The whine of the engines grew and the rotors turned faster, and in a few seconds the helicopter, another Mi-17, began to lift off.
Bullets spanged off the metal around him, and a grenade exploded among the still-fighting men and creatures.
Out of the carnage staggered Rudenko, with someone slung over his shoulder. Jack tried to cover him, firing over his head at the men and not-men that began to charge toward the ramp.
Rudenko stumbled as he was hit, a spray of blood emerging from his chest as a bullet passed through.
He made it to the foot of the ramp as the Mi-17’s wheels left the ground. Crying out with the effort, he unslung the body he’d been carrying. Jack grabbed the man — Mikhailov, he saw now — and dragged him up.
“Do svedanya, my friend,” Rudenko called as he pulled two grenades from his combat harness. He wore a bloody smile on his face.
“No! Rudenko, no!”
The big man pulled the grenade pins with his teeth as the tip of a stinger burst from his chest. As if in slow motion, the smile still on his face, he fell away into the darkness as the helicopter lifted off.
Jack covered his eyes with his hands against the glare of the white-hot fragments of the white phosphorus grenades when they went off, turning the melee into an inferno as the harvesters, all of them packed in tight as they fought the remaining Russians, burst into flame.
The helicopter was far enough away by then to avoid the lethal fragments that arced through the air. But it was well within range of the RPG anti-tank rocket that someone, man or beast, fired from within the burning cauldron.
Jack dove to the deck to cover Mikhailov as the rocket sped past his head into the cargo compartment and exploded against the ceiling, blasting one of the helicopter’s engines into flaming wreckage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Still holding Garcia’s phone to her ear, Naomi quickly crossed the living room and found the remote for the television. After some fumbling and a few curses, she had it turned on and tuned to her favorite twenty-four hour news network.
“Okay,” she told Renee. “I’ve got it. Oh, my God.”
On the television, in all its high definition glory, was an aerial view of Los Angeles looking north, with the mountains of the Angeles National Forest in the background. Smoke drifted up from half a dozen fires burning out of control across Altadena and Pasadena, spread out between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Santa Anita Park.
Special Agent Garcia came up to stand beside her, his mouth open in shock. “Jesus. That’s only a few miles from here.”
“For our viewers just joining us,” the male newscaster said, “what appears to be widespread rioting broke out in Los Angeles only half an hour ago. Police and firefighters are on the scene,” the view cut to show a ladder truck spraying water on the upper floors of a blazing building, with firemen scrambling to get more hoses into action on the ground as dozens of people fled past, screaming, “but no one seems to know for certain who started the riots, or why. Let’s cut to Michael Daley from one of our local affiliates, who’s on the scene.” The camera switched to a young black man who, despite his outward calm, was clearly afraid. He was standing next to a pizza restaurant on the corner of an outdoor shopping center. Two of the buildings behind him were on fire. “Michael, can you tell us what’s going on there?”
“Jim, if I had to use a single phrase to describe things here, I’d have to say it’s like a war zone.” He reflexively ducked as the staccato bark of automatic gunfire sounded somewhere not far behind him. “That came from a SWAT team that we saw enter this commercial complex just a few minutes ago, responding to a call from the veterinary clinic here.”
“The veterinary clinic?” Jim, the talking head in the newsroom, looked confused.
“Yes, that was the word we got from the police. Several firemen and two police officers who were sent to answer the call were reportedly attacked, but it wasn’t clear by whom or what.” He ducked again as several automatic weapons fired. Then came a series of screams and curses. “That’s when they sent in the SWAT team.”
He peered around the corner toward where the SWAT van was visible in the parking lot, and the camera zoomed in as a fusillade of firing erupted from the SWAT officers.
Naomi gasped as she saw the unmistakable shapes of harvesters in their natural form leap over nearby cars, hurling themselves at the policemen. There were only three of the things, but at close quarters against an opponent who didn’t understand what they were up against, that was more than enough.
“Michael, can you tell us what we’re seeing?” Jim’s voice was incredulous. “That looks like something out of Hollywood! Are you sure this isn’t a movie shoot?”
One of the officers screamed as a harvester’s stinger speared him, right through his body armor. Then the harvester’s cutting blade finished the job, neatly lopping off the man’s head.
“Jim,” the on-scene reporter gasped as the other members of the SWAT team were stabbed and dismembered, “our station checked on that with the film studios. This isn’t a movie. These things are fuc…” He caught himself just in time. “Believe me, they’re real.”
The view lingered on the harvester that had decapitated the policeman. The thing ripped off the dead officer’s helmet, then seemed to suck the head into its mouth.
The camera then panned to the gawkers who had been standing in the parking lot. Some applauded, no doubt thinking that what they were watching was a Hollywood production. Most, however, turned and fled for their cars.
The other two harvesters gave chase, while the third continued to feed. One of the two seemed to stumble, and Naomi saw an odd bulge in its thorax separate and fall away to the pavement. The camera panned to follow the creatures as they pursued the crowd, but the image of what had fallen to the ground was burned in her mind.
“Amoeba dubia,” Naomi whispered, recalling her conversation with Harmony Bates in the lab.
“Amoeba what?”
“I’ll tell you later. Renee, can you get the network to give us the footage of the report from Altadena that’s playing right now? I need to look more closely at something.”
“I’m on it. God, how did this happen?”
“I don’t know,” Naomi breathed, but in her gut she knew it must have something to do with Kelso. At Boisson’s urging, Garcia had told her about the Bureau’s suspicions about Kelso and his activities, and she had no doubts that somehow he had obtained samples from The Bag and done a double-deal to Morgan. Morgan’s people had been far too careful for this disaster to have been their doing, for she knew that nothing could have escaped from Vault One. But Kelso couldn’t have afforded the same extravagant safeguards, or he might’ve been careless. None of them, not even Morgan, had understood the true dangers of their precious Beta-Three samples. And all it would have taken, especially if the old harvesters had engineered in a reproductive method into the new generation, was a single kernel of that accursed corn to spawn Armageddon.
“Oh, no!” Michael, the on-scene reporter, turned a terrified face to the camera. In the background, several people were fleeing in his direction, and one of the creatures was right behind them. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
He bolted into the adjacent four-lane street, and the cameraman took off behind him. To his credit, the cameraman flipped the camera around, and the viewers were treated to a bouncing, jarring image of screaming people being pursued by something. The creature stabbed one person, then another, with a stinger from its thorax, and the victims dropped to the ground like rag dolls, screaming in agony.
The survivors passed by the cameraman, and an old joke, suddenly not so funny, came unbidden to Naomi’s mind as she watched the harvester rapidly close the gap: you only had to be faster than the slowest person to avoid being eaten.
The shaking, twisting, vibrating camera view caught fleeting glimpses of the thing as it closed with the cameraman, whose terrified huffing and puffing was clearly audible to the stunned aud
ience.
Something flashed across the screen, followed by a sound like a knife being plunged into a roast.
The cameraman screamed and fell, rolling on the pavement. The camera went flying, crashing to the ground a few feet away.
The picture dissolved into static for just a moment before the view cut back to Jim in the newsroom. He was shaken, his face pale as he spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen, our Los Angeles affiliate is having technical difficulties. We’re going to cut for a commercial, and will be right back with the latest updates.”
Naomi muted the television. “Renee, we need to find out where Kelso had The Bag. If we can do that, then we’ll at least be able to figure out the epicenter for what’s going on here, and how bad we can expect things to get.”
“I’m already ahead of you. I’ve got the results of the search of his residence: it came up clean. But I was going through some of the financial records for his buddy Kline, who set up a limited liability company seven months ago. That was odd, because it’s the only time he’s ever done that, except for his own business.” Naomi could hear some blazing fast typing in the background as Renee’s fingers danced on the computer keys. “That LLC is listed as the owner of a single family home. Shit.”
“What is it?”
“The address is just a few blocks from the intersection of Altadena Drive and Lake Avenue, and is right smack in the center of the hotspots on the map.” She paused. “I just sent the address info to Garcia’s phone.”
Naomi shook her head. Something wasn’t adding up. “How could a bunch of harvesters, which are still in their natural form for some reason, spread out like that without being seen until now?”
“Beats me. Maybe they were in the sewers or something?”
The thought sent a chill down Naomi’s spine. The sewers would be a perfect place for harvester larvae to grow, with plenty of organic material to feed on, and completely concealed from human eyes until they matured and decided to see what was in the world above.
But this wasn’t just one harvester. There had to be at least a few dozen to cause this much mayhem. “I don’t understand why they’re coming out into the open in their natural form like this. I would’ve expected them to blend in, mimic us.”
Renee’s voice was grim. “Maybe they don’t think they have to. The old ones did because there were only a few and we would have killed them all. But maybe these aren’t so worried about us.”
“Maybe. I don’t know, and that’s what scares me.”
Naomi stopped as her eyes caught the screen again. The view showed an entrance to a shopping mall near the mall’s theater. Hundreds of fear-stricken people were trying to force their way out. Several had already fallen or been pushed to the ground by those behind, and the camera showed them being trampled. Others had clearly been crushed against the doors, for several arms, hanging limp, dangled through glass that had been shattered by the weight of the bodies pressing against it.
She turned to Garcia and pointed at the screen. “Where is this?”
“That looks like the Santa Anita mall. My God, what’s going on?”
“Where is that in relation to Altadena?”
He pursed his lips, his eyes riveted to the horrifying scene on the television. “Maybe five or six miles as the crow flies. It’s southeast of Altadena, on the other side of I-210.”
Nodding, Naomi turned her attention back to Renee. “Are there any other signs of outbreaks here in the U.S.?”
“Not so far. Isn’t this one enough?”
The carnage on the television suddenly intensified, and people who before had been panicked became frenzied. But they weren’t simply intent on getting through the choked doors, they were simultaneously trying to escape from a young woman who was inside, stumbling toward the doors. The people nearest her went berserk, pushing, punching, kicking and biting those around them to get away from her.
Naomi didn’t understand until the woman, who was hispanic and looked to be in her twenties, brushed against an older man who was battering away at his neighbors. He screamed and arched his back toward her as if he’d been electrocuted.
Then those around him, the people he’d been trying to push back so he could get away from the woman, reacted the same way to him as they had to her.
It was then, as the woman staggered out the doors, somehow dragging the man along behind her, that Naomi realized what was happening. The left half of her body was covered in what looked like a giant amoeba the color of a livid bruise. Her arm was mostly gone, and even as Naomi watched, the nightmarish thing oozed its way past her shoulder to her neck. The television was muted, but she didn’t need the sound turned up to know the woman was shrieking in unimaginable pain.
Behind her, the man struggled, his own mouth open in screams of terror. The amoeba-like thing had brushed against him and stuck.
The two of them went down on the concrete just outside the entrance, and there they writhed, being eaten alive by what Naomi knew was a larval harvester.
The torrent of people escaping the theater and the mall streamed past them, doing all they could to keep their distance.
“Dr. Perrault,” Garcia said softly, “what the hell is that?”
Ignoring him, Naomi asked Renee, “Are you seeing this?”
“The scene at the mall?” Renee’s voice was hoarse, and Naomi could tell she was crying. “Jesus, Naomi. Those poor people!”
“Listen. Carl’s got to lie, cheat, and steal to get the SEAL facility reopened. We’re going to need the special containment chambers there, and soon.”
There was a long pause at the other end of the line, before Renee said, “What for, Naomi?”
“We’re going to have to learn everything we can about them if we’re going to stop them. To do that we’ll have to capture live harvesters.” She stared at the horrible scene on the television as people continued to pour from the mall. “I’ve got to go. Call me back on this number if you find anything else.”
“You got it.”
Naomi handed the phone back to Garcia. “Call Boisson. Tell her to forget about Morgan Pharmaceuticals and to put a tactical team together. And tell her to make sure they’re armed with the heaviest weapons she can get her hands on. Shotguns with slugs are best, unless you can load up your assault rifles with tracer or incendiary rounds. You can leave your pistols home unless they’re .44 magnums or bigger. Anything smaller is useless. And body armor. Make sure they’ve got that.”
Garcia gaped at her. “I thought you were a geneticist, not a soldier of fortune.”
“I’ve been both.” She stared at him. “Are you going to call her, or not?”
He shrugged. “I’ll call, ma’am, but I’m not sure she’ll take kindly to you trying to tell her what to do.” He was about to punch the quick dial for Boisson when the phone rang, startling them both. He raised his eyebrows. “It’s her. Garcia here, ma’am.” After listening a moment, he punched the button to put the call on speakerphone. “Dr. Perrault can hear you now, too.”
“Good.” It was clear that Boisson was far less than pleased. “There’s been a change of plan, Garcia. We’re on our way there and will pick up your detail and the good doctor in fifteen minutes. Dr. Perrault, I don’t know where you get your pull from, but Assistant Director Richards and the head of our Los Angeles office ordered me to put myself and my team at your disposal. I don’t like it, but I do what I’m told.”
Garcia glanced at Naomi, his eyes wide. “Dr. Perrault told me just before you called that she wanted a tactical team with body armor and heavy weapons.”
“We’re loaded for bear. Do you need anything else, doctor?”
“Yes, actually,” Naomi told her. “I need a couple of glass carboys, five or six gallon size, with metal caps.”
“You need what?”
“Two carboys. They look like the big jugs on top of a water cooler. But they have to be glass, not plastic, and the lids absolutely have to be metal that can be tightly sealed without a rubber or pl
astic gasket. If there’s a winemaking supply store somewhere close by, they’ll have them.”
“Done. Anything else?”
Naomi thought for a moment. “Bottles of lighter fluid, cans of hairspray, and disposable lighters. Get enough for everyone on the team.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“Not at all.”
Boisson laughed. “Okay, this ought to be good. So where are we taking our cans of hairspray?”
Naomi looked at the television, which was showing yet more gruesome footage of the disaster at the mall.
Garcia followed her gaze. In a soft voice he said, “Oh, shit.”
* * *
President Miller sat in the Oval Office, staring at the television footage coming out of Los Angeles. “My God, what in blazes is going on out there?”
“It’s them, Mr. President.” Carl Richards’ voice carried an edge, but it wasn’t because of any malice toward Miller or anyone else in the room. It was because he held himself responsible for what was happening. They should have found The Bag before any of this happened. The FBI and SEAL had both failed, and now the American people, and perhaps the entire world, were going to pay the price. He had originally thought he was being brought to this meeting as a scapegoat, but that hadn’t been Harmon’s intention. The President was serious about finding answers, and wanted them fast. “It’s the harvesters.”
Beside him, FBI Director Harmon frowned, but said nothing. Richards had shown him incontrovertible evidence in video footage and analysis by Renee Vintner that the “riots” in Los Angeles weren’t riots at all, but an outbreak of an unspeakable biological horror, the same as was happening in Brazil, China, France, India, and Russia.
As they watched, the camera caught a dark, glossy insectile shape racing behind a group of screaming people. It stabbed a man with its stinger, then pounced on him as he fell to the pavement. Straddling his chest, it lowered its face to his, and in but a moment the man’s head had disappeared completely into the thing’s mandibles. Then it just sat there, immobile, as more screaming people ran by.
Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Page 25