“Da. That is when I met you, at hangar.” Khatuna reached out and took Jack’s hand, giving it a fierce squeeze. “Thing chasing me, thing that you killed, was creature that killed my family. Thank you.”
They were all quiet for a moment, and Khatuna turned away, busying herself with leveling off the plane. They’d reached three thousand meters. The plane wasn’t equipped with oxygen, so they couldn’t go much higher. Besides, biplanes weren’t designed for high altitude cruising.
“I will try to get through to someone at Stavropol,” Mikhailov told them. “Perhaps they will know where we can land.” He keyed the microphone and said in Russian, “This is Kapitan Sergei Mikhailov, calling Stavropol with an in-flight emergency, come in.”
He had to repeat the call three more times before he was able to make a clear transmission through the frantic chatter. He was surprised when the man at Stavropol airfield seemed to recognize him.
“Mikhailov, da. Please stand by.”
A few anxious moments passed, then a new speaker came on. He, too, had difficulty in getting through the other transmissions on that frequency, but at last there was a brief pause where he could speak.
“Mikhailov, this is Mayor Kurmansky of the 247th Regiment. Where is Polkovnik Kuybishev?”
“Dead.” He glanced at Jack, who was watching him closely, no doubt wishing he could understand Russian. “The entire unit was destroyed. The only survivors are myself, the American Jack Dawson, and a civilian. Ulan-Erg was completely overrun by…” He paused, not sure how to characterize the harvesters to Kurmansky, not knowing if the man had seen any of the things with his own eyes. “…the enemy, as was Elista. We are returning to Stavropol in a civilian An-2.”
“Negative,” Kurmansky told him. Mikhailov could hear what sounded like automatic weapons fire in the background. “The airfield here is not secure, and the regimental garrison is under attack. By order of Polkovnik Zaitsev, you are to proceed with the American to Moscow by any means possible and report to Airborne Forces Headquarters.”
Kurmansky’s transmission broke up, overridden by other emergency calls. Mikhailov tried to get him back, but to no avail.
With an exhausted sigh that sent another spear of pain through his chest, he slipped off the headphones and let them fall into his lap. “We are ordered to Moscow,” he told Jack, even as Khatuna banked the big biplane smoothly to the right, bringing them onto a northwesterly course.
“Will this thing have enough fuel?”
They both looked at Khatuna, who shook her head. “Nyet. We will need to land somewhere.” She nodded toward a map case next to the copilot’s seat where Mikhailov was sitting.
He leaned forward and tried to reach it, but fell back, gasping and holding his side. He bit his lip to keep from crying out. He was worried that he might not make it to Moscow, for it would take them hours to get there.
“Here, let me.” Jack reached past him and opened the case, extracting several charts. He quickly sorted through them and pulled out a large-scale one that covered western Russia. He spread it out on Mikhailov’s lap.
After a moment of gauging the distances involved, Mikhailov said, “Lipetsk. There is both a civilian airport and a large air base there, and it should just be in range.” He had checked the fuel level during his very hurried preflight, before Khatuna had taken over, and had been enormously relieved to see that the An-2’s tanks had been full. It was one of the few times that fortune had favored him recently.
“How long?” Jack looked at him with grave concern, and Mikhailov knew what he was thinking.
“Four hours, perhaps a little longer.”
Khatuna shot him a glance, then shook her head, muttering under her breath.
“Can’t we land somewhere closer and take a faster military plane?”
Mikhailov considered. “Excluding the bases that are already experiencing emergencies, we might. But consider: by the time we land, explain our situation to the Air Force, which probably does not have any idea what is really happening, and then try to explain why we have on board an American in Russian military uniform who was involved in combat on Russian soil.” He shook his head, resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. They would be caught in red tape, as he knew Jack would say, for hours, if not days. “When we are close to Lipetsk I will see if I can get them to contact someone in VDV, the Airborne Forces, who knows of our situation. If yes, then we will land at the air base and take advantage of the Air Force’s hospitality. If not, we will land at the civilian airport to refuel.”
“Right,” Jack said. “Regardless of where we land, and assuming you don’t die on us in the meantime, I want your word that you’re going to get your ass into the nearest hospital.”
“I’m not exactly going to win any wrestling matches with you.” Mikhailov grinned, even as he fought to suppress another coughing fit. He could feel the blood gurgling in his lung with every breath now. “But the only place I will go into a hospital is in Moscow, after we report to VDV Headquarters.” His grin faded. “We cannot afford to waste the time I will have to spend in a hospital. We have to get to our headquarters so we can tell them what is happening. Perhaps someone will even believe us.”
“And what if you bleed to death on the way, you moron?”
“Then Khatuna will be in charge.”
She scowled at him. “Durak!”
Mikhailov smiled. “Da.”
Then he began coughing up blood.
* * *
It was a long four hours as the plane droned northward. Khatuna periodically spoke over the radio, but otherwise she remained quiet, intent on flying the plane. The only times she took a break was when she excused herself to go to the bathroom in the back, just as the men did. There was a metal bucket for the purpose, and to keep the plane from reeking even worse, they made an unspoken agreement to dump each deposit out the door over the empty landscape below.
Beside her, Mikhailov was hanging on, but he was terribly pale. Jack was really worried about him, but there was little he could do except scold his Russian friend into trying to rest.
Below them, the vast enormity of Russia crept by, the land a patchwork quilt of farms, more and more of them covered in snow as they proceeded north, that stretched to the horizon in every direction.
Having taken the headphones from Mikhailov, who was drifting in and out of consciousness, Jack listened to the military guard channel. There was less activity the farther north they went, but it was clear even to him, unable to understand the language, but differentiating the speakers, that havoc was spreading across southern Russia. And as the harvesters found more ways to disperse, piloting or riding as passengers in aircraft or on trains, driving cars, or even moving on foot, they would spread their unique form of cancer ever wider through Russia, then beyond that massive country’s borders.
He knew that the same must be happening in India, and wondered how Kiran was faring. Perhaps they got lucky and destroyed the harvesters before they’d spread beyond the Koratikal area.
He wondered what was happening elsewhere in the world, but especially back home. All he could hope was that Naomi was safe, still at work in her lab at Morgan Pharmaceuticals. He knew that she, of all people, held the key to solving this disaster, because this wasn’t a war they would win through force of arms alone. The harvesters must be able to breed like flies, and the only advantage that the humans had at the moment were that most of the things seemed content, or were forced for some reason as yet unknown, to stay in their natural form. Once they got smart and really focused on mimicking humans, there would be no stopping them with sheer firepower. The fate of the Russian paratroopers the previous night proved that: while they weren’t properly prepared or equipped, they were well-armed and well-trained, and were still wiped out to the last man. They killed at least their own number of harvesters, but that hadn’t mattered in the end.
No. Weapons alone wouldn’t do it. What they needed was a miracle, and he pinned his hopes on the
genius of Naomi and others like her. He just wished that he could call her right now, just to hear her voice, to know that she was all right. But he had to wait until they landed, and hoped that the cell service would work this time.
“What are you thinking?”
He broke from his reverie to find Khatuna looking up at him, and he could tell from her expression that she was afraid of what he might say. “Just missing my fiancée,” he said with a wan smile. “It’s been a long trip.”
She looked at him more closely, and he could only imagine what a mess he must appear in her eyes. His uniform was covered in a grisly mixture of mud and blood, both human and harvester, and was ripped and punctured in several places. He must look like a war movie extra done up by a Hollywood makeup artist. And he reeked of stale sweat, body odor, the unique stink of gunpowder, and blood. The oil, fuel, and fertilizer smells of the old biplane were pleasant by comparison.
Unable to help himself, he laughed.
“What is funny?”
“I’m such a stinking mess. Almost as bad as him.” He nodded to Mikhailov, who was sleeping.
She wrinkled her nose, and the trace of a smile touched her lips. “You do smell bad. Worse than zoo.” Then she asked, “Can you stop them? Those things?”
Jack’s humor evaporated. He could see the pleading in her eyes, wanting him to tell her some good news, along with a fierce hatred of the things that had taken her family. “I don’t know, Khatuna. They’re intelligent, tough, and very deadly. We went into Ulan-Erg last night with two companies of airborne troops, and Sergei and I are the only survivors. And you know all too well what happened in Elista.” She nodded gravely. “But they can be killed. They’re not invincible. Our biggest problem is just going to be getting people to believe that they exist, then teach them what they need to know to fight them.”
“They will soon believe,” she said. “They will have no choice.”
“Yeah. There aren’t any alternatives.”
They were silent after that, until some time later Khatuna said, “We are coming near Lipetsk. I must get clearance to land.”
She changed frequencies on the radio, then keyed her microphone and spoke. After a moment, she spoke again, anger plainly evident in her voice.
Jack didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s wrong?”
“They are refusing permission to land to any aircraft from Caucasus region!” She spat what Jack suspected was a particularly potent curse before talking again on the radio. “I told them we have injured military officer. They still refuse.”
Jack’s earphones suddenly came to life. It had been almost an hour since he’d heard any emergency calls over the military guard channel. A new voice now came on, very loud and strong. Jack didn’t understand the words, but he heard “Lipetsk” and could tell that the person on the other end of the line wasn’t very happy.
“Khatuna, take a listen to this.”
She switched over to the guard channel and listened. The controller at Lipetsk spoke again, and Khatuna snapped her head around to Jack. “We are ordered to turn back, or they will shoot us down!”
Jack felt something tug on his arm, and glanced down. Mikhailov was awake.
Pulling off the headphones, Jack told him, “It looks like they’re starting to quarantine aircraft coming from the south. Lipetsk won’t let us land, and are threatening to shoot us down if we approach any closer.”
Mikhailov took the headset and put it on. In rapid, angry Russian, he spoke to the Lipetsk controller. With a grimace of disgust, he tore the headset off. “I told them I was a VDV officer and was on urgent orders to report to Moscow.”
“They didn’t buy it, I assume.”
“No, and the Air Force refused to put me through to VDV Headquarters. The quarantine orders were just issued by the government: all aircraft from anywhere south of the Don and Volga Rivers are to be turned back, no exceptions. Even military aircraft. If they refuse, they are to be shot down. We are lucky they took this long to decide this, or we would not have made it this far. They are allowing no landings now, not even for passenger jets. All aircraft must return to airfields south of the quarantine line.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Everything south of Rostov, Volgograd, and Astrakhan has been declared a quarantine zone.”
“Shit,” Jack said, trying to absorb the enormity of what the Russians had just done. And it wouldn’t be good news for the countries on the borders of the quarantine zone, he thought. They would soon be flooded with people trying to get out. It was a situation that would get ugly, fast. “It probably won’t matter in the long run, but at least they’ve recognized that there’s a threat and are trying to do something. I’ll give them that much.”
“And what are we to do?” Khatuna asked. “We are nearly out of fuel. We cannot go that far.”
“Turn south, as the controller orders,” Mikhailov told her. “Then descend — slowly.” He grinned. “I have an idea.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Garcia!” Perrault took a big shard of glass from the shattered carboy and tried to pry the harvester larva from the agent’s chest.
“Get back!” A pair of hands roughly pulled Naomi away from the screaming, writhing man who had saved her life. It was Boisson. She had handed the cats off to one of the other agents before dashing over beside Garcia. “We can’t risk you, doctor. My boss made that explicitly clear. What do you think is going to happen if that thing gets on your hands?”
“Damn it,” Naomi said through gritted teeth, wiping the tears away. She’d hardly known Garcia, but had taken an immediate liking to him. Now, watching him being eaten alive by this thing. “God dammit!” She tossed the glass shard away.
“Is there anything we can do for him?” Boisson’s face was a grim mask.
Already, the harvester had absorbed most of Garcia’s hands and was working its way up his forearms. It was also spreading over his chest, greedily consuming the nylon of the combat vest, and Garcia’s screams grew louder as the thing worked through the body armor to attack the flesh beneath.
“No,” Naomi said. “If it were just a hand or a foot, we could try a field amputation, but this?” She shook her head.
“Yeah.” Boisson gestured for one of the other agents. “Get on the horn and call for an emergency helo evac. Tell them to extract us from the race track parking lot east of the mall. There are too many cars abandoned in the west mall parking lot for a safe landing. Take the others and get the good doctor and her menagerie moving. I’ll be along in a minute.”
The agent nodded in small jerks, his eyes fixed on Garcia.
“Move it, damn you!”
“Yes, ma’am!” That snapped him out of it. “Doctor, if you’ll come with me, please?”
Naomi shook off his arm. “What are you going to do, Boisson?”
The older woman turned to look at her with dead eyes. “What’s necessary. Now get your ass moving. Go!”
Taking back the cats, Naomi did as she was told, and the other agents again formed a protective ring around her as they headed through the mall toward the east parking lot and the theater.
* * *
Boisson knelt down next to Garcia, whose face was contorted in unimaginable agony, his throat a conduit for unending screams. That told her just how much pain he was in, because while he’d never been a macho asshole, he’d always been tough. He’d been a good agent, and a good human being.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly as she drew her Glock 23. While Naomi had said that standard caliber handguns would be useless against harvesters, Boisson hadn’t found anything more powerful in the brief time she’d had to put a team together, and she felt naked without it. It might not harm a harvester, but it would do for the unpleasant duty she now had to perform.
Garcia’s eyes registered recognition, and she thought she saw a glimmer of pleading behind the madness brought on by the ever-growing pain.
Making sure to keep away from the undulating horror on top of
him, she put the gun to his temple, and he closed his eyes. “Forgive me,” she said softly.
Then she pulled the trigger.
* * *
Naomi whirled around at the single gunshot that echoed from behind her. She tried to stop, but the two agents on either side of her gently took hold of her arms and propelled her forward.
“Ma’am, keep moving, please,” one of them said with a wooden voice.
Numbing her feelings, she did as he said. She’d seen plenty of people die before, but not like that. Never like that.
“Hurry up!” Boisson’s voice called from behind them as she ran to catch up. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” She paused next to the agent carrying the remaining carboy and its lethal cargo. “Just be careful with that damn thing.”
“You got that right.” He held the heavy glass jar close to his chest, trying to ignore what squirmed hungrily inside.
They passed several other larvae of varying sizes. The cats gave warning against all of them, and the team burned them all with quick blasts from their makeshift flamethrowers.
One, however, caught Naomi’s attention.
“No, not that one!”
“We can’t afford to stop,” Boisson told her.
“No, I’ve got to see this.” Without another word, she thrust the leashes for the hissing cats into the hands of one of the agents and moved closer to the larval harvester. The other agents moved to keep her covered.
The thing was roughly the size of the glass carboy, and, unlike the other larvae they’d seen, lay motionless on the floor.
What had caught Naomi’s attention was the ring of liquid quickly spreading around the creature. Dark and foul-smelling, it oozed from all over the creature’s body and ran down in rivulets to pool on the floor.
Boisson stood close beside her. “God, what’s it doing?”
“It’s shedding the excess water and other compounds that it doesn’t need for further growth,” Naomi explained. Even as she watched, the thing seemed to shrink slightly, and the ugly yellow and blue colors became more vibrant. If she’d had any suitable containers, she would have taken some samples.
Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Page 30