Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  The fly swooped in front of Mrs. Burrows’s face again, but this time she didn’t bother to swat at it.

  Her senses quickened.

  She glanced back at the old woman.

  The old woman’s white hair was a tangle of tight curls, as if it had recently been permed. She had a small mouth, with a top lip that was overstretched by her false teeth. It made her look vicious and angry. Mrs. Burrows averted her eyes, then raised them again, but this time turned her attention on the old man. He could have been in his eighties, and seemed to have something — Mrs. Burrows assumed they were hearing aids — plugged into both ears. He met Mrs. Burrows’s gaze full on. He narrowed his eyes as if he resented her scrutiny. She immediately turned away, then took several unhurried steps as she tried to maintain her façade of nonchalance.

  She told herself she was being silly — that they were merely an old married couple out on the Common for their constitutional. Or on their way to bingo, or to the shops. But something nagged at her, and she turned slowly back to them.

  The old man was bending over the cart. Now that she was able to see it clearly, it was bigger than she would have expected — far bigger than the average shopping cart wheeled daily along the sidewalks of any main street. It was rectangular, and instead of the usual bright tartan or florid flowery fabric, it was covered in a dun brown material. It also had sturdier wheels than she remembered from similar carts.

  The fly settled on Mrs. Burrows’s cheek, but she didn’t notice it.

  She was staring directly at the old woman, who appeared to be putting hearing aids in both ears, just like her partner had in his.

  As the old woman finished this, she looked straight back at Mrs. Burrows.

  “Good afternoon,” Mrs. Burrows said pleasantly, a little embarrassed that she’d been caught so obviously staring at the woman.

  “Think you’re so clever, don’t you?” the old woman snarled. Mrs. Burrows didn’t respond. For the tiniest instant, she asked herself if the old woman was addressing the comment to her partner — it was the sort of sour remark that might pass between a married couple of such advanced years.

  But then she saw that the old man, still leaning over the cart but with his face toward her, had a finger poised as if he was about to press a button.

  Was it a bomb?

  There and then, Mrs. Burrows recognized him.

  “Oscar Embers!” she gasped. He’d been one of her husband’s Saturday helpers at the museum. And Will had said he was a Styx agent. That meant the old woman was probably —

  “Tant … Tant … Tantrum!” Mrs. Burrows choked as she struggled to recall her name.

  “Say again,” Drake crackled in her ear. “What did you —?”

  3:13

  “Con … CONTACT!” Mrs. Burrows managed to scream at the top of her lungs.

  Black-clothed soldiers leaped up from their positions all around the base of the hill.

  “Come on, man!” Drake shouted as one of the soldiers fumbled to open the rear doors of the van. Leatherman moved in to take over. He heaved the soldier aside to get at the handle himself, but precious seconds had been lost.

  “Fools!” Oscar Embers exclaimed as, smiling, he pressed a button on the top of the cart.

  A low tone cut through the air, quickly building in volume.

  With Drake’s frantic voice in her ear, Mrs. Burrows braced herself. Her first thought was that there was going to be an explosion — it had to be some sort of bomb in that cart. Her second thought was that she was too close to escape the blast.

  She was done for.

  As it grew so loud that Mrs. Burrows’s teeth were vibrating, the tone dropped an octave, then another, then several more, until it couldn’t even be heard as a rumble. Her eyes rolled up into her head as she had the sensation that a knife was being dragged down her spinal cord, making each of her limbs twitch uncontrollably. The sound, beyond the limits of human hearing, was unbearable.

  Then Oscar Embers hit another button.

  The fabric panels on the sides of the cart were blown off, revealing a chunk of machinery. Its sides were gloss-black, inset with concave dishlike hollows of varying sizes that appeared silvery, like liquid mercury.

  There had been an explosion, but not one that Drake or the soldiers would have recognized:

  Mrs. Burrows was flung unconscious to the ground.

  A concussive wave had been thrown out by the device, an invisible wall of subaudible sound that only affected living things.

  To a man, the soldiers who had emerged from the dugouts were dropped where they stood. The woman and her Afghan hounds were knocked insensible. The two teenagers reading their books simply keeled over on their blanket. A small flock of starlings fell to the grass around them, caught by the pulse of sound as it radiated skyward.

  The few occupants of the houses on Broadlands Avenue at that time of day were similarly affected, collapsing to the floor. And a number of cars within the blast radius either came to a halt or drifted into parked vehicles at the side of the road as their drivers blacked out.

  Unable to get the doors open in time, Drake, Leatherman, and the two soldiers lay slumped in a tangle of limbs in the back of the van.

  “Enough,” the old Styx ordered as he appeared on the top of the hill beside Oscar Embers and Mrs. Tantrumi. Oscar Embers turned off the device. “Get clear before the Topsoil police arrive,” the old Styx ordered as he yanked out his earplugs. There was no need for them now.

  His ankle-length black leather coat creaked as he stepped over to where Mrs. Burrows lay in a crumpled heap. But he didn’t pay attention to her, instead watching the Styx Limiters scuttling out over the areas below like a swarm of cockroaches. Then, as a pair of Limiters ran up the hill toward him, he waved them over to Mrs. Burrows. She was out cold, her head hanging forward on her chest as they hoisted her up between them.

  “Wait,” he barked. “Search her.”

  One of the Limiters found the pair of phials in her pocket and held them up so the old Styx could see. He nodded. “Good. Get them tested, and take her to the Hold.” Then he walked around the water fountain, monitoring his men’s progress as they dragged away the unconscious soldiers. Other Limiters were kicking in the dirt around the dugouts where the soldiers had been hiding, and removing the surveillance cameras from the trees. No trace of the operation would be left by the time they had finished.

  Returning to the south side of the hill, the old Styx peered down at the van by the entrance to the Common — the Limiters hadn’t got to it yet, but the rear doors seemed to be open. He was sure that they’d been shut before the weapon had been powered down.

  Something wasn’t right.

  And as he watched he could have sworn he caught a fleeting glimpse of a tall, thin figure by the van — it certainly looked like one of his own people, but it was wearing black. He frowned.

  That couldn’t be.

  He was the only Styx there that afternoon not in Limiter combat uniform.

  He began to hurry down the gravel path to investigate for himself.

  Leatherman had just turned the handle on the rear doors as the wave of sound engulfed the van. Once Mrs. Burrows had used the trigger word, there was no question in his or Drake’s mind that they were under attack.

  The van hadn’t provided any shielding against the subsonic wave. If anything, it had concentrated the effect on its occupants. Within less than a second of Oscar Embers activating the device, Drake had passed out, with Leatherman and the two soldiers dropping beside him.

  So Drake didn’t see the man wearing the twin earpieces that Mrs. Burrows had mistaken for hearing aids as he wrenched open the doors and climbed into the van. And he felt nothing as this man, who he would have identified immediately as a Styx, located his limp body from among those of Leatherman and the soldiers, and carried him to a waiting car.

  And Drake didn’t know until later how fortunate he’d been. That he and Mrs. Burrows would be the only two to live out the day.<
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  33

  “HALLEY WAS the first person to come up with the Hollow Earth theory,” Dr. Burrows announced completely out of the blue. “And that was way back in 1692.”

  “What are you going on about?” Will asked, mopping sweat from his brow as they took advantage of the gradient to maintain a fast pace down the seam.

  “Edmond Halley; you know … the astronomer who discovered Halley’s Comet. His premise was that there are four concentric spheres, one within the other, like those dolls from Russia that fit inside each other. Then, in the nineteenth century, another chap called Symmes resurrected the idea. He — WHUP!” Dr. Burrows cried as his feet slid from under him. He skied a distance in the loose shale covering the slope, then managed to right himself. “Nearly lost it there.” “I think you did,” Will muttered.

  “Where was I? Yes, Symmes’s contribution to the theory was that there were two whopping great holes in each of the planet’s poles, and that the gas escaping from these was the cause of the aurora borealis — the northern lights, as they’re called … or maybe Halley proposed that.”

  “Dad, I’ve heard all this before, so why are you banging on about it again now?” Will asked a little tetchily.

  “Because those ancient people I was researching in the Great Plain have to have gone somewhere. They can’t simply have been jumping to their deaths down the Pore or the other voids. This wasn’t some flash-in-the-pan aberration that took place one day when an entire race decided to commit mass suicide like a pack of lemmings.”

  “But that’s a lie about lemmings, anyway — they don’t commit suicide at all,” Will pointed out. “It’s a myth.”

  Dr. Burrows went on, regardless. “No, with these people, it had to have been more than that…. I mean, they even built a temple in praise of the other world that they believed was deep inside the planet, calling it their Garden of the Second Sun. The triptych I saw in the temple clearly demonstrates that they thought it was some sort of idyllic place, some sort of Utopia.”

  “Maybe the spiders gobbled them up?” Will suggested mischievously.

  “That doesn’t make sense — they wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of making the map on the stone tablets or carving their three-pronged symbol near the submarine, or wherever it is. No, they were deadly serious about it all…. They were on their way somewhere … but where?”

  Since Will didn’t offer any sort of opinion, they walked on in silence until Dr. Burrows spoke again.

  “Back in the sixties, some oddball professor claimed that a technologically-advanced race inhabited the inner world, and that they had flying saucers.”

  Will had just about had enough of his father’s ramblings. “Right, so Symmes and the other guys were all nutty professors with wacky theories. Your point is …?” he said brusquely.

  “They might not have been that crazy,” Dr. Burrows replied.

  “Wait,” Will said, stopping in his tracks.

  Dr. Burrows looked at Will expectantly, thinking that he had just had a brainstorm, that he was about to impart some revelation that would shed light on where the ancient race had gone.

  It was as though a battle of ideologies was taking place in Dr. Burrows’s head, like a tug of war between two opposing teams. The stronger team, with a gray-bearded Charles Darwin as its captain, was made up of all the scientists, historians, and other great thinkers that Dr. Burrows had looked up to and tried to emulate all his academic and professional life. The opposing team consisted of rather more unconventional figures, including the likes of Halley and Symmes, and their captain was Lucretius, who in the first century B.C. had convinced everyone that the world was flat as a pancake.

  As a matter of course, Dr. Burrows would normally have been cheering on Charles Darwin’s team, but now, as the rope creaked and the two teams strained, he found himself strangely drawn to the unconventional team. It was as if he was beginning to take the Hollow Earth theories seriously.

  “What is it, Will? Have you thought of something?” Dr. Burrows asked with bated breath.

  But instead of shedding light on the fate of the ancient people, the only light the boy shed was from his lantern, which he was directing at a nearby passage. It led off to the right of the main trail, and Will was slowly moving toward it. “If we’re close to where the submarine was, this might have been one of the tunnels we tried, but didn’t take because of the teen spiders?” Switching off his lantern, he flipped the night-vision device down over his eye so he could see farther inside the passage. “Dad, does it look familiar to you?” he asked eventually.

  “I … think … it … does,” Dr. Burrows said slowly, rubbing his chin.

  Will was impressed. “Really?”

  “There’s something about that piece of rock up there at the top — the way it hangs down.”

  “That’s amazing! You remember that?” Will asked.

  “Yes, because I noticed it was unusual at the time. It’s obviously from the ignoramic class … and I reckon it could be stupidite.”

  “You mean igneous class?” Will whipped his head around to his father. “Stupidite? There’s no such thing.”

  “Ha!” his father burst out. He had been profoundly disappointed that his son wasn’t taking the Hollow Earth theory more seriously, and had decided to exact his revenge.

  “Stupidite,” Will repeated, shaking his head.

  “Look, Will, I’ve trogged down more miles of tunnel than I care to remember, and they all look the same, tediously so. Do you really expect me to recognize that particular one from all the thousands of others?”

  But Will had tuned out what his father was saying. Turning back to the tunnel, he sniffed the air. “Spiders. I smell spiders.” Sliding one of the Bergens off his shoulder, he put it down, untied the top, and then took out a radio beacon. He switched this on and carefully positioned it on a ledge.

  “Is that so your chum can find his way?” Dr. Burrows asked snidely.

  “Drake?”

  “Why else do you think he gave you those beacons? It’s so he can follow us down when the mood takes him.” Dr. Burrows suddenly leaned over Will’s Bergen and snatched out another of the beacons, secreting it in his coat pocket.

  “What do you want that for?” Will asked, closing the top of the Bergen and then hoisting it over his shoulder.

  “Just want one,” Dr. Burrows answered childishly.

  “Why?”

  “In case we get separated. Then you can find me.”

  Frowning, Will raised his Sten gun and edged slowly forward into the passage.

  “Spiders, you say? Can’t smell anything,” Dr. Burrows said as he reluctantly followed his son in, making a show of sniffing loudly.

  They had gone a few hundred feet when something scuttled away into the darkness.

  “Yes, spiders,” Will whispered. “I was right. And keep that luminescent orb shielded or you’ll knacker my headset.”

  “Let’s just go back to the main stem and try the next offshoot,” Dr. Burrows carped. Ignoring what Will had said about shielding his light, he was holding it high above him as he scanned the openings in the roof of the passage, all of which looked ominously spider-sized. “We don’t want to get cut off in here.”

  Something loomed out of the darkness: The first thing Will saw was the glowing lure at the tip of the stalk on the spider’s head. In the blink of an eye, it had sprung at him, landing within the limits of the light cast by Dr. Burrows’s orb.

  “Good heavens!” Dr. Burrows exclaimed as Will opened up with the Sten, shredding the spider with rapid fire. The only problem was that bullets were ricocheting alarmingly off the sidewalls of the tunnel.

  “Will! Enough!” Dr. Burrows yelled, and his son released the trigger.

  As they stepped over to inspect what was left of the creature, Will was chuckling. “Take that, spidey!” he said as he rammed a fresh magazine into the submachine gun.

  “It was a big brute,” Dr. Burrows commented, as he nudged part of it
s hairy body with his toe cap. “Took quite a bit to kill it. At this rate, you’ll have used up all the ammo before we’ve got anywhere,” he reflected.

  Will nodded. “Yes, that was nearly a whole magazine — thirty-two rounds. Better find out if we can use the repellent on them instead.”

  “And just how are we going to do that?” Dr. Burrows posed.

  “Because if I know my spiders,” Will said, “the blood from this one will bring a swarm of the things on us.”

  “Um … is that such a good —?” Dr. Burrows began nervously, but didn’t finish the sentence as Will drew out his Browning Hi-Power and pulled the slide back to cock it.

  “Safety’s off,” he said to his father as he thrust it into his hands, sounding remarkably like Drake.

  “These aren’t pussycats we’re dealing with here,” Dr. Burrows muttered under his breath.

  Tearing off the duct tape, Will pulled the aerosol from his arm and held the can beside his Sten gun. Then they waited, searching the darkness before them.

  Dr. Burrows was distinctly uneasy. “This is a terrible idea,” he complained.

  “Shhh!” Will said, as they heard stones being dislodged, then he yelled, “LOOK OUT!” as several glowing lures accelerated at them from the gloom. Will had been right — the scent of the blood from the dead spider had been irresistible to the beasts.

  Shouting “EAT THIS!” Will pointed the can directly at the spiders and sprayed frantically. As the spiders hit the cloud of vapor, the effect was instantaneous. The creatures couldn’t get away quickly enough, their legs tangling with each other’s as they scuttled into reverse.

  When all sign of them had gone, Will shook the can and looked at it, a smile on his face.

  “Works like a charm,” he said. “Nice one, Drake.”

  The iron door to the cell slammed back against the wall with a skull-shaking crash. A man stood there, his gargantuan bulk almost filling the doorway.

  “Rise and shine, darlin’,” he said. “No use pretending you’re still sparko.”