He shakes his head. “She’s dead. Lyons wouldn’t lie about that.”
“There’s a chance he believes it,” I admit, “but there is no proof. He could be wrong. Why would they bring her here if she was dead? Also, he killed Winters and tried to kill the only family he has left. I’m not sure he’s seeing things clearly.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. A thick vein on his forehead twitches. “We’re doing the right thing, and I have my orders. We’ve been planning this for—”
He closes his mouth.
“Planning what?”
I follow a subtle shift of his eyes and see the strap of his backpack. When he looks back at me, his face is twitching, his mouth pulling in and out of a smile. He shakes his head like he’s having a seizure, but I think he’s refusing to answer.
“Destroying the colony might not stop a war with the Dread,” I tell him. “It could start one.” I don’t know if Allenby’s position on this matter is right or not, but if it hasn’t been considered, it needs to be.
You’d think I just told him I was pregnant. He gapes at me, the drugs exaggerating his reaction. Then his mouth slaps shut, and he pulls himself together. “We’re already at war. Once upon a time, you knew that, too.”
I can’t argue about what I don’t yet remember, so I ask, “What if everything happening around the world is a warning? A shot across the bow.”
“A warning?” He scoffs. “For who?”
“Who do you think?”
It takes him only a moment to understand. “You think all of this … everything that’s happening around the world is a warning—for Neuro?”
“Not Neuro. Lyons. You don’t find it odd that they took his daughter? That they brought her here, to his first target?”
“If she really is here, they’re using her as a human shield. They’re desperate. Afraid. We can end this today, and they know it.”
I don’t argue. He could be right. The tracker signal might just be exposed to let us know she’s here, because they think that will stop Lyons. “I’m not going to get in your way, and I hope you’re right about all this, but if there’s a chance she’s alive, I need to at least try to get her back. How long do I have? Give me that much.”
“Ten minutes,” he says.
“Until what?”
“Let’s just say we’re going to do this the old-fashioned way first.”
“World War Two–style,” I guess, and he doesn’t argue. “Just tell me it’s not a nuke. There’s already enough talk of that.”
“Not a nuke,” he says, lowering the weapon. “What do you mean? Enough talk about what?”
“Russia’s nukes are on standby. Ready for launch. Which means everyone else’s are, too. The president issued an ultimatum: stand down in…” I look at my watch. “Eighty-six minutes, or else…”
“Or else what?”
“Nothing good,” I say, “but it won’t take much more than a nudge from the Dread to make sure it’s the worst possible ‘or else.’”
Katzman slowly shakes his head. “Then we need to stop them. Here and now.”
He’s right about the here and now, but the method is still up for debate.
“Look,” he says, “if you’re not out of here in ten, you probably never will be.”
“Anyone else I should worry about?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “We’re holding a perimeter until the—” He closes his mouth, realizing he almost gave me too much information. “No. Beyond me, it’s just th—”
His eyes go wide. The weapon comes up. I dive to the side as he fires, feeling the zing of bullets passing inches from my cheek. My roll is slowed by the foot-deep water, but I manage to get my feet under me and draw my sound-suppressed P229 handgun. Too bad it’s the wrong weapon for this fight.
Four bulls charge through the swamp, their massive mouths hanging open with worm-covered tongues, and green veins pulsing with energy, charge through the swamp.
“Oh my God,” Katzman whispers. “Oh my God.” The drugs do the trick. Katzman stands his ground and fires. The problem is, he’s about to become a mirror-world pancake.
49.
Katzman pulls what I like to call “a Hudson.” Like the space marine in Aliens, he stands his ground, firing and swearing, out of his mind while still inflicting damage. The drugs he’s on keep him from running but, mixed with adrenaline, are sending him into a manic state of mind.
“Fuck you!” he shouts, emptying his handgun and dropping it into the foot-deep water. To his credit, the bull he emptied the clip into is now limping and slow, but it’s still coming. “Fuck you!” he shouts again, unslinging his assault rifle and spraying an arc into the rushing monsters.
While he’s doing a horrible job killing the Dread, he is drawing their attention, freeing me up to act, which I appreciate because, unlike him, I’m not on any fear-fighting drugs. I suppose that’s lucky for both of us. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if we both fearlessly drained our magazines into a mirror-world swamp and died.
I consider leaving Katzman to face the bulls alone. Both fearless versions of myself probably would. I wouldn’t have been afraid to let Katzman face the result of his actions, even if he died. The ramifications of making a morally wrong choice wouldn’t scare me. For the first time in my life, I’m afraid of what the choice will mean for my soul. So I take a moment to think about it and come to a different conclusion.
I draw my Vector assault rifle, take aim, and pull the trigger. A full magazine peppers a Dread bull’s gaping mouth, shredding its innards and dropping it to the ground. A cascade of water explodes around the monster, sending sparkles of luminescent blood in all directions.
One of the three remaining bulls turns on me. The other two, including the limper, continue toward Katzman, who is struggling to reload his weapon. I have no trouble switching out the magazine but am very aware that if it takes a full magazine to take down a bull, I’m going to run out of ammo very quickly.
Think, I tell myself with just seconds left to act. The Dread bull is thirty feet out, pulsing fear at me. A wave of nausea sweeps through my body. I fight it, strategizing. Aiming. I pull the trigger, popping out a three-round burst. Bright green geysers of blood erupt from the bull’s right knee, just as it puts its weight down on the limb. With a warbling shriek, the creature spills forward and to the side. An arcing wave of water rises up to engulf me, but I slip out of the mirror world and move forward. The bull flinches as I reenter the mirror world, weapon already aimed down. Once again, I realize the Dread, while physically superior, are not accustomed to combat—their world is all about mental warfare, psyops. Nor are they used to using multiple dimensions in a strategic way. It catches them off guard. While they are comfortable with humanity in general, they’ve never seen anything like me, and it scares them, maybe as much as seeing a Dread in the flesh would frighten a person.
I pull the trigger. At close range, all three rounds punch through the eye on the side of the Dread bull’s head, shoving the monster’s brains out the other side. A plume of glowing green bursts into the water beneath the bull’s head.
A cough of sound-suppressed gunfire, drowned out by the wild shout of a man, turns me around in time to see Katzman’s final moments. The bull, even if it was shot and killed, will plow into him.
Katzman’s eyes go wide as even he realizes this. And then, he’s gone.
Not dead. Just gone. Returned to his home dimension. The bull passes through the empty space.
But Katzman, perhaps just reacting without too much thought, slips back into the mirror world before the bull has fully passed by. As a result, he reenters this world partially inside the bull. His legs are yanked up off the ground and pulled along for the ride, but the bull, whose gut has now been replaced by a panicking man, spasms and topples forward.
Get out of there, I think.
Katzman’s kicking legs suddenly disappear, leaving a gaping wound behind. The bull splashes into the water, dying slowly, mewling pi
tifully. I feel a moment of pity for the thing and then turn to the fourth bull, already injured by Katzman. It has pulled up short, shifting its four eyes between the most recently slain bull and me.
Whispering fills the air.
I take aim and fire, emptying the clip. The bull flinches back, turning to run, but then a round hits something vital and the monster falls limp. The whispering stops.
Katzman hasn’t returned, so I chase him back to the real world. He’s on the ground, coughing and sputtering, panicked and furiously wiping at himself. He’s covered in bright green gore, viscous slime, and chunks of Dread organs. When he left the second time, he took a lot of the Dread with him. I note that he’s not writhing in pain, either. They’ve trained for this but, unlike me, lack the ability to push fear. I volunteered to be the first guinea pig. I remember that now. The rest of Dread Squad must have received a more-refined batch of the DNA-altering retrovirus, leaving them more human than Dread, not fully both like me and not able to do everything I can.
“Calm down,” I tell him. He flinches when I stand over him but slows down a bit when he sees it’s me. “They’re all dead.”
I don’t know if he hears me. The foul-smelling guts covering his body have his undivided attention.
“Katzman!”
His eyes lock onto mine, wide with fear and drug-induced focus.
“You can leave all this behind when you slip between worlds.” I’ve been leaving the blood of dead Dread behind. Katzman, it seems, needs a little practice. “Just focus on what you want to take with you. Everything else will stay behind.”
He stares for just a moment, then gives just a hint of a nod.
“Go to the world between first,” I tell him.
“I—I don’t know if I can.”
I crouch beside him. “I trained you better than this. I remember that now. Just focus.” I shrug. “Or you can stay covered in gore.”
Strands of florescent-green slime dangle from his arms as he lifts them up, inspecting his situation. His stomach lurches. He’s about to wretch. I put my hand on his back and do the job for him.
Faster than you can blink, we’re in the world between for just a moment, and then back home, leaving the gore behind. Katzman is dry again, patting his body down with his hands. We’re surrounded by lush green willows.
“Thanks,” he says. “For helping.”
I move my hand from his back to his shoulder. “Tell me what’s going to happen.”
“I can’t.”
“I could have left you,” I say. “I saved your life.”
After a beat, he says, “It’s a weapon.”
“What kind of a weapon?”
He looks unsure for a moment, but a word bubbles out of him when I lean a bit closer. “Microwave.”
“I thought microwave weapons in the field were a no-go.”
“Not guns,” he says.
“A bomb,” I say, finishing the thought. “A microwave bomb.”
I knew that microwaves and radiation affected all frequencies of reality, but I never considered what that really meant. I don’t really consider them now. They kind of just barrel into me. “When we detonate a nuclear warhead, the effects are felt in both worlds.”
“You have a point?” Katzman asks.
“They’re bluffing,” I say, more to myself than Katzman.
“What?”
“They don’t want to push the president into nuclear war with Russia. It would kill them, too.” I want to believe this, but I’m not sure. The Dread, and the way they think, is still a mystery. “But if they’re pushed … If we leave them no choice…”
His forehead scrunches up, the depth of his wrinkles exaggerated by the drugs flowing through his veins. “You think they’d kill themselves, intentionally?”
“Maybe the World War Two Japanese analogy is more appropriate than Lyons knows? We really know nothing about the Dread. Who’s to say they wouldn’t rather burn with us than let us win?”
“What’s the alternative?” he asks. “Let them win? Screw that.”
“Can you stop it?” I ask. “If you had to?”
He shakes his head. “There are five of us carrying microwave bombs. Only one of us actually needs to make it inside.”
“That’s what’s on your back?”
He nods. “But it’s really just a backup plan, in case the assault goes FUBAR.”
Assault? Lyons is out of his mind. “Why?”
“Honestly…” He looks me in the eyes. “I’m not entirely sure.”
That Lyons hasn’t shared all his plans with the man in charge of Dread Squad is a little disconcerting. What could he be planning that a loyal soldier like Katzman might not carry out?
I look at my watch. Eighty minutes until the president’s deadline. This is going to be tight.
“How much longer?” I ask.
He points to the sky just as a faint whine begins to tickle my ears. I look up and to the north. A massive black Boeing C-17 Globemaster III flies toward our location. The huge transport plane is capable of transporting over a hundred paratroopers, dropping them into a battlefield with precision.
Then I see another.
And another.
Lyons’s covert, black operation is about to leap into the light of day and into the arms of the Dread.
50.
“Can you delay the assault?” I ask, already suspecting the answer. He barely gets a chance to start saying no when I wave off the question and sprint across the traffic circle.
As I leave the macadam behind and enter the lush Couturie Forest, he shouts to me. “They’re going to shoot anything that moves! Don’t be in there when they arrive!”
I don’t doubt his warning. Amped up on BDO he very nearly shot me. Probably would have if he hadn’t recognized me. The potent mix of chemicals might help a human being overcome the Dread fear, but when there’s nothing to be afraid of, the drug sends the user into a manic state. Facing the Dread without it allows me to think more clearly, which is essential, but it also leaves me more susceptible to their effect, not that the drug did wonders for Katzman’s performance.
My pace is slowed by the thick vegetation growing everywhere, but it’s faster than slogging through the mirror-world swamp. I speed up when I come across a footpath headed in the right direction, but I only get thirty feet before I’m struck by an invisible freight train. I’m lifted off the ground and thrown into a marsh.
I’ve pulled my body and armor fully out of the mirror world. They shouldn’t be able to strike me, unless … They’re pushing themselves into this world, just for a moment, just long enough to strike.
I stand, dripping wet, and ready my weapon. Then I slip between worlds, ready to put another Dread out of its misery.
Nearly waist-deep in water, I spin, searching for my target and finding absolutely nothing. I’m just a hundred feet from the curved wall of the colony. Like all the others, a series of arched entrances lines the outside wall, one every fifty feet, raised up just above the waterline by an earthen ramp. Like the city of New Orleans, the Dread colony is barely keeping the water out.
After ten seconds of searching for whatever struck me, I lower my weapon. I’m alone, and the entrances to the colony are unguarded.
A sudden fear clutches my insides.
I spin again, ready to pull the trigger, but am still unable to find a target. With my back to the colony, I search the black, hanging tree line. I see no motion, just bunches of dangling, wet foliage.
A ripple of water rolls past. I spin and fire three shots—into the water.
I’m being toyed with, my fear increasing with each close encounter.
But encounter with what?
I get my answer as the water, twenty feet away, bows up and slides away from a rising form. Four yellow eyes, all atop a flat head, break the surface. Four feet closer, a snout rises, blowing a hiss of air through two nostrils.
I take a step back. If you’d asked me, at any point in my life up until
yesterday, whether I was afraid of crocodiles, the answer would have been no. Today the answer is yes; I am most definitely afraid of crocodiles. I don’t think that what I’m seeing is an actual croc, but if it’s anything like the man-eating reptiles, the distance between its snout and eyes mean it’s absolutely massive. A good thirty feet long.
The eyes glide toward me, unblinking, moving through the water so smoothly that they don’t create a ripple.
A metallic-purple light slips through the water to my right. It’s in my periphery, but I don’t look at it. I can’t take my eyes off the monster coming my way … until it stops. The submerged Dread freezes, going perfectly still.
I glance at the purple thing moving beneath the water, gliding casually between the Dread and me. I can’t see much of it, but it looks like a long fish of some kind, its shiny scales reflecting the sky’s purple light.
The four large yellow eyes flicker and turn black as the thing slides beneath the water.
I’m paralyzed, watching the fish swim by, oblivious to the danger. When it’s ten feet in front of me, a shadow moves over the fish and snaps down. Water explodes into the air. The Dread rises from the water, thrashing the fish back and forth. Its eyes flicker brightly, and then the veins covering its wide body come to life like iridescent bulbs, blinking before going solid.
I was wrong; it’s not like a crocodile at all. It’s much, much worse. The mouth is not only deep, it’s also six feet wide, with long black teeth that extend outside the mouth, like a Venus flytrap. The long teeth have skewered the fish. It clamps its wide jaws shut, the teeth forming a perfect seam, carving the prey in two. Rough, glossy skin, crisscrossed with yellow veins, rises up from the curved mouth to the four eyes, allowing them and the tall nostrils positioned halfway to the end of the mouth to protrude from the water without revealing the rest of the beast. The body is, as I suspected, at least thirty feet long, but with legs long enough for it to stand clear of and move quickly through the water, though I suspect its flat tail can move it through the water pretty quickly, too.
In the ten seconds it takes the Dread croc to trap the fish, sever it in two, and swallow the halves, I’ve completed my assessment of the thing: I’ll be just another meal in fifteen seconds if I don’t kill it in the next five. Knowing my magazine is half empty, I eject it, letting it fall into the water. I slap in a fresh magazine with three seconds left.
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