by Sam Nash
***
The morning brought a coated tongue and an ice pick headache. Every movement sent her brain reverberating from the inner walls of her skull. Sitting upright in bed, it took a full minute to recall the events from the night before, although how she made it to the cabin and undressed were little more than a hazy blur.
Staggering to the bathroom, she held her head beneath the tap and slurped at the cool water, but it did nothing to slake her thirst. She stripped off her t-shirt and knickers and stepped into the shower. Closing her eyes, she stood beneath the gushing stream and tried to fill in the blanks of her memory. Lachie and Oona, then a fourth vodka and then…something to do with…um…
The shower alarm sounded. “Arrghh, stupid thing, I have barely had time to wash, let alone do my hair.” She jabbed at the buttons on the control panel, trying to reset the functions but to no avail. Dripping wet and uttering curses, she grubbed around the room looking for a bath towel. There was a loud knock on the door downstairs. “Now what?” Wrapped in a soft white bath sheet, Mary descended the stairs, noting that her calf muscles were stiff and gave her pain with each step.
Standing on tiptoe, Mary peered through the abstract glass panel in the door. It was Lachlan. Twisting the lock, she unlatched the door and let it swing open. The daylight blinded her. “Come in, shut the door.” She muttered, turning and wandering towards the kitchen.
“Ah didnae mean to disturb ya, I just wondered if we could chat?”
“Hmm…what about?” Mary picked up the kettle and shook it from side to side, judging the mass of water inside. Plonking it down on the power base, she flicked the switch on.
“About Oona. I tried to speak to her last night, but she threw an empty beer bottle at ma hee’d.” He sat down at the kitchen table. Mary held a mug aloft, offering Lachie a tea. He declined with a shake of the head.
“I don’t blame her. I’d have done the same thing in her position.”
“Really, why? What did a’do?”
“Men really are dense. She put herself out there, invited you to dance with her, not with those stunning twins.”
“Ah.”
“And then when she stormed off, she expected you to follow and make it up to her…”
“Is that so?”
“Instead, you got down and dirty on the dancefloor with two other women.”
Lachie pulled a contorted face. One of embarrassment and regret. “Okay, I can see her point. Now, what do a’do about it?”
Mary closed her eyes and sighed. “Children. Go pick her some wild flowers and say you’re sorry. Tell her how you feel. And none of that ambiguous crap that most of you blokes spout either.”
“Flowers? Ah don’t know flowers from weeds. Would yer come with me, Mary? Please?”
“Dear god, give me strength. Make me some tea and stick some bread in the toaster. I’ll have another attempt at a shower.”
Grumbling her annoyance, Mary returned to the bathroom and completed her ablutions. She dressed in the same grey sweatpants and t-shirt as everyone else on the base, and found a pair of sturdy black trainers in the wardrobe. Ditching her sandals in favour of the new footwear, she left the bedroom, grabbing her bag on her way out.
Despite the hangover, she rather enjoyed playing mother hen to Lachie; a big strong chap in need of her advice. She ate her breakfast and together they walked to the orchard in search of late summer flowers.
The rising sun evaporated the remnants of the storm’s moisture, which steamed in a haze at shoulder height between the trees. Bees danced their chatter across the roofs of their hives, preparing for the last few rounds of nectar collection. Many of the flowers hung limp from their broken stems, battered by the rain. Only the most hardy and fresh burgeoning blooms remained for the bees and for Lachlan to pick.
Freed from burden and restraint, Mary allowed herself an hour or two to decompress and recover from the effects of the vodka. More of Lachie’s group arrived at the orchard, in dribs and drabs. Some smoked peculiar smelling cigarettes, others shook the branches for the early ripening apples.
There was the tall blond woman, who introduced herself as Judith, but who everyone shortened to Jude. Her jaw clenched every time they misspoke her name. She seemed also to have a particular affection for Lachie, who was wholly unaware of the power he held over the female members of the group.
Ronica and Raeni, the twins of the dance fiasco, bickered constantly. Mary observed one to be bookish, while the other was quite the attention seeker. Which one was which, remained a mystery. Two other young men joined them, but stood farther away, content to observe from the outer battlements of the gathering. Oona was conspicuous by her absence.
Mary observed each of them with the same detachment she adopted during her long years as a lab technician at a British University. The students arrived, fresh faced and eager in the first days of the autumn term, wrote their assignments and attended tutorials with assiduous attention. By the third week of term, their good habits had fallen by the wayside. Social activities and lust drove their waking hours. Mary gauged this to be the group’s third week at the facility.
Mary had no need to read the minds of these novices. There were no ulterior motives beyond their own selfish desires. This was easy money in a comfortable environment. It made no difference to them if Mary joined the team or not.
The gathered flowers lay in a flattened area of grass, awaiting Lachie’s collection. With Judith and the twins watching his every move, he looked decidedly edgy. Mary saw his eyes dart to the simple bouquet, shortly followed by an imploring glance in her direction. Mary took the hint.
She scooped up the stems from the ground and tightened them into her palm. “Come and walk with me Lachie. There are some things I would like to discuss with you.”
“Right, yes. Catch you all later.” He said, dusting the debris from his trousers as he rose from the damp orchard grass. Together, Mary and Lachie walked in silence until they were no longer in earshot of the others.
“Where is Oona likely to be?” Mary said, thrusting the blooms at his hands.
“Ocht, you’ll need to come with me Mary, or I’m likely to bottle it.” He pushed the flowers back at her.
“You know, for a big bloke, you are such a baby.”
He guffawed and snorted at the same time. “Sometimes she sneaks down into the underground storage bunker. They have a few computers hardwired down there. She gets tech withdrawal worse than the rest of us.”
“Lead the way, big man.”
Mary was anticipating a long walk to the ramp entrance where she had witnessed Alexi driving in the electric car. Instead, Lachie took Mary to a large building which had not featured in the compound tour. Constructed of brick and steel, the few windows were of reinforced safety glass and did not open. They entered via a metal door, and walked through a dark corridor illuminated by a single light at the terminal end. There, Mary could just make out a standard safety sign on a door – stairs.
“Cosy.” Mary remarked. Her attempts to lighten the mood futile. She felt her mouth dry as Lachie opened the door, and gestured for her to make the descent into the storage bunker. “What’s down here.” She said, pausing at the top of the steps and peering over the banister at the abyssal drop in the stairwell.
“Oh, all sorts of things. Food, clothing, vehicles, equipment, the computers of course, you name it. It has its own electricity supply, I guess from some of the alternative energy sources that are hooked up around here.”
“Why haven’t they connected all the power sources?” She asked, and then chided herself for being drawn in. This was not her problem.
“No idea.”
The deeper they descended, the less they had to say. Mary was acutely aware of her leg muscles cramping in pain with each step. She stopped beneath one of the wall lights and rubbed her shins.
“You feeling the effects from all that dancing last night, Mary?” Lachie stopped and waited for her to catch up.
“What d
ancing?”
He cackled with laughter, slapping her shoulder, and then continued down the steps. Oh jeez. Note to self – no more vodka – ever. Eventually, they reached the bottom. Another ill-lit doorway, and out into a cavernous space, filled with massive trucks, farm machinery, forklifts, a helicopter and side partitions, stacked with metal storage cabinets.
“The computer room is down this way,” Lachie tipped his head towards a series of rooms on the opposite side of the cavern. They wove their way through the vehicles. Mary could see the computers in neat rows through an internal window. Oona was busy at one of the stations.
“Here.” Mary said, handing Lachie the wilting blooms. “You have to do this bit on your own.”
“But what do a’say?”
“Just say you are sorry for being an oaf, and give her the flowers.” Mary pushed him forwards, and then took a diagonal route through the tall trucks to the far wall. Standing in the doorway of a room filled with freezers and chillers, she watched Lachie make his approach. An enormous smile appeared on Oona’s freckled face the moment Lachie entered the room. Mary turned away, two minutes later when they started kissing.
It was curiosity that forced Mary inside the freezer room; alarm, that drove her to open the door marked with a biohazard symbol, and fear that sent her reeling from her discovery.
The frosted sheen coated the man’s body inside. It had one finger missing from his hand.
Chapter Seven
Mary shrieked, clapping her hand over her mouth and stumbling backwards. That crystallised stare, the unnatural twist of the neck and the gaping mouth, sent a cascade of memories from her brain. Scenes of shared duplicity at the hands of the Minister for British Defence; a recollection of drone strikes and the loss of many lives. This was the MI6 agent she had seen at JFK airport on their arrival.
The squeal brought Lachie and Oona dashing to Mary’s aid. They peered into the freezer and gasped, recoiling at the sight of their first dead body. Lachie cradled Oona in his arms.
“That’s it. That treacherous bloody Russian has gone too far.” Mary said, slamming the lid of the freezer down and storming from the room.
“What’ll you do?” Lachie said, trailing after her and leading Oona by the hand.
“Leave, and so should you, before you get embroiled in whatever scheme that degenerate has planned.” Mary scrambled towards the electric vehicles, testing each door for ease of entry. None were unlocked. In desperation, Mary tried the trucks, hopping up onto the footplates and yanking each handle. Alexi, it seems, had anticipated her moves, securing every vehicle in the compound.
“We can’t leave, Mary.” Oona said in a weakened, trembling voice. “The penalty clauses in our contracts are….”
Mary jumped down from a US Military truck cab. “Are what? What clauses? Nothing can be as bad as sticking around here under Alexi’s control.”
“The general will release evidence against each of us if we break contract.” Lachie said, his tone grave.
“Evidence of what? I can’t imagine any of you have done things to warrant aiding and abetting a terrorist?”
“None of us are clean. That’s why he picked us. Oona was awaiting trial for serious hacking offences when the general’s men intervened…” Lachie paused, squeezing Oona’s hand tight.
“And you?” Mary barked, her head still on a swivel looking for potential transportation.
“Misadventure. I thought I was helping an animal liberation group, I used ma’gift to find the access codes to the lab. I didnae know they’d bomb the lab after releasing the wee beasties. People died. The activists got caught. They gave me up straight the way.”
“Even still, you can’t stay. Look around you…” Mary flung her arms wide at the stacks of resources and supplies. “Whatever Alexi has planned is big, and you can bet your bottom dollar that you lot will be at the heart of it all.”
Oona swallowed, her breathing laboured and shallow, on the verge of tears. “There are a lot more freezers in this bunker, I’ve seen them. What’s to stop the general putting us in them? All the people here look happy and compliant, but they are all military personnel except for our little team. He has them stationed everywhere. We would not make it five miles without them tracking us down.”
For all her internal pep talks, Mary could not help but feel moved by their plight. They were in the same limbo as she; caught between the conflicting powers of the government and a wealthy terror faction.
“I don’t know how, but I will find a way to get you out. Just try and lay low. Do as little as you can get away with.” Mary was not sure what prompted her declaration. She was barely able to secure her own freedom, let alone seven gifted individuals with government targets on their backs.
They followed her into another side store where Mary found a series of bicycle racks. “Perfect. Pedal power.” She said, grabbing a baseball cap from a locker and tucking her hair up inside as she slipped it on her head. “Do I look like all the other female personnel?” They nodded. Lachie helped to yanked a bike with a front basket from the racks and wheeled it out into the main cavern. Mary secured her satchel in the basket, and wound the strap around the handlebars.
“Trust no one but each other, got it?” Mary said, scooting along on one pedal before swinging her leg over the crossbar to the other. Mary did not look back. She pedalled along until she saw a spiral ramp twisting up towards the surface. “Not the best time to have aching shins…” Mary mumbled, dropping the gears and pedalling hard up the continuous incline. She stopped just twice to catch her breath, before the dizzying ascent brought her to another large space. This level was buzzing with Alexi’s military personnel.
Enormous army trucks with canvas rooves were lined up in a convoy ready to leave. Their engines idled, generating a smog of diesel fumes. Mary dismounted, crouching low and wheeling her bike along the edges of the bunker walls. She watched as the uniformed men climbed up the sides of the trucks, to secure the load. Great rubber bungee straps were stretched across black metal crates, stacked high on each truck bed.
Mary crept closer, keeping low behind the stationary farm equipment on the opposite side. She was almost level with the trucks when she saw the first symbol. The yellow triangle supporting three black arc shapes, equidistant around a black circle. Mary’s heart fluttered in dismay. Hazard warnings had been part of her job for many years. This one struck fear in the hardiest of lab technicians. Alexi was transporting nuclear material.
Holy shit. How the hell did he get hold of that? And for what purpose? I need to tell someone in authority, but who? She crept on, pushing the bicycle slowly to mitigate the ticking noise as the wheels turned. As she neared the foot of the main entrance ramp, the trucks leapt into action. Mary ducked down, holding her breath until the dense fumes had dissipated. They powered up the ramp in a noisy cavalcade and disappeared from view.
A few personnel remained, stowing unused bungee straps and wheeling fuel tanks back into storage compartments. Mary waited. Her feet cramped with holding the same crouched position for too long. Just when she thought she might lose her balance, the men drifted into the stairwell and vanished.
A quick glance about her, and Mary was off. Pedalling furiously, she gathered momentum and hit the ramp at speed. The last few metres required all her strength, forcing her to pedal standing up. She crested the bunker, and out into the bright sunlight, several hundred metres from the communal centre. Aiming the bike towards the main gates, Mary pounded through the gears.
To her left, on the grassland, three men were busy inflating enormous metallic weather balloons. They rose in elegant wafts, as the gases pumped into their innards. The men peered at her as she zoomed by, but made no attempt to stop her. Must be something to do with Alexi’s bee obsession. Perhaps he tracks weather data alongside the changes in the electromagnetic spectrum.
The steel gates were just ahead of Mary, and wide open. She squinted at either side of the posts. No one manned them. They were electri
cally controlled, but she knew not who maintained them. She crossed her fingers and charged at the opening, sweeping through the aperture without resistance.
That was a little too easy. How did Alexi find me before? Shit. He arranged for a tracker in my satchel. Mary kicked down the gears and pedalled away from the compound at speed. When she was fully passed the long bend in the road, she pulled onto the grassy verge and tipped the contents of her bag into the handlebar basket. Sifting through her belongings, nothing looked out of place.
It was when she felt in each of the internal pockets, that she found a tiny device, no larger than the end of a cocktail stick. Mary snapped it in half and threw it into the ditch. Scooping everything back into her bag, she set off once more towards town. This time, she followed the signs at the junction to Washington, New Jersey.
Despite the maelstrom of questions whirling inside her mind, the ride was pleasant. It felt good to be back in the saddle after such a long abstinence. Fifteen miles eh? I can do that. Might get bum ache, but I can recover on the train. There must be a connection to Manhattan, or a bus maybe. Anyway, I am free. I can hide in a big city. Start again. Maybe get a little job for myself. Connie’s money won’t last me long in New York City.
A few miles further and her mind slipped back to Alexi. How the hell is he funding that entire set up? It must have cost millions, perhaps billions. And for what purpose? He cannot possibly mean to spread nuclear material around the United States. That would irradiate his precious bees.
Maybe he sells the nuclear material to countries like Iran or Iraq. They seem to always be threatening nuclear weapon capabilities. But where did he get it from? How am I going to warn the authorities without getting detained myself? If I telephone them, it would be dismissed as a crank call. One step at a time. Get to Washington, find a train link to NYC, and then worry about it.
Mary slowed to avoid a pothole in the roadside. The deviation allowed something to invade her peripheral vision. Glancing skyward, in what she estimated to be the general direction of the Summerfield Retreat, she saw a bright glint. Rising ever higher were two large weather balloons, lashed together in support of a black box beneath. She grasped the handbrakes and set her foot to the ground. The balloons were mesmeric, reflecting the sunbeams in a circular array. She watched as they became faint specs on the outer edges of the atmosphere, before resuming her journey.