by Scott Sigler
“Excellent,” Otto said. “I need you to prep for an extraction.”
“Understood. When?”
“Soon. We’re hopefully finishing up some research here, but we may have to bug out at any moment.”
Three people from a ship that was already known to be compromised. When Paulius went after them, he’d probably take all twenty SEALs under his command, bring the package back to an isolated ship with a crew of fifty. Just one infected person could mean the death or conversion of everyone onboard.
“May I ask as to the state of health for you three? I’ll come get you if you’re halfway down a crack leading straight to hell, but I’d like to give my people the best possible chance of making it out of this alive.”
“Are you asking if you should be wearing CBRN gear?”
The acronym stood for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear, and applied to the bulky biohazard suits military forces wore when any of those four threats were present.
“They do get in the way a bit,” Paulius said. “If possible, we’d rather go with our usual attire.”
Paulius heard the man breathe in deep through his nose, let it out slow. A thinking man, perhaps. If so, that was a good sign.
“All three of us are negative at the moment,” Otto said. “But be ready to adapt. Listen, Commander, I want something to sink in. If I call you, the people you’re bringing out and the material they are carrying could save the world. That’s not a figure of speech. It’s literal.”
“Admiral Porter told me we were saving the USA. Now it’s the world. Go figure. If we fail to extract the package, what’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Extinction,” Otto said. “The entire human race, gone. If any of your men signed up to be heroes, Klimas, this is their chance.”
Agent Otto sounded like an okay guy. Maybe he had a service background. He didn’t sound like a bullshitter, but he was still a suit — bullshitting and suits went hand in hand. His words, however, stirred Klimas’s soul; no one joined the SEALs to push pencils.
Saving the world? This was as big as it got.
HEADING FOR PORT
Cooper sat in the bridge of the Mary Ellen Moffett, guiding the ship toward Chicago at eight knots. The wind had picked up to forty miles an hour. Waves hammered the boat. It was two in the morning, the storm blocked out all stars, and snow swirled madly — his visibility was damn near zero.
At a time like this, Lake Michigan was the wrong place to be.
The weather forecast said the storm would die down in a few hours. Once it did, he could make better time, probably hit Chicago sometime that afternoon.
Everyone else was asleep. As well they should be — the job was almost over, and the weather had made everything about as difficult as it could be.
Cooper yawned. He drank a little coffee; it was already cold, but he didn’t care. He just needed to stay alert for three more hours, then Jeff would take over and Cooper could get some sleep. If all went well, he’d wake up just in time to help dock the Mary Ellen. Then he and his best friend would be rid of Steve Stanton and Bo Pan. They wanted off in Chicago? Well, that was just fine.
After that sweet good-bye, Cooper and Jeff could hit the town. A couple of days in the Windy City would be just the thing. José could come, too, if he opted to go out for once instead of rushing back to his family, as usual.
Look out, Chicago… the boys are about to be back in town.
BATTLE STATIONS
“Hey, Margo,” Perry said. He smiled, that smile that would have made it rain endorsement-deal millions had he fulfilled his destiny in the NFL.
“Hey,” Margaret said.
“I got Chelsea.” Perry’s smile faded. “The voices have finally stopped, but… I don’t think I’m doing so good. I’ve got those things inside of me.”
His face wrinkled into a frown, a steady wince of pain.
“It hurts,” he said. “Bad. I think they’re moving to my brain. Margaret, I don’t want to lose control again.”
I’m so sorry I failed you, Perry… I tried so hard…
“You won’t,” she said. “They won’t have time.”
The same dream, the same lines, and now, the same sound — the whistle of a bomb rushing downward to kill him.
A small shadow appeared on the ground between their feet, a quivering circle of black.
Perry stared at her. Then, he looked to the sky. “That doesn’t sound right, does it?”
The whistle; it had always been a consistent sound, growing steadily as the bomb fell, but this time it sounded intermittent… on, then off, on, then off.
Perry leaned in close. “General quarters, Margo — all hands man your battle stations.”
Margaret jerked awake. She was trapped, held down, something wrapped all over.
Cocooned.
Margaret blinked, reeled from the stab of terror that flooded her chest. No, she wasn’t in one of the fleshy brown cocoons… she was in her biohazard suit.
She was in the lab.
The sound of an alarm filled the air, audible even through her thick suit, a high-pitched whooop… whooop… whooop that told her things had gone bad.
She was sitting at a workstation next to the butchered body of Candice Walker. Margaret had fallen asleep, right on the keyboard. On the screen, an endless line of BBBBBBBBBBBBBB stretched from the top to the bottom.
She heard Tim’s voice in her helmet speakers.
“Margaret! Get up! We’re under attack!”
Under attack? That didn’t make any sense. Who would attack them on Lake Michigan?
A hand grabbed her arm, gripping hard against the blue synthetic material, jerked her around. Tim Feely, eyes wide and nostrils flaring behind his clear visor. He held a metal canister in each of his gloved hands.
“That’s the combat alarm,” he said. “What do we do?”
A voice bellowed over the speaker system, making them both jump.
“General quarters, all hands man your battle stations.”
The blaring alarm returned at full volume.
The floor suddenly bucked up beneath them, tossing them into the air. Margaret landed on Candice’s body — both she and the corpse fell to the floor. Monitors, tools and equipment rattled down all around them. Margaret found herself staring into Candice Walker’s empty skull, the concave impressions of where her brain had once been reflecting the lights from above.
Candice… the hydras had made her immune…
The hydras. Margaret had to save the hydras.
She jumped to her feet, as did Tim. A canister had fallen to the debris-cluttered floor. He picked it up and clutched it to his chest.
Margaret pointed at the canister. “That the yeast or the hydras?”
Tim flashed a glance at it. “It’s the yeast.” He looked down, around, a move made awkward by the bulky helmet. “The other one has the hydras… where is it?”
A cold vibration in her chest; if they lost that canister, she’d have to go back into the holding cells — in the midst of all this insanity — and draw blood from Edmund. She turned, looking for the canister amid the fallen equipment and scattered supplies. The morgue module looked like an earthquake had thrown it to and fro. Candice’s body lay on the floor, half on and half off an overturned autopsy table.
An excited voice blared from the ship’s speaker system.
“All hands to battle stations, we’re under fire from the Pinckney. Repeat, under fire from the Pinckney. All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
The ship lurched again, hurling her across the module. She slammed into a wall, felt her head bounce off the inside of her helmet. Lying on the floor… left shoulder stinging… someone yelling… she smelled smoke.
How could she smell smoke? She was in the suit…
The stinging in her shoulder. She looked, saw a piece of torn metal jutting out, blood trickling down the blue synthetic fiber of her suit. A hole… six inches long, ragged�
�
She was exposed.
Hands pulled her up, hands far stronger than Tim Feely’s. Margaret found herself staring at Clarence. He, too, was wearing a suit, but there wasn’t a mark on it. He had his pistol holster strapped to his right leg.
“Margo! You okay?”
She glanced at her shoulder. No, she wasn’t okay.
Clarence pulled her close, looked at the shard of metal. “It’s not deep. Hold on.” He reached up, grabbed it, gave it a light tug — the sting intensified for a second, then eased off.
He put his left arm around her, placing that hand on her wound and squeezing, applying direct pressure even as he urged her toward the door.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re moving. We’ve got to reach the side airlock.”
Margaret planted her feet.
“The hydras,” she said. “There’s a canister of them around here — we have to find it!”
The floor lurched beneath her again, a concussion wave slapping like the hand of a giant. Stunned, she started to fall back, but Clarence held her up.
“No time,” he shouted. “Move! Feely! Get your ass up and follow me!”
Margaret didn’t have a chance to see if Tim was okay, because Clarence all but dragged her to the ruined door. The door and walls alike were bent and shredded, white surfaces streaked with sooty black. Small fires flickered wherever they could find purchase.
Clarence raised his foot and lashed out, kicking the door open. He led her from the morgue into the analysis module, which was in better shape, straight through it to the miscellaneous lab and finally out of the trailers altogether.
He turned right, pulling Margaret along, headed for the airlock that led into the receiving and containment area.
Then Tim was next to her, the yeast container still pressed to his chest. Something had split his helmet visor. Blood poured from his forehead down the left side of his face, making his left eye blink spasmodically.
The airlock looked intact.
She planted her feet. “No! What if the explosions broke the containment cells? Those men could be out! My suit… I could be exposed.”
Clarence pulled his pistol from its holster, pointed it at the ground.
“Tim, get that door open,” he said. Tim ran to it.
Clarence pulled Margaret forward. “Margo, we don’t have a choice. We either get into the water so the SEALs can rescue us, or we go down with the ship. We don’t have long before strike fighters blow everything to hell.”
Fighters. Murray had pulled the plug. He was going to fire-bomb the Brashear, the Pinckney, the Truxtun, send all of it — metal and man alike — straight to the bottom.
Tim opened the door and they all moved inside. He sealed it up, started the pressurization cycle. As air hissed in, he looked at her arm.
“Shit,” he said. “There’s sticky tape in the processing area inside the big side airlock. We can seal this up.”
The airlock finished cycling. Clarence opened the door to reveal a smoke-filled mess. Sodium hypochlorite sprayed down from the ceiling; she smelled it instantly, filtering through the tear in her suit. The automatic decon procedures had kicked in, and she instantly saw why — the containment room had taken a direct hit.
Something had blown a hole in the white wall and slammed into the clear cages, ripping apart the middle cells. Bodies and parts of bodies — some red and raw, others blackened and smoldering — lay scattered among foot-thick, spider-webbed shards of glass.
She saw Conroy Austin’s severed head, a sleepy look on his young face. Something had torn it from his shoulders. It had come to rest on the bloody, ragged neck, temple pressed against a broken chunk of cell. A rain of bleach wet his hair to his scalp. Bits of brown material clung to his cheeks.
The two cells closest to her had avoided the worst of the damage, but thick cracks lined their walls. The cell on the left held Clark’s hatchling-ridden corpse, still strapped to the metal bed. But the cell on the right, Cantrell’s cell… it was empty. The cracked door hung open, its flat-panel monitor black and still.
Where was he? He’d tested negative all the way through. Could he come with them?
Clarence released her shoulder. He stepped out of the airlock door, pistol in both hands, barrel in front of him. He moved to his right along the bulkhead wall that separated the containment room from the lab area, keeping the metal to his back. Bleach rain drizzled on his suit, ran down it in rivulets.
He looked back at her, reached out his left hand and curled his fingers inward: follow me.
Tim gently pushed Margaret’s back, urging her forward. She stepped out and followed Clarence. Bleach beaded up on her visor. She quickly reached her right hand up and held her left shoulder, covering the hole in her suit as best she could.
Clarence kept moving to his right, eyes on the shattered cells in front of him. He reached the empty prep area just inside the wide exterior airlock. The endless rain splattered off the stainless steel equipment. He looked back at her, urgently waved her forward.
She stumbled toward the garage-door-sized airlock. Tim ran past her, head still tilted down as much as he could manage, his blue suit wet and gleaming.
The bleach smell grew stronger — some of it had leaked into her suit. It wouldn’t be long until the fumes made her lungs burn. Clarence had to get them out fast or she’d be as good as dead.
Tim reached a keypad to the right of the airlock. He punched in a code. The heavy door let out a hiss of compressed air, then slid open.
Margaret stared out into a nighttime blizzard. Through the whipping snow she saw shimmering lights — the Pinckney looked like a mystical fortress rising from the depths. Snaps of orange and yellow dotted the sky, muzzle flashes lighting up like the sparkle of cameras in a dark arena.
Fresh air blew in hard, making the bleach spray in any direction but down.
“Oh shit,” Clarence said. He grabbed her, held her tight. “Tim, hold on!”
From the rear of the shimmering, gray leviathan that was the Pinckney, Margaret saw a billowing cone of fire and heard a simultaneous blast that hammered her ears. The deck bounced beneath her. She fell, landing on top of Clarence’s thick chest.
A roar overhead; Margaret looked out and up, saw a bulky helicopter moving through the whipping snow, away from the Brashear and toward the Pinckney. Something flashed from under the helicopter’s stubby wing. A missile shot forward trailing a rope of glowing smoke. The missile closed the distance in two seconds: a fireball erupted from where the Pinckney had just fired.
“Margaret, hold still.”
Clarence, shouting to be heard over the alarm and the explosions. She turned to see something moving toward her face. She closed her eyes, trusted him, felt that something tug down around her neck and shoulders, pushing her suit against her skin.
A life jacket.
“Look at me,” Clarence said.
She opened her eyes. Bits of snow and ice clung to her visor, sliding down the glass along with the spraying bleach. Through it, and through his visor as well, she locked onto his intense eyes, his commanding eyes.
He shouted. She listened.
“The jacket will keep you afloat,” he said. “We have to jump. You’ll hit and go under, but you’ll pop right up.”
She heard a ripping sound, looked to the source — Tim Feely, wrapping sticky tape around his back and belly, over and over again, fastening the yeast container to his stomach.
Clarence ran to the wall and grabbed another life jacket. He pulled it around Tim’s head even as the smaller man kept taping. Clarence fastened the life jacket as Tim cut the tape and tossed the roll away.
Through the wind and the spray and the sound of gunfire, Margaret heard something to her right — the labored breathing of a man in pain.
She turned and saw Cantrell coming for her, not even ten feet away, black skin wet from the bleach rain, his squinting eyes red and swollen.
In his hands, a fire axe.
She too
k a step backward, away from the man. “Clarence!”
He was there, instantly, stepping between her and Cantrell, pistol raised and firing.
Margaret kept backing up as the first round made Cantrell twitch to the right. The second bullet blew out the side of his head. He fell like he had no bones at all, face slapping on the metal deck.
She took one more step back to stop her momentum, but the foot hit empty air.
The fall lasted forever and less than a second, a moment of nothingness before she slammed into the water.
All noise ceased instantly; someone had turned off the volume. In front of her, blackness.
Cold hit her hard and from all sides. Her body went rigid. Her breath locked in her chest. Then, sudden heat across her skin as her suit automatically tried to compensate for the drop in temperature; she felt it everywhere but her shoulder — there, a creeping, icy death as water poured in.
She had a sensation of rushing upward, saw tiny, wavering lights, then her helmet-covered head popped back into the noise of war. Gunfire and screaming, the roar of flames, the concussive pulse of explosions so powerful that air slapped against the water. The surface reflected the firework flashes from above.
In front and behind, towering ship hulls rose up like smooth, impenetrable castle walls. Swells lifted her and dropped her.
She felt that numbing cold, that clutching snake wrapping around her feet — water pouring in through the tear in her suit, filling up her boots.
Margaret turned sharply, trying to lift her left shoulder out of the water. She dipped into a deep trough. From her right came a new roar as a black monster tore free from the top of the wave, kicking out a spray of water that sparkled orange from the reflected fire above. The black shape crested, almost flew, then came down hard in another splash of molten orange.
Not a monster: a black boat, a raft, packed with men who looked like robots, dark bulky shapes and smooth helmets and huge guns mounted to the raft itself.
A line of splashes burst up in front of her face. Bullets, someone shooting at her from up on the Brashear or the Pinckney. As one, the boat’s gunners aimed up: the black monster breathed fire.