by John Shirley
Sarge grabbed at the BFG, managed to get hold of its strap—as he was pulled another fourteen inches into the wall.
“Ahhhhh! Motherfucker!” he roared, as he felt himself losing ground—his voice mingling almost indistinguishably from the roars of the man-beasts on the other side of the wall.
Another violent tug and Sarge was in the wall up to his waist. Sarge got a better grip on the BFG as Reaper and Sam strained to pull him back, sweat running down his face, down his neck, sticking his clothing to his skin…
Reaper could feel it then—he was losing his grip on Sarge, and the thing on the other side was giving one last mighty heave. Sarge was about to go.
“I’m not supposed to die yet…” Sarge said, between gritted teeth.
And then he vanished, pulled entirely through the nanowall.
Reaper and Sam backpedaled, falling in reaction, panting for air.
Sarge was…just gone. So were the shapes of the genetic demons, for the moment—the wall had quieted, a mysterious silence reigned, and the penetrating limbs had withdrawn.
Maybe they were all busy tearing pieces off of Sarge. Reaper was sorry he’d let Sarge hold on to the BFG once the genetic demons had grabbed him.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked, hoarsely.
Reaper looked at his sister, propped on an elbow beside him—she looked lost, haggard. But her eyes focused as she noticed his raked arm.
“We have to go now…” Reaper said.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“…we have to go now…” he repeated, helping her up, guiding her away from the wall. He bent to scoop up a satchel Sarge had brought in—it clanked with various kinds of ammo—and headed toward the accidental barricade blocking the way out.
It seemed to him that they could get through the debris if they just pulled some stuff out of the way. And if they could do it without making the ceiling collapse in on them, then…
Reaper got wearily up, began dismantling the barricade, working alone, letting Sam rest. Now and then glancing at the nanowall, half-expecting it to be breached again.
Sam glanced at the place where Duke had been dragged down to his death—then looked away. But it was still there: she was staring into space, eyes wide, as if seeing his death over and over in her mind…
Reaper kept working on the barricade.
After a while, seeing him work on the debris, she started to help him. The effort, however short-term its value, seemed to give her hope and she worked with concentration.
In a few minutes they were through—only to find themselves trapped, yet again, in a farther room.
Eighteen
REAPER AND SAM were hiding out in another infirmary room. Sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, resting. They could hear the genetic demons moving about in the air ducts, roaring and chattering in the corridors beyond this temporary refuge.
How long before they were up to their asses in monsters? Reaper wondered. It sounded like they were getting closer and closer.
Reflexively brushing her hair back into some semblance of order with a shaking hand, Sam asked it out loud. “How long?”
Reaper shrugged. “Minutes.”
They didn’t have many options. But he knew he couldn’t let these monsters get out of the compound. They’d spread their sickness to the whole world…
The infection happened so fast. What had Carmack been thinking? How much of the experiment had UAC known about? Had they been working on a bioweapon—in the form of a transformed human being?
Reaper’s country was in many ways effectively indistinguishable from the multinationals headed by the United Aerospace Corporation—and the UAC had a great many enemies. Religious fanatics formed into well-armed, secretly trained militias—some of them big enough to be called armies—and factions in hostile nations furious over the UAC’s exploitation of their resources; over its willingness to prop up brutal hegemonies just to keep the goods flowing from the oil fields, the uranium mines, the methane fields—like the one where Jumper had died…
But how could the UAC use these genetic demons as part of an armed force? The damned things were completely out of control. Could UAC’s military branch have been planning to drop an infected creature in amongst an enemy force—to get them all changed and killing one another? They must’ve had some means to control them…or they’d intended to develop controls. But then things had gotten out of hand.
Another possibility was that the whole project had gone sour almost from the start: the imps and the Hell Knight had been an unintended side effect of another effort entirely, hinted at by some of the computer files Samantha had unearthed, to create a kind of superman who remained in control of himself, who retained his former loyalties.
Maybe a repeat of the exact same mistake the scientists of Olduvai had made. Some vast, quickmoving catastrophe had destroyed that civilization.
Pretty obvious now what that cataclysm had been—it was replaying itself, growling and snarling, right now, beyond the door. It had killed Destroyer and Mac and Duke and dozens of others. Instinctively, the genetic demons wanted to spread their fury out into the world, wanted all humanity to share in it.
Whatever had happened on Olduvai was about to happen right here on their own world, culminating with some gigantic act of self-destruction, rendering the surface of the world a desert, the air poisonous.
Still…some people injected with C-24 didn’t sink to a bestial level—whatever dark thing there was in others that distorted their transformation was lacking in certain individuals. There were other possibilities, for someone like that. There was a chance for real power, simmering in the serum.
Reaper wondered…just suppose…
He shook his head. No—too risky. There was another way to stop these things…the only way to be sure of stopping them.
But he didn’t know if he had the strength to do anything more. He’d had longer missions than this, under worse physical conditions—firefights that lasted hours in temperatures ranging up to one hundred-and-ten, unspeakable humidity. But he was feeling so weak now…like the bottom was dropping out of the world.
Sam picked up on his distress, looked at him inquiringly—then stared at the blood running from under his body armor down his hip and leg. “You’ve been hit.” She unsnapped his armor, like pulling the shell from a tortoise, peeled it wetly away. More blood gushed, then, and they saw it was coming from a small hole in Reaper’s abdomen.
A bullet hole, from friendly fire? Or something else?
Still simmering with adrenaline, Reaper hardly felt the pain from it—just a kind of pinching throb. But he could feel the strength seeping out of him through that wound. He felt cold…colder by the second…
“You’re losing too much blood,” she murmured, bringing her medikit over. She examined the wound gravely, then glanced up at him. He saw it in her eyes—he was in bad shape. Not likely to get very far from here.
He nodded his understanding.
She sprayed the wound on his side and the raked places on his arm with skin sealant to stop the oozing.
What they’d gone through already would have pushed most people over the edge into helpless hysteria. His sister had been deeply shaken, had come close to losing it—and then pulled herself back. And now she was right back to taking charge.
My sister, he thought, smiling. Scientist, doctor, take-charge broad. She really is something.
He felt colder yet. Dizzy. A redoubled roaring echoed from the blocked doorway. The door shuddered as something big tried it. They heard the sound of claws on metal—a long, drawn-out screeching…then mindless chattering—and a squeal as one of the genetic demons attacked another; their competing roars as they fought. The tendency the things had to fight one another was one of the few advantages he and Sam had left.
The door started shaking again.
It would hold for a while. But not long. Those things would be in here, in minutes—ripping into them, or shooting those hideous tongue-spears into
their throats…
Reaper had to act. There were just too many of them now—and he didn’t have the BFG to even the odds. He’d soon run out of ammo if he took them on, tried to kill them all one by one.
Somehow he had to stop them from getting up to the surface, spreading out into the world. There was just one way.
Blow the Ark. Blow the compound. Meaning he and Sam would probably have to die, too. But it was that or…
He made up his mind.
“You have to listen to me,” Reaper said. “This is important…”
“You’re cold,” she observed. “You’re shivering…”
He bent over the satchel of ammo, started taking out grenades, taping and strapping them together with anything he could find. “These are ST grenades,” he told her. He had to work hard to get his fingers to move; they were going numb, feeling rubbery from blood loss. “When they get through…Are you listening? You pop the top, hit this button, okay?”
He finished the improvised bomb…and sank back, swaying in place. Feeling like he might keel over. The room was spinning, ever so slowly.
“John,” she said, urgently, “stay awake, please. Stay with me!”
The room was getting dark. The wound in his side was deep, and patching it on the outside hadn’t been enough. Internal bleeding. He could feel it—like his insides were gradually disintegrating. He might be able to med himself up enough to stop another wave of the genetic demons. But he doubted he could take care of them all. And every one of them had to be stopped cold.
He put his hand on her arm. “Listen, Sam—if I can’t make it to the elevator to keep them from getting topside, you’re going to have to nuke the whole place from here.”
She didn’t get back to him on that one right away.
He looked at her. “Sam, are you listening?”
She chewed a fingernail. Went determinedly back to the computer, monitoring the upload. But she said, “Yes.”
“If the quarantine clock gets to one minute, and you haven’t heard from me, or if one of those things gets in here—pop the top, hit the button…”
She was just going to have to deal with it the best she could. But at the back of his mind he did wonder if he were becoming a little too much like Sarge. She looked at him. Waiting.
“…and throw it in the Ark,” he said.
She nodded numbly. They both knew what that would mean—the Ark was unspeakably volatile. The explosion would set off a chain reaction, a blast that would multiply itself exponentially. The compound and a great deal more would be destroyed and both of them with it.
With any luck, though—the planet would be saved.
He stood up—and nearly fell over. Did they have a vitamin shot of some kind? Drugs? He didn’t see anything like that in here.
Sam nodded to herself. Coming to her own hard decision. She took something out of her medical bag. A syringe.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“C-24,” she said. Looking at him meaningfully.
His mouth went dry. “No.”
“I took it from Carmack’s lab…”
“No, forget it.”
“You’re bleeding to death,” she said flatly. “It might save you.”
He looked at her. How could he tell her? He had to be as evil inside as anyone here. She just didn’t know what he’d been forced to do, in the RRTS. He flashed to that teenager he’d blown in half, the day they’d lost Jumper…
“I’ve done things,” he told her. “You don’t know. Places I’ve been—dark places…”
“I know you,” she said.
“No you don’t. You don’t know me.”
“You’re my brother. I know you,” she insisted. And there were two big tears rolling down her cheeks.
Another wave of weakness shivered through him. He almost fell right then. A black gulf was opening up in front of him.
She was right. He was dying. This was his only chance.
Increasing clamor from the blocked entrance to the room. The door gave out a jarring thud and shivered. They were trying to break through—and in a concerted way, now.
Let us in! the monsters roared—in the language that preceded language.
Breathing hard, Sam turned to look at the door. Now it was bending inward, shaking; she heard the redoubled roaring. There was no more time for theories or arguments.
Reaper unholstered his sidearm, cocked it, and handed it to her. “One in my heart,” he said crisply. “And one in my head, the second…”
“I won’t need to!”
“Don’t hesitate! If I start to turn into one of those things…don’t wait. Do you hear me?”
She bit her lip. Then nodded.
He rolled up his sleeve, and Sam prepped his arm with alcohol. She intertwined the fingers of her free hand with his, clasping hard as if she could keep him alive, keep him here in the world with the strength of her grip.
“I’ve missed you,” she said. And she gave him the shot, injecting him with the stuff that made men supermen—or into monsters.
The serum was coursing through him and…he felt nothing.
It wasn’t going to work. Maybe the label had been wrong, or the serum not yet complete…
And then—he felt everything, all at once: every nerve, every cell of his body howling in outrage as it was invaded.
He was no longer cold. A wave of inconceivable heat rolled through him, and another, more and more. His back arched, his fingers fisted, his eyes started, his mouth went into a kind of rictus and his throat seized up and he couldn’t even scream as the C-24 roared through him, setting up a chain of cause and effect that reached beyond the biological, somehow resonating in the quantum realm: sucking energy from the world around him, forming it into matter, infusing it into him.
His body slowly began to swell, his bones creaking; his clothing tearing at the seams. He wasn’t growing like an imp—just firming, thickening, rippling with an energy that the physics of his own world didn’t even have a name for, as yet…
But it was too much—the sudden complete change of it all. The pain was unimaginable, a cosmos filled with nothing but agony. His body and brain couldn’t take it.
He wasn’t going to live through this. Nothing could. It was unbearable. He didn’t even want to live any longer. Feelings like this—of every last cell of his body interpenetrated and redesigned, made into something alien, in just a few seconds—were beyond comprehension.
And then the pain stopped—and so did his heart. He was falling—
And bang, he hit the floor. The world dissolved into a murky blur. Darker, darker yet.
He blew out a long slow breath—and was unable to draw another in. That breath—had been his last one.
Nineteen
SAMANTHA GRIMM MADE up her mind to shoot her brother in the head.
John had begun convulsing, his face a rigid mask of pain, and she could see the change taking place in him, the C-24 transmuting him before her eyes: his muscles, already firm, were bulking; there was a certain trace of heaviness in the bones of his face, indicating they were becoming more dense…
And the eyes. They seemed animalistic—two fires in his skull.
She was almost exhausted. And she was seeing everything through a glass, darkly: she’d liked Duke, despite his clumsy moves on her—maybe because of them—and she’d seen him sliced and diced. She’d seen Pinky, whom she’d worked with for so long, backed into a corner, then abducted by a monster. She’d seen Carmack become a monster. She’d seen heaps of bodies. She’d seen Sarge murder that nice Kid for having a conscience. She’d been told it was her responsibility to blow herself and her brother to kingdom come.
She was seeing doom everywhere she looked. Everything seemed hopeless. How could she believe, in this moment, that C-24 wouldn’t do to her brother what it had done to Curtis Stahl?
And as John fell onto his back, shaking, going into the last stages of the transformation, Sam raised the pistol, to shoot him in the head.
Then the door behind her burst open, and she turned to see an imp rushing at her, drooling mouth agape, squealing with hatred. She fired the pistol at it almost point-blank—wounding it in the right shoulder but not stopping it, not even slowing it. It struck the gun aside, then backhanded her, knocking her sprawling.
“John!” She managed, as she fell.
Head spinning, she felt something grab her by the right wrist and drag her across the floor, toward the shattered door. She struggled feebly, but the blow to her head had left her badly stunned, almost paralyzed.
She shouted her brother’s name one last time as she was dragged through the door, into the hallway, into reeking gloom, then it was all too much, and she lost consciousness.
Sam woke to a warped ringing sound—it was in her own ears, as if her head were a cracked bell, still ringing from the blow to the face the imp had given her. And there was a choking smell of rot and vinegar and blood.
Her eyes slowly cleared, and she saw she was in the bottom of a large air shaft, forty feet across: the central station for pumping and purifying oxygen throughout the compound. She’d seen down into it one time, on her first and only tour of the place: a vertical shaft with three gigantic fan blades whirling in it.
A little rusty light filtered down from a skylight, at the top of the shaft about four stories up, flickering with the slow turning of the fan blades. On the other side of the shaft, its back to her, the imp crouched over the body of a woman…using its talons to rip pieces of thigh meat from the woman’s leg, stuff them in its maw.
Watching it feed, Sam controlled the impulse to vomit—and to scream.
If you want to live, control yourself. This is your chance—when it’s not watching…
She wondered vaguely why she was still alive at all. Obviously it wanted to infect her, or it would’ve killed her already. She touched her neck, wondering if the thing had already pierced her with its tongue-barb. She could feel no wound there.
Maybe they needed to do the deed while you were conscious. Maybe it was saving her for later—if it was, it wouldn’t be for long.