The Gemini Effect

by Chuck Grossart

  “Probably three hours,” he replied, wiping the sweat from his brow with a rag. “Another hour to set up the equipment and two hours to dig the thing out.”

  The major looked at his watch. Three hours would put them close to sundown. He didn’t particularly want to be here when it got dark. “You’ve got to do it in two.”

  “We can only do this so fast, Major.”

  “In three hours, when the sun goes down, we could all be running for our lives.” He looked down at the supervisor’s heavy work boots. “Hope you can run in those things.”

  The mining supervisor thought for a second, shot a glance at the sun hanging over the western horizon, and then turned to his team. “Let’s get on this thing, people! Let’s move!”

  CHAPTER 29

  The elevator hummed as it slid down the long shaft to the Vanguard underground complex.

  “It’s Russian?”

  “I think so, General,” Carolyn said. “Soviet, to be exact. If it’s what I think it is, we can trace it back to the Nazis, early 1945. The Soviets discovered a rudimentary sample of the stuff when they took Berlin.”

  “I knew the Nazis were developing some horrible things, but in 1945? Did they have the technology to make something that could cause all this?” Garrett asked. The mention of Nazis had a close personal meaning for him—he could still remember brushing his finger across the faded blue numbers tattooed on his grandmother’s forearm. It was one of his earliest memories. She, and others like her, had been branded. Like cattle.

  “No, nothing the Nazis had could cause this by itself. Our Russian friends were able to refine the agent over the years, though. They were very, very good at making some truly horrifying agents.”

  The elevator stopped at the bottom of the shaft, the Utah desert sitting a couple hundred feet above them. As the doors slid open, they were met with the stern gazes of two sentries, M16s at the ready.

  “Identification, please, General.”

  General Rammes handed a coded card to the sentry, who slipped it into a small slot in a reader next to his undersized desk. Satisfied by the green light on the reader’s panel, the sentry directed the general to a small eyepiece protruding from an oddly shaped piece of equipment on the wall next to the elevator. The retinal scan confirmed the general’s identity.

  “Identity confirmed, sir. Welcome to Vanguard, General Rammes.” The sentry saluted smartly, and the general returned the courtesy.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. I will personally vouch for Colonel Hoffman.”

  “Copy that, sir.” Both sentries lowered their weapons, satisfied that all was in order. “And welcome back, ma’am. Glad to see you’re okay.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” Carolyn handed the sentry her own coded card, and peered into the retinal scanner. The readout confirmed that she was, in fact, Ms. Carolyn Ridenour.

  “You’re cleared to proceed, ma’am.”

  As the trio passed through the first set of heavy doors, which immediately slid closed behind them, Garrett said, “I’ve been in secure facilities before, but nothing like this.”

  “Colonel,” Rammes said, “when you see what we deal with down here, you’ll know why. Let’s suit up.”

  “Yes, sir.” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to see what kind of horrors were being studied here, kept hundreds of feet belowground in this desolate area of Utah. He was, however, strangely looking forward to seeing the bodies of the things up close. He wanted to take a good look at the enemy that had killed so many of his soldiers. Carolyn helped him don his protective ensemble, a positive-pressure suit that covered him head to toe. He felt like one of the scientists from E.T.

  “Carolyn, what has you convinced the level 5 is Soviet?” Rammes asked.

  “The creatures were active during darkness and hid in the shadows when the sun came up. They’re sensitive to light. That fact, combined with the mutation of both animal and human species that we’ve seen, points to a Soviet agent. We were able to get a sample smuggled out of their biological research facility in Kiev back in the late ’80s. One of their researchers decided he had to get a sample to us.”

  They passed through the second set of heavy doors and headed down a long, sloping ramp to the next set of doors, right outside the facility’s initial decontamination chamber.

  “Officially, they called it agent 1Z65. Unofficially, they called it Bliznetsy. Gemini.”

  “Gemini?” Garrett asked.

  “Their work was based on Mengele’s experiments with—”

  “Wait. Mengele? Josef Mengele?” Garrett was very familiar with that name. Mengele, the meticulous Nazi bastard who’d stood on the unloading ramp in his highly polished boots, holding a riding crop, deciding with a flick of his wrist which people would be sent to the gas chambers and which would be sent to hard labor—or medical experimentation—as soon as they stepped off the train. Nazi soldiers would move through the crowds of people, looking for those who met Mengele’s twisted physical criteria for experimentation, the most prized being twins, who would immediately be taken from their parents, most likely never to see them again. His grandmother had been subjected to Mengele’s extensive twin studies when she’d been held at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The endless experimentation. The endless measurement, study, and taking of blood. The endless terror. His grandmother had survived. Her twin sister had not.

  “Yes,” Carolyn said. “Doctor Josef Mengele. The Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ from Auschwitz. Apparently he’d done a great deal of the initial development work on the original agent. Our Russian friends decided to continue where he left off.” She turned to face the general as they reached the final set of heavy doors. “I could be completely wrong, General. I need to dig into the numbers and see if my theory is correct.”

  “If you are correct, Carolyn, what does it mean?” Rammes asked.

  “It means we’re in more trouble than we thought.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The sun disappeared below the rim of the blast crater, throwing the interior of the hole into twilight shadow as daylight slowly drained away. It had taken a little more than two hours for the mining crew to dig down to the nearest casing, and they were now in the process of hoisting the object up through the shaft they’d constructed.

  The mining supervisor looked at his watch and frowned. He’d hoped the digging would’ve gone quicker, but they’d come across a tough layer of large rocks that had severely hindered their ability to go any quicker. They’d ruined three drill heads breaking through.

  “How much time until it reaches the surface?” the Army major asked.

  “It’s on its way up the shaft right now. Probably another fifteen minutes at the most.”

  “Okay. I want you to release as many of your people as you can. Only keep the people you need to bring the casing up. Everyone else needs to get the hell out of here. Now.”

  “And once we get it out of the ground?”

  “My people will take over.”

  The mining supervisor saw a large group of soldiers ringing the circular rim of the blast crater, all heavily armed. There was an olive-green truck backed up to the edge, its back open, ready to receive its cargo. A tracked vehicle was slowly crawling down the slope of the crater toward the hole, black diesel smoke belching from its exhaust. He figured it was going to be used to get the casing out of the crater.

  “And then you need to get out of here, too,” the major continued. “We’ve got transportation arranged. You’ll leave all your equipment in place.”

  Good, the supervisor thought. The quicker we can get out of here, the better. Tearing down all his equipment and packing it out would’ve taken much more time than he was comfortable with.

  Within five minutes, all the people the mining supervisor didn’t need were scrambling up the edge of the crater, heading for waiting Humvees, which would take them away from the
large area of buried casings and, hopefully, to safety.

  The sun was sinking fast. The supervisor had seen the news reports and had watched the president’s address to the nation. He knew what might happen if they were still here when it got dark. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect.

  The sound of the chain breaking was the last thing he wanted to hear at that moment. It was immediately followed by a scream.

  The supervisor ran over to the hoist. “What the hell happened?”

  “We have a break. It looks like the casing is jammed in the hole, boss. We just lost the fucking chain!”

  “Fix it, and fix it fast! We don’t have a hell of a lot of time. You got me?”

  “Got it! We’re on it, we’re on it!”

  One of the workers had been unfortunate enough to be standing in the wrong place when the broken chain sliced through the air, and it tore into his right arm like a steel whip. The supervisor could tell the arm was broken, and the jagged wound was bleeding profusely.

  “Get that man out of here! Take him—”

  “We’ve got him!” the major said. “Just get the goddamned chain fixed and get the thing out of the ground!”

  A group of soldiers quickly carried the wounded man away from the scene and up the side of the crater.

  An Apache attack helicopter thudded through the air above the crater, adding another dimension of surrealism to the whole situation. He was just a miner, for Christ’s sake! This was all a bad dream. The feeling of dread he felt when the sun had slipped below the crater rim was building in intensity as he watched his work crew, now one man short, frantically try to replace the hoist chain. The hair on the back of his neck bristled with an almost electric fear. He looked at the long, sloping side of the blast crater and wondered how fast he could make it to the top.

  He felt like his time was running out.

  CHAPTER 31

  Garrett had worn full chemical gear before, but it didn’t quite measure up to the protective suit he was wearing now. It was lightweight and permitted much more freedom of movement than his heavy charcoal-lined chem gear, and the slow, constant airflow from his small backpack—providing positive pressure in case of a puncture or tear—kept him surprisingly cool. He, Carolyn, and General Rammes stepped through the portal to one of the many clean rooms in the Vanguard complex, the heavy six-inch-thick door sliding closed behind them. A series of interconnected locks slid into place.

  In front of them lay the three bodies that had been flown to the complex earlier in the day, each separately encased in a thick Plexiglas coffin-like structure. Heavy rubberized gloves were inserted into the sides so workers could handle the bodies without direct contact.

  Garrett was comforted by the level of protection this place employed to avoid any sort of release. If there were any bugs in those things he could catch, he knew the chances were infinitesimally small that something could actually get to him.

  He was also struck by the whiteness of the place—he felt like he was in a dream world, where every bit of color had been sucked away, leaving only white. The only colors he could see were on the readouts of the computer screens that lined one wall of the room, and the faces inside the protective helmets.

  Carolyn stepped up to the nearest Plexiglas coffin. “What have you got so far, Josh?”

  Lieutenant Josh Ewing turned around from his station. “Carolyn! I heard what happened. Thank God you’re okay.”

  “A little worse for wear, but not too bad. Just some scrapes and bruises. It could’ve been a lot worse.”

  “I’m sorry about your team.”

  “I am, too.” Beneath her protective mask, Carolyn fought back the tears. Now was not the time to get emotional. Now was the time to focus. “General Rammes informs me there are traces of a level 5 in the blood. How close are you to—” The words stuck in her throat as she looked down at the thing in the Plexiglas box. It was more horrible than she ever imagined, now that she could see it up close.

  One of the mutated rat-things—the size of a small dog—lay on its back on the white surface of the examining table, its legs splayed out. The right side of the creature was blown apart, probably, Carolyn thought, by shrapnel from the B-52 strike. The internal organs she could see were charred black and ripped into a mass of unrecognizable tissues, fused together by the searing heat of the shrapnel. The sides of the wound were what horrified Carolyn the most: the thing was covered with an incredibly thick layer of muscle. Dense muscle tissue, bound by heavy, cord-like sinew and tendon, ran the entire length of both sides of the open wound. The thing was built like a main battle tank.

  “Carolyn? Are you all right?”

  Josh’s voice snapped her back to reality. She’d only seen the things in the dark, and never clearly enough to make out any detail. The thought of thousands of these things killing everything in their path made Carolyn shiver. “Yes, I’m all right. Ugly little bastards, aren’t they?”

  “Ugly doesn’t quite describe it.” Josh pointed to where the broken and smashed body of one of the humanoid things lay. “Our freaky friend over there won’t win any beauty contests, either.”

  She had to force herself to look at it. Even smashed and torn from the bombing, the thing still resembled what she’d seen crawling inside the Chinook. The terrible beast that had killed her entire team. And almost killed her as well.

  Although the sight of it filled her with terror, it also sickened her to realize that it had once been a living, breathing human being, mutated into a terrible beast by something they didn’t quite understand yet. She was surprised the thought didn’t sadden her . . . She was glad it was dead. It had ceased being human, and it had to be killed. It was as simple as that. After what she’d seen happen at Kansas City—and to Matt—there was no other solution. The things may have been human just a day before, but now they were a threat. Everything that had made them people was dead and gone as soon as they were transformed. They were now a threat that required complete extermination. Along with the rest of the mutated creatures.

  She had to force herself to look away from it, as well.

  “Like I was saying,” Carolyn continued, “General Rammes said CDC found traces of a level 5 in the blood. Have you been able to nail it down?”

  “Not yet. There’s so many other compounds in the blood we can’t identify that it’s difficult to define the specific level 5. We do know it’s a DNA-based agent—the DNA of each of the creatures has undergone a complete transformation. It’s like they were reborn as an entirely new species.” He reached into the Plexiglas box and pried the rat-thing’s mouth open with his heavy, rubberized glove, careful to avoid the rows of razor-sharp teeth lining the thing’s mouth. “Just by looking at it, you can tell this was a rat. The bone structure of the skull, the musculature surrounding the jaw. It’s all pretty much like your common field rat, only larger, stronger, thicker.” He gripped one of the thing’s legs. “The legs have been restructured for running—slightly longer in proportion to the rest of the body, and more muscle than you can imagine. The claws have also lengthened and thickened.”

  To Carolyn, they looked like a set of claws that belonged on a grizzly bear, not an oversized rat.

  “The same can be said for our humanoid friend over there. You can tell it was once human by looking at it, but that’s about as far as it goes. Its DNA has been completely restructured, as well, every sequence right in line with our little furry friend here.”

  “Josh, I think the level 5 may be related to 1Z65.”

  “Gemini?”

  “Yes, Gemini.”

  “What makes you—”

  “They’re sensitive to light, right? They stay in the shadows during the day and only move in the darkness. The Gemini agent was initially designed to create a genetically bred army of night fighters, remember?”

  “Yes, I remember reading about it, but that agent by itself doesn’t
explain the mutations we’ve seen.”

  “I agree, it doesn’t. But, if it’s combined itself with other agents—maybe naturally occurring compounds—it could’ve mutated into what we’re seeing.” She strode over to one of the computer workstations and began tapping on the keyboard, digging into the rows of numbers that spelled out exactly what the creatures were made of, in a language only a few could understand. Carolyn knew that language like the back of her hand. “The Soviets abandoned it because of what happened at Kiev, remember? They couldn’t control it. The basic agent was much too unstable and unpredictable to ensure a uniform effect from its use.” She continued tapping on the keyboard. “Come on . . . You’re there somewhere . . .”

  “But for a while, they still tried to refine it,” Josh said.

  “That’s right. And that’s why the sample was smuggled out to us. It scared the living hell out of one of their researchers. At least one of them had the smarts to realize they were playing with fire. I wish we had, too.”

  “You mean the New Mexico incident?”

  “Exactly.”

  Garrett had been quietly listening to the discussion in his headset. “The New Mexico incident?” he asked.

  Lieutenant Ewing explained. “Once the Gemini agent was smuggled out of the Soviet Union, we started trying to figure out exactly what made it tick. We needed to know how to protect ourselves from it, just in case the Russkies decided to drop a vial of it somewhere in the United States.”

  “So there’s another place like this in New Mexico?”

  “New Mexico was where it ended, sir. It actually started in a biological warfare research facility located about fifty miles north of here.” Josh glanced at General Rammes, suddenly uncomfortable about telling this officer he’d never met about a highly classified subject, known only by a select few. It was definitely not meant to be common knowledge.