Last Gasp

by Trevor Hoyle

  Whatever qualms Jim Devanney might still have entertained he kept to himself. He listened to Major Jones, who went on to talk about the Secondary Plan. The Soviets had cooperated fully in the Primary Plan while knowing nothing about the Secondary. They had helped in the extermination of three quarters of the global population by taking care of China, their traditional adversary, but would play no part in the recolonization of the Designated Areas by the mutant breeds now being developed in Zone 4. Though as Major Jones was at pains to make clear, whereas the Primary Plan had taken five years to come to fruition, the Secondary might take fifty years or even longer. Genetic experimentation on pollution and anoxia victims was not only difficult and highly complex, but by its very nature long-term.

  “There seems no way of speeding up the breeding cycle of the human species,” Jones explained regretfully. “Even mutants take the usual span of time to reach adulthood. Unless we can adapt our present stock so that it can exist in a redundant atmosphere—that is, with less than five percent oxygen content—we have no choice but to wait for their offspring to reach maturity. Or at least puberty,” he added with a wry smile.

  “How close are you to producing a mutant breed that can survive in those conditions?” asked one of the State Department officials, a middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and eyebrows shaped like sea gull’s wings.

  Major Jones looked apologetic. “I’m afraid that that information is under strict security classification, ma’am. I’m not at liberty to divulge it, even to the present company, with respect.”

  Madden didn’t miss the look of outrage creeping into the woman’s eyes. He said smoothly, “For obvious reasons all material relating to Zone Four has to be restricted, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.” He glanced in Hansom’s direction. “But I don’t see why we couldn’t stretch a point in this instance. Mr. Secretary?”

  Hansom waved a condescending hand.

  “I won’t go into the technicalities, because they’re pretty formidable, but we are making excellent progress,” Madden informed them. “We’ve been working on this for the past seven years and we’re getting to the point where we can breed suitable specimens in the laboratory using sperm and ova from anoxia victims and genetically manipulating the DNA structure to encourage certain characteristics and eliminate others. The main problem, as Major Jones has already told you, is that it’s going to take at least a generation before we can start to breed in bulk. Starbuck’s director, Dr. Rolsom, has also been conducting experiments in surgical adaptation, but we don’t yet know whether this will be successful. It could possibly be a shortcut to producing the mutes we need for our recolonization program.”

  “Mutes?” queried Devanney with a frown.

  “The Starbuck term for mutants,” Madden elucidated. “Molecular biologists have their own slang, like all closed communities.”

  “The TCDD virus was created by genetic means, isn’t that so?” asked the red-haired woman. When Madden nodded she said, “Then why not use the same technique to produce these mutes of yours? Isn’t the process similar?”

  Madden called on Lutz, the expert, who nodded briskly and told the woman, “Yes, you’re quite right, ma’am. Gene splicing—in other words chopping up DNA to obtain the pieces you want and then growing multiple copies—is the same basic technique used in all genetic manipulation experiments. But the order of complexity alters dramatically with different organisms. Let us take, say, a simple laboratory strain of Escherichia coli, or E. coli as it’s known. This is the bacterium that lives in the human gut and has a single chromosome. Incidentally, the TCDD-bearing virus is even more primitive in terms of cell structure. Anyway, when we come to deal with human cells, which are roughly six hundred times the size of E. coli, these have not just one chromosome but forty-six. Each human cell contains a thousand times more DNA than a simple cell of E. coli, so perhaps you can gain some idea of how much more complex it becomes when you’re dealing with the human cell, even though we’re employing the same gene-splicing techniques of restriction enzymes and a plasmid cloning vehicle to—”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” The red-haired woman raised a hand in self-defense. “I take your point—or rather, I don’t. But never mind.”

  “And when you’ve perfected this mutant technique, or process, or whatever it is,” said Jim Devanney, “how many of these creatures can be produced?”

  Madden said, “Once we have the genetic blueprint, as many as we need. A million. Ten million. A billion.” He shrugged. “There’s literally no limit. We can recolonize all of Africa, India, the Far East, China— everywhere—with our own people.”

  “People?” Devanney said, staring. “People?”

  “Whatever you care to call them, they’ll be ours,” Wayne Hansom said, his upper lip slightly curled where a fine scar tugged at it. “Ten years from now the Russians will be gasping for breath themselves; they’ll be in no fit state to offer any kind of challenge. At least half their population will be on the verge of extinction. In my opinion we’re very fortunate that General Madden was perceptive enough to foresee this several years ago and to lay his plans accordingly. ASP has proved itself of inestimable benefit to the United States, as I’m sure everyone here today acknowledges.”

  “You mentioned something about surgical experiments,” Devanney said to Madden. He was like a man with a loose tooth who couldn’t stop probing it with his tongue. “On whom are you experimenting?”

  “Children,” Madden said, smiling at him. If the whining son of a bitch wanted it, he could have it straight between the eyes. “The Pryce-Darc Clinic sends us kids with pollution sickness and genetic deformities. Dr. Rolsom came up with the idea that we could make use of their defects and surgically adapt them for our own purposes. Grafting tissue and transplanting organs and so on.”

  “Jesus Christ, what for?” Devanney asked faintly.

  “Research,” Madden said, as if he’d been asked a stupid question. “Maybe we can construct the perfect model for the next generation of Americans. I find that a pretty exciting prospect, don’t you?”

  The rasping siren was part of his dream, warning him not to step into the minefield. He sat bolt upright, the sound real and all around him as the dream faded into the warm black air.

  Chase switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the telephone just as the red light began to wink in time to the urgent bleeping. He snatched up the handset and threw back the sheets.

  “Duty Officer, sir, Somebody trying to gain entry through access five.”

  He recognized Drew’s voice. “How many, Sam?”

  “We’re not sure. Eight, ten, maybe more.”

  “Are all other access points secure?”

  “So far, though eight and nine have yet to report.”

  The attack hadn’t been unexpected. Even though the Tomb was hidden belowground and even though the supply trucks approached Desert Range from the Nevada side, keeping a hundred miles clear of Baker, Garrison, Mitford, and Lund, the movement of supplies could have been spotted by somebody with a curious mind and a suspicious nature. Probably they thought it was a top-secret government establishment—as it had been once—which in these fraught times would be enough to provoke hostility and feelings of revenge.

  None of this surprised Chase. Nobody was sure anymore who controlled what. The location of the political and military seat of power— still referred to as Washington—was a mystery to the population at large. For a while “Washington” had been in Des Moines, then moved, so rumor had it, to Minneapolis. When the president appeared on television, speaking from a replica of the Oval Office, he might have been on the far side of the moon as far as anyone knew.

  The general public had the certain conviction that their esteemed leaders had folded their tents and stolen softly into the night. In fact they’d stolen, according to Prothero, to the Strategic Air Command headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska—an impregnable underground installation that had been constructed to protect SAC from nuclear attack, and wh
ich might have been custom-built to serve as a command and communications center for “Washington” and the Pentagon. The air in Nebraska was still breathable, with the additional safeguard that the SAC HQ was a sealed enclosure with its own self-contained oxygen plant.

  The siren’s harsh blare would have woken the dead, so Chase was prepared for the bleary-eyed faces peering out of the rooms as he ran for the elevator. He didn’t waste breath on explanations; everyone had been drilled in the emergency procedure. He thumbed the button, fretting as the huge elevator rose with ponderous slowness to the upper level. If the attackers were from one of the nearby townships they might be merely a bunch of guys filled with liquor and frustration who’d decided to find out what was going on at the old Desert Range MX missile site. That was his hope, because their security force was more than adequate to deal with what might be a straightforward policing situation.

  And then again, maybe they weren’t just curious, and that could be bad.

  All year long there’d been a steadily growing exodus from the south. This corner of Nevada, mostly desert scrub and dried-up water holes, wasn’t exactly hospitable, and so the stream of immigrants kept right on heading north, looking for a better place to settle. Chase hadn’t seen any of them with his own eyes, but he’d had reports. Among the dispossessed families and the anoxia and pollution victims were looters, drug-crazed youngsters, and, worst of all, freaks with deranged minds that had been eaten away by chemicals and cancer. He’d heard tales of bloody battles on the road and of small towns terrorized by demented mobs. His fear was that some of these had accidentally stumbled across the site, in which case they could be in for real trouble.

  The grain of comfort he nurtured and jealously clung to was that even at this moment Frank Hanamura was setting up the pilot plant on the Scripps’ research vessel in San Diego. At least Hanamura and his team were well out of it and able to carry on the work.

  Sam Drew looked up from the map table as Chase entered the operations room. Drew was ex-army, like most of the others in the security force—all of whom had been carefully screened and chosen for their commitment to the project. A guard in dun-colored camouflage gear stood at his elbow and there were three radio operators wearing headsets at the communications console, receiving reports and issuing instructions to the other command posts, nine in all, throughout the complex.

  Drew brought Chase up-to-date on the situation. He was a compact stocky man with a frizz of prematurely graying hair. They occasionally played chess together, with Drew invariably the winner. “All other access points are secure—no signs of attack,” he said, circumscribing the layout of the Tomb with an outspread hand. “Either they don’t know about the other entrances or they’ve decided to concentrate on this sector.” He suddenly raised his hand. “Listen!”

  From thirty feet above their heads came the muted rattle of small-arms fire. The operations room was on the topmost level, yet still protected by a thick slab of reinforced concrete and a series of lead-lined steel doors.

  “Any chance of them getting in through the silo door?” Chase asked worriedly.

  “Not a snowflake in hell.” Drew shook his head. “Not unless they’ve got a nuke warhead handy. The retracting cover weighs over seven hundred tons. No, their only hope is through the personnel entrance, and I’ve posted six extra men there. We can pick ’em off like wood pigeons as they come through. That’s if they can break down the door—which is about as likely as a cow giving processed cheese.”

  “It’s like being a rat in a trap.”

  “A pretty damn secure rat.” Drew didn’t seem too concerned, which Chase found reassuring.

  “Any idea who they are?”

  “Buchan got a peek at them through the scope, but the light wasn’t good enough to make out any detail.” Drew nodded toward the clock on the slabbed wall, which read four forty-seven. “Still dark up there.”

  “How long before dawn?”

  “About an hour. But it should be light enough to identify them before then if you want to risk putting the scope up.”

  “Is that their gunfire or ours?” Chase asked.

  Drew grimaced. “Them, the crazy bastards. They’re taking potshots at the door. I wouldn’t worry about it; they’re going to need more than a forty-five to even put a dent in it.”

  Chase studied the site layout in the cone of light. The complex was in no immediate danger. Each access point was secure and under guard. Desert Range had been built to withstand all but a direct nuclear strike ... so why was he uneasy? What was bothering him?

  What was bothering him, he realized, was that the location of the site had been discovered. This particular group mightn’t pose much of a threat, but suppose they sent for reinforcements or spread the word around? The Tomb would become a sitting target for every gun-happy loon within a hundred miles. In no time at all they would be under siege—and it didn’t take a tactical genius to realize that this was their one weak point. With their supplies cut off, sooner or later the moles would have to push their snouts aboveground and get their heads blown off.

  “Access six in Blue Sector,” Chase said, tapping the layout with his finger. “That’s about a mile away, right?” He looked at Drew, who nodded slowly, frowning. “I want you to put as many men as you can spare on the surface and have them circle around to cut off the attackers’ retreat.” He described an arc on the map. “Our men open fire at the same time as we come up through access five. If we time it for daybreak we should be sure of getting them all.”

  Drew blinked and gazed at Chase, dumbfounded. His Adam’s apple bobbed above the white triangle of sweat shirt at the open collar of his dark brown tunic. “You want to wipe ’em out?”

  “Every single one. No survivors.”

  “You think that’s necessary?”

  “Listen, Sam, if word gets out they’ll come back with every piece of heavy armament they can lay their hands on. We’ve got to stop that before it starts.” Chase glanced at the clock. “It’s nearly five. How long will it take to get your men in position?”

  “Fifty minutes.” Drew stroked his chin with hairy fingers. “That should be plenty of time to deploy before full light.”

  “Let’s make it dead on six o’clock to make sure.”

  “ ‘Dead’ being the operative word,” said Drew, looking at Chase as if he’d never seen him before. In a sense he never had.

  Forty minutes later they were standing tensely in the concrete cubicle next to the ramp leading up to access 5. Now and then shots could be heard ricocheting off the steel door into the desert air like demented wasps. In the corridor outside six men in combat gear were squatting with their back to the wall, smoking and quietly talking, automatic weapons propped between their jutting knees.

  Buchan was waiting nervously by the periscope control box mounted on the wall. “Beats me what the fuck they want.” He gestured vaguely. “None of this scientific stuff can be of any use. What are they after?”

  “Perhaps it’s the idea of people hiding underground they don’t like,” Chase said. “Makes them feel insecure. Vulnerable. And when things get really bad out there they’ll want somewhere safe to run to. This is it.”

  “How bad are things gonna get, sir?” Buchan asked. He was sweating profusely.

  “Don’t you listen to the news bulletins?”

  “What, you mean all that stuff in Africa and India and those places? I thought that was a plague of some kind, spread by bad drinking water. Nothin’ to do with the climate.”

  “We don’t know for sure what caused it,” Chase said. “If anybody does they’re keeping quiet.” He was about to go on and then found he couldn’t. All of a sudden he felt very weary, and it had nothing to do with being hauled from his bed in the early hours of the morning. His fatigue was deeper than that, rooted in every fiber of his being, the effect of climbing a steep slippery slope that got steeper and slipperier, so that however hard you struggled upward you kept sliding down and down into unimaginable,
unthinkable depths. With Cheryl and Dan gone, his only lifeline was somewhere out in the Pacific. But the lifeline was no more than a thread upon which the fate of the world hung. If the trials failed and the thread snapped, the slope would become a vertical plunge into nightmare and horror and final oblivion for himself and all mankind.

  “Five minutes,” Drew said, swiveling his black-haired wrist to look at his watch. “Want to take a gander topside?” he asked Chase.

  Buchan cleared his throat explosively and blurted out to Drew, “Sir, I gotta tell you. There’s two of our guys out there somewhere—Stuermer and Monteith.” He gulped, staring at the floor with stricken eyes. “They went out before the alarm, hunting for fresh meat. The guys do that, pick up a rabbit or a prairie fox, and get the cook to put it in the pot. I mean I know it’s against regulations ...” His hoarse voice died miserably.

  Drew was standing rigidly, fists bunched at his sides, the cords on his neck sticking out. “You stupid bastards!” He released a long hissing breath. “Did you see either of them when you looked through the scope? Was there any sign of them?”

  “Like I told you before, there were shapes but that was all. It was too dark. Maybe they came in through another entrance?” Buchan said hopefully. “They might have seen the attack coming and couldn’t make it back there—”

  “All access points are sealed,” Drew told him harshly. “Nobody has entered the complex. Nobody. If Stuermer and Monteith went out, they’re still out!”

  Chase stepped forward, pointing at the control box. “Hit it!”

  Buchan started as if jabbed with a needle, pressed the green button with the heel of his hand, and the lightly greased shaft slid upward accompanied by the whine of hydraulics. Buchan pulled the ribbed rubber handgrips horizontal and locked them in position, then stood aside as Chase pressed his forehead to the molded foam rubber and adjusted the focus. It was like looking into a thin gray mist. Against the flat colorless backdrop he could just make out a group of shadowy figures. He turned the calibrated setting to greater magnification and faces loomed in close-up. The skin on the back of his neck crawled. He swallowed a lump of phlegm in his throat.