Lost Gates by James Axler Page A

that if she could angle that run, she stood a chance of reaching the level exit before the swarm, and maybe shutting them off.
    Doc…
    She glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Doc was standing there, watching her, seemingly oblivious of the swarm as it passed him.
    “Run!” she yelled, breath catching in her throat. The metallic tang to the air made it hard to breathe.
    Doc tilted his head. Why, he wondered, was Mildred headed off at such speed? She was acting like a spooked horse, running blind with panic. And yet he couldn’t see anything that could account for that.
    The bay was empty and silent.
    Mildred reached the level exit and turned. In the red light it seemed as though the mosquitoes hung motionless for a moment, then dissolved into thin air. She panted heavily, gulping down air. The tang rasped at the back of her mouth, and made her sinuses feel as though they were being sandblasted.
    “Doc, what…” she breathed.
    The old man strode toward her, a look of concern discernible on his face when he came within the red illumination.
    “I do not know, my dear Mildred. But I do know that I did not see whatever it was that you saw. That being the case, I suggest we make speed before such a thing happens again.”
    Mildred shook her head as though to clear it, although the vision and the sound were now gone. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Doc. What the hell happened there?”
    Doc sniffed the air speculatively. “I am not sure, but I suspect that the quality of the air may have something to do with it. Have you noticed a change?”
    Mildred gave him a wry grin. “You’re asking me that after what just happened?”
    “A fair point,” Doc conceded as he hustled her into the corridor leading to the next level down. It struck him, as they moved, that it had been an incredibly stupid question for him to ask. So ridiculous, in fact, that it was laughable. He chuckled. The sound was low and mellifluous, rumbling deep in his chest and stomach, a ripple that ran through his whole body, making it hard for him to move. The band of muscle across his abdomen seemed to go into spasm, bending him over with the sudden pain. And yet, despite the agony, he felt compelled to laugh.
    It came out of him now in gouts, overriding anything else he might feel. Even rational thought was hard, overwhelmed by the need to laugh and the painit was causing him. He couldn’t breathe, his ribs constricted by the spasm in his gut.
    Mildred stopped and looked back. Doc was convulsed in fits of laughter. Literally—he looked like a man in the throes of a fit. As she watched, he doubled over and fell to the floor, twitching, laughing all the while, despite the pain that he had to be in as he spasmed. She hurried toward him, her mind racing. First the mosquitoes, now the uncontrollable laughter. What could be causing it? They knew that the redoubt was empty, so there was no human hand that could be behind the strange effects.
    She realized what was happening. The air has tasted different to her shortly before she had seen the first mosquito. Doc had remarked on a similar sensation shortly before he had started to laugh.
    They both knew that the air was stale and recycled. It hadn’t been breathed by humans for over a century. And the redoubt had been evacuated before skydark, as there was no sign of habitation. What if there had been a reason for that? Suppose that the redoubt had been more than just a refueling depot? Suppose it was home to chemical weapons? Nerve agents of some kind? Suppose there had been a leak of these agents, and they had infected the redoubt. Perhaps an evacuation had been ordered until the problem had been resolved.
    But what if skydark had put an end to any such action? The nerve agents would be in the atmosphere of the redoubt, being recycled and cleaned again and again by the filters in the air purification system. All chemical weapons had some kind of shelf life after which their effects diminished. That, with the