Naomi turned, intending to rush down the hall to her office to call Renee, but found Morgan’s hand on her arm. “Remember, Naomi, that information didn’t come from me, and Beta-Three doesn’t exist. You may have friends in the FBI, but I’ve got friends, as well. I don’t want you as my enemy. And you certainly don’t want me as yours.”
“I don’t care about assigning blame, Howard. All I care about is finding out whatever we can about where the seeds went, and who has them besides us so we can try to stop this.” She looked at his hand, still holding her arm. “Do you mind?”
Howard let her go, and she ran toward her office. The thought briefly passed through her mind that she always seemed to be running to her office, but she never got any farther from the nightmare that pursued her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jack, Mikhailov, and Rudenko exchanged helpless looks. Jack’s presence on the base was a major breach in security that could easily send Rudenko, at least, to military prison, and potentially land Jack in prison as a spy. The Cold War was over, but that didn’t mean the old suspicions weren’t still harbored by East and West. His only cover had been the late hour of the visit, although he was sure Rudenko would have figured out some other way to smuggle him in had he arrived during daylight hours. But Jack would never pass for anything other than what he was: an American civilian on a tourist passport who had no legitimate reason or authority to be on a Russian military installation.
The door flew open.
Polkovnik Zaitsev, Mikhailov’s regimental commander, stopped short, his mouth hanging open as he caught sight of Jack, who got to his feet. Zaitsev’s face clouded over with what could only be anger, and he turned to Mikhailov and barked something in Russian. After a rapid-fire exchange that went on for what seemed like a long time, Zaitsev closed the door and turned to Jack. “So you are this Jack Dawson fellow who interfered with the Spitsbergen operation?”
Jack was surprised at Zaitsev’s voice. He sounded like a Brit, with almost no trace of a Russian accent. “I like to think that we provided a bit of support to our Russian and Norwegian allies.”
“From what you just told me, sir, we could use his help.” Mikhailov’s expression was grim. “He can be trusted, polkovnik.”
Zaitsev glared at him for a moment, then turned to Jack. “I’m not in the habit of divulging our secrets to foreigners, least of all Americans, but I cannot in good conscience not take advantage of whatever information you might be able to provide.” He moved to the other side of the tiny room and leaned back against the window sill. “There appears to have been another incident. Only this time it’s a village, Ulan-Erg, which is a few kilometers from where the facility is located, and where many who worked at the facility lived. We don’t have any details, only some hysterical reports from the local police that are quite similar to those we received about the facility that Mikhailov was sent in to investigate.”
“Are we to deploy again, sir?” Mikhailov sat up, a spark in his eyes. Jack could understand his eagerness: while none of them wanted to face the horror again, Mikhailov wanted payback for his dead men.
“No. You, your troublemaking sidekick,” he shot a glance at Rudenko, who was standing at attention, “and your American friend are staying right here. I’ve already spoken with the commander of the 247th Airborne Regiment here, and he’s agreed to deploy a battalion for a cordon-and-search of Ulan-Erg under the guise of an unannounced night training exercise.”
“Why mask it as an exercise?” Jack shook his head in confusion. “Your people, both the troops and the civilians, must know that something’s happening. Even if you just label it as a terrorist attack, that’ll help make it real. People have to be warned.”
“Warned of what?” Zaitsev shrugged. “I am convinced that something is going on, but even if I could fully accept the idea of these harvester creatures, how does that help our people? What do I tell them, that they can be attacked without warning, that their neighbor or lover might be a monster? Perhaps we should order that every household should have at least one cat in residence, and toss them out of our planes with little parachutes.”
While it wouldn’t have been so great for the cats, Jack thought that wasn’t a half-bad idea. But he let it go for now. Out of the box ideas would come later, if he and the others survived. “Fine, but please tell me that some of the troops going out will at least have thermal imagers.”
Zaitsev grimaced. “They only have two. They are new, and the regiment here had them for evaluation purposes. But I’m not sure what to tell them to look for.”
“They’ll know when they see a harvester, colonel. Trust me, they’ll know. And are the troops going out equipped with any of the special munitions that Mikhailov’s men had?”
“No. They do not have that sort of thing here. As I understand it, those were another little specialty of Rudenko’s.”
The NCO made no outward sign that his name had been mentioned, but Jack noticed that he relaxed slightly at the colonel’s complimentary tone. While Rudenko would no doubt still be in hot water for getting Jack onto the base, he probably wouldn’t be tossed in prison.
Down below, they heard doors slamming open, followed by hundreds of pairs of boots slapping through the rain-soaked ground. Men shouted orders, and in the distance came the whine of helicopter engines spooling up.
Zaitsev pulled the curtains aside so he could glance out the window. “It’s about time. Were it our regiment, we would have been boarding fifteen minutes ago.”
As he turned back around to face the other three men, the door opened. None of them had heard the newcomer approach amidst the hubbub outside.
In the doorway, his drenched uniform dripping water on the floor, stood an officer, a major, if Jack recalled the Russian rank insignias correctly. In his hands he held an assault rifle, the muzzle pointed at Zaitsev’s chest. Jack was sitting off to one side, out of the man’s line of sight.
“Putin!” Zaitsev bellowed. “What is the meaning of this?”
In the hallway, out of view of his three companions, Jack caught sight of the sprawled forms of the two men who’d been on guard outside the room. They were the two who Rudenko had said had survived the battle on Spitsbergen. They were dead.
In Jack’s eyes, the next few seconds seemed to unfold in an eerie, stroboscopic slow-motion sequence.
The muzzle flash from the rifle as Putin fired.
Zaitsev stumbling back, arms windmilling, a cone of blood spraying out behind him.
Putin turning, aiming the rifle toward Mikhailov, who was diving to the floor on the far side of his bed.
Rudenko, unable to fire his shotgun without hitting Jack, charging Putin. The heavy thud as the big man slammed into the Russian major, throwing off his aim as he fired at Mikhailov.
The big Desert Eagle in Jack’s hands, the muzzle coming up slowly, so slowly, to track Putin as he grappled with Rudenko.
The NCO grunting in pain, then falling to the floor.
Putin, something that looked like a machete sticking out of his chest, slick with Rudenko’s blood, again aiming his rifle toward Mikhailov.
The flash of the Desert Eagle firing, the heavy recoil hammering Jack’s arms and shoulders.
The Putin-thing screeched as the bullet slammed into its body, which burst into flame as the incendiary filling in the slug exploded.
Time rushed forward again as the shrieking, burning harvester vaulted over Zaitsev’s body and hurled itself out the window.
Jack rushed to the shattered window and caught sight of the thing three floors below. It had the good fortune to have landed in a deep puddle, which put out the flames of its burning malleable flesh. It had fallen amidst a group of the airborne troops double-timing out to the landing field, so while Jack held the thing in his sights, he didn’t dare fire for fear of hitting one of the Russians.
Mikhailov appeared beside him, and he shouted something at the troops who were looking from what they took to be a fallen comrade to this lunatic
wearing nothing but a hospital gown, yelling at them from the third floor.
The harvester decided the matter. Leaving gobbets of smoldering flesh behind, it raced away on all fours, a revolting hybrid of man and beast that shouldered aside any men in its way, knocking them to the ground like bowling pins.
Those who had been standing in shock, watching the spectacle, dove to the ground as Rudenko’s shotgun roared and a massive jet of white hot particles flew from the muzzle. Either sufficiently confident in his aim that he wouldn’t miss or simply willing to sacrifice any of his fellow soldiers who got in the way, he fired three times at the thing before it turned the corner. But the already short range of the Dragon’s Breath shells was further shortened by the rain, and all he managed to accomplish was to elicit a stream of curses and shouts from the unsuspecting men below.
“Tvoyu mat’!” Rudenko slammed a bloody fist down on the windowsill in rage. He bellowed at the men below, pointing in the direction Putin had fled, and several men took off in pursuit. There was a deep cut in his arm, just below the elbow, where the harvester had wounded him. It was bleeding, drops splashing onto the windowsill as he angrily gestured for more men to follow after Putin, but the cut was clearly superficial.
The same could not be said for Zaitsev.
“Oh, shit,” Jack hissed as he and Mikhailov knelt next to the fallen colonel, while Rudenko pounded out of the room, bellowing for help. Zaitsev’s uniform jacket was wet with blood around the neat hole in the right side of his chest, and there was more crimson pooling under his body. The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood, with a faint trace of the nauseating scent of ammonia and burning hemp characteristic of the harvesters as they transitioned to their natural form.
Holstering his pistol, Jack pressed his hands to the wound in Zaitsev’s chest, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. “Colonel? Can you hear me?”
Zaitsev’s eyes blinked open. He nodded a fraction. “That was one of them?”
“Yes. And there could be more.” Jack looked up at the sound of running feet. Two men and a woman wearing surgical scrubs ran into the room, with two more behind them, wheeling a gurney.
As one of them took over from Jack, pressing a pad of gauze against the wound, Jack began to stand up, but Zaitsev grabbed his arm, his grip surprisingly strong. “You must help those men,” he whispered, a trickle of blood running from his lips. “You and Mikhailov. They will not know what to expect, will not understand.”
Jack glanced up at Mikhailov, who returned a curt nod. “Yes, sir. I’ll do what I can.”
Four more men burst into the room, all wearing full tactical gear and holding weapons at the ready. One of them, wearing the same rank insignia as Zaitsev, glanced at Jack, then knelt next to Zaitsev, who whispered a few words to him.
Babbling something in Russian, the man who seemed to be in charge of the medical team pushed the new colonel, who Jack assumed must be the commander of the 247th Airborne Regiment, whose men were outside, out of the way. Then the medical team gently lifted Zaitsev onto the gurney before racing down the hall toward the elevators.
The colonel turned to Mikhailov and asked a few questions in Russian. Then he turned to Jack. The man was powerfully built, like a bodybuilder, and could probably have given Rudenko a good run for his money in a fight. He had close-cropped gray hair and blue eyes that seemed to take in everything, yet revealed nothing. “You are American?”
Jack nodded.
Looking at the Desert Eagle under Jack’s left arm and his bloodied hands, the colonel asked, “You have combat experience?”
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel glanced down the hall where the medical team had taken Zaitsev, then turned back to Jack. “He told me you are to come with us, if you wish. If he were anyone else, I would think him mad.” He suddenly extended a hand to take Jack’s, even though Jack’s own hand was covered with Zaitsev’s blood. The colonel’s grasp was powerful. “You will come? As, ah, special advisor, we will say, da?”
Jack couldn’t even imagine the diplomatic implications of what this man was asking, not to mention the risk to his own life. Jack knew that he’d been lucky so far, incredibly lucky. But eventually, that luck was going to run out. It was only a matter of time. Just in the last forty-eight hours, he’d been in two lethal confrontations, and was hurling himself into a third. He hadn’t even had enough time for the shakes, the adrenaline crash, to catch up to him after the shootout with the Putin-thing. There was no time now to think, to ponder. He thought of Naomi, and cursed himself for a fool. He wouldn’t even have time to let her know what he was doing, which he suspected was probably for the best. She would reach through the phone and kill him on the spot. The reasonable answer, the smart answer, was to stay here, to let the Russians handle this on their own. But he also knew that this wasn’t a fight they were prepared for, and if he could do anything to help them, he would. He had to. “Yes, sir. I’ll come with you. I’ll need gear, though.”
As if on cue, Rudenko appeared in the doorway with another soldier in tow, both laden with uniforms, equipment, and weapons.
“Hurry. We leave soon.” The colonel spoke a few words to Mikhailov, then he and the three men who had come with him turned and left, their boots echoing down the hall until the sound was swallowed up by the growing roar of helicopter turbines.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Jack quickly stripped out of his clothes and donned the uniform and equipment that Rudenko handed him, while the other soldier helped Mikhailov get dressed. “What, you’re coming, too? You should be staying here!”
“Would you, after what just happened?” Mikhailov winced as he pulled on the uniform jacket, then the body armor. “I can walk, I can think, I can shoot. I will not stay behind.”
Rudenko threw Jack a worried glance, but said nothing.
Jack cinched up the combat harness, heavy with ammunition and grenades. “Who’s the colonel, by the way? The regimental commander here?”
“Yes,” Mikhailov told him. “He is Valentin Kuybishev, Polkovnik Zaitsev’s brother-in-law. Kuybishev is a heartless killer, with a fearsome reputation earned in Chechnya. But he is also very fond of Zaitsev, I have been told. That is why he agreed to Zaitsev’s request to take you without any argument. With Zaitsev’s blood on their hands, the harvesters have made this a personal vendetta for him. They will regret it.”
“That’s what I was thinking about Naomi,” Jack told him as he finished donning his gear. He grabbed the helmet and shotgun that Rudenko held out for him and followed the others out the door. “When she finds out about this little stunt, she’s going to kill me.”
* * *
The Putin-thing loped through the dark and rain. It had easily escaped its pursuers, even the animals — dogs — the humans had set after it. It had shed the damaged flesh, and with it the pain caused by the human who had shot it. It had only gotten a brief glance at him, but knew it would recognize him again, as it would the others in the room, if such a time ever came to pass.
The man it had shot, Zaitsev, had not been its intended target, but was merely in the way. It had planned to kill Mikhailov in his bed, then track down Rudenko, to contain any knowledge of its own existence. It now realized that was a short-sighted strategy. Had it continued to mimic Putin, it could have put itself into a more advantageous position. While it was very young and with little survival experience, it was learning at an exponential rate, and now understood the concept and benefits of moving up the ranks, as the shadowy memories of the humans it had consumed called it.
As the thing came to a heavily wooded area, it looked up at the sound of helicopters flying low over the city, heading east. It waited until they were gone, wondering at their destination, before it continued on its way.
It was guided now as much by instinct as conscious thought. It had no wounds to heal, but would need to feed again to replace the malleable flesh it had lost.
There was that, but something more, as well. It stopped as it was over
taken with a peculiar sensation, and felt a sudden swelling in the malleable flesh that surrounded its thorax.
Focusing its visual receptors, its eyes, on its thorax, it watched as a lump the size of a human fist rose from the soft tissue. The base of the lump began to constrict until the lump detached and fell away, landing on the ground with a soft splash.
Curious, the thing probed the lump with one of its smaller appendages, the serrated tip poking into the newly formed mass of flesh. Outwardly, it appeared to be nothing more than malleable tissue.
But appearances, as it knew quite well, could be deceiving. A wave of searing pain shot up the appendage touching the lump of tissue. The thing shrieked and tried to jerk its appendage away, but the tissue clung on tenaciously. The pain became greater with every second as the lump, driven by its own genetic imperatives, feasted upon the appendage, greedily consuming it.
In desperation, the thing extended the blade from the pod in its thorax with which it had injured one of the humans. With a decisive slash, it amputated the appendage just above the lump. A spurt of ichor fluid pulsed from the mutilated limb.
Snarling at its cannibalistic offspring, the thing backed away and watched, brooding, as its “child” finished consuming the rest of the amputated appendage. The lump, larger now, paused, as if it were sniffing the air, then began to ooze toward its parent.
The thing backed away. Already, the bleeding from its wound had stopped, although the severed limb still throbbed with pain.
Its offspring continued to move in its direction, but the thing didn’t wait for another close encounter. It turned and fled from the woods into the adjoining neighborhood. But it was not simply fleeing from its offspring. It had been overcome with a sense of ravenous hunger, and it needed to feed. And soon.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 17