Jason heard the hatch slam shut above. Then Gray and Kowalski came clambering down the ladder, pistols in hand. Only then did Jason think to remove his own weapon from inside his parka.
“Over here!” Jason called to them.
The two men joined him.
Gray pointed to the other hydraulic towers. “Spread out. Stay hidden. Let them get close. Offload even. Any signs that they’re hostiles, we’ll use the darkness to wage a guerrilla war on the ground. Barstow is on the roof with Karen, armed with our last two rifles, to help cover us from above.”
After getting acknowledgment from Jason about this plan, Gray headed to one pillar, Kowalski another. They ran low, trying not to be seen.
The lumbering vehicle had slowed, its engine changing timbre.
Then it stopped forty yards off.
The winds shifted the fog enough to reveal a strange sight. The arctic machine was the size of a massive tank and looked like one, too. Giant belt treads flanked both sides, each rising taller than an elephant’s back. They supported what appeared to be an armored bus topped by what looked like the wheelhouse of a tugboat.
Lights flared up top, along with shadowy movement from within.
A door opened in that wheelhouse, and a dark figure stepped out onto the open deck that circled the upper structure. A shout cut through the wind’s howl. It was not loud enough to discern any words, but it sounded like a query, a challenge.
Another figure passed something to the one on the deck.
From the sudden increase in volume of the speaker, it must have been a bullhorn. “HELLO! WE INTERCEPTED YOUR RADIO COMMUNICATION EARLIER! WE KNOW ABOUT YOUR TROUBLE!”
The speaker was clearly a woman, British from her accent. She must have eavesdropped on Gray’s earlier radio call to Karen.
“WE FOLLOWED YOUR TRACKS AND CAME TO HELP!”
Gray bellowed from his hiding place, needing no bullhorn to be heard. “Who are you?”
“WE REPRESENT PROFESSOR ALEX HARRINGTON. WE WERE EN ROUTE TO COLLECT A GROUP OF AMERICANS WHEN WE HEARD OF THE ATTACK.”
Jason bit back his shock and considered this possibility. Painter had told them that the professor’s contacts would be flying over to Halley. But after eavesdropping on the station’s attack, had they turned back and come overland instead?
“WE MUST HURRY! IF THE AMERICANS ARE HERE, THEY MUST COME WITH US RIGHT AWAY.”
“And who exactly are you?” Gray pressed, plainly wanting more proof. “What is your name?”
“I’M STELLA . . . STELLA HARRINGTON.”
Jason took in a sharp breath, recognizing the name from the mission files. The speaker confirmed this in the next breath.
“THE PROFESSOR IS MY FATHER—AND HE’S IN DIRE TROUBLE!”
15
April 29, 7:55 P.M. PDT
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
If they poke me with one more damned needle . . .
Jenna paced the length of her section of the newly expanded patient containment unit. She’d been quarantined here for the past twelve hours.
Inside the hangar, the CDC team had added new pods to the original quarantine hospital. Through a window on one side, she could see Josh, unconscious on his bed. He had suffered two more seizures during the past afternoon, fading in and out of delirium.
From her pod, she watched the young man being subjected to another battery of tests. A nurse held him rolled up one side, while a doctor performed a spinal tap. There remained little doubt Josh had become septicemic with whatever microbe was out there. But from what Jenna had been told, they hadn’t been able to isolate the presence of the infectious virus in any of his tissues or blood as of yet.
They kept taking samples from her, too, looking for the same.
On the other side of her pod—my cell, she thought angrily—another window revealed Sam Drake in the neighboring section. Like her, he was dressed in a hospital gown and looked no happier as he sat in his bed. They had both been thoroughly scrubbed upon arriving here, a humiliating procedure that included having to huff through a pressurized nebulizer that delivered an aerosolized dose of a powerful broad-spectrum antimicrobial. It was a precaution in case they had inhaled any of the infectious particles at the Yosemite cabin—not that the drug had yet to be proven effective.
But better than nothing, I suppose.
Since then, she and Drake had been swabbed, scraped, poked, and had every bodily fluid collected. So far neither of them suffered from any of the clinical symptoms Josh had shown within the first twelve hours: namely a spiked fever and muscle tremors. Because of that, the doctors believed she and Drake might have escaped exposure at that cabin. Still, as an additional precaution, they had to stay quarantined for another day. If they remained asymptomatic, they could be discharged.
Could be being the operative message.
Very little was certain at the moment.
With one exception . . .
She paced another lap in her cell. Worry kept her moving, agitated, unable to sit or lie down for long. There was a third member of the Yosemite team whose fate was less uncertain.
Nikko.
Her partner had been whisked over to the suite of research labs across the dark hangar. Lisa assured her that he would be well taken care of, that she would keep Nikko kenneled in her own lab. Unfortunately, Nikko was spiking a fever already, accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea.
My poor boy . . .
Jenna longed to break out of here, to go to him. If only to comfort Nikko, to let him know she loved him. Anger fought with grief, leaving an ache in her chest. She hated to think of him suffering alone, wondering where she was, believing he’d been abandoned. But worst of all, she could not fathom losing him.
“You’re going to wear a rut right through the floor.”
She turned to see Drake at the window, his finger on the intercom button. He smiled softly, sadly, plainly knowing she was hurting.
She crossed and pressed the intercom’s talk button. “If only I could go to him.”
“I know, but Lisa will do everything she can.” Drake’s gaze moved past her shoulder to the window behind her. “Especially since she’s got a personal stake in all this.”
Jenna felt a twinge of guilt. What was the loss of a dog compared to a brother? Maybe she needed to gain a better perspective about all of this, to stay professional. After all, Nikko was just a dog.
But she refused to accept that.
To her, Nikko was just as much of a brother.
“What we can do while we’re waiting,” Drake said, lowering his voice, “is to figure out what we’re all fighting. If we knew what was brewed up in that damned lab, then both Josh and Nikko would have a better chance of surviving.”