“What does she have? Sick with what?”
Again, the older girl didn’t answer.
“Is it contagious? Do you have it?”
This time, she shook her head.
Would she even know? Would she tell him?
Contain them!
Turning back to the soldier, “Clean up the wounds as best you can. Get her ready to move in five minutes.” He brushed past the older girl and stomped up the steps. “We’ve got eight klicks back to 45-121! Everyone prep to move out!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Martha
A large floodlight lit up the ground below them as their helicopter climbed up and over Mount Hood and dropped back down the other side. As they swept over the trees, rocks, and foliage, Martha found the sight strangely surreal, as if she were watching on television rather than through the narrow window at her side. Harbin sat next to her on the bench seat. They hadn’t spoken since taking off.
The sergeant—Martha had learned her name was Riley—and the other soldiers sat on the opposite bench. Weapons now resting in their laps, barrels pointed down.
“Approaching 45-121,” the pilot’s voice announced over their headphones.
45-121? Apparently, the anomaly had a new name.
Sergeant Riley’s lips began to move, and Martha realized she and the other soldiers were speaking on a different frequency.
As if reading her mind, Riley reached to the dial next to her head, gave it a fast turn, and faced Martha and Harbin. “When we land, I want both of you to stay in the chopper until I give the all-clear, understand?”
Martha looked around at the uneasy faces of the soldiers sitting across from her, but she was tired of the secrecy. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Riley’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward. “Do…you…” she said slowly, deliberately, “…understand?”
Beside her, Harbin nodded.
Martha sighed, nodded, too, then turned back to the window.
They passed over the crevasse, and the path of the anomaly came into view. It seemed more pronounced than before, this wound carved into the earth. The foliage within it and along the sides had discolored from a healthy green into a darker shade. Dead or dying, she thought.
The moment they touched down next to four other helicopters, the soldiers were on their feet and out the door, Sergeant Riley in front.
Martha waited for the last one to go, then she removed her headphones and unbuckled her safety harness.
Harbin grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
“Why? I don’t answer to her. I’m gonna find Holt and—”
Harbin cut her off. “Didn’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“Something’s very wrong.”
“See what?” Martha repeated.
Harbin unfastened his harness, removed his headphones, but stayed in his seat. “When we approached, I didn’t see a single person down below. Not one. Where are they?”
“It’s dark.” She tried to shrug him off, but he only tightened his grip.
“I…I can read lips.”
“Huh?”
“My sister was born deaf, and when I was a child, I learned sign language and lip reading along with her. It was always this little game of ours; a language the two of us could speak together…this secret thing. Sergeant Riley didn’t realize I knew what she was saying…when she spoke to the others.”
Martha looked for Riley and her team; she could no longer see them. Over their heads, the blades of the helicopter slowed and came to a stop. Their world got very quiet. Up front, the pilot was busy scribbling on a clipboard. He still had his headphones on, couldn’t hear them.
She didn’t move from the bench. “What did she say?”
He glanced over the ruins of the empty village, toward the trees. On his lap, he twisted his fingers nervously together.
“Harbin? What did she say?”
“They lost contact with the teams at the anomaly…here…several hours ago.” He nodded out the open door. “As you saw, they’d been ferrying people between here and Zigzag at a fairly rapid pace. At some point, that becomes a one-way trip. I think they realized it after Holt departed. When they understood something was wrong, they sent another team and lost contact with them shortly after that. Riley was ordered to conduct recon. She told her team it was probably just a radio problem, some kind of interference with the mountain or a residual effect from the anomaly itself, but it was clear from their expressions nobody believed that nonsense. I’m not sure she believed it, either.”
“There must be a satellite pointing down here—military, NSA—probably a dozen satellites.”
Harbin just shrugged his shoulders.
“How many people are missing?”
Again, he shrugged.
“Eighty-four.”
This came from the pilot.
Both Martha and Harbin looked up at him. Neither had seen him take his headphones off.
Martha’s mouth fell open. “Eighty-four?”
He nodded. “Sixty-eight personnel already on the ground, four in the EC135 your friend Holt hitched a ride on, twelve more in the other recon chopper. Radio contact has been a problem since we got here, something to do with all the iron in this mountain. They’ve had us all moving at such a fast clip, unable to really talk to one another. Nobody realized there was a problem until the choppers stopped making the return trip.”
He had a gun in his hand. Martha hadn’t noticed it at first. Some kind of semiautomatic. As he spoke to them, his finger moved cautiously over the trigger guard. The pilot’s gaze remained on the trees and village outside the windshield, his head slowly swiveling back and forth.
Martha stood and went to the open door. She could now see Riley and her team. They were about a hundred feet away, the beams of flashlights mounted to their guns slowly moving through the remains of the village. She realized most of the tents were no longer standing. Cases of equipment were strewn about. It must have rained here, too. Everything looked wet.
“We should wait here,” Harbin said again from behind her.
Martha knew she couldn’t do that. She stepped down out of the helicopter, her shoes sinking into the muddy ground.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Martha
The air was oddly still and smelled sweet. Not necessarily from wildflowers or even the rain, more like someone had coated everything in a mist of antifreeze. Some man-made scent that had no place here.
Of the original four helicopters, three were large troop carriers, the other an EC135, like the one she’d first arrived on. She crossed the makeshift landing pad to the empty EC135.
Riley’s team had moved farther on. They were picking through the remains of the tents about a hundred yards away. Although their voices carried, she couldn’t make out what they said.
Harbin must have changed his mind. He came up behind her with a flashlight. He held a dosimeter, too. “I found this on the ground over there.”
“Does it work? Any radiation?”
He shook his head. “Readings are all low.”
“Can I see the flashlight?”
Harbin handed it to her, and she ran the beam over the back of the helicopter. The doors were all open. The exterior was streaked with blood.
“That’s a handprint,” Harbin said, pointing. He held his palm about an inch over the surface and followed the blood forward.
“There’s more on the seat,” Martha said, the light playing over the interior. “Some on the glass over there, too.”
“Is that Holt’s briefcase?”
It was. Partially tucked under the seat in the footwell.
Martha pulled the leather briefcase out and tried the latch.
Locked.
“We’ll take this back with us.” She handed it back to Harbin.
Harbin dropped the briefcase between them with an audible gasp.
“What is it?”
His face had gone white. He pointed down at the bag. “There
’s…a fingernail embedded in the handle.”
Martha pointed the flashlight and saw that he was right. Her stomach crawled, and she had to look away.
“We should go back to the helicopter and wait for Sergeant Riley.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Whatever is happening here is well beyond whatever we were brought in to investigate. You have a family, for God’s sake. You shouldn’t be here.”
Images of Emily and Michael popped into Martha’s head, and she realized they were the reason she needed to be here. Whatever this was, they had to stop it. She needed to stop it. That’s how she kept her children safe.
Martha left the briefcase on the ground next to the EC135 and proceeded to check the other helicopters, Harbin following behind her at a deliberately slow pace. She found more streaks of blood. The windshield on one of the troop carriers was spiderwebbed with large cracks. She couldn’t imagine what kind of force was necessary to break the glass on a military aircraft.
She’d finished with the last helicopter when Harbin said, “Have you noticed the ground?”
Martha pointed the flashlight beam down. Other than depositing Holt’s briefcase, she hadn’t seen it.
Aside from their own tracks, the ground was filled with muddy footprints.
As she played the light over the prints, she realized exactly what Harbin meant, why this was peculiar—nearly all the footprints were heading in the same direction—west—through the village, toward the wide mouth of the anomaly path into the woods.
She raised the beam and pointed it toward the trees.
It was too dark to see much, but that didn’t matter. She knew where that path ended.
Harbin was first to say it aloud. “We’ll have to check the crevasse when the sun comes up.”
“But…why?”
“I told you both to wait in the helicopter!” The beam of Riley’s flashlight jerked across the ground as she stomped over to them.
“There’s nobody here,” Martha said softly, still staring off into the trees.
“You don’t know that.”
“They’re all dead,” Martha said. “Did you find any bodies?”
Riley shook her head. “That doesn’t mean they’re dead.”
Martha exchanged a look with Harbin but let it go. She started back toward the EC135.
“Hey!” Riley shouted. “What did I just tell you?”
“Shoot me,” Martha replied without bothering to turn around. She ducked around one of the troop carriers and crouched next to the briefcase.
Riley came up behind her, followed by Harbin. “What is that?”
Martha picked up a twig and used it to knock the fingernail out from the leather handle. Then she set the case down on its side and tried the locks again. “Holt’s briefcase. He understood what was going on. There might be something useful in here.” She picked up a rock and cracked it against the lock. The blow didn’t even scratch the metal. She hit it again.
Riley said, “Holt is DIA. I can’t let you open that. I seriously doubt your clearance level covers whatever is inside there.”
Martha ignored her, hit the briefcase again. “Why the two-hour window? Do you know anything about that?”
“Stop hitting the case.”
Martha dropped the rock and picked up a larger one, then brought it down hard on the lock. Still nothing. “He felt it was important nobody stayed here for more than two hours. Do you know if that was to limit exposure, or was it because he knew whatever caused the anomaly would repeat on some kind of cycle?”
This time when she hit the lock, there was a spark, the metal gave, and it popped open. She then went to work on the second one, bringing the rock down hard with a satisfying crunch.
“You’ll be brought up on treason charges, you understand that, right?”
Martha ignored her. “If this event is occurring on some kind of schedule, where are we in that cycle? Is it going to happen a minute from now? Or did it just happen and we have nearly two hours?”
“The blood we found on the helicopters wasn’t fresh,” Harbin pointed out. “If the event cycles, it occurred some time ago. We’re either in the middle or possibly the tail end of Holt’s window.”
“All the more reason for you both to get back in the helicopter,” Riley countered.
“Did your superiors explain the two-hour window to you?” Martha brought the rock down again. “Because this impacts you and your team just as much as it impacts us. Whatever happened here took everyone in the camp, not once, but twice—”
“—that we know of,” Harbin interrupted.
“That we know of,” Martha repeated. “It doesn’t seem to care if you’re a soldier or civilian, man or woman. Whatever this is has no prejudices, no preferences. And it’s clearly coming back. The only real question is when.”
She brought the rock down again, hard, and the second lock snapped off.
Martha tossed the rock aside and opened the briefcase.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Martha
Inside Holt’s briefcase, Martha found his laptop and power cord, a blank notepad, several loose pens, and the NDAs each of them had signed.
She opened the laptop and pressed the power button. Nothing happened.
Harbin knelt down next to her. “Battery?”
The laptop had a fingerprint reader, but as far as she knew, that wouldn’t keep it from starting. She pressed the power button again, harder. Still nothing. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Riley stiffened. “Shhh!”
“Don’t tell me—” Before she could get the rest of the words out, Harbin clamped his hand over her mouth and pointed toward the woods.
The beam of a flashlight momentarily cut through the black from deep in the trees, then vanished again. A second later, it reappeared, brighter, closer. The first beam was joined by a second, then a third.
Riley gestured for them both to get behind the helicopter before turning back toward the members of her team. All three of them were on the opposite side of the village, out of earshot, barely within visual. She tapped a button on the small induction radio resting under her jawbone and said softly, “Bogies, multiple, approaching from the west.” Without waiting for a response, she knelt in the mud and sighted her weapon on the mouth of the path as the lights grew closer.
Harbin removed his hand from Martha’s mouth and slowly edged around the side of the helicopter, moving with a surprising amount of stealth for a larger man. Martha followed behind him, pushing the briefcase through the mud with the toe of her shoe until it was out of sight, too.
Safely concealed, Martha cupped her hands on the helicopter’s side window and peered through. Although the glass was filthy, smeared with blood, she could still see the path.
Two soldiers came into view. Only visible for a moment before they turned off their flashlights, Martha didn’t recognize either of them. In the moment before those lights flicked off, both raised their weapons and pointed them in her general direction. She thought she caught the outline of several others behind them, but she couldn’t be sure.
On the ground, about half a dozen feet from where Martha hid, Sergeant Riley lowered the night-vision goggles attached to her helmet and switched them on. She tapped the button on her radio again. “Do you have visual?”
Martha couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, and she found that frustrating. If someone answered, she had no idea what they said. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw at least four soldiers near the mouth of the path now. Two had crouched down low, the first two remained standing, their weapons sweeping slowly over the devastated expanse of the village.
Riley unsnapped a small box from her belt and heaved it into the bushes—it landed about a dozen feet from the others, and all weapons quickly turned in that direction. She pressed another button on her radio. “This is Sergeant Kristine Riley with the United States Army. Identify yourself.”
Her voice didn’t come from where she crouched i
n the mud, but instead from whatever she’d thrown—some kind of amplified speaker.
One of the soldiers who had been crouching in the path rose and turned his flashlight back on. He flicked the beam on and off twice, and shouted, “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Fraser! Lower your weapons! We’re coming in!”
“Understood!” Riley got to her feet and let her gun fall to her side. She pressed the button on her radio again. “Stand down.”
From the opposite end of the village, flashlight beams began to blink back on as Riley’s team came into view again—they’d spread out and assumed a defensive stance.
Martha and Harbin stepped out from behind the helicopter.
Riley crossed the open field and spoke to the one who’d identified himself as Lieutenant Colonel Fraser. He was tall, at least six-four, wide shoulders; he towered over her.
Again, Martha couldn’t hear. “Can you read their lips? Like you did in the helicopter?”
Harbin shook his head. “Too far away. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
Riley had her arm out, gesturing toward the remains of the village as she spoke rapidly. No doubt telling him about the missing people. Who knew what else.
No more secrets.
“Screw this,” Martha said, before stomping out across the field toward the two of them.
At first, she didn’t see the stretcher held by two other soldiers about twenty feet back. Nor did she see the teenage girl held still by two more soldiers. It wasn’t until she got close that she realized both were secured with zip-ties and gagged.
Martha turned, ready to run back to the helicopters, but Riley and Fraser stood, blocking her path.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Martha
Martha planted her feet firmly and pointed back behind her. “Why the hell are those two children tied up?”
Sergeant Riley held her palm up. “Calm down, Doctor.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I want both of them released immediately!”
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