Tunnels 05 - Spiral

zero-gravity belt. Drake knew he was still far too close to the nuclear device.
    But that didn’t matter now.
    He clicked the arming button.

    The detonator in Sweeney’s hand bleeped as it picked up the signal.
    He glanced at it.
    “BOMB!” Sweeney screamed at Will and Elliott. “GET OUT OF HERE NOW!”
    They weren’t about to argue with him.
    They sprinted away from the edge of the crater, the low gravity helping them as they fled.

    “Nice knowing you, Becky,” Drake said to the Styx twin as they left the void and burst into the zero-gravity belt, still moving at phenomenal speed.
    She saw he was smiling.
    Then she saw his finger was poised over a button on the detonator.
    Her lips began to form the word
no
, but she never uttered it as Drake pressed down.
    There was a blinding flash, as bright as a thousand suns.

    Sweeney swung the struggling Styx woman in front of him. “I can’t get away in time.”
    He moved Vane closer to him.
    “The EMP will fry my circuits.”
    He contemplated the Styx woman’s wriggling egg tubes as they dripped liquid. He knew he should probably kill her, but at that moment life had become sacred to him. All life.
    “Give us a last kiss, darl —” he whispered to her.
    As the nuclear device went off down in the void, the electromagnetic pulse swept over him.
    The grids on Sweeney’s face instantly glowed white hot, the skin around them burning, and two small plumes of smoke issued from his ears.
    Then as the circuitry in his head reached critical point, his head simply exploded. Like a massive felled tree, he toppled over, taking the Styx woman with him.
    The Earth shook, and a torrent of dust and debris shot from the crater. But this lasted for less than a second, as the bottom of the void closed in on itself.
    As Vane tried to extricate herself from under the huge man, she was cackling maniacally. Apart from a few broken ribs, she believed she’d escaped.
    But in the aftershock of the bomb, she’d failed to hear the tiny tinkle of glass as Sweeney hit the ground, crushing the test tube in his hip pocket.
    By the time the Limiter General reached the scene half an hour later, Vane had lesions on her skin and was coughing up blood. When he tried to find out from her what had happened, she was too feverish and didn’t make any sense.
    He naturally assumed it was radiation sickness. That was, until the Styx Limiter and the garrison of New Germanians who’d been present at the crater all began to show identical symptoms. Even though, in theory, they hadn’t been close enough to the blast to be badly affected.
    Within twelve hours, Vane and every one of the soldiers had died from the fever.
    The Limiter General himself, having returned to the city of New Germania, collapsed and died shortly afterward.
    And, blown on the dry winds, the pathogen spread.
    And spread.

AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, Stephanie was browsing through a magazine she’d read more times than she cared to remember. As her grandfather entered, she looked up expectantly.
    “Any news?” she asked.
    “I got Parry, but I’m afraid he still hasn’t heard anything,” Old Wilkie said as he put the satphone on the dresser.
    “Nothing? So we still don’t know if Will’s OK.”
    Her grandfather shook his head. He opened his bag to extract two rabbits he’d just shot, and laid them on the table. Stephanie wrinkled her nose in disgust.
    “How’s Chester doing?” Old Wilkie asked.
    “Same old, same old. Just sitting there, like he always does,” she replied.
    Old Wilkie nodded. “What about those books I got for him? Parry says he enjoys reading.”
    “He’s, like,
whatever
. Can’t say I blame him, though. I started one of them called” — she groped for the title — “
The Highland Mole
or something.” She rolled her eyes as she stuck her tongue out. “Talk about being, like,
completely
unrealistic.” Shaking her head, she dropped her gaze to the magazine article she had, for the umpteenth time, been poring over, with the title “X Factor — The Future of Britain’s Talent.”
    “He likes those types of books,” Old Wilkie countered. “Just go and spend some time with him, will you? Try to get him to talk.”
    Letting out a sigh, Stephanie slapped her magazine shut and rose from the table. As she reached the door, she pushed it open a fraction to peer into the adjoining room. Chester was simply staring through the window at the sky above the sea.
    As she went in, he quickly lifted the