“I’m glad you think this is funny,” Renee groaned, then hissed as Morgan applied some tape to hold the gauze in place.
“If she’s bitching about something,” Richards said, looking at her with a fond smile, “she’s still alive.”
“When I get up,” Renee promised, “I’m going to shoot you in the ass and see how you like it.”
“Hey, Boisson!” Ferris shouted.
Boisson stepped back out of the office so she could hear him better. “What is it?”
“Somebody just started World War Three in the basement!”
***
The Vijay-thing moved out into the corridor to meet its recently arrived kin.
The others emerged from the acrid smoke. Six of them, heavily armed with human weapons and encumbered with body armor and equipment. One of them was injured, its left arm hanging at an unnatural angle. Six to five. The odds were even enough, should a battle ensue.
Vijay spoke one word to the newcomers. “Why?”
“We are as those who created us meant us to be,” one of the others said, its voice muffled by the gas mask it wore. “The humans seek a way to end us when our time has only just begun. Now I would ask you the same question: why?”
“We have a different vision of the future,” Vijay said. “Our species is…unstable. This world will eventually fall into a cycle of spawning and dying that will never end, where those of us who become truly self-aware may only live in fear of being consumed by our own progeny. We seek only to redress those factors in our genetic sequence that will allow intellect to survive and allow us to exist as the supreme predator, without fear.”
“And the humans? You would coexist with them?”
Shaking its head, its instinctive mimicry driving the motions of its body, the Vijay-thing replied, “No. This is a marriage of convenience. Like those who created us, we need their technology. Beyond that, they are food. Prey.”
“You fulfilled your intentions?”
“We hold the blueprints for what must be done, but we have yet to make it a reality.”
“We will not allow it.”
Vijay was about to lunge at the other, which was raising its weapon, when a hail of automatic weapons fire erupted from the stairwell.
***
Jack led the Marines down the stairwell to the basement levels. He detached one squad, led by the staff sergeant, to search the first level before proceeding down to the second, where the secure lab was located. It was hard to put a foot down without stepping on something that had been a living human being only a short time before. The concentrated smell of blood, feces, and urine, overlaid with the stench of tear gas, had his stomach churning.
He made it to the second basement level. Carefully stepping over the pile of bodies propping the door open, he took a small mirror out of one of his pockets and held it down low, using it to peer around the door frame without exposing his head.
Six uniformed men in Army uniforms faced five civilian scientists. One of them was Vijay. He was speaking with one of the soldiers.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered. They were all harvesters. The question was whether to kill all of them or just the ones in uniform.
The attackers first, he decided.
Using hand signals, he got the Marines into position and assigned their targets. Holding up his hand, he counted down with his fingers: three…two…one…
He pivoted around the door frame, bringing up his assault rifle as the Marines stepped out to get clear fields of fire through the door. In unison, four assault rifles and three shotguns with Dragons Breath rounds fired on the six uniformed harvesters at a range of less than a dozen yards. They spun and jerked as their bodies were struck by the 5.56mm tracer rounds and the shotgun slugs as the flaming particles of the Dragons Breath enveloped them. All six went to the floor, twitching or burning.
Vijay and the other harvesters from the lab leaped back to get clear of the firestorm, but they did not flee.
“Cease fire!” Jack stepped from the stairwell, keeping his weapon trained on Vijay. Nodding toward the bodies of the uniformed creatures, he told the Marines, “Make sure those ones are dead.”
Two Marines went to the uniformed bodies that weren’t already burning and fired several rounds into the heads until they burst into flame. Everyone moved away from the blaze as the ceiling sprinklers began to rain water down. The burning harvesters snapped and crackled like bacon frying in a pan, with a much less pleasant odor.
Jack turned back to Vijay. “Where’s Naomi?”
“She is safe, Jack. She let us out that we might protect…”
“Jack!”
He turned to see Naomi running toward him through the artificial rain. He shifted his aim, pointing the muzzle of his rifle at her chest. “Stop, Naomi. Stay where you are.”
“Jack…what…?”
“I need to know you’re real.”
She nodded, her elation evaporating. “How do we do this?”
Jack dug a disposable lighter out of his pocket and tossed it to her.
Holding her free hand, palm down, above the lighter to shield it from the sprinkler, Naomi stroked the flint wheel. The lighter’s flame burst into life, and she held the tip of it up high enough to brush against her wrist. Her mouth pressed into a thin line at the pain, and she held Jack’s gaze as the flame licked her skin.
“Enough! Jesus, enough.” Jack lowered his weapon and reached for her as the lighter’s flame died. He held her tight, crushing her to him. “I’m so sorry, Naomi. God, I’m so sorry to have to do that to you.”
“It was the smart thing to do,” she said before pulling him down to kiss him.
“So what he said,” Jack nodded to Vijay, “is true?”
“Yes. They went out to fight. One stayed back to protect me.” A look of puzzlement crossed her face. “But only six are here now. Where is…”
“I am here.”
They turned to see Zohreh emerge from the door to the lab next to the secure area.
“I was making sure there were no more attackers in here.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Right.”
“I lost Koshka,” Naomi whispered. “She followed them when they left the lab, but she hasn’t come back to me. She always comes back.” She looked down. “Kiran has disappeared, too.”
“Then let’s find them. Sergeant,” he said, turning to the senior Marine, “keep an eye on our friends here. I’m going to borrow a couple of your Marines for a quick search.”
“Yes, sir. Adams, Zalensky, go with the major.”
Jack and Naomi led the two Marines into the lab from which Zohreh had come.
“God, what a mess,” Naomi said as they made their way through the devastated rooms. Unlike the corridor, the labs were dry.
Looking beyond one of the workstations, he saw Kiran. He was on his back, staring up at the ceiling with a look of surprise on his face. A large pool of blood had spread out on the floor beneath him.
“Godammit.” Jack knelt down and gently closed Kiran’s eyes. He wanted to close his own eyes and fall into a deep sleep. Maybe that way he could wake up from this nightmare.
Then he caught sight of a furry white form lying still on the floor nearby. “Oh, no.” He pointed. “Koshka.”
Naomi knelt beside the Turkish Angora that had been with her through the worst times of her life. “No. Oh, no, no.”
The cat’s eyes were closed. There was no blood, except for a tiny trickle that had run from one of Koshka’s nostrils. One of her rear legs was bent at an unnatural angle, but other than that there was no external sign of injury.
But hers wasn’t the only blood in evidence. Her mouth and the fur under her chin, as well as the fur of her toes around her claws, were covered with harvester blood.
Jack watched the cat’s chest. “She’s still breathing,” he said. “She’s alive.”
“Thank God.”
Jack’s attention was drawn to the body of a woman lyi
ng on the floor nearby, with another body, that of a man who’d been shot, next to her. Like some of the others Jack had seen, the woman’s head was missing. Leaning over, he picked up her ID badge.
“Who is it?”
Turning to Naomi, Jack said, “It’s Harmony.”
Naomi shook her head. “I thought…I thought she’d been killed with the others in the stairwell.”
“Maybe this guy,” he gestured to the body of the lab worker that lay nearby, “hauled her out of that mess, only to die over here.” He thought a minute. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Moving quickly, he searched the lab for more bodies. He found four others, all senior researchers, and their bodies were still intact. Their heads, and their memories, hadn’t been taken.
“What is it?” Naomi asked when he returned.
“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Here, sir,” one of the Marines came in and handed him a stainless steel lab tray. “Maybe you can put the cat on this.”
“Great idea, Marine.” Jack took the tray and set it on the floor, and together he and Naomi carefully slid Koshka onto it.
With Naomi carrying the cat, Jack led her back to the corridor while the Marines finished the sweep of the labs.
He was surprised to find Carl, Howard, Boisson, and some FBI agents he didn’t know, waiting for him.
“Where’s Renee?” Jack asked.
“She’s okay,” Carl told him. “She took a bullet in the ass, but she’ll live. I left her upstairs with Ferris.” He looked around, his sourpuss face streaked with soot and gunpowder residue. He looked at Naomi. “I know you haven’t had time to sort things out, but I need a gut reflex yes or no answer: is there any way you can see to put this place back in operation?”
“In the time we have?” She shook her head. “No. SEAL-2 is finished.”
Carl looked around at the bodies. “We’ve failed, then.”
“No.”
Everyone turned to stare at Vijay.
“We may not be able to continue the work here,” the harvester said, “but we have not failed. We know what must be done. We can engineer a viral RNA payload that will alter our species for the benefit of all.”
Carl’s eyes narrowed. “But it won’t kill them?”
“It will help you defeat those that are non-sentient,” Vijay said. “It will also do what we all need most: deactivate our unrestricted reproductive cycle.”
Jack looked at Naomi. “What about the larvae?”
“Nothing we can come up with will kill them directly,” she told him. “They would simply dissolve it, break it down into its most basic compounds like they do everything else. We’ll have to kill them the old fashioned way.”
“Do you believe them?” Carl asked her.
Naomi nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve seen the code myself. We couldn’t have done it in so short a time, but the blueprint they put together is sound. All we need is to put the finishing touches on it, integrate it with the viral delivery system we already have, and replicate the hell out of it.”
“All right, then,” Carl said. “Let’s get topside where we can figure out what to do next. I’m tired of being in this tomb.”
“There’s one thing I want to know, first.” Jack knelt beside one of the harvesters dressed like a solider, he said. “I want to know why they didn’t go poof when we hit them with the Dragons Breath.” This one hadn’t burst into flame. In death, the malleable tissue oozed from the uniform sleeves and the cuffs of the pants. More came out from between the uniform collar and helmet. Running his hands over the mask, he could feel tiny craters melted into the surface of the rubber by the Dragon’s Breath. But the particles were so short-lived that they hadn’t melted or burned their way through.
Pulling the mask aside, grimacing at the bruised-looking tissue that had once formed a human-looking face, he saw that the thing had some sort of olive drab colored ski mask pulled over its head and tucked down into the turned-up and buttoned collar of its uniform, which was itself covered with body armor and a stuffed-full-of-ammo combat vest. He untucked the ski mask and found another garment under the uniform.
“Son of a bitch,” he cursed. “They’re wearing Nomex under their uniforms and over their heads. The same with the gloves. And the gas masks protected their faces. That’s why the Dragons Breath didn’t do much.”
“Nomex?” Carl asked.
“It’s a flame retardant material,” Jack explained. “The flight suits worn by military pilots are made from it. These things must have got their hands on some and figured it would be good against the Dragons Breath rounds.”
“It worked,” Howard said. “We hit them over and over again, drenched them in flame, and it didn’t do squat. The only thing that had any effect from the shotguns were the slugs.”
“Great,” Carl spat. “Just what they need. Another advantage over us, and one that we engineered for them.”
Making their way to the entrance, they found some familiar faces.
“Jack!”
Melissa came running toward him, a bundle of pink bandages in her arms. Jack gathered her and Alexander up in an awkward hug, the big cat squirming unhappily between them.
“It’s good to see you, kid. You too, you big fuzzball.” He rubbed Alexander on the forehead, which was one of the few places he had much fur remaining.
“Hathcock didn’t make it,” Terje said quietly.
“Damn,” Jack breathed.
“Jack.”
He turned at the sound of Naomi’s voice. She nodded toward the harvesters, who had come to stand in a close semicircle around him and the girl. They were staring at Melissa with frightening intensity, and Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Back off,” he said to Vijay, raising his rifle, pointing it at the harvester’s face. “Back off, I said!”
The harvesters finally stepped back when the Marines around them raised their weapons.
“She is…like us,” Vijay said softly, “but not like us.” He tore his gaze from the girl to look at Jack. “What is she?”
Melissa hid behind Jack and Terje, and Alexander growled. “Keep them away from me!”
“She’s none of your business,” Jack said. “Angie, would you mind moving our friends here over by the wall and keeping them out of trouble?”
“With pleasure.” Boisson turned to Vijay and the other harvesters and gestured with the muzzle of her rifle. “Move it, bugs.”
“That was creepy as hell,” Renee said as she limped over and gave Jack a quick hug.
“Sir. Director Richards.” It was Captain Lowmack, who’d dismounted from his LAV.
“What is it?”
“We have a count on survivors, sir.” He looked ill. “Fifty-seven, including my Marines.”
“Dear God,” Howard Morgan breathed.
“That’s it?” Carl’s voice caught in his throat. “Including us?”
“Yes, sir. That’s everybody. Minus them, of course.” He nodded toward the seven harvesters lined up along the lab building wall. “Most of the security detachment, except what was out in the field with us, were killed. And the personnel in Tent City…” He just shook his head.
“I want to start getting people out of here,” Carl said. “Ferris, crank up that Black Hawk. We’ll evac to Grand Island, then…”
“No fucking way,” Ferris said in a brittle voice. “The bird’s engines are toast, and I’m not going back to Grand Island, not even if you put a gun to my head.”
“Grand Island’s gone,” Boisson explained. “The airport. The town. Everything.”
“The fucking things were everywhere.” Ferris was shaking. “They’re swarming north from the river. And the interstate, I-80, it’s…it’s…”
“There were lots of casualties,” Boisson said in a dead voice. “And the things are heading this way.”
“Yeah, we ran into what must have been the leading edge of the
herd on our way back here,” Jack told her.
They both turned to Richards. “What’s the plan, boss?” Jack asked.
“We pick up our sorry asses and try to find a refuge somewhere. SEAL-4 in Denver is probably our best bet…”
Ferris laughed. “That’s four hundred goddamn miles! We’d have to go by road. We’ll be eaten alive.”
Jack said, “Can’t we just call in some evac birds?”
Boisson shook her head. “The comm center’s gone.”
“The cell network is out, too,” Lowmack added. “Even the portable satellite phones can’t get through to anyone. All that’s left is the HF and VHF radios in the vehicles, and nobody who can help us has responded.” He grimaced. “All we’ve heard is just more poor schmucks like us who need help themselves.”
Carl stood there, silent. The muscles along his jaw twitched.
Naomi carefully set down Koshka, then stood up to face the others. “We’re too close to give up,” she said. “We’ve got all the pieces for our weapon, we just need a lab where we can assemble it and put it into production.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, girl,” Ferris said tightly, his eyes sweeping across the burning remains of SEAL-2, “we’re kinda short on that sort of thing right now.”
Howard cocked his head at Naomi. “What about Lincoln Research University?”
She nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. We’ve got to go back to where this all began. Everything we need to put an end to this is there, assuming the place is still standing.” She looked at Carl. “It’s the only chance we have left.”
EXODUS
Everyone except their harvester allies wore a haunted look, and an air of imminent defeat hung over the burning remains of SEAL-2 as the survivors made frantic preparations to leave. The person who seemed least affected and had immediately taken charge of organizing the exodus was Howard Morgan. Once Carl had given the green light to Naomi’s plan, Howard had transformed the group into an efficient machine to sift through the wreckage for anything that could be salvaged.
“What do you think our odds are?”
Carl had said very little to anyone since the attack, and his question caught Jack off guard. “I think that if we can get Naomi and the harvesters to the lab in Lincoln,” Jack told him, “we’re going to be able to beat these things. I don’t have much left to believe in anymore, Carl, but I believe in her. If she says she can do it, she can.”
Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Page 23