Micro

Chapter 18

Fern Gully 29 October, 2:00 p.m.

The knife entered the ground between Karen and Jenny, driving them apart, and continued down into the earth for what seemed like a vast distance. Then it was withdrawn with a rumbling sound, shaking the world. Jenny was on her knees, holding her arm and moaning.

Karen scooped Jenny up with one hand, and began to run with her, heaving her across her back and sprinting at high speed. The knife plunged down again, but this time Karen had dived under a clump of ferns, still carrying Jenny on her back.

The ground thumped and bounced, and the thumping receded. The man was walking away, carrying the broken halves of the station in his hands. They saw him toss the pieces into a knapsack. He moved off, and was gone.

A silence descended. Jenny was crying.

“My arm,” Jenny said. “It hurts…hurts so much.”

Jen’s arm had been broken, badly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you fixed up,” Karen said, trying to sound optimistic. Jen’s arm looked horrible, a compound fracture of the humerus, probably. Karen found a duffel bag lying on the ground nearby, and she opened it, and took out a radio headset, and began calling on it. “You guys? Anybody? I’m with Jenny. She has a broken arm. Can you hear me?”

Peter’s voice came on. “We’re okay. Everybody’s accounted for.”

They gathered under the fern, and placed Jenny on a leaf, using it like a bed. None of them had any medical experience. Karen opened the medical kit and found a syringe with morphine. She held it where Jenny could see it. “Do you want this?”

Jenny shook her head. “No. Too groggy.” She might need her wits, despite the pain. Instead, Jenny accepted a couple of Tylenol tablets, while Karen ripped up a piece of cloth and fashioned a sling. They helped her sit up. Jenny swayed, her face ashen, her lips pale. “I’ll be okay,” she said.

But she was not okay. Her arm was swelling dramatically, the skin darkening.

Internal bleeding.

Karen caught Peter’s eye, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Remembering what Jarel Kinsky had said about the bends. You could bleed to death from a small cut. And this was not a small cut.

Peter looked at his watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. They’d slept for two hours.

The ground was scattered with debris. It was like a shipwreck. The duffel bags and the backpack lay in various places. Many other things had fallen out of the bunker when the knife had split it open. They found the machetes and the harpoon. Rick’s chinaberry rested on the ground nearby; it had fallen out of the tent. They had survival gear and supplies, at least, but where would they go? If Station Echo had been taken away, what had happened to the other stations? Had the man seen them? Did he work for Vin Drake?

They had to assume the worst.

They had been discovered. The stations had been taken away. Where to hide? Where to go? How to get back to Nanigen now?

As they stood pondering what to do, the sky grew darker. A gust of wind tugged at the leaves of a haiwale plant nearby, revealing the fuzzy undersides of the leaves. As Peter looked up, he saw the wind catching leaves overhead, flipping them over, tossing the leaves…

Then came a strange sound, a deep sploosh, and another sploosh. They watched in stunned surprise as a flattened sphere of water, of enormous size, fell on the ground next to them and exploded into a hundred smaller droplets flying everywhere. The afternoon rains had arrived.

“Get to high ground!” Peter shouted. “This way!” They began to run, heading upslope, grabbing whatever they could carry. Karen carried Jenny on her back, while raindrops exploded around them like bombs going off.

At Nanigen, Vin Drake turned away from his computer screen. He had been watching a weather-radar scan of the Ko‘olau Pali. Those trade winds were so dependable. As the winds ran up against the windward side of Oahu, they dropped their moisture on the mountains. The peaks of the Ko‘olau Pali were some of the wettest places on earth.

Don Makele knocked on the door. The security man entered and placed the pieces of Station Echo on Drake’s desk. “The beds are rumpled, toilet’s been used. And I saw a couple of them on the ground running. I ordered them to stop. I tried to stop ’em with my knife. They scattered like cockroaches.”

“That’s disturbing,” Drake said. “Very disturbing, Don. I told you to fix this.”

“What do you want me to do, sir?”

Vin Drake leaned back and tapped a gold mechanical pencil on his teeth. A portrait of him hung on the wall behind him, painted by an up-and-coming Brooklyn artist, in which Drake’s face seemed to fracture into bold colors; it was an image of power, and Drake liked it. “I want you to close off the security gate at the entrance to Manoa Valley. Stop the shuttle truck. The valley is to be sealed. And bring me your two best security men.”

“That would be Telius and Johnstone. I trained them in Kabul.”

“They have experience in the micro-world?”

“Plenty,” Makele answered. “What do you want them to do?”

“Rescue the students.”

“But you’re sealing off the valley—”

“Just do as I say, Don.”

“Yes, sure.”

“I’ll meet your men outdoors. Parking lot B, twenty minutes.”

The raindrops were pounding down, exploding, hurling gouts of water mixed with soil. Peter vanished in a cloud of spray as a raindrop hit him. The raindrop knocked Peter through the air and left him sprawled and coughing. The others ran, slipping and sliding, while more raindrops landed around them. Then came a sound like a freight train.

It was a flash flood running down a cleft in Fern Gully. It burst around a rock and past the base of a tree fern, and hit the people with a wall of brown water, sending them swimming for their lives. Karen was carrying Jenny along, when suddenly, as the flood hit, Jenny was torn from her back with a cry.

“Jenny!”

The water took Karen down. She couldn’t see Jenny. She found herself clinging to a leaf, which was spinning around and around in the current. Rick was kneeling on the leaf in front of her. “Grab my hand!” he shouted to her. Rick caught Karen by one hand, and hauled her onto the leaf. She coughed and gasped. The leaf spun and ran along with the current. “I’ve lost Jenny!” Karen shouted, looking around frantically. With her broken arm, Jenny would not be able to swim.

Danny Minot had climbed up onto a rock. It poked out of the floodwaters ripping around it.

A drowned earthworm floated past, rolling over and over in the water. Jenny Linn struggled in the water, trying to swim, but her sling interfered and her broken arm flopped in a frightening way. Her head went under. And came up.

Rick lay flat on the leaf. “Jenny!” he shouted. “Reach out! Jenny!”

“Hang on, Rick!” Karen shouted, and she grabbed Rick’s feet, and held on, trying to keep him from sliding off the leaf as he reached out to try to save Jenny.

Jenny rolled on her side, and reached out with her good hand, but she passed by Rick, her fingertips just brushing his. He lost her, couldn’t get a grip on her fingers, and he shouted in frustration.

Jenny was approaching the rock where Danny huddled. “Danny, please!” she screamed, putting out her good hand. The current shook her body, threatening to drag her under.

Danny Minot reached out for her. He touched her hand. Her fingers closed around his fingers. He reached farther with his other hand, and managed to get his fingers under the sling. He pulled Jenny toward him. Then he felt himself slipping off the rock.

Jenny screamed in pain as he wrenched her broken arm. But she welcomed it. “Don’t let go of me, please!” She reached with her good hand…caught Danny’s shirt.

A drowning person will take you down with them. Danny knew about drowning people. They were very dangerous.

He looked around. Was anybody watching? Then he locked eyes with Jenny Linn. “Sorry,” he said. He opened his hands and let her go. He was going to be pulled into the water and drowned by her, for sure…

Danny turned away. He couldn’t bear that expression on Jen’s face. He had done everything he could to save her. If he hadn’t let her go, she would have pulled him in, certainly…they both would have died…Jenny was doomed anyway. I’m a good person…He huddled on the rock while the water rumbled around it. Nobody had seen what he’d done. Except Jenny. That look in her eyes…

Karen screamed as she saw Danny lose his grip on her. “No! Jenny! No!” They glimpsed Jen’s head bob once more in the current, and she went down, and they didn’t see her again.