by Scott Sigler
Klimas opened another box, cleaned Levinson’s finger, then pressed the tester against it. Yellow, yellow, yellow…
Green.
“Two down,” he said. “My turn.”
“Maybe you should give me the gun.”
He opened his testing unit. “Don’t worry about that. If we see red, I step out that door and everything will be taken care of.”
Yellow… yellow… yellow…
Green.
He gathered the boxes and testing units like nothing unusual had just happened, like he was cleaning up after a late lunch.
“Margaret, you still look pretty beat. If you’d like to move to your bunk module, you could get more sleep.”
He held up another white box: this one full of small, circular Band-Aids.
She nodded. “Yeah, I’d like to get out of here.” She removed the IV, wiped up the drop of blood and applied one of the bandages.
“Lead the way, Paulius.”
He opened the door for her. She stepped out onto the deck. She was in some kind of a cargo hold, much smaller than what she’d seen on the Brashear. Other mission modules were lined up end to end along the hold wall.
Margaret noticed a SEAL standing about fifteen feet from the door she’d just walked out of. A young man, black. The name on his left breast read BOSH. He had a gun strapped to his chest, barrel angling down. She’d seen that weapon before, recognized it: an MP5.
He had both hands on the weapon. Bosh must have been the one who would have taken care of everything if Klimas had tested positive.
“Margaret?” Klimas said. “This way, please.”
She followed him toward a module. From the outside, they all looked the same. She cast a glance over her shoulder; Bosh was following, hands still on his weapon.
Margaret suddenly hoped the testing units were as accurate as Tim claimed — if her next test mistakenly returned a false-positive, she might not have time to ask for a second chance.
Klimas held a door open for her. As Margaret stepped in, she saw Bosh take up position outside the module. Inside were two sets of stacked bunks, gray blankets wrapped so tightly around the mattresses you could bounce a quarter off them.
“Take your pick,” Klimas said. “I’ll have that sandwich brought right out. Someone will check on you for your next test. Until then, I’ll ask that you stay in here.”
She nodded. He left, closed the door behind him.
Margaret sat on the first bunk. It seemed to pull her in, drag her down. With a U.S. Navy SEAL ready to execute her standing right outside, she fell asleep almost instantly.
PAY THE MAN
“It is necessary,” Bo Pan said. “We’ll take them one at a time.”
Steve Stanton could barely breathe. His head throbbed. He was already responsible for killing one man, at least — and now Bo Pan wanted to murder three more?
“No,” Steve said. “I won’t be a part of this.”
Bo Pan’s eyes narrowed. As always, the two of them were alone in the tiny stateroom. Bo Pan stood in front of the closed door. If Steve tried to force his way past, would he make it? Would the old man shoot him down?
“Steve, you have done your nation a great service, but our work is not over yet.”
Steve tried to speak with volume, with intensity, but his throat hurt, felt painfully scratchy — all that came out of his mouth was a cracking whisper, the voice of a boy rather than that of a man.
“We don’t have to kill them. They have no idea what’s going on. Just give them their money and they’ll leave.”
Bo Pan’s nostrils flared. He drew a breath, ready to give a lecture.
Steve spoke first. “If you kill them, I’ll tell.”
The words sounded petulant, childish, but it was all he could think to say.
Bo Pan’s head tilted forward until he stared out from under his bushy eyebrows.
The footage from the Platypus replayed over and over again in Steve’s thoughts. Not the low-res pictures taken every twenty seconds, but the full-speed, high-def footage stored on the machine’s internal drives. The dark footage of the man entering the Los Angeles’s nose cone, light beaming from a bulky suit that looked like it belonged to like a fat astronaut… the look of surprise on the diver’s face as the Platypus shot in, cut the umbilical cord and then snatched the small, black container… a brief instant of that expression shifting to horror as the snake curled around his bulbous helmet.
Steve hadn’t seen anything else, because the Platypus was already slithering quietly through the wreck, leaving the diver behind to die in an explosion of C-4 that likely blew the sub’s nose cone wide open.
That diver’s blood was on Steve’s hands.
He’d thought only of himself. He’d programmed what Bo Pan told him to program, because he’d just wanted to go home.
Bo Pan wanted more death: Steve would not allow that to happen, even if saying no meant dying himself.
Steve sat very still, wondering if he’d die right in this very room, among empty cans of Coke and crinkly bags of Doritos.
And then, Bo Pan’s face softened. The old man relaxed. He let out a sigh.
“As you wish,” he said. “We would not have achieved this without you, Steve. We will pay them, then we go on our way.”
Steve blinked. “You mean it?”
Again, the words of a child. He was in the middle of an international incident, had just defeated the U.S. Navy, was trying to stop the murder of three innocent men, and he sounded like a boy whose mother had just promised him a new toy.
Bo Pan nodded. “Yes. You are right. It would just cause too many problems. They don’t know what is going on, so it is not worth the risk. We will dock and I will leave.”
Which brought up another problem — Steve wanted to be as far away from Bo Pan as possible.
“Am I supposed to go with you?”
“No. You will return to your parents.”
Steve was going home. In a day, maybe a little more, he’d be sitting at the restaurant, eating his father’s cooking. Could it be true?
Bo Pan smiled a grandfather’s smile. “I am sorry you can’t come with me right now. Soon enough, however, you will be welcomed in China as a hero.”
The old man thought Steve still wanted glory, when all Steve wanted to do was hide and forget this had ever happened.
“Okay,” Steve said. “I understand.”
Bo Pan took out his cell phone. He awkwardly typed in a message, one slow thumb at a time. He sent the message, yawned, then put the phone away.
“I have arranged transportation,” he said. “Four men will be waiting for us when we arrive at the dock to help us with the Platypus. A truck will take you and your machine back to Benton Harbor.”
Four men? The Platypus wasn’t that heavy. Steve and Bo Pan could move it on their own — crate and all — and had done so many times.
Bo Pan rubbed his face. He sat on his bunk, laid his head on the pillow.
“I am going to sleep,” he said. “Don’t make noise.”
The old man started snoring almost immediately.
Steve tried to stay calm. He felt a fever coming on, but he didn’t have time to get sick. He was probably safe. Probably. Bo Pan still needed him; just because they’d found one alien artifact didn’t mean there weren’t more on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and only Steve and his Platypus could recover those artifacts if they were discovered.
But Bo Pan didn’t need Cooper, Jeff or José.
Steve stared at Bo Pan for a few minutes, made sure the man was actually asleep. Then, he sat down at his little table. His fingers started working the laptop’s keys: quietly, so quietly.
The storm outside was finally dying down. They would be in Chicago in a few hours.
He had to act fast.
KNOCKIN’ AT THE DOOR
Heat.
She felt it through her biosafety suit. Angry wind scattered loose papers across the crumbling asphalt and the cracked bricks that made
up the road’s surface. At the end of the street, she could see the wide Detroit River — steam rose up from it, heavy steam, because the water was boiling. Abandoned buildings on either side of the street seemed to sag slightly, like they were exhausted, like the heat had taken the masonry and paint to just a few degrees below the melting point.
This wasn’t right. Why was it so hot? The bomb hadn’t hit yet.
She started to sweat suddenly, not in droplets but in buckets that poured off her, dripped down to fill the boots of her sealed suit.
Sweat pooled around her ankles… her shins… her knees.
Her hands shot to the back of her neck, clawing at the helmet’s release clasps. Sweat pooled to her thighs.
If she drowned in her dream, would she ever wake up again?
Gloved fingers searched for the clasps, darted back and forth, hunting desperately… but there were no clasps.
Sweat rose past her belly button.
“Hey, Margo.”
She stopped moving, looked out the curved visor to the huge man who had suddenly appeared before her. Dirty-blond hair hung in front of his electric-blue eyes, even down past that winning smile.
“Hey,” she said.
The sweat tickled the base of her throat.
“I got Chelsea,” he said. His 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.”
She started to tell him that she didn’t care, that she really didn’t give a fuck about his goddamn problems, but when she opened her mouth to speak, it filled with the hot, salty taste of her own sweat.
The level rose to her nose.
Perry reached out a hand. A triangle point pushed the skin of his palm into a pyramid shape, its blue color dulled by his nearly translucent flesh.
The sweat rose above her eyes, stung them, turned Perry into a shimmering vision.
Margaret heard a squelching sound, felt something hit her visor. She couldn’t see Perry — all she saw was a wiggling, bluish-black creature: an inch-high pyramid with tentacle-legs twice as long as the body, plastered to her visor like a still-twitching bug splattered on a windshield.
The legs squirmed, spreading Perry’s blood across the clear surface.
Margaret’s lungs screamed at her: breathe, you have to breathe!
The hatchling’s tentacles wrapped around the back of her helmet. The triangular bottom of the pyramid body had little teeth that sank into the visor’s plastic, bit and pulled and ripped.
It tore open a hole. The sweat started to lower. She felt it drop to her forehead, then her eyes. She blinked away the sting, holding on desperately, waiting for it to drop below her nose.
When it did, Margaret drew in a gasping breath.
The hatchling scurried down her suit. It hit the ground and ran for the sagging buildings.
Perry’s smile returned.
“It hurts,” he said. “Bad. I think they’re moving to the brain. Margaret, I don’t want you to lose control.”
“You won’t,” she said, the words familiar and automatic even though so much of the dream had changed. “They won’t have time.”
Perry’s smile widened. “I didn’t say my brain.” He put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a brotherly squeeze. “I said yours.”
She heard a banging. Not the whistle of a bomb, not this time, but rather a banging as if someone had a gong and was hammering the whole city at once, bang-bang-bang.
“Somebody knockin’ at the door,” Perry said. “Do me a favor, open the door, and let ’em in.”
Bang-bang-bang!
Margaret sat up, aching muscles voicing their complaint before they started shivering, shaking so bad that her back hurt and her teeth clacked. Her head throbbed. She needed water. Her throat felt so dry, so sore.
Her dream was always the same — why had it changed?
The sweat filling her suit… just like the icy lake water had done when she fell out of the Brashear. Her brain had brought the real-life trauma into the dream. And what Perry had said, that was just a reflection of her own fear of infection.
That was why.
That had to be why.
Her dream suddenly came to life again as the same bang-bang-bang sound made her jump.
No, not bang-bang-bang… a knock-knock-knock.
“Doctor Montoya?”
Klimas, calling through the door.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Come in.”
The door opened. He leaned in, beady eyes staring, smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Ah, you’re dressed,” he said. “That saves some awkwardness. It’s time for your third test.”
She realized there was a plastic-wrapped sandwich on a plate, sitting on a small table that folded down from the wall. She didn’t remember anyone bringing it in.
“My… third?” The words cut at her dry throat. “I didn’t take a second.”
Klimas nodded. “Yes, you did. Passed with flying colors. You don’t remember?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Well, you were pretty groggy,” Klimas said. He offered her the all-too-familiar white box. “Please put this to good use, then Doctor Feely said you need to see something.”
A white box. A foil envelope inside. Inside of that, Tim Feely’s little prick.
I didn’t say my brain… I said yours.
The dream, so different. She shook her head, chasing away the thought so she could focus on the present.
“How long was I out this time?”
“Six hours or so,” Klimas said. “Feely said you could skip a test. Not like you’re going anywhere, right?”
Six hours… she’d slept for sixteen before… that made twenty-four hours or so since the battle on the Brashear…
Could infection symptoms start in twenty-four hours?
Margaret blinked. She was being ridiculous. The battle, the abuse to her body, a dip in the icy waters of Lake Michigan, her wounds — she was just rundown, out of shape. Maybe she’d caught a basic, run-of-the-mill common cold.
There was one way to find out.
She reached out and took the box. With practiced motions, she swabbed the base of her thumb and poked herself with the tester before she had time to think about what she was doing.
Then, she stared at the flashing yellow light. Flashing slower… slower… slower…
Green.
She sagged sideways onto the bunk.
Klimas stepped forward, caught her. “Margaret, you okay?”
She nodded, weakly. He helped her sit up straight. “I’m fine. Couldn’t be better.”
He patted her shoulder. “That’s a good soldier. So come on, get up. Doc Feely said you’ve rested enough.”
He stepped back to the door and held it open for her. She stood, let the blanket slide away. She wore fatigues. When had she put those on?
That’s a good soldier. She was dressed like one. In the past few days, she had sure as hell acted like one.
Fuck you, Clarence. I’m better off without you.
Margaret walked out of the mission module and onto the cargo bay’s gray metal deck. Loud male voices filled the area. A row of closed mission modules lined the far side. In front of her, she saw three neatly stowed black boats, the same ones the SEALs had used to rescue her. In front of the boats, two Humvees on metal pallets that were chained to the deck.
Behind the boats lay an open area filled with around twenty armed men wearing camouflage uniforms. In the middle of them, wearing fatigues that were too big for him, stood Tim Feely. He’d set up a makeshift lab of some kind. Metal table, and a big metal pot that hung from an improvised tripod made of plastic poles and duct tape. Beneath that pot, three Bunsen burners cast up small, blue flames. A tube ran from each burner to a blue tank strapped into a dolly.
Clarence stood at the far edge of the circle. He was staring at her. He wore a gray T-shirt, fatigue pants and black combat boots. She wondered what he was thi
nking. Maybe he was thinking how he’d fucked up, how he was now alone. Maybe he thought she’d want to take him back.
Some of the soldiers sat on crates or chairs, others leaned against cargo and bulkheads, still others just stood there. They were talking and laughing. She saw an open crate, boxes of infection testing kits inside. Used testing units littered the area; what lights she could see glowed green. The men were checking themselves. She knew exactly what would happen if one of those units glowed red.
Three of the men raised cups to their mouths and drank. Their faces scrunched up in disgust. One of the men — Bosh, who had been prepared to shoot her — bent over at the waist, as if he was about to vomit. As men do, the others all hooted and hollered, playfully mocking him for being weak.
A short man with the worst excuse for a mustache she’d ever seen leaned in, shouted at Bosh.
“Oh come on, D-Day,” the man said. His name patch read RAMIEREZ. He was shorter than everyone present except for Tim.
“Admit it,” Ramierez said. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had some random, hot goo in your mouth.”
“Only his mom’s,” said another man, this one big enough to make Clarence look small, almost as big as Perry Dawsey had been. His name patch read ROTH. “Especially when she had the clap!”
The other men laughed loudly, relishing Bosh’s discomfort. He gagged again and almost lost it, which made them shout at him even more.
Bosh stood, his big eyes watering. “Oh my God,” he said. “I’d rather lick the pus from an infected camel taint than taste that again.”
Klimas cleared his throat loudly. The men all reacted immediately, their eyes snapping first to him, then to Margaret.
“Gentleman,” he said, “we have company.”
The men immediately straightened, quieted down. They all grinned at her, beaming with admiration — all except Bosh, who looked quite embarrassed.
Tim gave a dramatic bow. “M’lady, welcome back.” He stood straight. “Good to see you tested negative.”
She nodded. If she hadn’t, she would have died in her bed, and everyone knew it.
Bosh took a half step forward. “Ma’am, I’m sorry if that comment was offensive.”