Rebecca noticed Crowe’s gaze and instinctively drew away.
“What do you want to do, Skipper?” Crawford said.
“Evacuate the kids back to Auckland. We’ll put the chimp back in her cage and take her with us.”
“Liar,” Rebecca spat, “I know what you’re going to do with her, and you’re not getting her. You’re going to put her in the tank with that white blob to see what it does to her. I’m not going to let you.”
Crowe sighed tiredly. “Sort it out, Mandy.”
The soldiers were all gone now, packing their trailers, except for Manderson and the young man, Evans. The tall Texan didn’t waste time with threats of physical violence. He just reached under a table and brought out his weapon, one of the long, strangely rounded guns they had seen earlier.
“Hand over the animal, ma’am.”
“Shoot me!” Rebecca shot back. “You big brave American GI. Just shoot me!”
“Don’ wanna,” the lanky Texan drawled. “Will if I have to.”
Tane stood and moved next to Rebecca. She glanced at him, appreciating his presence, he thought. He sensed a movement behind him.
“Give me the chimp,” Manderson asked politely.
“Give him the chimp,” Crowe roared suddenly, and Xena screamed.
“Dr. Crowe!” Southwell pleaded.
“Leave her alone,” Tane shouted. “Leave us alone!”
Manderson’s rifle drifted toward Tane. For the first time in his life, Tane stared straight at the small black circle that was the mouth, the end of the barrel of a gun. Just a tiny amount of pressure on the trigger at the other end of the barrel was all it would take. Such a small movement of one finger, and…He shut his eyes.
He opened them again as he felt a hand push him to one side.
Fatboy was an imposing figure for a seventeen-year-old. Tall, strong, toughened by years of rugby league, and the cowboy hat added even more height. The moko seemed suddenly terrifying on the face of the warrior who now stepped in front of Tane. Fatboy’s knees were bent, his back rigid, his chest puffed out. Tane had seen him act tough before, but this was something more. This was something deeper, something ancestral. Fatboy’s eyes burned and his tongue stabbed at the soldiers. He smashed his hands into his chest.
“Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!”
Fatboy faced the soldiers and their deadly weapons with the spirits of ancient warriors on his shoulders. Crowe and Manderson froze in the face of such ferocity. They had faced lethal viruses and terrorists with guns, they had faced hell, and they had faced death, but never before had they faced up to Fatboy and his moko.
Xena was still screaming, lips flared, jumping up and down on Rebecca’s lap as Fatboy continued the haka.
“A upa…ne! ka upa…ne! A upane kaupane whiti te ra!”
“Leave us alone!” Tane yelled.
“Stony!” Southwell shouted.
Xena screamed again and broke free of Rebecca’s grasp. She ran across the floor of the room on her hands and feet. Long drapes covered the windows and she lunged at them, tearing at the fabric. She screamed and screeched in alarm.
One of the drapes tore from its hooks, falling away from the window even as the three soldiers froze, listening intently to their earpiece radios.
Tane didn’t need to hear the message to know what was being said. Through the torn drape, fog whirled and swirled around outside the second-story windows of the hotel.
Then came the sound of gunshots.
SHAPES IN THE MIST
“Get them into biosuits,” Crowe ordered, his face tense.
Gunfire sounded again from outside the hotel. A few sporadic shots, followed by long bursts of automatic fire.
Southwell wasted no time. She opened a suitcase from a small stack near the door and motioned to Tane and Fatboy to do the same.
“It’s a pressurized suit,” she said. “You’ll feel it inflate when you seal the faceplate.”
She put on her own suit, then helped Rebecca into hers. Tane and Fatboy imitated as best as they could. She showed them the earpiece radios and how to strap the throat mike around their necks.
“You want to talk, press here,” she said, indicating a small button on the outside of the suit, near the neck. “But don’t use the radio unless it’s important.”
She connected her air hose and closed her face mask with a click, then helped Tane with his.
The moment Tane plugged the small earpiece into his ear, he was suddenly immersed in the battle that was raging outside. A cacophony of orders, shouts, and cries of alarm. The gunfire was constant now.
Crawford’s voice was recognizable. He seemed to be coordinating the battle outside.
“Don’t mind the jellyfish,” he was shouting, the voice tinny but surprisingly real in Tane’s ear. “They can’t get through the suits. Watch out for the big ones!”
The big ones! The big ones?
“Crowe, this is Crawford, I’ve—”
The voice was cut off suddenly amidst a sustained burst of gunfire.
All three of them were in their suits now, and Tane realized that Crowe was shouting at them.
“Get behind us. We’re going down the main stairway. We need to make it to one of the trailers!”
Xena leapt into Rebecca’s arms.
“Let me,” Fatboy said, and Rebecca passed the chimp over gratefully. They had to move fast, and Fatboy’s strength was going to be needed.
“Leave the chimp behind,” Crowe ordered, but Fatboy ignored him.
The sounds of shouts and confusion intensified on the radio.
“Fall back, fall back to the trailers!” That was Crawford’s voice again. “Try your sprayers. The bullets don’t bother them; just cut straight through them!”
Cut through what?
“Crawford, this is Crowe. What’s going on out there?”
They were already moving, out through the double doors of the restaurant and toward the main staircase. The fog had poured in through the main doors to the hotel, flowing over and around the reception desks and rolling up the staircase, creeping up the stairs, one by one.
“They’re all over the place, Stony.”
“Crawford! What are all over the place?”
“The…Oh my God! Oh my God!” Crawford’s voice again, desperate, despairing. The voice cut off suddenly.
“Repeat that, Crawford!”
The radio remained silent, but from outside they could still hear the sounds of firing.
“What the hell is going on?” Crowe raced along the short passageway to the stairs, close on the heels of Evans. Manderson and Southwell followed, and the three kids raced behind her as quickly as they could in the bulky, armored biosuits that were far too large for Rebecca and Tane and were awkward to move in.
The fog was halfway up the long curved staircase and climbing rapidly. The first yard, maybe two, was soft and transparent, but then the fog intensified into a dense cloud.
Crowe turned to face them. “The trailers are outside the door to the left.”
Even as he said it, they heard one of the truck engines start.
Crowe continued, “I don’t know what we’re heading into, but we’ll try to deal with whatever it is. You kids head straight for the trailer. It’s armored. Once we reach it, we’ll head south, out of the fog. Are we clear?”
“Clear!” Tane and Fatboy said, but Rebecca drew in a sharp breath.
“Don’t go mist,” she said with a quiver of terror in her voice. “Don’t go in the mist.”
“DNT GO MST,” Tane remembered, and realized the message had had nothing to do with Masterton at all. Don’t go in the mist.
“It’s our only way out,” Crowe snapped. “We’ve got to go through the mist to get to the trailers.”
“Don’t go in the mist!” Rebecca screamed.
Crowe shook his head. “Evans, you’re on point. Manderson, tail-end Charlie. Get moving, now!”
Rebecca didn’t move. Tane was already three
or four steps down, following Southwell who was following Crowe, when he realized that she was still on the top landing. The mist swirled around him, light at first but intensifying.
Evans, a couple of steps lower, disappeared into a cloud of the dense fog ahead.
“Stay close,” Crowe ordered.
Manderson, realizing that Rebecca had not followed, retreated back up to the top landing and grabbed her by the arm. “Get moving,” he shouted, pushing her down the stairs. She tripped and fell, sliding face-forward down past Tane and Fatboy, and stopping herself a step below Crowe. Her body half disappeared into the thicker fog ahead.
There was a sudden hissing sound, and Evans’s voice came back to them, not in words, but in a strange strangled gurgle. Then silence.
There was a thud, and his weapon hit the stairs, the end of it just visible and protruding out from the fog.
Rebecca screamed and scrambled backward up the stairs, pushing herself up with her hands and feet.
“What is it, Rebecca?” Tane yelled. “What happened?”
“I didn’t see,” she screamed, turning and running back up the stairs. “He just disappeared!”
Tane turned and followed her, and realized that the others were with him. All of them.
They raced back into the restaurant. Silent now. The radio, too, was silent.
Crowe and Manderson turned in unison and slammed the double doors shut. Crowe used something on his weapon to coat a dense foam around the edges of each of the doors.
“What was that?” screamed Rebecca. “What’s out there?”
“Calm down,” Crowe shouted, not too calmly himself. “Calm down,” he repeated with a bit more control. “Whatever it is, it can only survive in the fog. That foam will prevent the fog from getting in here.”
Tane looked at the irregular pattern of the foam. It looked like gray-colored shaving cream. Or icing on some bizarre cake.
“What happened to Evans?” Manderson asked, checking the safety on his weapon.
“Don’t know,” Crowe said.
“Crowe, this is Miller,” a voice on the radio said now.
“Go ahead, Miller. What is your status?”
“I have nine men with me, no injuries. We are in trailer two, heading south, out of the fog. What is your position?”
Crowe looked at Manderson before saying, “We are secure. We are in the forward command post. We have sealed the doors to prevent the fog from entering. We can probably hold out here for a while. What the hell is going on out there?”
“I wish I knew.” The voice on the radio sounded frightened. “Some kind of…creature…I…don’t know. But whatever they are, they are big, and they move fast, especially where the fog is thick.”
Crowe said, “Okay, Miller. Keep moving. Get yourself clear.”
“Roger that, Stony. We’ll regroup, then come back for you.”
The radio went silent once again.
“Nine men,” Manderson drawled. “Plus Miller. Plus two of us.”
He didn’t need to say any more.
“Let’s hope they made it to the other trailer,” Crowe said without conviction. “Are there any other entrances to this room?”
“Fire escape.”
Crowe and Manderson ran to the rear of the room to seal that door. They were just returning when Tane noticed a whisper of mist trickling in through a gap in the seal on the front doors.
“Dr. Crowe,” he said urgently, pointing out the thin plume of steam.
Crowe nodded and moved forward to plug the gap with more foam.
He was only a few yards from the door when it exploded.
For just half a second, Tane thought he saw a vague white shape at the toughened glass of the door, as if something had charged at the door through the fog on the other side. There was a hissing noise also, and then the entire door just shattered into tiny squares like the glass from a car windshield.
Pieces of glass smashed into his biosuit, and he thought for a moment that Crowe, who had been much closer, had been cut to shreds by the flying shards that enveloped him. But the biosuits were made of some toughened material, designed to stop bullets, and the glass fragments bounced harmlessly off.
Fog poured into the room.
“Get back!” Crowe yelled, running back and pushing Rebecca by the shoulder. “To the fire escape.”
“What was that?” Manderson shouted. “That thing at the door.”
Crowe had no answer. He just said, “Try your sprayer on them. Bullets don’t work!”
“Water works,” Tane said, without fully realizing what he had said. “Water works!”
Crowe looked at him without stopping. “What does that mean, son?”
“I don’t know, but water works.”
They hit the door to the fire escape and burst through it, scattering the gray foam that Crowe and Manderson had carefully sprayed there a moment ago.
It was a narrow concrete staircase, flight after flight of featureless stairs with a red metal railing.
The fog was lapping at the boots of the biosuits and rising up around their knees.
“Up,” Crowe shouted, bounding up the stairs.
They couldn’t exactly go down, Tane thought.
He took two steps and then stopped dead. Manderson, behind him, collided with him but didn’t stop and brushed past.
Tane turned and ran back into the room.
“Tane!” His brother’s voice. “Where are you going?”
“The Chronophone!” Tane called back. It was in a line of equipment by the double doors, waiting to be packed out to the trucks.
If he had stopped to think, given himself a chance to be afraid, he never would have done it. But he hadn’t. So he did.
The fog was still thickening inside the room. The walls faded before his eyes as it intensified.
The jellyfish stayed in the dense fog, he remembered, and hoped the same was true for the Big Ones.
The Chronophone was where he remembered it, and he grabbed it with a snatch. It was heavier than he remembered and he stumbled but kept his feet.
The fog was alive, moving and scything around in broad patterns, and there were things in the center of those patterns.
From all around came strange hissing noises as whatever they were moved swiftly through the thickening fog.
The mist had risen up the stairwell also, but he cleared it in a single flight of stairs. The others were waiting for him, just out of the white clouds.
“Get moving,” Crowe said in a gravelly voice, and that was all that anybody said.
The six of them, seven if you counted the chimp, flew up two flights of stairs and looked down from the next landing. Still the fog was rising up the narrow shaft.
“How high is this hotel?” Crowe asked.
Nobody knew the answer.
The next two flights of stairs were harder, but adrenaline gave them wings. Two more stories, though, and Tane could see that Rebecca was flagging. His own legs, unaccustomed to carrying the weight of the biosuit and the Chronophone, were rebelling also. Southwell seemed unaffected, and Fatboy, even with the weight of Xena, hardly seemed to have raised a sweat.
Looking down, Tane could see that the fog was swelling up the narrow concrete shaft after them. Slowly, inexorably rising up the stairs.
If they couldn’t get above it, Tane realized, it was the end of everything.
Two more stories and they came to the final flight of stairs. Above them a cold, hard concrete ceiling blocked their escape route.
Crowe looked down at the rising mist. “Through here,” he said, flinging open the door to a rooftop area, where a few comfortable loungers skirted the edges of a long rectangular swimming pool. The afternoon sun burned into a light haze over the area, a thin spread of fog. Around them the rest of the world was white. They were a small concrete platform adrift in a sea of cloud.
“Are we high enough?” Tane asked. No one answered.
The mist around them began to intensify, rollin
g over the edges of the concrete parapets of the rooftop area and falling out of the doorway behind them.
“Miller, are you still there?” Crowe called.
“Roger that.”
“We’ve had to DD. We are now on the roof of the hotel. We are in extreme, I say extreme, danger. We need evac now.”
“Cannot help. I repeat, unable to assist. We have just cleared the fog and are proceeding south to the new command center at Albany. Will contact the Kiwis for you and see if there is anything they can do.”
“Roger that.” Crowe looked around grimly. He was hard to see, even in the full light of day, thanks to the thickening mist.
“What do we do now?” Southwell asked.
“Sit tight,” Crowe said. “Sit tight and pray.”
The jellyfish came first. Flying through the thickening fog. The harsh whistling sound they made was the first indication that something else, besides the six humans and the chimpanzee, was alive in the fog.
“Try not to move,” Crowe said. “They are attracted to movement and sound.”
Even as he said it, it was clear that it was useless. The biosuits themselves gave an audible click and a hiss with every breath they took.
It didn’t take the jellyfish long to find them.
One landed on Tane’s arm, and he watched it, horrified, yet fascinated for a second as it extended its long filaments and probed the black armor of the biosuit, trying to find an opening. The suit was strong enough to withstand it, though, and he flicked it away with a yelp of disgust.
It was back a second later, though, so he squashed it, flattening it with a sharp slap. It fell away into the mist.
The next one he squashed stayed there, stuck to his suit, but when he looked back at it a moment later, it was mostly gone. Dissolving, it seemed, back into the fog.
More came, though, and more still. He slapped at them, smashed them, shudders running through his body at the thought of the fine tentacles needling their way inside the suit. He looked at Rebecca’s back and realized with a shock that her black biosuit had turned white. Her back was covered with the jellyfish, the odd Y shapes fitting into each other like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Smothering her.
The Tomorrow Code Page 19