Aftershock (17 page)

The two escalators descended directly from the banqueting hall. But Johnny Xavier was right, they had stopped working. They were also cast in darkness.

‘Here, I've got this,' Bandonis said, pulling a torch from the back of his belt. He swept the beam over the top of the right-hand escalator. It lit up the first 5 metres, then petered out. ‘Let's go then,' he added, gripping the rail and stepping onto the steel tread. It was wet with water.

The light spilling back from the torch was so faint it barely did any good at all, but gradually their eyes began to adjust. Hilary held Emily's hand tightly with her left hand and grasped the rubber handrail with her right. She felt a horrible sense of dread deep in the pit of her stomach, but knew she had to project the illusion of remaining calm. After two steps on the wet metal, she stopped, pulled off her high heels and tossed them over the railing onto the parallel escalator.

Michael was close behind Hilary and Emily. He took a step down to join them.

‘You okay?' he asked his wife.

‘Oh yes!' Hilary declared. ‘Reminds me of a holiday in St Tropez.'

Michael looked pained.

‘I'm sorry,' Hilary said suddenly. Then she did something she had not done for a long time. Taking her hand from the rail, she put it on Michael's cheek, feeling the soft warmth and revelling in it for a second.

‘I'm so sorry about...' Michael began.

Hilary shook her head.

Craig Deloray and Sigmund de Silva, who had been a few steps behind, approached them. Michael looked up at their vague shapes emerging from the gloom. Then he squeezed Hilary's hand.

The escalators ran in three stages from the top floor of the dome to ground. The first led down to the second floor where the cinema and theatre were located. Another set connected the second floor to the first level which was dominated by a set of conference rooms. The final escalator hooked up with the ground floor, and the casino, Poseidon's Gold. From there, a wide, carpeted staircase descended one level to the lower ground floor.

‘Miguel? Can you see anything?' Michael called.

‘Looks like the escalator is in one piece, sir,' he called back.

Then Michael noticed the torch beam wobble.

‘Miguel?'

There was no reply.

The light moved downwards, casting strange shadows across the wall, a silhouette of the engineer, crouching down.

‘Miguel? What is it?' Michael repeated, and edged his way carefully in front of Hilary and Emily. They had frozen to the spot.

Michael came up behind the engineer. Bandonis turned as his boss approached. In the light from the torch, Michael could see the mangled body on the metal steps. It was a man in a tux. His dead face was blackened. There was a huge red and grey opening running from his left temple to his lips. His legs were twisted under him. One arm hung from a few sinews.

‘My God!' Michael exclaimed.

Bandonis rose unsteadily. Michael took four steps back up the escalator to where Hilary and Emily were standing outside the circle of light.

‘There's a dead body a few steps down,' he said.

Hilary put a hand to her mouth. The two men, Sigmund de Silva and Craig Deloray, had come up behind Hilary and Emily. ‘Miguel and I will move the body to the right side of the escalator.'

Michael disappeared for a few moments. The others heard a heavy weight being shifted over the wet metal steps and then Xavier was back, his face pale.

‘Hil, you cover Em's eyes and help her past, okay?'

Hilary Xavier nodded.

Michael took Emily's right hand, Hilary turned her daughter's head away holding her against her hip. Slowly, carefully they crept down the frigid steps of the escalator. Hilary tried hard not to look, but morbid curiosity overwhelmed her. She glanced to the right as they passed the body. The dead man's blind eyes were staring straight at her, his mouth slack and open. She recognised him ... just. Unable to contain herself any longer, Hilary gasped. She had seen the man earlier. He had been alive and well and tending to his famous charge. Now Kristy Sunshine's manager, Brett Littleton, was as dead as dead could be, a mutilated corpse on the icy steel steps.

A few minutes after leaving the banqueting hall, they had reached the second floor of Dome Gamma. It was pitch black. Michael and Hilary Xavier, with their daughter and Craig Deloray, followed Miguel Bandonis and Sigmund de Silva. Bandonis held the torch as steady as he could. The carpet was sodden and water had gathered in puddles in the lush fabric. And it stank – a blend of food, the crisp ozone of electrical activity and the stench of the ocean floor, a rich salty compost odour.

Bandonis swept the torch around the walls and into the dark recesses of the landing. The walls ran with water. Part of the ceiling had collapsed and a metre square piece of plasterboard hung down from one edge. The torch revealed electrical wiring and a brightly coloured plastic conduit running along the cavity above their heads.

‘There's an emergency override for the ceiling lights here somewhere,' Michael said. He looked over to Bandonis.

The man was shaking his head. ‘There should be.'

Michael held his gaze then closed his eyes for a second and sighed.

‘There're a couple of floor lights,' Bandonis offered.

‘Forget it. What about the lower floors? What are the cuts there?'

‘Not sure, sir. I think emergency lighting for the casino was untouched.'

Michael Xavier looked at the engineer. ‘Well, that's something at least.' He turned to the others. No one spoke. ‘After you, Miguel,' Michael said.

The next pair of escalators were shorter, and they all reached the conference suite level without incident. Michael took the torch from Bandonis and walked half a dozen paces over to a wall panel adjacent to the doors to Conference Room 1. From his pocket, he removed a credit card-sized piece of black plastic and ran it down a slot to the right of the panel. Nothing happened.

Bandonis was at Michael's shoulder. ‘It's down too,' he said. He pulled a penknife from his pocket. ‘Here, let me try this.' He leaned in and ran the knife along the slot. Stopping about two-thirds of the way down, he pulled the knife back towards him a fraction of a millimetre. There was a quiet click and the panel swung outwards. Michael Xavier held the torch while Bandonis fiddled with a collection of wires. The engineer tugged on a red lead, unthreading it from the others and slotted the copper end into the opening of a junction box. He flicked a switch to one side and the lights came on.

‘So, what now?' Craig Deloray asked as Michael and Miguel approached. His face was wreathed with sweat. Michael had forgotten how badly injured the man was.

‘You okay to go on?'

‘Don't have a choice, do I?' Deloray replied and forced a half-smile.

‘What
is
the plan, precisely?' Sigmund de Silva asked. He was sitting on a low wall that surrounded a flowerbed in the centre of the hall close to the foot of the escalators. He looked exhausted. Like the others, his face was smeared with sweat and dust and blood.

Michael took a deep breath. ‘We have to get to the emergency subs on the lower ground level.'

‘And if they're not working?'

‘Then we have to head that way.' He pointed to his left, the west side of the building. ‘The linkway to Beta is on the same floor. If we can get to Beta, there is another set of emergency subs. We can try to reach the universal dock or press on to Alpha and the other dock. I'm assuming any rescue effort will use the
Cousteau
or one of the other subs.'

‘But Miguel, you reckoned half the subs were duds,' de Silva said.

Bandonis nodded. ‘Yes, but the other half aren't.'

‘Okay, but then, Michael,' de Silva went on, turning back to Xavier, ‘your brother was telling the truth about one thing, wasn't he? If the linkway is impassable or destroyed, we'll be trapped.'

‘There's always that possibility,' Michael conceded. He looked from face to face. ‘But I'm hoping we won't need the linkway.'

Emily Xavier was the first to hear the strange hissing sound. ‘Dad, what's that?' she asked suddenly.

‘What's what?'

‘That sound?'

‘Hissing,' Craig Deloray said. ‘It's coming from up there.' He pointed to the ceiling a few metres across the hall towards the escalators that fell away to the first floor. He walked over, staring at the ceiling. ‘It's a gas leak,' he called to the others. ‘Methane, I think.'

No one saw where the flame came from. The first anyone knew about it was when a sheet of fire shot out from the ceiling. From a few metres away, it looked like a powerful jet spewing from a hose, a deadly cascade of orange and yellow flame. It caught Craig's left side and enveloped him. He screamed. His clothes caught alight instantly and his hair burst into a mass of sizzling black. The stink hit the others before they could even comprehend what was happening.

Sigmund was the first to react. He was the only one of the men still wearing a dinner jacket. He pulled it off in one smooth movement as he ran towards the stricken security man.

Deloray was blown off his feet by the force of the blast. Screeching in agony, he landed in a fiery heap. They all heard a fizz as his body hit the sodden carpet. It sounded like a pork chop being thrown onto a barbecue. He writhed and rolled over the wet carpet trying to put out the fire.

Sigmund grabbed the man's kicking right leg, keeping as far away as possible from the still gushing flame. Deloray was smothered in fire now, his clothes peeling away, his hair a charred mess. Clear of the gaseous burst, Sigmund repeatedly smacked his jacket onto Deloray's body, but it was making very little difference.

De Silva looked up as a burst of fire-retardant foam showered down. Michael was holding a fire extinguisher and frantically spraying it in a wide arch over the burning security man. In a few moments, the fire was out. Sigmund slammed the jacket down a few more times for good measure. They both noticed Craig Deloray had stopped screaming. He was lying still on his front.

Michael got down on his knees and gingerly turned Craig over. His face was frozen in a horrible grimace. Half of the flesh had been ripped away by the flames, his teeth and jaw bone were exposed on one side. The remaining skin had been charred black, bubbled and fried.

‘MICHAEL!' Hilary screamed.

He span around to see his wife clutching their daughter and pointing towards the ceiling. Her eyes reflected the bright yellow slurry of fire sweeping across the ceiling towards the escalators.

‘Run!' Michael yelled. ‘Go!'

He jumped to his feet and saw that Sigmund was already dashing after Hilary and Emily. Miguel Bandonis was only metres away and had just seen the fire. Without thinking, acting purely on impulse, Michael Xavier ran as fast as he could across the squelching carpet towards the top of the escalator. He could see Hilary and Emily had made it to the top step and were running down as fast as they dared. He was about to shout to them again when he slipped, his feet sliding awkwardly on the soaked floor. He fell backwards, banging his head on the floor. A terrible pain shot down his spine. He tried to pull himself up and felt strong arms grabbing him under the shoulders. He saw Sigmund in front of him, heading down the escalator, and felt a burst of heat on the back of his neck. He cried out in panic. The smell of burning hair filled his nostrils.

He was stumbling, falling again. Then he caught himself, snatched at the rubber handrail and felt a hand grip his free arm, glimpsing Miguel Bandonis beside him on the escalator.

Lights streamed past. Another burst of heat came from directly overhead. He heard Hilary scream and his stomach felt like it was falling out of his body. Then he saw his wife and daughter. A sheet of flame shot down from the sloping ceiling above the frozen metal steps. It missed them by centimetres and was sucked back into a panel overhead. The escalator stairs seemed to rear up. He collided with Miguel. An elbow slammed into his damaged side sending a flood of pain through his body. He waited for the crunch of impact, saw blurred steel, a flash of black rubber railing, the soiled white of his shirt sleeve. But the bone-shattering landing never came. He fell onto his side, hitting a hard floor covered with soft carpet. He rolled away just as Miguel crashed down beside him. Pulling himself up, Michael looked down to see the engineer lying on his front, groaning into the carpet. Michael helped him to his feet and looked up. Hilary was standing just up ahead of them, her face a picture of terror. Xavier was about to ask what had happened when he saw for himself. The staircase down to the lower ground floor was completely blocked with burning rubble.

‘The casino,' Michael yelled, grabbing his wife and daughter and shoving them towards a set of heavy double doors. He turned back to Miguel. The man was getting to his feet, grasping his side, clearly in agony and barely able to walk. Sigmund was there in a second, and between them they helped the injured man towards the casino.

The sound of the fire filled the hall as flames found new material, new fuel. Superheated air rushed across the ceiling and embers dropped and fizzed on the wet carpet. In a few moments, the three men had traversed the short distance to the doors and dived through. Dumping Miguel on the carpet just inside the casino, Michael and Sigmund rushed back to the doors and heaved them shut.

Hilary collapsed to her knees. Emily was gasping for air. Michael went over to them. ‘You okay?'

Hilary nodded.

‘We have a few minutes,' Michael said. ‘Those are fire doors. They'll hold back the flames for a bit.' He walked over to Miguel. The man's shirt was wet with blood. He crouched beside him and gently lifted the wet fabric. There was a deep gash in his side. Standing up, Xavier ran over to the office of the casino close to the doors. Rifling through a cupboard beside a desk to one side of the room, he found a First Aid kit and dashed back to the others.

Throwing open the box, Michael found antiseptic cream, wipes, iodine, pads, plasters and bandages. ‘This will hurt,' he told Miguel. The man nodded. Michael cleaned the wound, smeared it with antiseptic and pressed a pad onto it. Miguel yelped.

‘Sorry.'

Michael stuck the pad to Miguel's abdomen with two large plasters then wrapped bandage around his waist.

‘Thank you,' Miguel said, between gritted teeth.

‘So, how're we going to get down to the subs?' Sigmund asked. He was standing beside them breathing heavily.

Michael said nothing, just gazed around the vast space, his expression desperate. Then they all heard a sound. It was familiar, but wildly incongruous, a clanking of metal against metal, a tumbling of coins.

Michael and Sigmund took a couple of paces in the direction of the sound. Turning into an aisle of slot machines, they saw a man in a dirty dinner suit and a Stetson standing at a machine. He had just yanked the handle and was watching the spinning wheels intently. He seemed completely oblivious to them.

Michael and Sigmund approached slowly. They were almost at the man's side before he glanced round and produced a crooked smile. ‘I'm just having the best run. Friggin' unbelievable.' His voice was a heavy Texan drawl. He was a short, overweight man of about 50. Neither Michael nor Sigmund recognised him. His dinner suit was ripped and covered in dust, the Stetson was powdered grey. He had a dark bruise on his left cheek and his upper lip was swollen.

‘I'm Michael Xavier, and this is Sigmund de Silva,' Michael said, unable to keep the bemusement from his voice.

‘Yes, I know who you are,' the man said, keeping his eyes fixed on the spinning wheels.

‘What's your name?'

‘Gil,' he said. ‘Gil Tallow.'

Michael vaguely recognised the name – one of Johnny's business pals.

‘What're you doing here?' Sigmund asked.

The man did not take his eyes from the wheels. ‘Winning!' he said. ‘I'm winning.' Then he turned to face the two men square-on, pushed the hat back up his forehead and beamed. ‘It's sooo darn exciting!'

‘Why are you here?' Michael persisted. ‘I didn't see you at dinner.'

‘No. Damn pissed about that.' And he looked into Michael's eyes, his face suddenly serious. ‘Martha was so friggin' late. We came through the linkway from the other dome, what's it called?'

‘Beta.'

‘Yeah, that's it. Beta. We're headed for the banquet when the whole friggin' place starts a-shakin'. One wild ride,' he added with a grin, and turned back to the machine.

‘Where's Martha?' Michael asked.

‘Oh, she's dead,' Gil responded without looking away from the slot machine.

Michael glanced at Sigmund, who looked completely lost. Then he noticed how Gil's hand was shaking so much it took him a few moments to slip a coin into the slot at the top of the machine.

‘So ... so, Gil,' Michael said. ‘How did you get here?'

‘Back stairs,' he replied and turned to give Michael a puzzled look. ‘Over there.' He pointed to the far wall of the huge open space. ‘Ain't that obvious? The main stairs are backed up worse than an old lady on a cheese diet.' Then he gave a manic laugh. ‘Thought that was pretty friggin' apparent.'

‘Gil, there's been a terrible accident,' Sigmund began. ‘We've got to try to get down to the lower ground floor. It's our best chance of survival.'

Gil ignored him.

‘Gil?' Michael said and placed a hand on the man's shoulder.

‘Don't you friggin' touch me,' Gil Tallow spat. For the first time, he took his hand from the arm of the machine, and span on his heel. ‘I know your game, mister,' he hissed, his eyes narrowing to slits. ‘Oh, yeah.' He snarled. ‘Oh, yeah.'

Michael pulled back, speechless.

‘You wanna piece of the action, don't ya? That's your friggin' trick, ain't it?' Tallow's voice was little more than a whisper. ‘WELL YOU AIN'T HAVING NONE!' he yelled suddenly, his eyes ablaze. Before Michael could realise what was happening, the man pulled a length of metal pipe from the far side of the slot machine. Gripping it in his right hand, he swung it round. The pipe cut the air, missing Michael by a centimetre. He leapt to the side and fell over his own feet, landing with his back against another slot machine on the other side of the aisle.

Stunned, Sigmund had frozen to the spot. Gil Tallow looked at them and laughed, let the pipe slip through his twitching fingers and turned back to the machine. ‘Darn farm hands,' he exclaimed and spat on the floor between them. ‘Bunch of friggin' pussies.'

Sigmund did not waste a second. He pulled Michael to his feet and gripped him by the shoulders. ‘Don't say another word, Michael,' he said under his breath. ‘The crazy fucker's helped us more than he'll ever know.'