Burning Angels

84

The Wildcat helicopter clawed through the dawn skies, climbing fast.

Jaeger squatted on its cold steel floor at the head of a pair of stretchers, clutching the hands of his wife and son. They were both desperately ill. He wasn’t even certain if Ruth could recognise him still.

He could see a filmy, distant expression in her eyes now – the stage directly before it turned into the glazed stare of the walking dead; the kind of look he’d seen in the eyes of the monkeys, before he’d put them out of their misery.

He felt gripped by a terrible fatigue and dark sense of hopelessness; waves of exhaustion, mixed with a crushing sense of utter failure, washed over him.

Kammler had been one step ahead of them every inch of the way. He’d sucked them into his trap and spat them out again, like dead, dried husks. And to Jaeger he’d just delivered the ultimate in revenge, ensuring that his last days would be horrific beyond imagining.

Jaeger felt paralysed by grief. He was awash with it. Three long years searching for Ruth and Luke, and finally he had found them – but like this.

For the first time in his life, a terrible thought flashed through his mind: suicide. If he were forced to witness Ruth and Luke perish in such an unspeakable and nightmarish way, better to die with them, and at his own hand.

Jaeger resolved that was what he would do. If his wife and son were taken from him for a second time – and this time for ever – he would choose an early death. He’d put a bullet in his brain.

At least then he would rob Kammler of his ultimate victory.

It hadn’t taken him and his team long to make the decision to abandon Plague Island. They could have done nothing there: nothing for Ruth and Luke, or for each other, not to mention the wider human population.

Not that they were kidding themselves. There was no cure. Not for this; not for a five-thousand-year-old virus brought back from the dead. Everyone on that aircraft was as good as finished, along with the vast majority of planet earth’s human population.

Some forty-five minutes earlier the Wildcat had put down on the beach. Before boarding, each team member had gone through the wet decon tent, sluicing down and discarding their suits, before dousing themselves with EnviroChem and scrubbing out the shards of glass.

Not that any of that could alter the fact of their own contamination.

As Kammler had told them, they were all now virus bombs. For the uninfected, their every breath spelled a potential death sentence.

That was why they’d chosen to keep their FM54 masks on. The respirators not only filtered the air they breathed in; with a DIY modification courtesy of Hiro Kamishi, they could also filter the air breathed out, so preventing them spreading the virus.

Kamishi’s bodge was rough and ready, and it came with its own risks, but it was the best they had. They’d each taped a particulate filter – similar to a basic surgical mask – over the respirator’s exhaust port. It created greater resistance, with the unfortunate result that the lungs were less able to exhale and void the virus.

Instead, the Gottvirus would pool in the confines of the respirator, so around eyes, mouth and nose. With that would come a greater risk of increased virus loading – in other words, accelerated infection – which could precipitate a rapid onrush of the symptoms. In short, in striving to not infect others, they risked doubly poisoning themselves.

But that didn’t particularly seem to matter, with all of humanity seemingly doomed.

Jaeger felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. It was Narov’s. He glanced up at her, a look of pained emptiness in his eyes, before flicking his gaze back to Ruth and to Luke.

‘We found them… But after everything, it’s all so bloody hopeless.’

Narov crouched beside him, her eyes – her striking, clear, ice-blue eyes – level with his now.

‘Maybe not.’ Her voice was tight with intensity. ‘How has Kammler got his virus out to the world? Think about it. He said that the virus has already been unleashed. “Even now it is making its way into the four corners of the world.” That means he has weaponised it. How did he achieve that?’

‘What does it matter? It’s out there. It’s in people’s blood.’ Jaeger swept his eyes across the forms of his wife and child. ‘It’s in their blood. Breeding. Taking them over. What does it matter how it’s spreading?’

Narov shook her head, her grip tightening on his shoulder. ‘Think about it. Plague Island was deserted, and not just of people. Every single monkey cage was empty. He’d emptied the place of primates. That’s how he sent the virus global – he exported it via those KRP shipments. Trust me. I’m sure of it. And those few animals that already showed signs of sickness – he let them loose in the jungle.

‘The Ratcatcher can trace those monkey export flights,’ Narov continued. ‘The monkeys may still be in quarantine. That won’t stop the virus completely, but if we can nuke the monkey houses, it may at least slow its spread.’

‘But what does it matter?’ Jaeger repeated. ‘Unless those aircraft are still in the air, and we can somehow stop them, the virus is already out there. Sure, it might buy us a little time. A few days. But without a cure, the outcome will still be the same.’

Narov’s expression darkened, her features seeming to collapse in on themselves. She had been grasping at that hope, yet in truth it was a chimera.

‘I hate losing,’ she muttered. She went as if to drag her hair into a ponytail – as if pulling herself together for action – before remembering she was still wearing the respirator. ‘We have to try. We have to. It is what we do, Jaeger.’

They did, but the question was how. Jaeger felt utterly defeated. With Ruth and Luke lying there beside him, being slowly consumed by the virus, he felt as if there was nothing left worth fighting for.

When the kidnappers had first ripped them away from him, he had failed to protect them. He’d clung to the hope of finding and rescuing them; of redemption. Yet now he had done so, he felt doubly impotent; utterly powerless.

‘Kammler – we cannot let him win.’ Narov’s fingers dug deeper into Jaeger’s flesh, where her hand still gripped his shoulder. ‘Where there is life, there is hope. Even a few days might make a difference.’

Jaeger glanced at Narov, blankly.

She gestured at Ruth and Luke, lying on the stretchers. ‘Where there is life there is still hope. You need to lead us. To take action. You, Jaeger. You. For me. For Ruth. For Luke. For every person who loves and laughs and breathes – take action, Jaeger. We go down fighting.’

Jaeger didn’t say a word. The world seemed to stop revolving, time itself standing still. Then, slowly, he squeezed Narov’s hand and raised himself to his feet. On legs that felt like jelly, he stumbled towards the cockpit. He spoke to the pilot, his words sounding cold and alien through the FM54’s voice-projection unit.

‘Raise me Miles on the Airlander.’

The pilot did as asked and handed over the radio handset.

‘It’s Jaeger. We’re inbound.’ His voice was steel. ‘We’re bringing in two stretcher cases – both infected. Kammler’s shipped his primates off the island. It’s via the monkeys that he’s spreading the virus. Get the Rat on to it. Trace the flights, find the monkey houses and nuke them.’

‘Understood,’ Miles replied. ‘I’m on it. Leave it with me.’

Jaeger turned to the Wildcat pilot. ‘We’ve got urgent casualties to deliver to the Airlander – so why not show me how fast this thing can go.’

The pilot pushed his throttles forward. As the Wildcat soared towards the heights, Jaeger felt a stirring in his spirits. Go down fighting.

They would fight this battle, and maybe they would lose, but as his scoutmaster used to say to him when he was a kid, quoting Baden-Powell, the scouting founder: ‘Never say die until you’re dead.’

They had a matter of weeks in which to save his family, and all of humankind.