“He means,” Richards said from where he stood near the rear of the LAV, “that you’re no longer an active observer. I’m sorry to do this to you, Terje, but I’m going to have to ask you to take temporary command of the Marines.”
Terje stared at him, shocked. “But…”
“There aren’t any buts about it, captain. One of the observation posts up on the rooftops reported a wave of harvesters approaching the building, and we’ve lost contact with both Jack and Captain Lowmack. As if that wasn’t enough, I just got word from Renee that she and Howard heard what might be gunfire somewhere down in the basement level, maybe in one of the service tunnels.”
Terje could feel the blood draining from his face. Melissa. He had sent her down to the basement, right into harm’s way. “What? But I’ve got to go back and…”
“No.” Carl stepped up to him and jabbed a finger against his armored chest. “I’ll go back to the basement and sort things out there. Besides sitting my ass behind a desk, that’s something that my training and experience qualify me for.” He gestured to the LAV and the Marines who watched them with anxious expressions. “Maybe this is a different military from your own, but this is the stuff that you’re qualified for.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice. “If Lowmack and Jack are down or even just incommunicado, you’re the only officer we’ve got left. These people need you, so man up and take charge.”
With that, Carl turned and headed toward the entrance at a fast trot. “There is some good news,” he called, turning around as he held one of the front doors opened. “Ferris says he found us a plane. You’d better make sure we live long enough to reach it.”
Clearing the shocked expression from his face, Terje turned to face the waiting Marines just as the first Claymore mine went off not far beyond the student union.
Behind him, the lights in the building went dark.
NETWORK DOWN
The phone on Naomi’s desk rang.
It was Renee. “Carl told me to call you,” she said, her words coming in a breathless rush. “Harvesters are coming, so things are about to get interesting again. And in case you wander out into the lobby area, the lights are off. Carl talked to Ferris — and that’s some good news, by the way, as I guess he found a plane that might work — and he said that the things have figured out that light at night means people.”
“Renee, calm down,” Naomi told her. “The only surprise is that there’s still a serviceable plane at the airport. We knew the harvesters would probably come sooner than later. It just happened to be sooner.”
“I know, but…”
Renee paused.
“Spit it out,” Naomi said.
“We’ve lost contact with Jack,” Renee blurted. “Lowmack, too. The Marines haven’t been able to raise anyone in the search party, and we heard what sounded like weapons fire somewhere down here in the basement, probably in the tunnels.”
Naomi’s hand clenched around the phone and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ll be right down.”
“No! No. Carl said for you to keep working. The idiot took Howard to look for Jack and the others.”
“Without backup? What about the other Marines?”
“They’re all on the defenses except the ones guarding you guys. And listen, they’re probably out of touch because of the radios. I can’t imagine they work worth crap in those tunnels.”
“Sure. I’m sure you’re right.” Naomi sat back in her chair. She was so tired that it had become something deeper than mere exhaustion, a numbness that had consumed her. The only things keeping her on her feet were a constant stream of coffee and the elation-fueled adrenaline of the work they were doing.
“Okay. Okay,” Naomi said, trying to put her worry about him into a mental box. “What about you? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, about to pee myself, but I’m okay. Melissa and Alexander are here with me. I gave the kid one of those automatic shotguns, just in case. The damn things have less recoil than these hand cannons we use.”
Naomi had a hard time picturing Melissa even holding one of the AA-12s, let alone firing it. “Does she know how to use it?”
“Point the end toward a harvester and squeeze the trigger.” Renee tried to laugh, but it came out as a nervous cough. “What else does she need to know?”
Naomi thought a moment. They had four Marines on guard duty up here. That was probably two more than they really needed. “I’m going to send two of the Marines on guard duty down to keep you safe until the others get back.”
“But Carl said…”
“I don’t care what Carl said! I’m not going to leave you two down there by yourselves, so just shut up about it.” Outside, guns began to fire. “Looks like our company’s here. You call me the instant you hear anything, or if you’re in trouble. Understand?”
“Yes, mom,” Renee said softly. “Be careful.”
“You, too. Talk to you soon.”
Naomi hung up the phone, then went to the door. Opening it a crack, trying to not let too much light out, she said to the nearest Marine, “Two of you are to head down to the basement and guard the computer center.”
“Ma’am, we don’t have orders to…”
“I just gave you new orders, Marine,” she snapped. “Two civilian women are alone down there, and they need someone to protect them. That would be you. Now get moving.”
The Marine licked his lips in uncertainty, then nodded his head. “Yes, ma’am. We’re on it.”
“Good.”
Just before she closed the door, a series of explosions ripped through the darkness beyond the front of the building, shaking the glass. Bright orange flares blossomed in the darkness, and the Marines manning the defenses opened up with everything they had, the muzzle flashes of their weapons and the tracers making a beautiful fireworks display.
“I sure hope that Norwegian guy knows what he’s doing,” she heard the Marine say before ordering two of his men to the basement.
***
From the commander’s position in Lowmack’s LAV, Terje watched in horror as the people fleeing from the harvesters pursuing them ran straight into the mined approaches. The warning signs the Marines had put up had been intended to keep stragglers who wandered onto the campus away from the kill zones. No one had anticipated a panicked stampede in the dark.
One Claymore mine went off as someone in the approaching crowd stepped on the tripwire, then half a dozen more mines exploded across the forward part of the perimeter. Thousands of metal balls scythed through the people in the lead, cutting them to ribbons.
The green image in his night vision goggles flared over and over as the moving mass of people and creatures continued to press forward, setting off successive waves of mines as they entered the main kill zone.
“There was nothing you could have done, sir,” the gunner said in a wooden voice. “Even if they’d made it to the fence, we couldn’t have brought them inside with that pack of monsters right behind them.”
Feeling like his tongue was a dead lump of flesh in his mouth, Terje keyed his mic to the unit channel and said, “Open fire.”
Once again, just as they had so many times earlier on this God-forsaken night, the LAVs spat death and destruction into the darkness, raking the harvesters with machine gun and cannon fire. Marines hurled white phosphorous grenades into the midst of writhing, snarling creatures, sending up gobbets of white-hot death that rained down on the enemy.
The courtyard area was transformed into a blazing inferno. Terje cringed at the heat on his exposed face as he stood up in the commander’s hatch, firing with the top-mounted 7.62mm machine gun.
He bared his teeth as his hands swept the muzzle of his weapon back and forth, sending tracers into the maelstrom. The growl that began at the back of his throat became a scream of rage.
“Sir!” He heard a voice through his headset over the hammering of the machine gun. It was the gunner, shouting at him. “Sir! You can stop shooting now!”
Terje was
the only one still firing. He let go the trigger and his weapon fell silent.
Taking a shuddering breath, Terje keyed his mic. “All units, cease fire.”
One by one, the vehicle commanders and squad leaders checked in. They hadn’t suffered a single casualty.
“When the flames die down,” he ordered, “I want a sweep for any possible survivors and to replace the mines. In the meantime, get your ammunition topped off so we’ll be ready to send the next batch of harvesters to hell.”
He collapsed down into the turret, sitting on the commander’s seat to escape the raging furnace beyond the wire outside.
The gunner was grinning at him. “Fuckin’-A, sir,” the Marine said. “Fuckin’-A.”
***
“If anybody ever told me that I’d be hunting monsters in a dark tunnel with a billionaire,” Carl muttered as he made his way forward through the service tunnel, “I would’ve told them they were nuts.”
“And if someone ever told me that I’d be doing something as stupid as this in company with a bad-tempered senior FBI agent, I’d have fired him,” Howard replied.
Carl’s mouth cracked upward into a grin. He was glad he was facing away from Howard. Showing that he had the slightest sense of humor could damage his reputation.
As they approached an intersection, he knelt down.
“Which way?” Howard asked.
“Left. The smell of gunpowder’s definitely stronger that way.”
“March to the smell of the guns. That’s a new one.”
“Come on,” Carl said. “And watch behind us. I don’t want to get shot in the ass like Renee.”
“I’m sure it would do wonders for your disposition.”
“Smart ass. Let’s go.”
Carl led the way down the tunnel to the left, their footsteps echoing off the stark walls. His imagination was running wild now, with spectral shapes writhing and crawling in every shadow in the green world of the night vision goggles. His respiration and heart rate jumped, and he had to stop for a moment.
He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You okay?” Howard asked.
“Piss off. Of course I’m okay. I thought I heard something.”
“You’re a lousy liar.”
Carl could almost hear the bemused grin in the man’s voice. He mouthed an obscenity as he started moving forward again toward a bend in the tunnel to the right.
As they turned the corner, Carl saw a body, a Marine. “It’s Lowmack.”
“Damn,” Howard whispered.
Carl swung low and fast around the corner where Lowmack’s body lay, his finger tense on the trigger. A few feet away lay two more dead Marines. “Cover me.”
“Go,” Howard said, sweeping the tunnel with his weapon while Carl crept up beside the Marines.
“They weren’t killed with weapons fire,” Carl told him after a quick examination of the bodies. “These two were killed by a harvester. Stinger wounds.”
“Our friendly neighborhood hitchhiker must have pulled a fast one,” Howard murmured.
“Maybe. And maybe not.” Standing up, he continued down the tunnel. Up ahead he could see the opening to an alcove on the left. “Now we just have to find Jack and Vijay.”
“You won’t find Vijay down here.”
Both men stopped at the hoarse voice that came from the dark recess of the alcove. The momentary silence that followed was broken by a plaintive meow as Jack staggered out, his shotgun cradled in one arm, Koshka in the other.
“The bastard killed those two Marines, then ran,” Jack told them.
“Christ, Jack!” Carl was doubly relieved that his friend was alive and that Koshka was with him. “Are you all right?”
“I took some shrapnel in my legs. It hurts like hell, but none of the fragments are very deep. What’s going on topside?”
Carl grimaced. “Turning on the lights in the building foyer was like hanging out a Come and Eat sign. Your buddy from Norway is up there dishing out some humble pie to our bug-eyed friends. I hope.”
Jack cocked his head, listening, as the three turned back toward the lab building basement. “Sounds like it.” Then he stopped. “Wait. You guys didn’t nail the hitchhiker, did you?”
Carl shook his head. “We didn’t see anything or anyone until we found Lowmack’s body. We just figured he went out that way.” He pointed down the length of tunnel past the alcove where Jack had been hiding.
“No, Vijay went that way, but not the hitchhiker.” Jack broke into a fast limp toward the lab building. “Shit! He was somewhere over here when we got ambushed. I holed up in the alcove back there after my night vision goggles died. But he must have doubled back this way, because he didn’t come past me.”
“We went left at the T-junction leading out of the lab,” Howard mused. “He must have gone to the right before we got there and hid around the next corner.”
“And only Renee and Melissa are in the basement,” Carl said through gritted teeth.
The three men ran faster.
***
Renee glanced at the ceiling at the sound of the firing outside.
“It’s okay,” she heard Melissa say. The girl was sitting in the chair next to her, with Alexander in her lap. “Terje won’t let them through.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a crush on him?”
Melissa’s mouth dropped open. “I do not!”
Renee began to laugh, then cringed as a rippling series of muffled booms echoed through the rooms, followed by what sounded like raindrops the size of bowling balls hammering against a tin roof. “Thor, God of Thunder,” she murmured as the firing outside rose to a fever pitch. She looked back at Melissa. “Thor. Did you know that was the name of my first networked computer?”
“How long ago was that? Did it have a color monitor, or one of those icky green ones?”
Renee scowled at her. “Don’t go there, smartypants.” She leaned forward on the desk, resting her chin on her folded hands. “All I want to do is sleep, but I’ve had so much coffee I’ll be peeing for a week.” She looked at the computer screen, trying to somehow divine what Naomi was doing upstairs from the information fed through the network to and from the various computers and lab equipment upstairs. But all she could really understand was that there was a hell of a lot going on. “God, I wish I was a tenth as smart as she is.”
“Naomi?”
“Yeah.” Renee grinned. “Talk about an overachiever.”
“I wish I was as pretty as she was.”
“You’re beautiful, hon,” Renee told her. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you different. That stuff on your skin doesn’t define you.”
Melissa looked doubtful. “It did before. Everyone thought I was a mutated freak. And I’m only here now and not dead in Chicago because of it. Jack wouldn’t have come for me, otherwise, would he?”
“I guess not. But in that case, give thanks for it. Believe it or not, sometimes crappy stuff that happens to us in life is for a good reason. We just don’t know it at the time.”
Before Melissa could say anything, Alexander tensed. With a deep growl in his throat, he stood up and jumped the short distance from Melissa’s lap to Renee’s desk, taking up a position right in front of the two monitors and blocking Renee’s view.
Rather than scolding him or trying to push him out of the way, Renee reached down and picked up her shotgun. “Get your gun, kid,” she said, “and go over there and duck down behind that cabinet.”
“But…”
“Do it!”
As Melissa did as she was told, Renee knelt down behind the almost nonexistent cover of the open-bottomed workstation, her eyes following Alexander’s rapt gaze toward the access door to the service tunnels. She pointed the shotgun in the same direction, propping the weapon’s bulky magazine on the desktop.
Alexander’s growl deepened, and he crouched down low.
“I’m scared,” Melissa whispered.
“Just keep your head, and don
’t shoot unless I’m down. I don’t want to get shot in the ass again.”
“Okay.”
Gripping the shotgun tighter, Renee focused her attention on the tunnel, trying to ignore the sound of Melissa’s teeth chattering.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
Renee spun around at the voice. Two Marines drew up short, staring down the barrel of her shotgun.
“Jesus!” She lowered the weapon. “I just about killed you, you idiots! What are you…”
“Renee!”
Renee spun back around to see a Marine tumble through the door from the tunnel.
He looked at her with wild eyes. “It’s right behind me!”
The two Marines raised their weapons, taking aim at the tunnel door as their comrade staggered clear, limping badly.
Turning back around, Renee looked at the tunnel, then at Alexander. The big cat opened his mouth and hissed.
At the limping Marine.
Oh, no. That was all she had time to think before the Marine impostor whipped up his assault rifle, inhumanly fast, and opened fire.
Tracer rounds whizzed over her head and she ducked down, grabbing Alexander by one of his rear legs to pull him out of the line of fire.
Caught by surprise, the two Marines were knocked backward by the bullets that struck armor and flesh. One of them reflexively squeezed the trigger of his weapon and held it as he went down, shooting half a magazine into the racks of precious computer equipment around them.
Then the harvester turned his weapon on Renee’s workstation. The computer monitor and phone were blasted into pieces. One of the tracer rounds grazed her hair, and she could smell the acrid stench of a few strands burning as she dove to the floor.
Something roared and the room was bathed in a searing white light. Then again. And again.
The harvester screeched and stopped firing.
Getting up on her knees, Renee peered out from under the workstation, through the legs, to see the harvester slumping to the floor, the malleable flesh of its face and chest burning furiously. Turning around, she saw Melissa standing behind the cabinet where Renee had told her to hide. She was holding her AA-12 shotgun, which still had smoke drifting up from the muzzle.
Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Page 29