Max bent and picked up Ben’s gun and with the final round it held, shot her in the face at close range. ‘You stupid fucking cunt.’
* * *
Chapter Thirty-One
Shocked, Ben began to move, but Max swung around and held out the canister, one finger on the spray button. He’d taken the cap off. ‘I’ll blast you right in that incredible face with it. Stand still.’
Aleksey grabbed Ben’s arm.
Max laughed. ‘Did you really think that lunatic could have stolen this without me knowing? From my own lab?’
Aleksey’s mind was whirling, the pieces finally coming together. He shifted his eyes to the fallen woman. She was still, one hand trailing in the water. ‘Bailey was working with you. That’s why you shot him—he was going to say something to you, spoil your plan.’
‘What plan?’ Ben seemed about to move once more, but Max’s finger began to press on the release valve, and his grin was malicious.
‘What is the point of making a vaccine if you can’t fucking sell it! For Christ’s sake, did you think I’d put all this work into something and then sit back fingers-crossed for a religious nutcase somewhere to make the plague? For some rogue state to release it from their labs? I am literally sitting on billions and billions of pounds profit—but only if my vaccine is actually needed.’
‘YouwantedAustin to release it.’
‘Of course! I couldn’t, could I? Shit, the lab making the vaccine accidentally lets the gain of function pathogen out first? Who’d believe that shit? It was perfect. He and his stupid wife would release it. I was clearly not involved, and then I’d be free to manufacture and sell my vaccine around the world.’
Aleksey wondered who was more insane, someone who wanted no human race, or someone who wanted to profit off their desperate struggles to survive. ‘You don’t want everyone to die?’
Max began to laugh, and it sounded entirely unhinged. He toyed with the canister while he hiccupped to silence. ‘I don’t care how many people live or die; I just don’t want governments to collapse. I need them. They’ll whip up panic in their populations so complete that they’ll be killing each other if they think someone might be infected—they’llmandatemy vaccine. The media will squash any dissenting voices. Most of the plebs will get it before the chimera spreads too badly, but who cares if they don’t? We need a bit of population control. It’ll probably only be wealthy countries who can afford mass vaccination anyway. Who cares if Africa or India or North Korea is emptied out? Although I guess in North Korea’s case we wouldn’t know one way or another…’
‘You lost half the men you tested it on.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Yeah. More. But so what? Who’s gonna care if it kills them if it keeps them safe? It’s such a fantastic cosmic joke. How long do you think it’ll be before pictures appear on the nightly news of the plague victims all over the world? They tear at their faces for some reason. Quite a few of our cohort did. You should have seen the ones who were watching and waiting to go in next.’ He mimed an Edvard Munch screaming man, drawing fingers down his cheek from bulbous, maddened eyes. Then he sobered. ‘And if governments mandate my vaccine, they can hardly admit it’s going to kill people too, can they? Nah. Win, win either way for me.’
‘But why did you shoot Rachel? Your own sister?’
‘If you hadn’t come along, she’d have been dead after lunch yesterday—well, throwing up and shitting herself so violently she’d have died within a few days. Hello? Microbiologist here. So much choice…listeria; salmonella; hepatitis A; E. coli…the list goes on and on. Can you imagine how difficult that choice was for me? I was tempted to offer you a bit of that cheese by the way, but just as well I didn’t. I’m on the brink of becoming the world’s richest man, lorded and feted by the entire global media.SaintMaxwell, and my bloody sister pipes up about her Saint Nicholas cure-all? I mean, she was a total freakoid, but what if she was right? I couldn’t take that chance.’ He glanced down at her body. ‘This way was more merciful than listeria really.’ Glancing at his sister led him to look up at the carving, and he frowned deeply. ‘Hey, Ben, didn’t you tell me at dinner this was calledLightIsland? Huh, now that is weird.’ He glanced into the woods behind the medieval wall thoughtfully. ‘What if they actually are here? Her angels of the light?’
Aleksey felt something akin to a battering ram thump into him.
He was completely taken off guard.
He was flying through the air, propelled by something, and then he hit water, and he knew—Ben. Indomitable and all powerful, Ben had seized that one tiny opportunity of the man’s distraction and had driven them both into the pond, a flying rugby tackle summoned from nothing more than sheer willpower. They swam together, deep under the water, right to the far side behind the island, and then under the bridge, where they surfaced silently.
‘You’ll have to come up. You can’t stay under forever! You can’t breathe under water and I’ll still be here!’ Max’s voice was gleeful. He didn’t sound concerned at all. ‘Come up, you fuckers!’
They moved further away to the far side of the bridge and climbed down the trickle of the waterfall over the rocks and lowered themselves into the sea.
They held onto a projection, letting the waves lift and lower them. ‘If he infects us, he could use us to carry it to the mainland, Ben. We might become too ill to fight him.’
‘Or the moron comes back like that bitch said, and he comes too close before we can warn him off.’
Given she’d kneed him in the balls, Aleksey let this uncharacteristic invective go. Besides, as he’d invented Dead Bitch Well, he could hardly complain.
‘Come. There is somewhere.’ He reckoned they could get back into the lighthouse and use it as a secure base to wait the lunatic out. Max had to sleep at some point, he assumed. And then he would be theirs. He felt fairly confident the aerosol would not reach them if they were eighty feet up in the lamp house. They swam together on their backs, both too tired to do more. The sun was fully up now, and the day promising to be warm and still. Even though they were sculling up the northern coast, there was very little swell and almost no chop. At another time, in other circumstances, they might have enjoyed it.
They emerged onto the low-lying land by the spring where it was easy to access the pebbly beach. The key was off to their east now, by the cottage.
Crawling out of the ocean, they lay panting on the shingle beach for a while until they heard distinctly, far too close, a shouted, ‘I will find you!’
‘Shit.’ Ben rolled over onto his belly. ‘He’s coming this way.’
Aleksey nodded. He was close to thinking he’d take his chances with the plague.
