“What are you going to tell the men at the gate?” Sheila yelled.
“I’m going to tell them to eat my dust!” Harlan yelled back.
There was a black-and-white, weighted wooden gate across the driveway. The pedestrian traffic walked around it. Harlan hit it at about forty-five miles per hour and the Rover’s bush bars made mincemeat of it. The smiling guards dove out of the way to either side.
Sheila spun around and looked out the back of the car. The guards had recovered and were running after them. Also in pursuit was a pack of wildly barking dogs. Gatekeepers and dogs quickly disappeared as Harlan negotiated an S-curve around some virgin conifers.
The Range Rover rocketed out of the trees. The huge mansion loomed before them in the night. The entire building was glowing, particularly the windows. The undulating bands of light that were rhythmically expanding up into the night sky appeared to be coming from the roof like gigantic flames.
“Aren’t you going to slow down a little?” Sheila yelled. The engine was whining like a jet turbine and the kettle drums were pounding. It sounded as if the entire orchestra was inside the car. Sheila reached up and grasped the handle above the passenger-side door to steady herself.
Harlan didn’t answer. His expression was one of intense concentration. Up until that moment he’d been steering the vehicle within the confines of the driveway. Now that he had the house in sight, he drove straight toward it across the lawn to avoid the pedestrians. People were streaming from the mansion in single file on the way out of the property.
About a hundred feet from the wide, sweeping steps that led up to the front terrace, Harlan downshifted despite the fact that the engine’s RPMs were already close to the red area on the gauge. The car responded by slowing considerably. At the same time significant power was directed to the rear wheels.
“Holy shit!” Jonathan yelled as the distance closed to the front steps. People could be seen diving blindly over the limestone handrails to get away from the three tons of steel hurtling at them.
The Range Rover hit the first step and the front kicked up, launching the entire vehicle into the air. The tires made contact with the earth again at the rear of the front terrace ten feet from the double French door entry. Multipaned side lights surrounded the front door on both sides as well as the top.
Everyone but Harlan squeezed their eyes shut when the collision with the house occurred. There was a muted sound of shattering glass that could be heard above the classical music, but there was surprisingly little effect on the car’s forward momentum. Harlan hit the brakes and threw the steering wheel to the right. He was intent on avoiding the grand staircase which was directly ahead.
The car skidded on the black-and-white checkered marble floor, brushed past a large crystal chandelier, and then collided with a marble console table and an interior plastered wall. There was a crunching sound and everyone was thrown against their seat belts. The passenger-side airbag inflated and pressed a startled Sheila back into her seat.
Harlan fought the steering wheel as the car bounced over the crushed table and broken two-by-four studding. The final collision was with a metal and wooden structure draped with electrical cable. The car came to a halt against a steel girder that shattered the windshield, splintering it into a thousand pieces of tempered glass.
Outside the car there was sputtering and sparking as well as a strange mechanical hum that could be felt more than heard over the booming classical music.
“Is everybody okay?” Harlan asked as he disconnected his fingers from the steering wheel. He’d been holding it so tight as to preclude circulation. Both his hands and forearms were stiff. He turned down the volume on the CD player.
Sheila fought with the collapsing airbag. It had abraded her cheek and forearms.
Everyone responded that they had weathered the crash surprisingly well.
Harlan glanced out through the broken front windshield. All he could see were wires and twisted debris. “Do you think this is the ballroom, Cassy?” he asked.
“I do,” Cassy said.
“Then mission accomplished,” Harlan said. “With all these wires, it certainly appears as if we’ve collided with some sort of high-tech apparatus. By the looks of all this sparking, we’ve done something.”
Since the Range Rover’s engine was still running, Harlan put it in reverse and gave it gas. With a good deal of scraping the car inched backward along its path of destruction. After ten feet the car cleared the superstructure of the Gateway. Everyone could see up to a platform that appeared to be made of Plexiglas. Oval stairs of the same material led up to it. Standing on the platform was a hideous alien creature illuminated by the unabating electrical sparks. Its coal-black eyes regarded those in the car with shocked disbelief.
All at once the creature threw back his head and let out an agonizing cry of grief. Slowly he sank down to the surface of the platform and gripped his head with his hands in utter anguish.
“My God! It’s Beau,” Cassy said from the backseat.
“I’m afraid it is,” Pitt agreed. “Only his mutation has been complete.”
“Let me out!” Cassy said. She undid her seat belt.
“No,” Pitt said.
“There’re too many loose wires,” Harlan said. “It’s too dangerous, especially with all this sparking going on. The voltage must be astronomical.”
“I don’t care,” Cassy said. She reached across Pitt and opened the door.
“I can’t let you,” Pitt said.
“Let go of me,” Cassy snapped. “I have to get out.”
Reluctantly, Pitt let Cassy get out of the car. Gingerly she stepped over the wires and then slowly mounted the steps to the platform. As she got closer she could hear Beau moaning over the mechanical hum and the sputtering wires. She called out to him and he slowly raised his eyes.
“Cassy?” Beau questioned. “Why didn’t I sense you?”
“Because I’ve been freed of the virus,” Cassy said. “There’s hope! There’s hope we can get our old lives back.”
Beau shook his head. “Not for me,” he said. “I can’t go back, and yet I can’t go forward. I have failed the trust put in me. These human emotions are a terrible hindrance. They are completely unsuitable. Wanting you I have forsaken the collective good.”
A sudden increase in the electrical sparking heralded a vibration. It was slight at first but rapidly gained strength.
“You must flee, Cassy,” Beau said. “The electrical grid has been interrupted. There will be no force counteracting the antigravity. There’ll be a dispersion.”
“Come with me, Beau,” Cassy said. “We have a way of ridding you of the virus.”
“I am the virus,” Beau said.
The vibration had reached a point where Cassy was having trouble maintaining her balance on the translucent steps.
“Go, Cassy!” Beau shouted passionately.
With one final touch of Beau’s extended finger, Cassy struggled down to the floor of the ballroom. The room was now shaking as if there were an earthquake.
She managed to get back to the car. Pitt was holding the door open for her. She climbed in.
“Beau said we have to flee,” Cassy yelled. “There’s going to be a dispersion.”
Needing little encouragement, Harlan put the car in reverse and stomped down on the accelerator. There was more bumping and shaking than when the car had come into the building, but soon they were back in the main hall.
Deftly Harlan pulled the car around so that it was facing out through the shattered front entrance. The chandelier above was shaking so badly that bits and pieces of the crystal were flying off in various directions. Sitting in the front seat with no windshield, Sheila had to shield her face.
“Hang on, everybody,” Harlan said. With wheels spinning on the slick marble, he rocketed the Range Rover out through the front door, across the terrace, and down the stairs. The jolt from hitting the driveway at the base of the stairs was as bad as the impa
ct had been when they’d slammed into the ballroom wall.
Harlon drove back across the lawn in a beeline toward the cleft in the trees that marked the point where the driveway emerged.
“Must you drive this fast?” Sheila complained.
“Cassy said there was going to be a dispersion,” Harlan said. “I figured the greater the distance we’re away the better.”
“What the hell is a dispersion?” Sheila asked.
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Harlan admitted. “But it sounds bad.”
At that moment there was a tremendous explosion behind them, but without the usual noise or shock wave. Cassy happened to have turned around in time to see the house literally fly apart. There also wasn’t any flash of light to indicate the point of conflagration.
At the same time everyone in the Range Rover became aware that they had literally become airborne. Without any traction the engine raced until Harlan took his foot from the accelerator.
The flying lasted only five seconds, and the return to earth was accompanied by a sudden lurch since the wheels had slowed but the forward movement of the car had not.
Bewildered by this strange phenomenon Harlan braked and brought the car to a stop. He was unnerved at having totally lost control of the vehicle even if it had been only for a few seconds.
“We were flying there for a moment,” Sheila declared. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Harlan said. He looked at the gauges and dials as if they might provide some answers.
“Look what happened to the house,” Cassy said. “It’s disappeared.”
Everyone turned to look. Outside the car the pedestrians were doing the same. There was no smoke and no debris. The house had just vanished.
“So now we know what a dispersion is,” Harlan said. “It must be the opposite of a black hole. I guess whatever is dispersed is reduced to all its primary particles, and they are just blown away.”
Cassy felt emotion well up inside of her. There was a sudden, intense sense of loss, and a few tears rolled out onto her cheeks.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pitt saw Cassy’s tears. He understood immediately and put his arm around her shoulder. “I’ll miss him too,” he said.
Cassy nodded. “I guess I’ll always love him,” she said wiping her eyes with a knuckle. But then she quickly added: “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
With a tenaciousness that took Pitt’s breath away, Cassy clasped him in an intense embrace. Tentatively at first and then with equal ardor Pitt hugged her back.
Harlan got out of the car and went around the back. He got out the flasks. “Come on, everybody,” he said. “We’ve got some of our own infecting to do.”
“Holy shit,” Jonathan cried. “There’s my mother.”
Everyone looked in the direction Jonathan was pointing.
“You know, I think you are right,” Sheila said.
Jonathan alighted from the car with the intention of sprinting across the grass. Harlan grabbed his arm and thrust one of the flasks into his hand.
“Give her a whiff, son,” Harlan said. “The sooner the better.”
DR. ROBIN COOK, a graduate of Columbia Medical School, finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard. He is the author of numerous bestselling novels.
Robin Cook, Invasion
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