Area 7 ss-2 Page 13
the doorway, reaching out for Book II with an outstretched
hand.
Then Book II looked up.
The descending elevator was barely three feet above his
head and coming down fast!
He threw out a hand and Love Machine grabbed it, and
hauled him over to the doorway, pulling him through the water.
Then Elvis and Calvin grabbed them both and yanked
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them out of the water, just as the elevator slid past the edge
of the doorway and abruptly came to a halt--right in front of
the doorway.
Everybody froze.
Water began to ooze up around the floor of the lift, rising
up from beneath it, hungrily searching for an escape
from the shaft. It immediately began to spread out across the
concrete floor of Level 5.
Book II waited tensely for the elevator's doors to
open--waited for a phalanx of 7th Squadron men to burst
out from it with their guns blazing.
But none did.
The lift was empty.
They were safe, for the moment.
Book II turned to face the room around him. A layer of
expanding water had already started filling it.
It was a wide anteroom of some sort. Some wooden
desks, a Lexan glass cabinet full of shotguns and riot gear.
Plus a couple of holding cells.
Book II frowned.
It was almost as if he were standing in the reception room of a jail.
"What in God's name is this place?" he said aloud.
AT THAT VERY SAME MOMENT, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LEVEL 5,
Juliet Janson and the President of the United States found
themselves standing in a whole new kind of hell.
Juliet had thought the animal cage room had been bad.
This was worse.
After bursting through the heavy-looking door on the
western side of the animal cage room, she now found herself
staring at a far more frightening part of Area 7.
A wide, dark, low-ceilinged room stretched away from
her. It was sparsely lit, with only one in every three lights
turned on, a policy which had the effect of leaving small
patches of the vast room hidden in perfect blackness.
But the low light couldn't hide the true nature of this
level.
It was filled with cells.
Old rusty concrete cages--thick-walled, with anodized
black bars sunk deep into concrete dividers. The cells were
quite obviously aged, and in the half-light of Level 5, they
took on a positively Gothic appearance.
It was, however, the groans and hoarse whispers coming
from the darkness behind the bars that betrayed the nature of
their occupants.
These were not animal cells, Juliet realized in horror.
They were human cells.
THE PRISONERS HEARD THE HEAVY DOOR BURST OPEN--HEARD
Juliet and the President and the other two Secret Service
agents charge through it--and they rushed as one to the
doors of their cells to see what the commotion was.
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"Oh, hey, baby!" one toothless individual cried as
Juliet, striking and purposeful as she held her silver SIG Sauer pistol in her hand, charged past his cell, pulling the
President behind her.
"Ramondo!" she yelled. "Block that door behind us!"
A row of steel lockers lined the wall near the door leading
back to the animal cage room. Ramondo yanked the first
three of them down from their upright positions, strewing
the lockers in front of the door.
The prisoners began to shout and cry out.
Like all lifers, they could sense fear instantly, and they
took pleasure in heightening it. Some yelled obscenities,
others rattled their bars with enamel drinking mugs, others
still just wailed a constant ear-piercing "Ahhhhhhhhh!"
Juliet bolted through the nightmare, grim-faced and determined.
She saw a gently-sloping ramp off to her right--fenced
off by a big barred gate. The ramp seemed to lead up to the
next level. She made for it.
"Hey, baby! You wanna go for a spin ... on top of my
flagpole!"
The President stared wide-eyed at the chaos all around
him. Prisoners in blue denim uniforms, unshaven and
crazed, leaned out from their cages, trying to grab him.
"Hey, old man. I bet you got a nice soft marshmallow ass--"
"Come on," Juliet yanked the President away from the
voices.
They came to the barred gate.
As one would expect on a cell block, its lock was thick
and strong. They couldn't shoot through it.
"Curtis," Juliet said crisply. "Lock."
Special Agent Curtis slid to his knees in front of the
gate and pulled a high-tech-looking lock-picking device
from his coat pocket.
As Curtis unfolded his lock-picker, Janson scanned the
area around them.
There was movement and noise everywhere. Arms
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flailed out of cell doors. Snarling faces tried to squeeze
through the bars. And the shouting, the constant shouting.
"Ahhhhhhhh!"
None of the prisoners seemed to recognize the President.
They all just seemed to enjoy making noise, inciting
fear--
Then abruptly, there came a loud boom from somewhere
behind them.
Juliet spun, pistol up.
She was met by the sight of a Marine, his full dress uniform
completely saturated, charging toward her with a Remington
pump-action shotgun raised.
Behind the first man were three more Marines, also
soaked to the skin.
The lead Marine lowered his shotgun when he saw
Juliet and the President.
"It's okay! It's okay!" Book II said, coming closer, lowering
the shotgun he had pilfered from the arms cabinet in
the anteroom. "It's us!"
Calvin Reeves stepped forward, spoke seriously.
"What's happened down here?"
Juliet said, "We've lost six people already, and those Air
Force bastards are in the next room, right on our asses."
Behind her, Special Agent Curtis inserted his lock
picker into the gate's lock, pressed a button.
Zzzzzzzzz!
The lock-picking device emitted a shrill dentist-drill
like buzz. The lock clicked loudly and the gate swung open.
"What's your plan from here, Agent Janson?" Calvin
asked.
"To be where the bad guys aren't," Juliet said. "First of
all, by going up this ramp. Let's move."
Special Agents Curtis and Ramondo headed up the
ramp first, followed by Calvin. Juliet pushed the President
after them. Love Machine and Elvis went next. Book II fell
into step beside Juliet, covering the rear.
Just as they were about to head up the ramp, however,
they both heard a voice above the din.
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"--not a prisoner--a scientist!--know this facility-- can help you!"
Juliet and Book II spun.
It took them a second to locate the owner of the voice.
Three cells down from the ramp, in the cell closest to
the a
nimal cage room.
The owner of the voice was standing up against the bars
of his cell--which in the surrounding chaos had only made
him look just like all the other prisoners.
But upon closer inspection, he looked considerably different
from the others.
He wasn't wearing a blue denim inmate uniform.
Rather, he wore a white lab coat over shirtsleeves and a loosened
tie.
Nor did he look deranged or menacing. Quite the opposite,
in fact. He was short, with glasses and thinning blond
hair that looked like it had been combed every day of his life.
Juliet and Book came to his cell.
"Who are you?" Juliet shouted above the din.
"My name is Herbert Franklin!" he replied quickly.
"I'm a doctor, an immunologist! Until this morning, I was
working on the vaccine! But then the Air Force people
locked me in here!"
"You know this facility?" Book II yelled. Beside him,
Juliet stole a glance at the heavy door leading back to the animal
cage room. It was banging from the other side.
"Yes!" the man named Franklin said.
"What do you think?" Book II asked Juliet.
She pondered it for a moment.
Then she shouted up the ramp: "Curtis! Quickly! Get
back here! I got another lock I need opened!"
Two minutes later, they were all heading up the ramp,
now with a new member added to their group.
As they raced up the sloping walkway, however, making
for the next floor, none of them noticed the layer of expanding
water that lapped up against the bottom of the ramp.
when schofield's runaway AWACS plane had crashed
down onto it, the massive aircraft elevator platform had been
parked on Level 4—at the spot where the President's entourage
had left it nearly an hour earlier.
Now, the crumpled remains of the Boeing 707 lay
sprawled across the width of the elevator platform.
Gnarled pieces of metal lay everywhere. A couple of
tires had been thrown clear with the impact. The plane itself
lay pointed downwards, tilted over on its side, its nose
dented sharply inwards, its left-hand wing broken in half,
crushed beneath the plane's tremendous weight. Miraculously,
the AWACS plane's thirty-foot flying-saucer-like
rotodome had survived the fall completely intact.
Shane Schofield stepped out of the wreck of the plane,
followed by Gant, Mother and Brainiac. They jumped over
the debris as they ran for the giant steel door that led to
Level 4.
A smaller door set into the base of the gigantic door
opened easily.
No sooner had they opened it than Schofield raised his
gun and fired. The shot smashed into a wall-mounted security
camera, blasting it to oblivion in a shower of sparks.
"No cameras," he said as he walked. "That's how
they're following us."
The four of them made their way up a short upwardly
sloping corridor. A squat solid-looking door loomed at the
end of it.
Mother spun the flywheel on it and the big door swung
open.
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Schofield stepped through the doorway first, his nickel
plated pistol leading the way.
He emerged inside a laboratory of some sort. Supercomputers
lined the walls, their lights blinking. Keyboard
terminals and data screens and clear-plastic experiment
boxes occupied the remaining bench space.
Otherwise, the lab was deserted--
Blam!
Gunshot.
Blam!
Another.
It was Gant, exterminating a couple of security cameras.
Schofield continued to scan the wide room.
The most dominant feature of the laboratory was a line
of slanted glass windows that lay directly opposite the entrance.
He stepped up to the observation windows and peered
out through them--
---and found himself looking out over a wide, high
ceilinged room, in the center of which stood a gigantic glass
cube.
The cube was freestanding, occupying the center of the
hall-like room, but without touching its ceiling or walls.
The wall on the far side of the cube--a wall which divided
this level in two--didn't quite reach the ceiling.
Rather, it stopped about seven feet short of it, replaced by
thick glass. Through that glass, Schofield saw a series of
crisscrossing catwalks suspended above whatever was on
the other side of the floor.
But it was the cube in front of him that held his immediate
attention.
It was about the size of a large living room. Such a conclusion
was easy to come to, given that the glass cube was
filled with regular household furniture--a couch, a table,
chairs, a TV with PlayStation 2 and, most strangely of all, a
single bed draped with a Jar Jar Binks doona cover.
Some toys lay strewn about the glass-enclosed living
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room. Matchbox cars. A bright yellow Episode I spaceship.
Some picture books.
Schofield shook his head.
It looked like the bedroom of a little boy.
It was at that precise moment that the occupant of the
glass cube ambled casually out from a discreetly curtained
off corner of the cube--the toilet.
Schofield's jaw dropped.
"What on earth is going on here?" he breathed.
there was a set of stairs on the northern side of the elevated
lab leading down to the cube.
When he reached the base of the stairs, Schofield
walked alongside the dividing wall that sealed this section
off from the eastern side of the floor. Gant walked with him.
Mother and Brainiac stayed up in the observation lab.
Schofield and Gant came to a halt before the giant freestanding
cube, gazed into it.
The occupant of the glass cube saw them coming, and
casually walked over to the edge of the completely sealed
structure.
The occupant arrived at the clear glass barrier in front of
Schofield, cocked his head to one side.
"Hey, mister," the little boy said.
"--SIR, I HAVE COMPLETE VISUAL BLACKOUT IN THE LABS ON
Level 4. They've started shooting the surveillance cameras--"
"I'm surprised it took them this long," Caesar Russell
said. "Where is the President?"
"Level 5, moving up the ramp to Level 4."
"And our people?"
"Alpha Unit is in position, waiting in the decompression
area on Level 4. Delta Unit has been stopped in the animal
containment area on Level 5."
Caesar smiled.
Although Delta was momentarily halted, the theory behind
its movements was sound. Delta was forcing the President
up through the complex--to where Alpha was waiting ...
"Tell Delta to get through that doorway and push up the
ramp, and cut off the President's retreat."
he couldn't have been more than six years old.
And with a bowl-shaped shock of brown hair that came
down to his eyes, Disneyland T-shirt and Converse sneakers,
Only this kid lived inside a glass cube, in the belly of a
top-secret United States Air Force base.
"Hey there," Schofield said warily.
"Why are you frightened?" the boy asked suddenly.
"Frightened?"
"Yes, you're frightened. What are you scared of?"
"How do you know I'm frightened?"
"I just know," the boy said cryptically. He spoke with
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such a serene, even voice that Schofield felt like he was in
some kind of dream. "What's your name?" the boy asked.
"Shane. But most people call me Scarecrow."
"Scarecrow? That's a funny name."
"What about you?" Schofield said. "What's your
name?"
"Kevin."
"And your last name?"
"What's a last name?" the boy asked.
Schofield paused.
"Where are you from, Kevin?"
The boy shrugged. "Here, I guess. I've never been anywhere
else. Hey, do you want to know something?"
"Sure."
"Did you know that Twinkies give kids half their daily
glucose requirement as well as giving them a tasty snack?"
"Uh, no, I didn't know that," Schofield said.
"And that reptiles are so sensitive to variations in the
earth's magnetic field that some scientists say they can predict
earthquakes? Oh, and nobody knows news like NBC,"
the boy said earnestly.
"Is that so?" Schofield exchanged a glance with Gant.
Just then, a loud mechanical noise echoed out from the
other side of the dividing wall.
Schofield and Gant spun, and through the glass section
at the top of the wall, saw the lights on the other side of
Level 4 suddenly and unexpectedly go out.
the president of the united states moved cautiously up
the ramp that linked Level 5 to Level 4, surrounded by three
Secret Service agents, four United States Marines and a lone
bookish scientist.
At the top of the ramp was a large retractable grille--
kind of like a garage door mounted horizontally.
Juliet Janson hit a switch on the wall and the horizontal
door began to slide open, revealing ominous darkness
above it.
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