through one of the aisles between the racking shelves until he reached a large metal cabinet against the wall.

  “Several of you get to work and move any explosives and incendiaries within a twenty-foot radius of here. Last thing we want is to ignite anything with a stray spark,” Parry said with a wave of his hand at the shelves. Then he supervised his son and Sweeney as they slid the metal cabinet out of the way. The wall behind appeared to be no different from anywhere else, but Parry took up a coal chisel and mallet and began to tap away at it.

  It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t just a solid slab of reinforced concrete. He’d located an area at the bottom of the wall that gave off a different sound when he chipped at it. And he was working his way vertically up the wall when he stopped to address Will. “You’re good at this sort of stuff, laddie. Help yourself to some tools and find the other side of the doorway,” he said, pointing four feet or so along the base of the wall.

  Will found that there was a wooden batten buried just below the surface of the concrete, and it didn’t take much effort to uncover it. As the two of them continued to work, a rectangle the size of a pair of double doors gradually revealed itself. Once they were finished, they both stood back.

  “Open Sesame,” Parry said. “That’s our way in.”

  Having checked that the surrounding shelves were clear, Parry turned to everyone. “Now we break down the concrete in the doorway.”

  “What’s in there?” Drake said. “An explosives cache?”

  Ignoring the question, Parry swung a sledgehammer at a bottom corner of the rectangle.

  Sergeant Finch wasn’t so reticent. “Yes, the secondary store is ’idden there,” he said. “A top secret store.”

  “And the rest,” Parry muttered under his breath as he kept swinging. Both Sweeney and the Colonel joined in. The concrete was gradually yielding, but not as quickly as Will had thought it would.

  “Can I have a go?” someone asked, striding into the arsenal.

  “Chester!” Will burst out, a big smile on his face. Elliott was following several paces behind, her expression one of concern.

  “About time I did something,” Chester said as the Colonel passed his sledgehammer over and the boy set to work.

  Sweeney was the first to break through, and stopped to take a look.

  “No, carry on,” Parry said. “Better that we clear it completely.”

  Some twenty minutes later the Colonel was attacking the last piece of concrete at the top of the opening. After it crashed to the floor, Parry used his flashlight to show the way. They all filed in behind him.

  “There’s more than enough here for what we need,” Drake said, taking in the sheer number of wooden crates as Parry flicked his flashlight beam over them. “But this is nothing fancy — just your plain vanilla postwar explosive stock. So what was with all that melodrama earlier?”

  “The best way to hide something is to hide it in something already hidden,” Parry announced as he spun around to face everybody. “You cannot under any circumstances breathe a word of what you are about to learn — not to anybody.” He drew himself up to his full height. “I am now going to ask you each to give your consent that, under the Defense of the Realm Act 1973, as revised 1975 and 1976, that you irrevocably and unreservedly yield to the powers contained within the act.” Parry then spoke their names in turn.

  “Drake?”

  “Whatever all
that means, yes,” Drake said.

  “Finch?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Colonel Bismarck — you are hereby granted full British nationality. I need your answer.”

  “Can Parry do that?” Will whispered to Chester as the Colonel indicated that he agreed.

  “And, likewise, Eddie the Styx, you are hereby granted full citizenship of this country. Do you agree?”

  “Yes, sir,” Eddie replied.

  “Mrs. Burrows?”

  “Yes, Parry,” she said gently. “Why ever not?”

  “Elliott — sorry, I forgot that you also need to be granted British nationality. Answer me, please.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Sweeney?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Parry then addressed Will and Chester, who confirmed their agreement.

  “Stephanie?” Parry said.

  “Like, yes,” she replied.

  “Right,” Parry said. “You should be aware that if any one of you leaks information regarding this matter, under the Defense of the Realm Act, you will be liable to summary automatic execution without trial or any form of legal recourse whatsoever.”

  “Execution?” Mrs. Burrows said.

  “I’d have full authorization to kill you,” Parry answered matter-of-factly. And from the tone of his voice, everyone knew he meant it. “After the nuclear disarmament treaty of 1972, it was resolved by a secret subcommittee within the Ministry of Defense that we were leaving ourselves at a howling dis-advantage. So . . .”

  Parry directed his flashlight beam into the corner of the room.

  There were ten metal containers there, shining dully.

  “Huh?” Stephanie said, wholly unimpressed after all the buildup.

  “We stuck a few TNDs away in here,” Parry said, “for a rainy day.”