Burning Angels

‘It’s me, Ruthy. It’s Will,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve been searching. I found you. I’ve come for you and for Luke. To take you home. You’re safe now…’

‘You bastard — you’re lying!’ Ruth shook her head violently, striking out again with the stake. ‘You’re that cruel bastard Jones… You’ve come here for my child…’ She swung the stake again, threateningly. ‘YOU TRY TAKING LUKE, I’LL…’

Jaeger reached out towards her, but as he did so he was reminded of how he must look, encased in the space suit and visor and the thick rubber gloves.

Of course. She’d have no idea who he was.

No way of recognising him at all.

Dressed like this, he could be any one of those who had tortured her. And the mask’s voice projection system meant that he was speaking like some kind of alien cyborg, so she wouldn’t even know his tones.

He reached up and pulled back his hood. Air gushed out of the suit, but Jaeger didn’t give a damn. He was infected. He had nothing left to lose. With feverish fingers he unstrapped the respirator and pulled that up and over his head.

He gazed at her. Beseechingly. ‘Ruth, it’s me. It really is me.’

She stared. Her grip on the bamboo stake seemed to falter. She shook her head disbelievingly, even as recognition flared in her eyes. Then she seemed to collapse in on herself, throwing her body at the cage door with the last of her energy, and letting out a piercing, strangled cry that cut Jaeger to the heart.

She reached for him, desperately, disbelievingly. Jaeger’s hands met hers. Fingers meshed through the bars. Heads came together, skin-close; hungry for a loving touch, for intimacy.

A figure moved beside Jaeger. It was Raff. As discreetly as he could, he undid the bolts that kept the cage fastened from the outside, then stepped back to give them their privacy.

Jaeger leaned inside and brought her out to him. He held her close, hugging her as tightly as he could, while trying not to cause any more pain to her bruised and battered form. As he did so, he could feel how hot she was, the fever of the infection coursing through her veins.

He held her as she shuddered and sobbed. She cried for what seemed like an age. As for Jaeger, he let the tears fall freely too.

As gently as he could, Raff retrieved Luke from the rear of the cage. Jaeger held his son’s emaciated form in one arm, with his other keeping Ruth from collapsing. The three of them sank slowly to their knees, Jaeger clutching tight to both of them.

Luke remained unresponsive and Jaeger laid him down, while Raff broke out their medical kit. As the big Maori bent over the boy’s unconscious form, Jaeger figured he could see tears in his eyes. Together they worked on treating Luke, as Ruth sobbed and talked.

‘There was this man, Jones… He was evil. Pure evil. What he said he was going to do to us… What he did to us… I thought you were him.’ She glanced around fearfully. ‘He’s not still here? Tell me he’s not here.’

‘There’s no one else here but us.’ Jaeger pulled her closer. ‘And no one’s going to hurt you. Trust me. No one’s going to hurt you ever again.’

84

The Wildcat helicopter clawed through the dawn skies, climbing fast.

Jaeger squatted on its cold steel floor at the head of a pair of stretchers, clutching the hands of his wife and son. They were both desperately ill. He wasn’t even certain if Ruth could recognise him still.

He could see a filmy, distant expression in her eyes now — the stage directly before it turned into the glazed stare of the walking dead; the kind of look he’d seen in the eyes of the monkeys, before he’d put them out of their misery.

He felt gripped by a terrible fatigue and dark sense of hopelessness; waves of exhaustion, mixed with a crushing sense of utter failure, washed over him.

Kammler had been one step ahead of them every inch of the way. He’d sucked them into his trap and spat them out again, like dead, dried husks. And to Jaeger he’d just delivered the ultimate in revenge, ensuring that his last days would be horrific beyond imagining.

Jaeger felt paralysed by grief. He was awash with it. Three long years searching for Ruth and Luke, and finally he had found them — but like this.

For the first time in his life, a terrible thought flashed through his mind: suicide. If he were forced to witness Ruth and Luke perish in such an unspeakable and nightmarish way, better to die with them, and at his own hand.

Jaeger resolved that was what he would do. If his wife and son were taken from him for a second time — and this time for ever — he would choose an early death. He’d put a bullet in his brain.

At least then he would rob Kammler of his ultimate victory.

It hadn’t taken him and his team long to make the decision to abandon Plague Island. They could have done nothing there: nothing for Ruth and Luke, or for each other, not to mention the wider human population.