Tunnels 06 - Terminal

believing what he was seeing, Jiggs manoeuvred towards it as he remembered the Russian submarine in Smoking Jean, and what Drake himself had said about pores opening up on the surface from time to time. So could some twist of fate be the reason that this seaplane had been sucked down too? Caught in a whirlpool that had brought it all the way down to this inner space?
    Much of the white paint remained on the fuselage, although it was stained by patches of rust, particularly around the rivets. And long tendrils of some kind of black algae had anchored itself in clumps all over the exterior, waving in the air currents like fine black hairs.
    Reaching the large float under the surviving wing, Jiggs braced himself against it, then with a push of his legs directed himself at a door on which Emergency Exit had been stencilled. He tugged on the handle. It refused to open, so he used his handgun to shoot out the lock and hinges. With another tug, the door came away with a burst of rust. Jiggs allowed it to float off, then entered the aircraft with Drake.
    Although the windows amazingly weren’t broken in this section of the seaplane, everything was damp inside – the fabric of the seats and the carpet almost rotted completely away and covered with a grey slime. In one of the rows Jiggs spied two skeletons. Their bony arms were clasped around each other and from the way their skulls were touching, there was no question they’d been in a final embrace at the moment of death.
    ‘I’d have done the same,’ Jiggs confided to them.
    But he didn’t have time to examine what else was in thereas he gently laid Drake on the floor and set about tending to him. Battlefield triage was nothing new to Jiggs. Slipping Drake’s Bergen off and removing the booster tied to his wrist, he methodically catalogued the areas that needed attention. Having worked his way along each of Drake’s limbs and then the trunk of his body, he quickly found the injury to his shoulder.
    ‘That’s no burn. That’s a bullet wound,’ he mumbled to himself, then glanced at the welts on Drake’s head and the charred areas of his combats, which would need to be carefully removed to assess the damage to the tissue beneath them. ‘But it’s probably the least of our problems.’
    He scanned the cabin around him as he voiced his concerns out loud. ‘Major trauma from third-degree burns … huge risk of infection from this septic environment … and unless there are any supplies here, just my medikit to work with.’ He rolled up his sleeves. ‘Hey ho,’ he whispered grimly. ‘Off to work we go.’
    If Drake had any hope of pulling through, at least he was in capable hands. Jiggs was highly proficient in field medicine. In some of the places he’d been sent – often the middle of nowhere – he’d frequently been called upon to use his skills to save both himself and those around him.
    But now Jiggs suddenly noticed his patient had stopped breathing.
    ‘No, you don’t, old man. You’re not going to die on me.’ He leant over and gave Drake mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. ‘Not today,’ he said, as he began to thump his chest to get his heart beating again. ‘Not on my watch.’

 
     
    P ART O NE
    Aftermath

 
     
     
    Chapter One

    S chraack!
    The small skull split open under Will’s boot, the hollow sound resounding through the empty New Germanian street. Will hadn’t been looking where he was treading as he’d moved towards the pavement, and had completely failed to notice the diminutive skeleton stretched out in the gutter.
    ‘Oh … my … good … God,’ Will swallowed as he stood over the skeleton, which had to have been that of a child. Although very little brain tissue remained inside the skull, the sight of the empty pupal casings spilling out was horrifying. The climate of this inner world with its ever-burning sun couldn’t have been more favourable for the armies of voracious flies, which had stripped the flesh from the human skeletons in a matter of weeks. Eight weeks to be precise. And stripped it so efficiently that the stench of decay that once hung over the dead city had almost completely vanished.
    Everywhere Will looked there were sun-bleached bones, mostly poking from crumpled clothes. Since the virus had also killed off all the mammals that would normally have scavenged on the remains, the bodies had lain undisturbed, stillprecisely where they had fallen.
    Undisturbed except for the carrion-feeding birds. Avian