The man made his way through the crowd and hesitantly sat down on the stool next to Putin. Putin leaned forward on the bar and crawled on his elbows until he could reach down behind it to where the bartender kept the dirty glasses before they were washed. Snatching up the first one his groping hand closed upon, he squirmed back onto the stool and poured a drink and shoved it in front of the soldier. “Here, boy, you look like you could use this. It might put some hair on your ass.”
“Thank you, sir.” The soldier nodded and wrapped a hand around the glass, but didn’t lift it to his lips.
Putin sucked down half the vodka in his glass before noticing that his companion hadn’t taken a drink. “What’s wrong? Drink up, boy.”
The soldier fidgeted, an uncomfortable look on his face. “Sir, I can’t. I’m on medication and can’t drink.”
Putin sputtered and slammed down his glass, sending a spray of vodka across the bar. He peered more closely at the soldier. “What’s your name?”
“Sleptsev, sir. Ryadavoy Pavel Ivanovich Sleptsev.”
“I know about every bastard in the entire regiment here, but I don’t know you.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not one of those pussies that came down from Pskov, are you?”
Sleptsev smiled. “I must confess that I am, sir.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here? I heard they were massacred the other day.”
“That is true, sir.” Sleptsev’s smile fell away, replaced by a look of terrible sorrow. “I came down with the company, but was violently ill when we arrived. That is what the medication is for, why I can’t drink with you. The company commander ordered me to stay behind, and I haven’t yet received orders to return to Pskov.” He shook his head. “He was a good man.”
“Who?”
“Our commander, Kapitan Mikhailov.”
Putin gaped at Sleptsev for a moment, then burst out laughing. “They must not have let you out of the barracks before now, Sleptsev. Mikhailov, that lucky bastard, made it out of that fuck-up alive. I heard that his bulldozer of a NCO, Rudenko, hauled him out.”
For just a moment, Sleptsev’s face went completely slack, as if all the tension had gone out of the muscles of his face. He blinked, then said, “No one told me, sir! I thought all this time that everyone who went there was dead!”
“Those fucking imbeciles at regimental headquarters.” Putin shook his head in disgust. “It’s no wonder we lost the Cold War. For what it’s worth, boy, I’m sorry. Our regiment sent out men to find out what happened to yours, but all they found was burned out debris, a blown up helicopter, and lots of bodies. A full company is still out there, dicking around for nothing.” He frowned. “I’m not sure Rudenko did Mikhailov any favors by saving him, though. The good captain is probably going to wind up in front of a military court, what with losing all those men here, on top of the company he lost in Spitzbergen last year. It looks bad for the Army, you know. The brass doesn’t like to be embarrassed. Stupid fuckers.” He suddenly turned around, put his hands to his mouth to amplify his voice, and bellowed into the crowd. “Poshyol ty’!”
Another round of curses and catcalls, accompanied by a few poorly-aimed shot glasses, answered his latest challenge.
Satisfied, Putin stood up, swaying unsteadily. “God, I have to take a piss.”
Sleptsev rose from his stool. “I think I’ll join you, sir. It was a long walk from the barracks.”
“Just don’t pee on my boots, or you’ll be licking them clean, boy.”
Pushing his way through the crowd, Putin exchanged good-natured insults and curses with the men and more than a few of the women he passed. At last through the throng, he made his way down a narrow hallway that held several doors. Lively banter and laughter could be heard from some rooms, moans and cries from others. “Fucking cathouse.”
At the very end were two doors, both unmarked. Putin kicked open the one on the right, surprising two men and a woman who were snorting a white powdery substance off a cut piece of glass over one of the two sinks.
His face clouding with a red rage, Putin roared, “Get the fuck out of here!” All signs of his inebriation gone, he lunged forward and slammed a fist into the nearest man’s face, driving his head into the stained porcelain sink with a reverberating clang.
The woman shrieked and ran, dropping the glass holding the powder. It shattered on the tile floor.
The second man cocked his fist, ready to hit Putin from behind. Sleptsev delivered a savage kick to the man’s groin, then drove a knee into the man’s face as he bent over, his mouth open in a silent scream of pain.
Putin grabbed the first man by the collar and hurled him out the door, and Sleptsev followed suit with his own victim.
“If I ever see you in this place again,” Putin screamed, the veins in his neck bulging, as the trio escaped down the hallway to the bar, “I’ll fucking kill you!” He spat after them.
After slamming the door shut, he told Sleptsev, “Lucky for them they were just civilians. If they’d been some of our own, I’d have pounded them into paste. What’s wrong with people like that, doing drugs? Isn’t vodka good enough?”
Stepping up to the wall and the long metal gutter that served as a urinal, Putin undid his fly. “It shouldn’t be so much work just to take a piss.”
He cried out as he felt a white hot pain in his back, just above his kidneys. A veteran of many bar fights and half a dozen combat actions in Chechnya, Putin reacted instantly. He whirled around, bringing up his elbow to hit his attacker — it could only have been Sleptsev, he thought — in the face.
Except that it wasn’t Sleptsev. Not entirely, at least. Putin saw that the younger soldier’s face had softened like warm putty, and something, a tentacle, perhaps, protruded from his chest and disappeared behind Putin.
Sleptsev leaned back, impossibly far, as if his spine had elongated, to avoid Putin’s attack. Putin let his own momentum continue to spin him around, and he slammed his right fist into Sleptsev’s exposed side.
Instead of his hand rebounding after feeling the satisfying crunch of a broken rib or two, Putin’s hand disappeared into Sleptsev’s body, the younger man’s flesh extruding outward to capture Putin’s entire forearm.
Putin gaped in amazed horror. “What the fuck are you?”
The only response from the slack-faced soldier was an agonizing bolt of pain in Putin’s back, as if someone had shoved a knife even deeper into his body.
With his free hand, Putin reached around to try to grab whatever it was and pull it free. He recoiled as his hand clamped around something slick and slimy, that pulsed like testicles during orgasm.
The creature that had masqueraded as Sleptsev wrapped its arms around him, pulling him into a tight embrace. Then the putty-like flesh of the young soldier’s face parted to reveal what was truly underneath.
Putin’s scream died on his lips as he was drawn into a dark abyss.
* * *
The human’s struggles peaked as its head was drawn into the thing’s mandibles. While they had teeth, the jaws were not intended primarily for tearing, but for gripping prey while the salivary acids did their work. Ignoring the muffled screams, the thing’s saliva began to reduce the skin and muscle of the human’s face, then the bone of its skull, to elements that could be digested.
But this was not merely an act of consumption, of feeding. Long strands of cilia, much like very fine hair, rode along with the salivary acids. Through these organs the thing sensed the chemical composition of what it consumed, and with that information, the thing could adjust the content of the salivary acids to break down nearly any organic material into food.
More than that, however, the cilia could identify electrochemical impulses associated with the cells of the nervous system. Like a forest of antennae, they collected the data produced by and contained within the prey’s brain, and through a highly complex process evolved over countless millennia translated this information into memories and knowledge that the harvester could acces
s within its own central nervous system.
Since this process took longer than simple feeding, the thing drew its latest victim into one of the three toilet stalls and closed the flimsy door. It knew that there was little chance of being disturbed for some time after the violent display that it and its prey had put on, expelling the three humans who had been here.
Once it was finished, it stripped the human of its clothing and slipped out of its own. Then it altered its shape, the flesh oozing along its exoskeleton to become an exact mimic of Putin. It donned his uniform, then buried Sleptsev’s uniform in the overflowing trash can.
Opening the door a crack, it took a quick glance down the hall. It was empty.
The thing took one last look at Putin’s headless, naked body, and a thought emerged from among the mass of memories it had taken.
Fingerprints. While it had already destroyed the face and teeth, which could be used to identify the human, the body could still be identified from the tips of the fingers.
Taking the prey’s hands into its mouth, it dissolved the fingers up to the first knuckle. It knew the body would be discovered, but identifying it would be difficult.
The thing wanted to ingest more of its victim, but there was no way to tell when its feeding might be interrupted by one of the humans outside.
Extending an arm, the limb stretching beyond what a human could manage, it propped open the small window near the ceiling that looked out upon the dark alley outside. Then it shoved Putin’s body through, ignoring the wet splat it made in the rain-drenched garbage.
Checking its appearance in the mirror, the thing pulled open the door and headed back into the club. The humans there turned to see it emerge, shuffling slightly, perfectly mimicking its drunken prey. It made what it knew the humans would consider a crude gesture and shouted. “Poshyol ty’, you whores and sons of whores!”
As if letting out a pent-up breath, the club-goers hooted and jeered, happy to see that Putin was in one piece after the earlier altercation with the druggies, who had been none too gently shown to the door.
While the thing had slipped into the role of its most recent victim, it had no intention of dallying here. It had come here based on Sleptsev’s memories. He had been to this place before, a place frequented by army men, human predators that the thing might be able to manipulate to its own ends. Putin had simply been a convenient victim.
No, it could not stay here to reinforce its new persona. It had unfinished business to attend to at the military hospital.
* * *
After arriving in Moscow, Jack called Rudenko on his cell phone. None of the calls Jack, Naomi, and Renee had made from the States, or the calls Jack had made from India, had gone through. After arriving in-country, Jack had first tried to reach Mikhailov again, but had only gotten what he assumed must have been an out of service message spoken in Russian by a sultry female voice.
When he’d called Rudenko again, the NCO had answered the phone right away.
“We were not expecting you, my friend, but both the kapitan and I are very glad you are here. You, I suspect, will not be so happy after we talk.”
“And talk we must, Pavel. The question is how can I get to you? There aren’t any flights to Stavropol until tomorrow, and it’s too far to drive.” Stavropol was over seven hundred miles from Moscow.
“Stay there. I will arrange things.”
Not fifteen minutes later, a heavily-tattooed young man who looked like he might be at home in a movie about the Russian mafia appeared. After introducing himself only as Drago, he led Jack through the airport to the cargo terminal. After Drago said a few whispered words to the airport security personnel, Jack was ushered outside, where a twin turboprop aircraft that Jack recognized as an An-32 stood waiting. An aircraft widely used in both military and civilian service, this one, bearing civilian markings, looked like it had been through World War Three.
Setting aside the fear that gripped him at the sight of the flying death trap, Jack reluctantly followed the young man up the rear cargo ramp and strapped himself in.
The trip south was a surprisingly smooth flight, but it ended with a white knuckle night landing in heavy rain, and Jack couldn’t get off the plane fast enough.
Waiting for him was Rudenko, sitting behind the wheel of a Tigr four-wheeled tactical vehicle that was the Russian Army’s equivalent of the Hummer. Two other soldiers sat in the rear, and all three men were heavily armed.
“It is good to see you, Jack.” Rudenko extended a bandaged paw, and Jack hesitated. “I am fine. No worse than sunburn.” He grabbed Jack’s hand and shook it in a crushing grip.
“And you, Pavel.” He winced as Rudenko let go his hand, then pressed something large and heavy into his palm. “What’s this?”
“It is the pistol you sent me as a gift, the .50 caliber Desert Eagle. Strictly illegal, as you know, and even more illegal for a foreigner to possess. But necessary now, I fear.”
Jack glanced at the two men in the back seat, who gave him respectful nods. He noticed that both had shotguns, and they quickly turned their attention back to the rain beyond the windows, their eyes scanning the darkness.
“They see and hear nothing of this, my friend. They were with us on Spitsbergen and know what we face.”
Jack nodded, satisfied. The last thing he wanted was to land in hot water with the Russian authorities. It would be a bit difficult, even for Rudenko, to explain why Jack was carrying an illegal weapon on a Russian Army base.
Jack turned back to Rudenko. “How’s Kapitan Mikhailov doing?”
“He is recovering rapidly.” Rudenko put the Tigr into gear and headed toward the airport exit. “But he is in a great deal of trouble. Those things killed everyone else, all the men who accompanied us to that facility. He will likely face a military tribunal.”
“A court-martial?”
Rudenko nodded, the instrument lights illuminating his grim expression. “He has led men into battle twice, and both times his unit was destroyed under uncertain circumstances.”
“And no one believes what really happened?”
“I do not know for certain, but suspect not.” He glanced at Jack. “Who could believe the things we have seen?”
Jack tensed as they reached the gate to the base that served as the headquarters for the 247th Airborne Regiment. The two guards approached the Tigr and peered inside. Rudenko nodded to the one who looked in on his side. The man returned the gesture, and together the two soldiers retreated back out of the rain into the guard post. A moment later the gate was opened, and Rudenko proceeded inside.
A few minutes later, he pulled into a spot at the military hospital.
“Come. Let us go see the good kapitan.”
* * *
Nearly three hours later, well past midnight, Jack sat back, stunned. “My God, Sergei.” Sitting in Mikhailov’s room in the hospital, he not only felt as if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole, but had been accelerated to the speed of light into a horrible alternate universe as he listened to the Russian captain and Rudenko relate what had happened at the enigmatic facility near Elista.
“God had nothing to do with it, my friend.” Sergei’s eyes were clear, but he wore a haunted expression that Jack knew all too well.
“And there’s no telling how many of those things may have been spawned?”
Mikhailov shook his head. “No. There is no way of knowing that. But if these larval forms you described consumed the car tires and other missing plastic and rubber parts, all the animals, the non-infected corn plots, and the people at the lab and those who came after, there surely must be dozens of them. Certainly the ones that we killed were not all there had been, and we know for certain that one capable of mimicking a human escaped.”
“Sleptsev, I am sure of it. He was the only one who was alone long enough in the building with the corn to have been taken.” Rudenko spat. “He was shaping into a good soldier.”
“They were all good soldiers, Rudenko.”
After clearing his throat, Jack said, “There’s more that you need to know. Naomi’s been researching the genetics of these things, and she’s found differences between the original harvesters, like the ones we fought on Spitsbergen, and these new ones.”
The two Russians looked at him expectantly.
“From what she understands, the original harvesters couldn’t reproduce on their own, or they were sterile. That’s one reason there were so few of them. But these new ones, the ones being spawned by the infected corn, apparently have the ability to reproduce asexually, meaning it would only take one of them, not two.”
“How?” Mikhailov exchanged a horrified look with Rudenko.
“She’s not sure exactly, but the genes that are involved appear to be similar to those of an amoeba.”
“Like the microbes that cause dysentery?”
Jack nodded. “Right. She thinks they may reproduce by something like cellular fission, where one cell divides and becomes two, then four, then sixteen, and so on.”
Rudenko gave him a blank look and turned to Mikhailov, who spoke to him in Russian for a moment with what Jack assumed was a brief explanation.
“Chyort voz’mi,” Rudenko whispered. “How quickly? How fast?”
Jack shook his head. “She doesn’t know yet. We might never know, unless we can set up some contained experiments where we can observe the things without them getting loose.” Jack didn’t like the idea, remembering how the last experiments had gone involving captured harvesters. Unfortunately, they might not have any other choice. “On the bright side, at least your people are still out there looking around the facility. They might get lucky and bag one or two of these things, which would validate your story and give us a specimen to study.”
“They are not properly equipped. They do not have thermal imagers, nor do they have cats, of course. And while the Russian Army does not have a reputation for gentle interrogation techniques, the third field expedient, of trying to set suspected harvesters on fire, was not adopted, for obvious reasons. Nor are the men out there armed with proper weapons.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 15