by Addison Gunn
“Sam, you’ve got to go. Now.”
“I’m not leaving here until I have those formulas.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Alex, please.”
“You’re not safe here,” Miller said. He picked up the crate of ammunition and lugged it past her into the lifeboat. “Can anybody here operate a boat?”
The Korean kid standing back in the corridor raised his hand.
“Controls are up top. Go.”
The kid nodded and brushed past Samantha, who stood frozen at the hatch. One by one the others spilled aboard, passing her. She looked horrified, numb.
As the kid climbed the stairs to the second level, Miller popped open the crate and pulled out his old .45 Glock sidearm. He handed it to Samantha, then rummaged through the box for a magazine and a box of ammunition.
“We’re only a few nautical miles from shore,” Miller said, slipping bullets into the cartridge with his thumb. “Sail northeast. Get to land as quickly as possible. Go ahead and moor the boat on shore. There are predators in this water that will snap you in two if you try and swim it. Sam, are you listening to me?” He handed her the gun and she took it with a shaking hand.
She was crying. It was so uncharacteristic of her Miller almost reached out to comfort her, but there was no time for tears, and no way he could touch her with an active Archaean parasite still within her. “But, Alex,” she cried, “I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t have a choice. They want to experiment on you. I’m doing you a favor. Do you understand? You have to go.”
“Alex...”
Du Trieux’s voice came over Miller’s com. “I’ve got incoming on the second floor landing. Cut them loose, Miller. Now.”
Miller jumped from the boat back onto the deck and activated the davit system. “Tell the kid to go full throttle the moment you hit the water!” he shouted.
As the boat descended, Miller caught movement out the corner of his eye. On his left, du Trieux had knocked two guards off their feet. On his right, Morland had done the same.
Hsiung’s panicked voice sounded over the com. “I’ve had to lock myself inside the railgun turret to keep from being taken into custody. It’s covered in fungus in here. Why are we doing this, exactly?”
“We’re facilitating the escape of fugitives,” Miller answered.
“Splendid.”
“The antennas are down, but I’ve been found,” Doyle said. “Ow! Easy, you great lump—can’t you see I’m injured?”
Miller watched the lifeboat hit the water, and went to the control panel to detach it. The ship zipped to full throttle and cut across the water of the Chesapeake Bay like a razor.
Miller frowned. If it was the right thing to do, why did he feel like hell?
“Miller!” Hsiung shouted over the com. “They’ve broken inside. What do I do?”
He watched the lifeboat fly across the water and out of range. “Go ahead and let them in. It’s done.”
“I SUPPOSE YOU’RE proud of yourself, are you?” Gray asked.
Miller scratched the stubble on his chin and squinted in the light. Three days in a storage closet was a small price to pay. He knew he and his team were too valuable for Gray to get rid of, even if they had disobeyed direct orders and set back the vaccine research by years. In his mind, it was worth it. “Maybe,” he answered. “Where’s my team?”
“Getting out of their brig closets,” Lewis said with a hint of sarcasm. “Same as you.”
“Sit down, Miller,” Gray said. “I want you to understand what you’ve done.”
“I know exactly what I did,” he said. “I saved six souls from a life of torture and degradation.”
Gray raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you think?” There was a knock at the office door. He leaned forward in his chair and shouted, “Come in, doctors.”
Dr. Kapoor and Dr. Dalton entered the room, holding thick three-ring binders under their arms. Neither of them made eye contact with Miller. They dropped the folders onto the ping pong table and took their seats.
“Explain to Miller, if you would, what you told me this morning.”
Dr. Dalton looked sick to her stomach. If Miller didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn she was about to vomit. Dr. Kapoor opened the binder, flipped a few pages of paper and then cleared his throat.
“Blood sample B demonstrated active mutated Archaean parasite,” he said. “Similar to samples obtained from test subjects at the S-Y complex one year ago.” Licking his fingers, he turned a page. “Sample A demonstrated no active Archaean parasite, but possessed a naturally occurring antibody which had neutralized the infection.”
Miller blinked for a moment, unsure if he’d understood what he’d just heard.
Gray looked livid. “Did you catch that, Miller?”
“I did, but I’m not sure I fully understand. Where did you get Sample A?”
“You tell me,” Dr. Kapoor said. “The DNA in the blood sample suggests a woman. Somehow, she shows signs of having previously held an active mutated Archaean parasite in her system, but it’s mutated—again. A somatic mutation over time, or environmental factors—ultraviolet radiation from the sun, replication error during cell division—who knows? But it happened in her immune system. She developed a natural antibody which not only neutralized the Archaean parasite, but will prevent her from becoming re-infected.”
“Wait,” Miller said, holding up his hand; it shook. For a brief moment, he felt light-headed. “Samantha? She’s immune to the Archaean parasite?”
“It would seem so,” Dr. Kapoor said.
Gray seethed. “Everything clear to you, Miller?” He spread his hands onto the table in front of him and dug his fingernails into the particle board. “We had the cure. We had it on this very ship, right under our noses. And you helped it escape!”
“How is that possible?” Miller gasped. “Did she know? Could she have known she’s immune?”
“There’s no way to know that without asking her, is there?” Dr. Dalton said.
“Where did you tell her to go, Miller?” Lewis said, leaning forward in his chair. “Where can we find her?”
Miller’s mind was a blur. There were so many things that could have gone wrong crossing the bay. They could have been attacked by tusk-fiends. They could have capsized. They could have drowned. Not to mention everything that could go wrong once she reached land.
What the hell had he done?
Miller slumped in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. He had been in the right, he knew. He’d acted quickly and decisively, and he’d saved six Infected souls from lives as lab rats. What kind of life was that? It was inhumane. And he had saved a woman who, at one point in his life, he had loved.
But in saving her, he had damned the world.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Extinction Biome is the creation of jungle warrior, revolutionary, counter-revolutionary and outdoorsperson Addison Gunn. But who is Addison Gunn? Addison’s too damn busy to answer that. Instead Gunn’s wrangled some of the best new talents in the genre to pen this exciting new series...
Recovering TV writer Anne Tibbets is the author of Shut Up, the The Line series—Carrier and Walled—and also Extinction Biome: Invasion and Dispersal, as Addison Gunn.
Anne lives in the Los Angeles area and divides her time between writing, her family, and several furry creatures she secretly believes are plotting her assassination.
To discover more about Anne, visit:
www.AnneTibbets.com
1987, THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR. For Captain Vadim Scorlenski and the rest of the 15th Spetsnaz Brigade, being scrambled to unfamiliar territory at no notice, without a brief or proper equipment, is more or less expected; but even by his standards, their mission to one of the United States’ busiest cities stinks...
World War III was over in a matter of hours, and Vadim and most of his squad are dead, but not done. What’s happened to them, and to millions of civilians around the world, goes beyond any war cr
ime; and Vadim and his team – Skull, Mongol, Farm Boy, Princess, Gulag, the Fräulein and New Boy – won’t rest until they’ve seen justice done.
“A fast-paced thrill-ride that wastes no time with lengthy exposition or build-up... With striking imagery and Smith’s incredible imagination, this is a dramatic and exciting slice of sci-fi.”
Fantasy Book Review on The Age of Scorpio
“The protagonists are effortlessly brought to life, only growing in personality as the novel progresses.”
SF Book on Veteran
“Superlative, full-throttle, Harry Harrison-style SF: fiendishly inventive, highly accomplished and compulsively energetic.”
British Fantasy Society on The Age of Scorpio
www.abaddonbooks.com
Includes Bonus Content!
When Thomas ‘Only’ Atkins signed up to fight for King and Country, half the boys he grew up with ended up fighting alongside him.
The 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers were a ‘Pal’s Brigade,’ a whole town transposed to the Somme together to feed the Front’s relentless need for warm bodies. They also disappeared from the face of the Earth, on the 1st November 1916, along with nearly half a mile of mud and trenches, a Sopwith and a tank.
Finding themselves on a terrifying alien world, Tommy and his mates have to contend with man-eating plants, ravening beasts and the eerie, insectile Chatts—to say nothing of a sinister, arcane threat from within their own ranks...
The No Man’s World Omnibus presents all three novels from this series, Black Hand Gang, The Ironclad Prophecy and The Alleyman, along with a new introduction and extensive new content.
‘Kelleher has accomplished something quite difficult: He has given us an entire company of soldiers that we like, hate, or feel despair for...
The novel is action-packed; the world is a brilliantly created “death world” that portends adventures.’
RED ROOK REVIEW
www.abaddonbooks.com
“Gene the Hackman, top dog, him done the great Walk Around. Not for him the darkness, not for him the Time of Ice that we know today.”
Evelyn War is a Believer. She knows that in the Old Time, long before the Time of Ice, the Masters fought a war with Them, great chitinous beasts that stalked the world and rended and killed. She knows that the Masters set fierce, doglike Aux like her to watch over their great sleep and to keep Them off their Lawn. She knows that the stories are not just lessons in the ways of war. Them were real.
But in the frozen ruins of Berlin, Them have not been seen for many years. Now the Aux fight among themselves and say all that was just stories. They scorn Evelyn and mock her warnings.
But the ice is melting, and the whistling calls of Them can be heard in the tunnels of the U-Bahn once more....
“Dan Abnett is probably the best writer of dark military SF in the world.”
The Guardian
www.abaddonbooks.com