Alpha worked methodically to batter and stab and shoot the mob of Skulls. With each fallen monster, the fight became more manageable, easier. Soon they stood near the chart table surrounded by the corpses of their enemies. They fought to catch their breath.
“Bravo,” Dom said between heaving breaths, “are you there?”
“We’re there,” Meredith replied. “We’re alive. The engine room is clear.”
“Good. Bridge is clear, too. Any humans or Hybrids?”
“None. You?”
“Same.”
“Something isn’t right here,” Meredith said.
“Definitely not.”
“I found something else,” Miguel said, showing his prosthetic to Dom. A red light blinked from the trace explosives detector. “Something here is rigged to blow.”
***
Midshipman First Class Rachel Kaufman took a deep breath, preparing herself to lead her assigned group of civilians. It had been one thing to run drills and exercises with her fellow midshipmen back in her Naval Academy days. But trying to get a gaggle of civilians to follow a few simple orders was worse than herding Skulls.
“Come on!” Rachel yelled over the frantic voices of the men, women, and children. “You have less than ninety seconds to get into the shelter! If you don’t, you’re Skull food!”
Rory Booker, her fellow midshipman, waved the group onward. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
The civilians filed into a church. The flimsy wooden walls and delicate stained-glass windows of the place wouldn’t stand a second against the rancor of the Skulls. The only chance they had was making it into the basement. In the musty, concrete-lined space, they at least had solid doors to protect them. It would get the civilians out of their way while Rachel, Rory, and the rest of Kent Island’s volunteer and military forces could eradicate the invading Skulls.
“I can hear the Skulls screaming!” Rachel added. “They’ll be on us in seconds!”
“Come on, people!” Rory said. “These things are going to tear us apart!”
Rachel looked at her watch. Sixty seconds already. Some of the civilians were shaking in fright; others, mostly children, were bawling. But amazingly, most of them just looked plain bored.
That annoyed the snot out of Rachel. If this were a group of midshipmen, they would all share the same serious expressions, determined to do exactly what they’d been told. They would execute their orders to the best of their ability with nary a complaint.
One woman paused against the flow of people and looked up at Rachel. “How long are we going to be down there? I didn’t bring any snacks.”
“Snacks?” Rachel screamed. “You want snacks? Good lord, you’re going to be snacks for the Skulls if you don’t move your ass.”
The woman looked miffed and opened her mouth to respond. Rachel glared at her until the woman got the hint and marched along with the others.
Rachel glanced at her watch again. Goddamnit. They had hit the ninety-second mark.
A whistle blew, and an army master sergeant marched down the center of the street, waving his hands. Other groups of civilians filing into shelters paused. They stared at the master sergeant, and eventually their voices fell silent.
“Ladies and gentleman,” the man barked into a bullhorn. “Once again, you have failed to get into your shelters on time. Another drill, another failure. Do you realize what this means?”
Everyone was smart enough now not to answer.
“It means you’re all dead,” he continued. “And don’t you dare cover your children’s ears. This is the reality we live in now. As soon as a shipload of Skulls hits our shores, you’re all dead. I don’t care if your back hurts or you’ve got arthritis or you don’t know how to run. You know why I don’t care?”
The people who had made it to the basements were trickling outside once more.
“I don’t care because the Skulls don’t care,” the master sergeant continued. “We’re facing an enemy that doesn’t care if you’re a woman or a child. Doesn’t care if you’re disabled or sick. They are killers, and they do not stop.
“So here is what you will do. People, help your neighbors. Parents, help your kids. Kids, help your parents and grandparents. Because if just one of you falls, if just one of you turns into a Skull, you risk the rest of this island. I will not tolerate failure. Is that understood?”
Now it was time to speak. The crowd responded in a deafening, “Yes, sir!”
“Go back to your homes. We’re doing this again, and we’re doing it right!”
They didn’t get it right. But at least, according to Rachel’s watch, they got into the church and secured in the basement in under six minutes. It still wasn’t great—half of them would’ve been torn up by Skulls if this wasn’t a drill—but it was better than the first six times they’d done this.
Finally, the drills were over. The mass of people began to disperse. While some of the children and elderly looked worn out, too many of the people were actually smiling at being done for the day. Rachel didn’t like that.
“People here have grown soft,” she said to Rory. “They forgot what it’s like on the other side of the bridge.”
Most of these people had arrived at Kent before the Goliaths and acid-spraying Droolers started cropping up. They were the lucky ones who had somehow managed to avoid the monsters until the military discovered them. Or they had heard the rumors and made it to Kent of their own volition. There was another fraction of civilians who had arrived by boat. Those people had been fortunate enough to have sea craft of their own, and they’d largely avoided the mainland since the outbreak began.
None of them—including Rachel and Rory—had encountered the Hybrids they’d been warned about. Kent Island had once been a place of hope. It stood as a beacon of what could be. When people worked together, they forged new communities and protected themselves from the dangers outside their gates and welcomed the refugees running from the terrors of the Oni Agent.
But despite the work as they’d poured into this community, it was still fragile. Even a small group of Skulls on the island could spread the Oni Agent as fast as chicken pox in a kindergarten classroom.
“I don’t see what the fuss is about, really,” a grizzled old man said as he walked next to his gray-haired wife. “Those gates get taller every day. The military brings in guns and soldiers to protect us. Those monsters aren’t ever going to get in.”
Rachel shook her head. I hope you’re right.
-6-
Lost in the shadowy corridors of his drug-addled brain, Dr. Shigeru Matsumoto remembered another time. He sat on the tatami mat surrounded by his family—mother, father, wife, and children. The coldness of winter crept under the paper screens. Then a Toyota pulled up, taking him back to Tokyo, back to work.
Back to Unit 731.
It would only be later that night that he would learn of the firebombing of Yokohoma. His family had been caught in their sleep. He visited afterward and saw their faces. Charred skin melting off burning sinew. Blackened bones mixed with the charcoal remains of their home. A dishonorable way to die and a most dishonorable way to kill.
He still heard their screams of anguish at night. He didn’t need to have witnessed it, didn’t need to be there to allow those tortured shrieks to percolate through his mind for the rest of his life.
Then he blinked, and he was back in the present moment.
He was at the first test. Just him and his lab assistant. Ah, what was the man’s name? He struggled to think through the fog of grief.
Nishiyama?
Yes, yes, Kinzo Nishiyama. That was it.
They were both young scientists determined to make a difference for their country. No one admitted it outright; it would be near blasphemy to utter the words. But they were losing the war. The Americans were taking the Pacific from them, one island at a time. Soon they would be in Japan.
A shudder snaked through him at the thought of it. His ancestors had made their home in Yokohama
for centuries. The bodies of his family were laid to rest there. Yet soon American boots would stomp over their graves.
He took great pleasure when he and Nishiyama first injected their compound based on animal-derived prions. The first Chinese soldier he had injected with the compound had devolved into a slobbering mess of a human being. A dissection revealed his brain had been riddled with patches of stiff plaques and holes. Interesting, but not the desired effect.
Months in the lab led to improved formulations. The first time one of his subjects tried to kill him, he knew he had succeeded. He had watched the starving prisoner jerk and shudder as the compound took hold. The man had lashed against his chains, and when Nishiyama went to check his reflexes, the prisoner had nearly broken his shackles trying to bite the lab assistant.
They had invoked the power of the Shinigami, the death gods, on Earth.
He took pleasure in his victory. It was the only joy left to him in this life.
This was Japan’s last defense. If the Empire fell to the gaijin, he would rally every last man, woman, and child to their defense. He imagined Americans trying to fight through a Tokyo filled with people who had taken the compound. Those who were possessed by the Oni were given strength, fortitude, and aggression beyond any mortal being. Even the sick and frail would be able to defend the Empire.
But it all fell so quickly when the Americans dropped their bombs and his government capitulated.
Afterward, he was whisked away to Fort Detrick in Maryland. They wanted him to advance his work in the years after the war, to make the compound stronger and easier to transmit. He had created the compound to defend his own country, but America wanted to use it to defeat others. To make it so that their enemies would destroy themselves from the inside without the Americans having to expend a single one of their precious soldiers.
They wanted to win wars without having to fight them.
There was little honor in that.
Despite that, he could not walk away from his work. He cared too much about the science to give it up. For years he worked under their directive until the program was erased from existence. They sent him, along with a few others like him, to the mountains of West Virginia, on the other side of the world from the graves of his family. He should have died there, never to set foot in a lab again. Some of his compatriots relished the fresh air and the landscape of pine forests winding between mountains.
But the call of the lab, the call of his work, was too great.
So when, in the middle of the night, a man walked into his room with blood on his hands, promising him a chance at resuming his life’s work, he could not refuse.
Now he was in Moscow. Cold beyond anything he had known in Japan. The people here did not smile at strangers on the street. That was acceptable. He spent all of his time with the father and son who promised him a return to glory for him and his country. Revenge for what the Americans had done.
The last clear memories he had were of them convincing him he needed surgery to prolong his life. The only way to keep working was to subject himself to the experimental devices the younger Spitkovsky had shown him.
Once he awoke from surgery, his life became a blur. He saw only shades of colors and heard only muddled sounds. Clarity reigned in fits and bursts. He felt as if he’d been drunk the entire time since he started working for the Russians. Ever since they implanted that thing into his brain.
He found himself in a helicopter above a jungle. Then he was in a room, surrounded by medical equipment.
Then he was on the ocean. Visions of a new medical crew swam above him.
Next he was on a plane. A crash. People taking him through the woods. Trees everywhere. Trees and monsters. The people who carried him called them Skulls.
But now the device had been removed. Taken out by the Americans. And slowly his mind was returning to him. Now he saw a bright light. A face. Scars. Slight wrinkles spreading from the eyes. A furrowed brow.
“You going to answer me?” the American asked in his gratingly nasal tone. “Or are you going to play dumb again?”
***
Colonel Jacob Shepherd stood at Shigeru Matsumoto’s bedside. This frail old man had created the Oni Agent that destroyed the world. He looked more skeletal than his creations. His skin hung off his body like a flag on a pole on a windless day. He hated using these machines to keep the old man alive. The resources in here, from the IV drip to the attending nurses and doctors, could be used to save the men and women in the fight against the Oni Agent.
But here they were, keeping this bastard alive because he was a link to the past. Maybe he had useful intel on Spitkovsky and the FGL. If he did, Shepherd hadn’t gotten it yet.
“Come on, Matsumoto. Quit playing the fool,” Shepherd said. “You didn’t go from working on Titans and Hybrids to being a vegetable in a matter of days.”
Matsumoto’s eyelids fluttered. Shepherd had learned not to get his hopes up. Ever since they’d moved the old man into Fort Detrick, he’d been like this, constantly drifting in and out of lucidity.
Kinsey had heard some kind of neuromodulation device had been pulled from the old man when he was back on the Huntress. That device had been used by the FGL to track the Huntress. But it seemed to have had some kind of effect on Matsumoto as well. Somehow, that device had kept the doctor under their influence. Maybe it had something to do with the technology the FGL had developed and implanted into the Titans to control them. Dom and the Hunters had tracked Matsumoto down in the Congo, where he’d been hospitalized there. Somehow, the FGL had used the neuromodulation device to regulate when Matsumoto was lucid and when he was put into a near-comatose state.
Now, without the aid of the device, Matsumoto seemed to be merely a quiet observer of the world around him. His eyes had shed their gray sheen, and he seemed more alert and slept less. But he also didn’t talk much.
“No changes?” Shepherd asked a nearby doctor.
“Nothing, sir. Every sign shows he’s healthy as can be for a guy his age. What I can’t tell you is whether he isn’t talking because he can’t or because he’s choosing not to.”
Shepherd looked back to Matsumoto. The old man’s eyes focused on something only he could see. “I hope you know what you did. You’re responsible for the deaths of millions, maybe billions of people. And if you know anything to help us stop it, you better start talking.”
Matsumoto didn’t respond. Shepherd hadn’t really expected him to.
“I don’t know if you believe in an afterlife, but I promise you, wherever you’re going after this one, it ain’t going to be pretty.”
Shepherd waited a moment to see if any of his words sank in. Matsumoto simply stared straight ahead.
“Goddamnit, old man. I thought bringing you back to Fort Detrick would ring some bells, but I was wrong.” He sighed. “I wish you’d just die. Then we wouldn’t be wasting our resources on you.”
Shepherd was tempted to strangle the bastard himself. As he turned to leave, cold fingers wrapped weakly around his wrist. The chill spread through those fingers and into Shepherd’s vessels. He twisted around to face Matsumoto. The old man stared straight into his eyes. His lips were cracked, and white whiskers bristled above them.
“I have been imprisoned for so long,” he said, his voice gravelly and weak. “So many times. I do not know what I’ve done now. I have been a slave to anger and hatred. Forces beyond my control. Forces that controlled me.”
No shit, Shepherd thought. But he said nothing. If Matsumoto was finally talking, he wasn’t going to break the spell.
“They will come for me again,” Matsumoto said. His eyes swam with tears, but his gaze never left Shepherd’s. “You must stop them.”
“No way, old man,” Shepherd said.
Matsumoto’s fingers fell away. His hand swung limply over the side of his bed. He waved a hand in front of Matsumoto’s face. The old man’s gaze remained fixed straight ahead even when Shepherd stepped to the side. He’d lost him agai
n. And he hadn’t gotten a single useful word from the bastard.
What the hell had he been rambling about? Maybe the old man was convinced he couldn’t control the ghosts of his past. Or maybe he was worried about the FGL still controlling him.
Whatever the case, the old man’s fears wouldn’t help Shepherd quell his.
Fort Detrick was still in danger. So was the rest of the United States.
He left the hospital in no better a mood than when he’d arrived. A private saluted him as he climbed into a Humvee, and the vehicle took him away. All around him, other soldiers scurried between buildings. Civilians, too. Vehicles filled the streets of the base. Not just the ones burned to a husk, battle-scarred Humvees, or civilian sedans riddled with bullet holes and claw marks—these were actually filled with people traveling between assignments.
There was a buzz on Shepherd’s handheld radio. He picked it up.
“Shepherd here.”
“Sir, I have news to report.” It was Lieutenant Vasquez. She’d served under Shepherd since before the outbreak. “You asked me to let you know when the first batch of Phoenix Compound made it through production.”
Ah, yes. The cure Dr. Winters and her medical team had developed on the Huntress. Because of the unique way it destroyed infectious proteins—prions—it served as both a vaccine and a cure if administered early enough after infection.
“And it’s cleared production?” Shepherd asked.
“Yes, sir. Quality Control reports that the process is stable and the compounds are working as expected. We will be ramping up production immediately.”
“Excellent,” Shepherd said. “Get the first batch to the medical clinic. I want all the men and women guarding the walls to get it. Anyone in direct contact with the Oni Agent for research purposes as well.”
Over the growl of the Humvee’s engine, he heard the piercing staccato of automatic gunfire. He winced and waited for a chorus of howls to answer it. His dreams would forever be haunted by the night when a group of Goliaths tore through Fort Detrick. Every time he heard gunfire or the lone howl of a hunting Skull, he braced himself for a desperate defense. They had worked so hard to recover, yet all the man-hours spent rebuilding, all the bullets spent defending, all the lives lost in the effort, could be wiped away with a single rampaging horde.
The Tide_Ghost Fleet Page 5