by John Shirley
“Are you? Then you’re fucking up again,” Portman said. “’Cause here you are. Loafing in the jungle with us…You remember this jungle. Where your ol’ pal Jumper bought it…thanks to you.”
“You were our corporal,” Mac said. “You should’ve done a better job. We’d be alive now. You should’ve kept me in line of sight. Sarge was busy—you were responsible. You let that thing whack my head off. You let me die, Reaper. You should’ve covered my six…”
Reaper felt wet on the outside, with the humidity and his sweat, and bone dry inside. His lips stuck together, and it was painful to pull them apart and talk. His voice came out in a desiccated rattle, “Look, Mac—I just didn’t know what we were dealing with.”
“What about me?” Jumper asked, pushing to the front of the group, grinning at Reaper with this wrecked, bloody mouth. The top of Jumper’s head was missing, just the way it’d been when he’d been shot in the rain forest, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He had one eye left, hanging down on his cheek, and it swiveled to look at Reaper as he chuckled. “Did you know what you were dealing with when you let ’em kill me, Reaper? Jungle fighting? Like you never had done that before…” He plucked his eyeball, rubbed it against his flak jacket as if he were polishing a marble. “Can’t see for shit through this thing…” He put the eye back in place. “That’s better.”
“I…I was stuck with those bunk guns, Jumper—Listen, bro, I’d have given my life—”
“Bullshit. And you’re making excuses—you could have refused that ordnance,” Goat said, stepping into view. “Even if it meant pissing off the major. But you chose sinfully—your sin was not putting your men ahead of your career. You are the accursed of God…”
“The major was hot on those guns—”
“Sarge would have stuck by you,” Jumper said. “You knew it was a mistake. Then you let them decoy you with that dumb teenager you blew to pieces…”
“Nobody can help any of us,” Portman said, “except Corporal John Grimm here. He can help us by blowing out his brains. That’d make us feel better anyway. Maybe we’d rest then. Because we counted on him, and he blew it…even the stupid guerilla kid, you coulda figured he didn’t know what he was doing, maybe captured him…but you had to end his miserable little life…”
Reaper could bear it no more and burst into roaring, sobbing rage, and he wrenched himself out of the Ark-induced vision, closed his eyes and felt himself falling, falling through the essence of corruption, into oily blackness, to emerge in a spinning tube of liquid colored with colors that weren’t colors and suddenly he was staggering out into the Ark chamber in the compound…back home. But in another way, they were still a long way from home.
Twenty seconds later the room stopped shifting, and Reaper’s gut quieted enough so that he was fairly confident he wouldn’t throw up. At almost the same instant, Sam materialized in the Ark chamber, stepped out of the cylinder into the main room.
She took two steps and stumbled, groaning—he caught her as she fell. Held her in his arms. Her eyes were rolled up in her head and she shuddered, went limp—and again shuddered, went limp, over and over…as she muttered, “Dad…he’s…John’s all…”
“Sam!”
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them, looked at him. She swallowed. “I hate that thing…Seeing things in there…”
He nodded, helping Sam steady on her feet. “Me too…” But then he thought: Maybe what I saw was just the truth. Sometimes dreams show you the truth…
He looked around; the UAC promo screens had gone quiet, with all but the barest auxiliary power cut off, and it was nearly dark here, only a few of the lights working. It was like a big catacomb to him then, just waiting for the skulls to stack up.
“So what now?” she asked, running a shaking hand over her hair.
He was checking his gun, adjusting the strap—anything to occupy his mind so he didn’t have to think about what he’d just seen, in the Ark…his conversation with the dead.
“Nobody can help any of us,” Portman had said, “except Corporal John Grimm here. He can help us blowing out his brains. That’d make us feel better anyway…”
Reaper closed his eyes. Oh God. Jumper. Let his only friend down…he’d let him die…
Maybe he should just end it now. Kill Sam—do her a favor, keep those things from getting at her. Then he’d kill himself. So that Jumper and the others would have some rest.
It would be the work of a moment. Turn and shoot his sister, then stick the muzzle of the weapon in his mouth, suck metal, pull the trigger…
“John? You okay?”
His fingers tightened on the weapon. “…That’d make us feel better anyway…”
“John?”
He had a lot of combat experience behind him. He knew, on some level, that he was as posttraumatic as they came, right now. Partly because of what’d happened in the rain forest. Not being there for Jumper. Letting him die.
Then—Olduvai. The pressure of worrying about his sister there. Losing Mac, Portman, Goat, Destroyer.
Theoretically it was all on Sarge’s account sheet, it was his responsibility. But Reaper kept thinking maybe he could’ve saved them…After all, what he’d seen in the Ark had been contrived by his mind. He’d superimposed his own nightmares, his own guilt on the quantum field shifting within the Ark…
The feeling of remorse and hopelessness was so strong—hopelessness like the weight of ten miles of ocean over his head…tons of dark cold sea about to crush him. He’d failed, and failure was death in his profession. He was surrounded by horrors. The world was doomed. Doom was like a dark icy cloak settling over his shoulders…it was all so hopeless, they couldn’t possibly…
“John!”
Sam shook him now. Because he was just standing there, fingering his gun, staring.
“I need you, John!”
He’d just let her down. Better if they both died here and now, a flash of pain and it’d be over…
“John—please! Hey—brother, yo!”
Brother. That seemed to call him back. He looked into her eyes—and saw life there, and determination. Intelligence, a range of possibilities…and hope.
He took a deep breath and shook himself.
“Fuck you, Portman,” he muttered. Seeing them in his mind’s eye.
“What?” she said.
“You too, Mac. Yeah—even you, Jumper. The whole fucking bunch of you. I did all I could. Some days, things just go sour…”
She waited, sensing he was working through something.
He wasn’t through with it. But he’d put it back into the dark corners of his skull—he was ready to move into some other dark corners now.
“I’m sorry,” he said huskily, squeezing his sister’s shoulder. “I guess I lost it for a minute…Let’s do this thing.”
Sixteen
“SARGE,” REAPER SAID into his comm, “what’s your position?” No answer. He tried again. “Sarge—do you read?”
A burst of static in his headset. And maybe, from far off in the compound, the distant sound of gunfire, abruptly cutting off.
Then: “I copy, Reaper…”
But Sarge was a little occupied, right now. He and the Kid had just finished killing a full-blown imp. And now he saw someone crawling toward him, from a heap of wreckage—the wreckage of fallen rafters and fallen human beings.
The individual crawling toward him was not obviously turned as yet. He wore the tatters of a uniform; one of his legs was twisted the wrong way.
“Sarge,” Reaper’s voice said, over the comm, “we don’t have to kill everyone. Transmission of the condition is self-selecting.”
Sarge watched the man crawling toward him across the bloody floor of the corridor.
“Help me,” the man begged. His tears made the dried blood on his face run once more. “Help me please…”
The Kid lowered his gun, obviously intent on lending aid. Sarge pulled the Kid back, shook his head.
Sarge le
veled his weapon…
“Please…”
…and fired, at close range, so that the man who’d pleaded with him was hurled back into the shadows, his head shattered.
The Kid gaped at that, put up a hand to cover his mouth.
“Roger that, Reaper,” Sarge said calmly. “I’m on my way toward you…” He turned to the Kid—who took a nervous step back from him. Sarge pretended not to notice that. “Clear the rest of this sector,” he ordered the Kid. “Meet me back at the Ark chamber.”
Sarge dropped the exhausted chaingun and went off in his own direction.
The Kid watched for a moment, then turned and hurried off on his mission—only looking back over his shoulder at Sarge once.
At first, the Kid had felt glad to get away from Sarge. But a short ten minutes later, in the echoing gloom—in a corridor that was all too much like the ones on Olduvai—the Kid was wishing Sarge was still with him.
Because this corridor was mostly blacked out…and because it seemed so empty and quiet. And that just made it fairly creak with imminence, as if the silence were an arranged prelude to an attack.
I’m going from paranoid to having crazy thoughts. The amphetamines turning to crap in my bloodstream.
There was a noise from a door, to his left. He turned the gunlight on the door. STORAGE, it said. A cough from in there. A noise that might’ve been a sob. Something or someone was definitely in there.
He could go and get Sarge…but Sarge was on the other side of the compound—and judging by the bursts of gunfire coming from that way, the Kid figured Sarge’s hunt was yielding up some game. He was busy.
And if he went back for Sarge, he’d look like a pussy. Was Sarge calling for backup every time he ran into the enemy?
As if replying in the negative, another burst of gunfire echoed down the hallways to him…
Okay. So he was going to check out this storage room on his own. The door was narrow. If they came through it, they’d come one at a time. The Kid would be ready.
Aim for the head, he reminded himself.
The Kid held his weapon at ready, held his breath, too—and kicked the door in.
There was a squeal and a gasp from inside—but nothing else. No imp, no half human launched itself out at him. It was dark in there.
He took a step closer and shined his light into the small, dark storage area—but the center of the room was crowded with people, scared but otherwise ordinary-looking people, all staring back at him, blinking in the light.
Startled, the Kid raised his gun to fire—and the humans in the room cried out in fear, some of them covering their eyes.
He lowered his weapon and found the light switch on the wall. It lit up about twenty people in various stages of damage and desperation, crammed in with shelves packed with food and supplies. Some of them clutched chair legs, pieces of metal, as makeshift weapons.
“Holy shit,” the Kid said.
Jenna Willits came out from the crowd—the Kid recognized her. She’d been working with Samantha Grimm in the infirmary.
Her eyes were haunted, as if she were staring in disbelief at something she’d seen, something that stayed before her eyes no matter what she looked at.
“My baby…” She licked her lips. “They took my baby…” She said it as if she still couldn’t believe it was true. “They took the baby…please help us.”
She’d lost her husband, the Kid remembered—now it seemed like she’d lost a child, too. This thing was tough—but in the Navy he’d seen refugees, running from war and revolution, carrying dead children in their arms so they could find a proper place for a burial; he’d seen old people left lying in ditches to die, to save on food supplies, so the younger ones could have a chance to live. That was life for a lot of the world. But for the upscale people at the facility and the compound, this kind of desperation was a new experience.
One of the older men in the crowd looked at the Kid with a mixture of expectation and mistrust. “Are you here to help us?”
The Kid licked his lips. “Uhhh…”
“Please,” another woman sobbed, breaking down. She’d held herself together for a long time now, huddled in the darkness, running from hellthings who’d once been friends and colleagues, and she just couldn’t cope anymore. “…Please…” The words almost indistinguishable from moans. “…save us…”
The others took up the chorus. “Help us!”
“For God’s sake…”
The Kid was backing out the door.
“Somebody’s got to do something—”
“—we have no weapons—”
“—you have to protect us!”
The Kid slammed the door on their pleading. And ran to find Sarge.
“Sarge?” Reaper called, on the headset comm.
“Yeah…” Sarge’s voice crackled.
“We’re in the compound infirmary, looking over the medical supplies—thought we could all meet up here.”
“I’m not far away…Hold on…I’ll get back to you…”
“Sarge?”
No reply. But distantly, they heard gunshots. A lot of them.
Sam looked up from the wound-spray kits she was sorting. They figured there’d be a lot of patching up to do here. “He is shooting who he’s supposed to be shooting…Isn’t he, John?”
“Yeah well—he got the message. I told him that not everyone gets infected. He said roger that.”
“But suppose…” She looked back at the kits, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. “Suppose he isn’t discriminating?”
Reaper shrugged wearily, suddenly sitting heavily in a chair. “I’ll try to convince him.”
“But suppose—”
“I said I’ll try to convince him!”
Instead of reacting to his anger with anger, she looked at him with concern. “You look tired…”
“So I’m tired…”
“Here…just sit still…”
She went to a cabinet, got out an inst-infuse nutrition kit, brought it over to him. She sponged his arm with alcohol, then pressed the cylindrical inst-infuser against his bare shoulder. There was a flash of pain, then the processed nutrients rushed into him—bringing strength, and a little clarity.
But he still didn’t know what to do about Sarge.
She opened another medikit, found a nutrition bar, and tossed it to him. He tore it open and began to eat, not tasting it much. “Sarge’ll do exactly what he thinks he’s supposed to, as he interprets his orders, and not one iota different.”
“You said you were willing to convince him…” She hesitated. Maybe amazed at herself, at what she was about to suggest.
He looked at her. Then made sure his comm was turned off, before he said, “You suggesting I might have to ‘convince’ him—by killing him?”
“I don’t know. But—it’s not unthinkable, to save a lot of other lives. If he’s killing innocent people. But maybe there’s another way. A tranquilizer shot, or…”
Reaper shook his head. “He’s wary. He knows you’re not on his side. He’s not going to turn his back on you for a second, Sam. Anyway, you’re jumping the…jumping to conclusions. He might be all right with it…”
“Who might be all right with what?” Sarge asked, abruptly coming in.
How much of the exchange had he heard? Reaper wondered. “I heard gunshots, just a minute ago, Sarge…”
“Yeah,” Sarge said, picking up a nutrition bar, tearing its wrapper open with a practiced motion of the same hand. He bit off half of it, and, chewing, went on, “Ran into some of our little genetically fucked-up buddies.”
“You’re sure they were…” Sam began.
Sarge glanced at her—his expression conveyed his supreme indifference to her opinion. “Close enough for rock ’n’ roll.”
She shook her head slowly. “Close enough—isn’t close enough. We need to know. If they’re obviously changed or changing…fine. But if they’re not…we have to wait. Find a way to make sure. Work up a test.”<
br />
He finished the nutrition bar with his second bite. He swallowed, and said, “We don’t have time for that. I don’t have time to eat this, and I don’t have time to talk to you. While the compound is sealed, we’ve got to make sure nothing that could’ve been infected can get out.”
“I’m the only doctor here,” Sam said flintily. “That puts me in charge of the quarantine. And I’m not going to allow—”
“You’re not in charge of anything. Neither is your brother. This is now a military lockdown. It’s martial law, Doctor. And for that matter—how do I know for sure you two didn’t get infected somehow?”
Sam and Reaper looked at him. Sarge just waited.
Reaper decided, for now, to put his outrage away and answer the question rationally. “We don’t have the marks. You can see for yourself. And we’re not behaving that way.”
“I only have your word for it that the thing infects its victims through the neck and nowhere else. Maybe—maybe not. And there might be stages of behavior in people who’re infected, Corporal Grimm…”
So now Sarge was calling him Corporal Grimm instead of Reaper—as if creating a little personal distance between them, for what had to come.
Reaper had just about had enough. “Sarge—you make a threat against my sister, or me, even a theoretical one, I’m going to do have to take it seriously. And act accordingly.”
Sarge looked narrowly at him, head tilted. At last he said, “I guess you’re the same guy—so far. But I can’t have you questioning my orders. Not the ones I’ve gotten and not the ones I give.”
“You got any new orders from anyone lately?”
“No.”
“Maybe we should call out and get some, Sarge.”
Sarge shook his head. “I got mine for this kind of situation. I just didn’t tell you every last part of it. They didn’t specify what might go wrong. But before we went to Olduvai I was told that if things go sour…” He shrugged. “We have orders to contain this facility by any means necessary.”
“But I don’t think everyone is infected!” Sam insisted. “Or even capable of being infected!”
“We have orders to contain the threat,” Sarge said, “by any means necessary.”