After a moment, the two returned their attention to Khatuna and mumbled something. With a curt nod, she turned and took one end of the hose from Jack, while one of the two men took the rest of it. While Khatuna connected her end to the plane, the man took his end to where the fuel tank fill caps were. Dropping the hose, he opened one of the caps, unscrewed something inside, then dropped in the hose.
Khatuna climbed inside the plane, and Jack heard a hum from inside the aircraft. The hose twitched as fuel began to flow into the An-2’s dry tanks.
His role in their little play concluded, Jack stepped close to the cockpit, making sure to keep clear of the still-hot engine.
Khatuna slid the side window back and leaned out.
“I’m going to try to call home,” he told her.
She nodded, then turned away. Jack could hear Mikhailov saying something. “Sergei says do not talk too long. And keep watch for politsiya.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Jack stepped under the plane to the side opposite the people who continued to point and jabber about the plane. Pulling out his phone, he breathed a sigh of relief to see that, although the battery was low, it was still working. He dialed Naomi’s number.
“We’re sorry,” a recorded female voice told him after a few rings. “That number is currently unavailable.”
“Shit.” He tried again, but got the same recording. Then he dialed Renee’s number.
After two rings he heard her voice. “I’m sorry, hon, but you’re going to have to leave a message. I’ll ring you back as soon as I can. Leave a message at the beep.”
“Dammit,” he hissed. He hit the end call button. He didn’t want to waste the little bit of battery power he had left leaving a message.
That left only one choice. He dialed the number for Richards’ cell phone.
He answered on the first ring. “Dawson! Where the blazes are you?”
“I’m in Russia with Mikhailov, trying to make our way to Moscow. Listen, we’ve got to make this quick. My phone’s about ready to die.”
“Understood. Status?”
“Things are going to hell fast here, Carl. Last night I jumped into a village in southern Russia with half a battalion of Russian paratroopers. They were all wiped out in the fight. And it wasn’t just that village: the harvesters have spread like wildfire through the Caucasus region, causing hell all over the place, especially at military facilities, and the government’s declared a quarantine line along the Don and Volga rivers. They’re turning back planes, even threatening to shoot them down.”
“You jumped in with Russian paratroopers? You’re insane, Dawson.” Jack could imagine Richards shaking his bald head in disbelief. “But thanks for the tip on the quarantine. We hadn’t heard that from our intel people, yet.”
“When you do, believe it. And if things are moving this fast here, India’s going to be just as bad, maybe worse.” India was a lot more densely populated than Russia. More food for the harvesters, he thought darkly.
“That’s not the worst,” Richards told him. “LA’s been hit, Dawson. It’s a war zone out there, and we’re doing everything we can to keep those damn things from spreading.”
Jack felt as if someone had just punched him in the gut. “Naomi?”
Richards was silent for a moment. “She’s in the field. We’re trying to get her out.”
Leaning back against the cold metal skin of the plane, Jack said, “Christ, Carl. What the devil was she doing?”
“Her job, Dawson. Just like you and the rest of us. There aren’t any sideliners in this one, not anymore.” He paused. “Listen, if it’s any consolation, she’s with a team led by one of our best. You remember Boisson, don’t you?”
“Angie Boisson? Yeah, she was on the Bronsky case, wasn’t she?” Jack recalled the tough African-American woman who’d been in the shootout that was the finale of the multi-state killing spree by the murderous Bronsky brothers. When the FBI had sprung the trap that Jack had helped lay, Boisson had taken two rounds to the chest. Her body armor had stopped the slugs, but Jack knew that getting hit like that was an extremely painful experience that you didn’t just shrug off. But Boisson did. Ignoring the pain, she got back to her feet, grabbed up her weapon, and continued blazing away at the bad guys, and was credited with the killing shot for one of the two murderers.
“Yeah, the same. She’ll get Naomi out of there. You just need to stay focused on getting yourself home. Don’t let the Russians screw with you.”
“That’s the trick,” Jack told him. “I don’t have my passport or visa, and we’re escapees from the quarantine zone. Mikhailov’s trying to get us to his superiors.” He glanced up at the An-2 looming over him. “And let’s just say that we’re taking an unconventional mode of transportation.”
“I’m not even going to ask. I’ll tell the embassy people about you losing your passport. Dumb-ass.”
“Tell me about it.” He glanced at his phone. “I’m about out of juice. I’ll call you back when I can.”
“Take care of yourself,” Richards told him. “And don’t worry about Naomi. We’ll get her out of there.”
“Right.” Jack hung up, not feeling at all reassured. He knew that whatever Naomi was doing must have been necessary, and he told himself not to worry himself sick over her. She’s a big girl and can take care of herself. And he knew that it was true. That thought helped, at least a little.
He looked up as Mikhailov slid open his window and poked his head out. “Jack, get in here. We’ve got trouble.”
* * *
“What is it?” Jack was again standing in the cockpit behind Mikhailov and Khatuna.
Mikhailov had his cell phone to his ear and held up his hand for Jack to be quiet as he listened. His eyes met Jack’s, and he shook his head slowly.
“Da,” Mikhailov said. Then he spoke some more in Russian. He listened again, then hung up and put the phone back inside his tunic.
Khatuna looked frightened.
“Now what?”
“That was my division commander in Pskov. You are now a wanted man, Jack. The FSB, what I think you translate as Federal Security Service, which is actually a new name for the old KGB, thinks you brought the infection here.”
“What?”
“Do not shoot the messenger, please. They have issued orders to all police and military forces that you are to be arrested. And if you resist, you are to be shot.” He winced. Talking was becoming more and more of an effort. “Apparently some in the FSB do not believe the American government’s revisionist history, resurrecting you as a ‘good guy’ from your earlier status as a murderer and terrorist last year.”
“And the fact that the outbreak at the facility where you were first ambushed happened before I arrived here obviously eluded them,” Jack said bitterly.
“They are paranoid, faced with a disaster they cannot begin to comprehend,” Mikhailov told him. “Blaming disasters on a scapegoat is a very old game, my friend.”
“How did they even know Jack is involved?” Khatuna asked.
“Colonel Zaitsev informed VDV Headquarters that Jack was with us, and that he was a valuable source of information that must be protected. The FSB has ears everywhere, even in the VDV.” He frowned. “I suspect my division commander will be arrested for helping us.”
“Why did he?” Jack was curious. “Why didn’t he follow orders? They could’ve just waited for us to appear and then clapped me in irons.”
“I think because he realizes that you can help us, and that if the FSB gets you, it will not be a good thing for our country.”
Jack sucked a breath of air in through his teeth. “What do we do now? We can’t just waltz into Moscow to VDV Headquarters, and there’s no way I’d be able to get to the American Embassy or a consulate anywhere; they’ll be covered by FSB surveillance. And this crate won’t get us out of Russian territory.”
“This plane could get to Ukraine or Belarus,” Khatuna told him defensively. Jack realized that she really loved th
e old Antonov.
“That will not help,” Mikhailov said. “If they have not already, they will soon close their borders, and they still have deep ties to FSB. They may not turn you over, but they will probably hold you for interrogation. Perhaps for a long time.” He shook his head. “None of the former Soviet Republics will be safe. We need to get you to a NATO country.”
“What about the Baltic states? Aren’t Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in NATO now?”
Mikhailov snorted. “Yes, but we could only reach either Estonia or Latvia; we would have to cross over Belarus to reach Lithuania. True, they are NATO members, but do you really wish to trust yourself against the FSB backed by Russian military forces in either of those countries, where they have maybe ten thousand men, combined, in their active defense forces? And Finland is not a NATO country. They have no love for us, but you would likely be swallowed for some time there, too. Quarantined, if nothing else.”
Jack scowled at him. “Well, Sergei, you’re not leaving us with a lot of choices. We can’t go east, because that’s just more of Russia until we get to China, which is probably also in the shitter by now. We can’t go south. We can’t go west. With the Baltic countries and Finland out of the running, the only country that’s left is…” Jack paused as the light bulb went off in his head.
“Da.” Mikhailov nodded, his blood-streaked lips curling up in a smile. “Norway.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“I don’t like this.”
Naomi looked up from her study of the larval harvester in the carboy to see Boisson staring at the racetrack and stables to the north of the mall. The horrid cries of the animals there had finally stopped. Now, from that direction, there was only silence that was in marked contrast to the sounds of panic and chaos coming from the other points of the compass.
The worst was from the hospital complex just east of the racetrack parking lot where the team had been huddling for the last half hour. There had been a steady stream of ambulances coming in, trying to push their way through a crowd of hundreds of people, all trying to get into the emergency room.
But about fifteen minutes ago, there had been a sudden flurry of shots fired, and since then there had been nothing but panicked screams, even as more ambulances arrived.
Naomi could only guess, but she had no doubt that at least some of the people who’d been taken there had been attacked by larval harvesters. She shivered as she watched the oozing thing in the big glass jar, imagining what a nightmare the hospital’s emergency room must be now. Beyond that, there were probably casualties now among the hospital’s staff, doctors and nurses who had been attacked by the creeping horrors as they’d fought to save their dying patients.
“I doubt we’ll have to worry about any threats from the hospital,” she said, turning her attention away from the larva and getting back to her feet. “The harvesters will congregate there as long as there’s a food supply.”
“I don’t mean that.” Boisson pointed to the stables. Several harvesters had appeared, running headlong away from the stables. “That.”
Everyone tensed, watching the creatures as they bolted across the huge parking lot. A couple were heading in their general direction, but the others weren’t. They were heading in random directions, anywhere that took them away from the stables.
“It looks like they’re trying to get away from something.”
Naomi forgot whatever else she’d planned to say as a flood of harvesters, dozens of them, came out of the stable area across the parking lot. She watched in fascination as one of them stumbled, then fell to writhe on the ground. She tapped Boisson on the arm. “Can I borrow your binoculars?”
Boisson reached into a pouch and pulled out her Pioneer binoculars and handed them to Naomi.
Putting them up to her eyes, Naomi stared in rapt fascination at the downed harvester. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. In their natural form, the harvesters tended to gather their malleable flesh around the torso, which in part gave rise to their quasi-cockroach appearance. This one had that, but had more wrapped around one of its arms, and that arm was clearly quite a bit shorter than the other one. “My God! It’s being attacked by one of the larval forms!”
“Cannibals? Now there’s a pleasant surprise.”
Naomi wasn’t sure if she should be surprised or not. This was their first insight into how the larval forms and the adults interacted. It looked like a little bit of good news for a change.
“There goes another.” Boisson pointed to another creature that tumbled to the pavement, maybe twenty yards from where the first had gone down. “Oh, Jesus!”
They saw what the adult harvesters, of which there must have been hundreds now, were fleeing from across the expanse of the parking lot.
Naomi swiveled the binoculars to the left, toward where the stables were, and gasped. There was a line of larvae advancing across the parking lot. Unlike the specimen they’d captured, or even the one that had dropped from the upper floor of the mall when Garcia had pushed her out of the way, these were huge. They were, literally, each as big as a horse. Some were larger.
As she watched, she saw that some still hadn’t fully digested their most recent victims. A horse’s leg rose up, as if begging for help, from the mass of one of the biggest larvae as it rolled across the parking lot. It slowly disappeared, sinking into the bruised-looking mass of tissue.
“Naomi.”
Naomi couldn’t speak. She was both fascinated and repelled by what she was seeing.
“Naomi!”
“What?” Naomi lowered her binoculars and looked at the team’s leader.
“I think we’d better get going,” Boisson told her in a tight voice. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but we have an awful lot of company heading our way.”
Looking back to the north, seeing the entire view rather than just the narrow perspective provided by the binoculars, a chill ran through Naomi as she saw just how many harvesters were fleeing right toward them.
Boisson called out to the men and women on the team. “Make a line in front of us with the lighter fluid, but don’t light it yet! Carson,” she said to the agent holding the larva, “set that damn thing down about twenty meters behind us, then get on the firing line. Doctor, you stick with me.”
Then she keyed her radio. Naomi noted that it took her several tries to reach the LA ops center this time.
“This is Boisson. Yes, we’re still at the fucking mall. I know you can’t send evac yet, but there’s a pair of Marine Cobras working over some positions one or two kilometers to the south of our position. I want at least one of them up here to cover us.” She listened for a moment, and Naomi could see her face go rigid with anger. “Get me the SAC. Now.”
To Naomi, she rasped, “Those stupid fools are going to get us killed. Not only do they not have any choppers available to pick us up, but the LA FBI building was attacked by rioters and the mobile command post doesn’t have any communications with the local military commands. Christ, what a fuckup. Hang on.” She listened a moment. “Yes, sir, this is Boisson. No, there’s been no evac. We were told that no choppers are available for at least another half hour. We’ve got an army of these monsters coming right for us, and there’s a pair of Marine Cobras just to our south.”
By Naomi’s guess, the closest harvesters were maybe a hundred and fifty meters away. She turned around to look at the helicopters, which were still circling. So close, she thought.
Boisson nodded at whatever the SAC on the other end of the radio was saying, but her expression told Naomi that it wasn’t good news. “Yes, sir. Understood.” Keying off the mic, she looked at Naomi. “He’s going to do what he can, but I think the only way we’re going to get out of this is on our own.”
Taking a quick look at the approaching harvesters, she reached into her combat vest and pulled out a flare. “Get ready! Try to knock some down close to us. We’ll set fire to them and maybe that’ll help keep the others away.”
Na
omi knelt down, gathering the cats close to her. They seemed to be overwhelmed by terror now, knowing that so many harvesters were close. She tied their leashes to her web belt so she could have her hands free for the shotgun. Boisson had positioned her behind the defensive line of FBI agents, but that hardly meant she was safe. And ten or so meters behind her sat the glass carboy with its precious, horrible contents.
“Steady.” Boisson held her assault rifle in one hand and a lighter in the other. She stepped forward and knelt down to the pitiful stream of lighter fluid that was all that separated her team from the oncoming horde of apparitions. “Steady.”
When the closest of the creatures was a mere ten meters away, she ignited the lighter fluid and jumped back. “Fire!”
As her team opened fire, she turned and slammed her fist against the base of the flare, launching it in the direction of the Cobras orbiting to the south. Naomi saw her mouth something, maybe a silent prayer that the Marines would see the dazzling red ball that soared toward them. A red flare. Send help.
“Back up!” At Boisson’s order, the agents began to slowly move back, away from the sputtering line of burning lighter fluid.
Harvesters went down under the barrage of fire, and just as Boisson had hoped, several of them skittered or stumbled forward into the burning lighter fluid and exploded into flames. Other harvesters, unable to stop in time, tried to leap over. Some made it, only to be blasted to pieces by the concentrated fire from the FBI agents. Others didn’t, and they joined their brethren in flames.
In no time at all, the pitiful line of lighter fluid had been transformed into a conflagration, with flames reaching a dozen or more meters into the sky. The agents had to move back, away from the blistering heat.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 32