The Rainmakers, ch 10
The Ant Farm
Mac's Voice-over: As we came in over the desert, I saw a lot of military vehicles and a couple of large tents. There were people swarming all around the place; it looked like an ant hill that had been kicked over by an ornery child. I saw drilling equipment, but there was no exhaust coming from the great engine, and the engineers were standing around with their hands on their hips. It's hard to tell from a couple of hundred feet, but they looked stumped to me. I guess whatever they were doing, it Gant's got a strange look on his face—somewhere between worry and fury. I know he feels bad about calling me in on this… but what choice did he have, really?
I don't think I've ever traveled anywhere faster than I traveled from L.A. to Bannon, New Mexico. I spent as much time as I could going over the layout of the underground laboratory, but when we arrived at Holloman AFB and transferred to the helicopter, there was no more time; the craft zipped toward the lab at top speed, and I had to keep the fragile sheaf of papers in their protective tube or the wind would have shredded them.
Gantner jumped slightly when MacGyver tapped a finger on his headset. He fumbled for a second to turn on the radio so he could hear Mac's voice, but there was something wrong with the receiver. He pointed to his ears and shrugged.
Mac lifted the cuffs from Gantner's ear and shouted, "Wha'cha doing next weekend, Gant?"
Gantner shook his head; he either didn't hear Mac right or he didn't understand. Mac shouted again, "If I pull this thing off, I want a favor in return!"
"Anything!" Gantner shouted back. "What do you want?"
Mac mimed dribbling a ball and shooting a basket. Gantner's eyebrows rose toward his hairline. He pointed at himself. "You want me to play basketball?!"
"With my Little Brother!" Mac called back. "You," Mac pointed at Gantner, then himself, "me—and Reggie—on the courts—Three Man Out!"
"Mac!" Gantner shook his head, crossing his hands as if calling 'time out', "I'm no good… I can't!"
"You gotta!" Mac leveled a finger at him. "You OWE me!"
Gantner sighed and muttered something that Mac understood clearly even though he couldn't hear a syllable. Mac grinned madly and buffeted Gantner on the shoulder. Gantner rocked with the motion, unable to keep the grin off of his own face.
⌂
Barbara was awake long before she opened her eyes and uncurled herself from where she had huddled on the floor. A part of her was stunned—petrified. She was afraid that if she thought about anything too much, she would realize that she was dead… or worse: buried alive.
She did finally sit up and take stock of herself. The corridor she had been walking down was dark, and pieces of the walls and ceiling were lying around indecently on the once-hygienically clean floor. The air was thick with smoke or dust—Barbara wasn't ready to think about fires, yet; burning to death was right up there with 'being buried alive' on her list of 'Things I Don't Ever Want To Do'.
Climbing unsteadily to her feet, she looked around. The elevator was a few feet away, past a vending machine that had toppled and shattered, its sugary contents scattered across the floor. She walked around the mess and pressed the button several times to call the elevator... to no effect. She turned around, unsure of what to do or where to go. Then she remembered that she had been on her way to the commissary when the sky fell. She picked her way down the hall, leaning against the wall to steady herself.
The door to the commissary was hanging half off of its hinges. Barbara looked through the gap to see if there was anyone inside. She turned away swiftly, covering her mouth in horror. The ceiling had completely collapsed, and from beneath the pile of rubble Barbara could see someone's feet, a woman's—still clad in stylish pumps. Barbara forced herself to push aside the door and check to see if there was anyone else in the room who might have survived. She found no one.
She stood for a moment, staring at the unfortunate woman's feet. Who had she been? She didn't recognize the shoes, nor could she think clearly enough to guess who might have been in the commissary at this hour. Barbara knelt and gently removed one shoe, hoping that it could be used to identify the victim if she managed to get herself out.
The urge to escape from this tomb hit Barbara hard, with all the adrenaline that panic can provide. She had to steady herself against the wall again, but this time to prevent herself from sprinting across the littered floor, searching for an exit. It wouldn't do to sprain an ankle or fall through a hole in the floor!
Breathing deeply, Barbara leaned against the wall and tried to think of the best way out. With no elevator, the stairs would serve to get through the sublevels to the main biology lab. From there, an emergency stairwell climbed to the first level.
Clutching the shoe in one hand, she resolutely set out. She found the stairwell, the steps littered with fractured concrete and dirt, but passable. She climbed steadily, thinking with sudden hope that she might be able to get all the way to the surface, but after a long breathless scramble she was disappointed. The upper flights of the stairwell were clogged with debris from where one wall had collapsed; she had to backtrack to find an exit, which deposited her in one of the access corridors below the bio lab.
From there, she picked her way in the semi-darkness, dodging broken electrical lines and piles of shattered glass. With the elevators out and the stairwell blocked, there was only one other access that she knew of—a maintenance ladder reached up through the sublevels, designed to provide access to the heating and air conditioning vents of the various levels and sublevels. The ladder was fifty feet high at a stretch, made out of reinforced steel and braced. She prayed that it was still intact.
As she was making her way to the maintenance area when she heard somebody cough. She turned around, trying to locate the direction it was coming from.
"Hello?" She called tentatively.
"Who's there?" A man stumbled through a doorway ahead, looking around vaguely. He was a tall, thin fellow in a lab coat, one of the staff scientists; Barbara thought she recognized him but she couldn't remember his name.
"Spencer—Barbara Spencer. Are you all right?" The man's face was streaming with blood, and one of the sleeves of his coat was ripped.
"I'm alive… I guess that's something." He squinted at Barbara. "I lost my glasses when… what happened?"
"I'm not sure. An explosion, I think," Barbara said. Just being with a living, breathing person made her feel better—a little more in control. "You're bleeding…"
"Oh." The man prodded the wound on his cheek with insensitive fingers. "Ouch. You're the first person I've seen since… the first person alive, that is." The man swallowed convulsively. He fumbled in his pocket for a linen handkerchief, dropping it in the process. Barbara picked it up and shook it out.
"Yeah." Barbara didn't elaborate; she didn't need to. "What's your name?" She folded the cloth into a bandage.
"Dobbson. I was in the bio lab and had to come down to the storage room for some baseline solution… " He stopped talking, wincing as Barbara pressed the bandage to his face. "I lost my glasses—I'm blind as a bat without them."
"Well, I'm on my way up and out of here," Barbara said, forcing some cheer into her words. She took one of his hands and placed it over the bandage. "Now hold this in place, and put your other hand on my shoulder."
"The elevators are out of service," he mumbled as they began to move forward slowly.
"I know. We're going up a different way."
"Sounds good. Th-thank you. For helping me."
Barbara couldn't think of what to say to that. She led the way firmly, going slow and steady, drawing strength from the dependent touch of Dobbson's hand.
⌂
Barbara and Dobbson found the service shaft as undamaged as fortune would allow. She told Dobbson to start up the ladder, but he demurred.
"Ladies first. That way, if I slip and fall off, I won't take you with me." When she hesitated, he smiled and patted her shoulder. "Don't worry… I'll be right behind you. I won't let you out of my sight, and considering that I can barely see—I shall be very close indeed!"
They began to climb. Barbara had thrust the woman's shoe into the belt of her dress so that she could use both hands; she needed them. The going was not easy, and all the bruises and bumps she had not felt before were now singing loudly under her skin. She ignored the discomfort and went on.
"You okay down there, Dobbson?" she called after a few dozen feet. She didn't really want to look down, but she did.
Dobbson tilted his face up, a rakish grin on his face. "I'm fine… but I do wish I had my glasses."
"I'm glad that you don't," Barbara quipped, "you'd be looking up my skirt right now if you did!"
"Oh… my." Dobbson blushed a little as he laughed. "I am cursed!"
At the top of the ladder – the highest sublevel of Level Two – the lights were flickering but at least they were on. Although there were some signs of damage, it was nothing like what they had seen so far. Hope rose again in Barbara's heart that they had found a way out. She took Dobbson's hand in hers and walked them cautiously toward the bio lab.
There were voices ahead – real, living, human voices – and Barbara let out a sigh as they turned a corner. Down the hallway past the elevator was the bio lab, and Barbara could see a group of people standing there. A part of her realized that this likely meant that they had found no way to the surface, but she couldn't shake the elation she felt at finding more survivors. She took Dobbson's elbow and hurried him forward.
Just as they started down the hallway, there came an alarming groaning sound from the walls and ceiling. Barbara shouted and broke into a run, dragging Dobbson with her as the ceiling began to sag and the wall buckled, then rained down an avalanche of dirt and debris, completely clogging the hallway, and effectively sealing the survivors inside the lab.
Barbara didn't stop running until she reached the safety of a solid wall. She released Dobbson and let herself sink down until she was sitting on the floor. She suddenly realized that the shoe that she had brought so far with her was gone, dropped somewhere along the way.
She decided it was time to let herself cry.