Around me, everything was chaos. Thrasher was caving in the skull of a wolf with the yard–long piece of two–inch rebar he called his billy club. Angie was shooting point blank at a wolf that had Ace on the ground. Athalia was standing over a dead wolf and kicking another in the chops. Vargas and Hell Razor were back to back, blasting away at three circling wolves and, believe it or not, laughing.
I ran to Angie and Ace and did my trick again, stuffing the muzzle of my gun through the fur of their wolf before pulling the trigger. The three of us went and helped the others, and it was over in less than a minute.
Well, almost over.
All the wolves we’d been fighting were lying dead around us, but we were still hearing growling and snarling.
“Where the hell is that coming from?” asked Angie.
Then we saw it. A commotion in the patch of scrub behind us.
“No!” shouted Vargas, and he plunged through the cacti, stumbling and getting caught on the needles.
The rest of us charged in after him and saw a last wolf tearing at something near the wall.
“Goddamn it! Get off of her!”
Vargas blasted at the wolf and got its attention. It whipped around, snarling, and tried to launch itself at him, but Thrasher’s rebar took it in the mouth before it could jump, and turned its head to red pulp. It sank down with a whimper and revealed the body that lay behind it.
Poor Kate’s throat was open from chin to clavicle, and all her blood spilling out on the dry yellow ground. Her arms had been trapped in a bed of cacti. She hadn’t even been able to defend herself — not that it would have helped. Still, what a way to go. It was so pitiful I felt like crying.
Vargas did. He dropped down on his knees beside her, weeping and shaking. “I told you not to come. Didn’t I tell you? Goddamn it, I told you!”
A cactus off to our left spoke up. “Congratulations, volunteers. I am impressed. You are the first subjects to survive their first encounter with any of my progeny, and—”
Vargas bolted up and shot the cactus. “Congratulations? You son–of–a–bitch! You just killed a little girl!”
A rock in the other direction continued. “I’d still call that a victory. Only one casualty, and the weakest, least effective one at—”
Vargas shot the rock. “You heartless, soulless motherfucker!”
He started shooting at random — sky, walls, plants, rocks — his eyes crazed with grief and rage.
“We are not some goddamn experiment, you invisible asshole!”
BLAM!
“We are people!”
BLAM!
“And you killed the best of us!”
BLAM!
“Ain’t no research worth a dead little girl!”
BLAM!
CLASH!
We looked up. Vargas’s last bullet had whistled over the wall about twenty yards down. That area had been black and full of stars just like the rest of the “sky,” but now, as we watched, big jagged pieces of that black were falling away, and light was showing through from behind it. A one–way window.
Three more huge shards spun down and shattered on the wall below, and we could see a wood–paneled room through it, and also the silhouette of a man watching us.
Vargas raised his gun and fired and the silhouette stepped away, out of our line of sight.
“Come on,” said Vargas, starting forward and reloading. “We gotta get through that window.”
“Damn straight,” I said.
We filed in behind him and…
…that’s when the other Night Screamers started screaming.
– Chapter Eight –
There were three of them this time, shrieking and flailing towards us from three different directions, and behind their high pitched wails, the lower howls of armored wolves.
“They’re like fucking alarms!” shouted Hell Razor as he blew a screamer’s head off. “They let everything with teeth know where we are!”
“Is it on purpose?” Angie gut–shot another screamer and it collapsed in a mewling heap. “Are they working together? Is Finster signaling them?”
Vargas and I finished off the last mutant together, then he motioned us all back the way we’d come.
“Back to the corner,” he said. “We can’t let ‘em get around behind us.”
We ran back and faced out, guns ready. They didn’t keep us waiting. Wolves were loping in from all over, twice as many as before. There was no escape from death this time, and part of me, the same part that had earlier said, “I just want to get it over with,” the same part that had jumped into the fight at White Mesa without thinking twice, the same part that had started the ruckus at the Black Market, was excited by the idea. I didn’t understand it. I should have been pissing my pants, but instead my heart was pounding like I was on a first date. I was having a hard time keeping myself from laughing out loud. The only thing that kinda killed the buzz a little was knowing that my all my friends were going to die too, but even that wasn’t enough to keep my blood from singing.
On either side of me Angie and Athalia were squeezing off head–shots as calm and easy as if they were at target practice. Two wolves dropped. Then another two. Vargas, Ace and Hell Razor weren’t snipers like that, and were holding their fire until the wolves got closer, while Thrasher had put his guns away entirely, and was rolling his shoulders and limbering up with his rebar. Me, I knew I had to get close — under that metal fur — to do anything, so I was wading out through the dead grass with a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, howling answers to the wolves’ challenges as I went.
We were all going to die, and it was going to be glorious.
But then, just as the wolves were close enough to see the glow of their eyes, Angie and Athalia’s guns developed a weird echo that didn’t quite match the shots they’d fired. Then a wolf they hadn’t shot stumbled sideways and I realized I wasn’t hearing echoes. I was hearing more guns.
“Watch your fire!” Vargas pointed beyond the wolves. “There’s people coming!”
It was hard to see who they were in the dark, but I could see the flashes of their guns just fine and, wonder of wonders, they weren’t aiming at us. All over Finster’s indoor outdoors wolves were yipping and turning as bullets caught them in the flanks. The shots weren’t doing much damage, but they brought the wolves’ charge to a standstill as they tried to face two threats at once.
We fanned out and moved to enclose them, and the people who had come to our rescue — whoever they were — did the same. Pretty soon, what had looked like it was going to be a dead ranger bloodbath turned into a dead wolf massacre. The ring closed and the wolves turned and lunged, bloodying up a few of us, but we knew what we were dealing with now, and we made our shots count. A few minutes later it was all over — no casualties on our side, high fives all around.
“You all okay, rangers?”
A handful of the folks who had rescued us stepped forward and we whooped when we finally recognized them behind their gas masks. It was Metal Maniac, Mad Dog, and a bunch of the other townies.
Vargas shook his head. “What the hell are you doing back here — aside from saving our asses?”
Metal shrugged. “After all you done for us, we couldn’t just stand by. We all worked here, remember? We knew the kind of craziness you might find.”
Mad Dog laughed. “Good thing some of us know secret ways to get into the garden or we woulda all been on the outside watchin’ you die on the security monitors.”
There were tears in Angie’s eyes. “This is why the rangers succeed. Not because we have the biggest guns, or the best armor. But because, when we do good by the people, the people do good by us. Thank you, friends. Thank you.”
The townsfolk cheered, but Vargas held up a hand.
“Yes, thank you, but now that you’ve saved us you gotta get the hell out again. We know where Finster is now, and hunting him would get awful crowded with you and y
our army tagging along.”
“Not to mention you’re all still sick as dogs,” said Angie. “You should all be in bed.”
Metal looked stubborn. “We told you, we want to be in on the kill.”
“And I told you, we’ll bring him out for you if we can, but we need to do this part alone.” He cleared his throat. “There are a few things you can do, though.”
“Name ‘em,” said Mad Dog.
Vargas ticked them off on his fingers. “One, find us a ladder. Two, carry out the body of our medic, Kate, who… who didn’t make it.”
“Aw shit,” said Metal. “I’m sorry.”
“Me… too,” said Vargas, then cleared his throat again and continued. “And three, post a guard on all the exits of the base so Finster doesn’t slip out and hightail it out of here.”
Metal saluted. “On it. Thanks.” He spun and called to one of his fellow townies.
“Hey, Owen! Bring the ladder from Storage Bay Six! The big one!”
***
Ten minutes later we propped a long ladder against the broken window in the roof, shooed Metal Maniac and Mad Dog back toward the exits with their friends, and I started up the rungs with Ace, Athalia, and the rangers covering me from the ground. It was a strange sensation. I knew I was heading for a slanted window in a curved ceiling, but the illusion of the night and the stars was so strong that I felt like I was climbing a ladder through the sky.
As my head came even with the bottom of the window, I drew my pistol and peered in, scanning for threats. Inside was a large, wood–paneled office. Again, everything appeared clean enough to be sterile, and that thought made me think that the whole facility was like a body keeping itself clean to protect itself against infection — and we were that infection. Gave me the shivers.
All that wood paneling should have made the office feel warm and inviting, but it failed. Maybe it was because, while it had more shelving than the town library, there wasn’t a single thing on those shelves — no books, no trophies, no curios, no dust. Likewise there were no pictures, maps, or paintings on the open walls. The room had all the personality of cardboard box, like an office ready for its first occupant, not an office that had been in use for over a hundred years.
And for a full thirty seconds I thought it was empty too. Then I noticed the slender man sitting at the large mahogany desk right in front of me. Noticing him freaked me out so much I almost fell off the ladder. Why hadn’t I seen him? He’d been there the whole time, but I’d looked right past him like he was part of the furniture. Maybe because he was so still? He hadn’t looked up, or shifted, or even seemed to take a breath the whole time I’d been looking through with window. Why wasn’t he moving? Was he dead? He must have known we were coming for him. He’d been there when Vargas had shot out his window, but he just sat there, staring blankly.
I trained my gun on him and took another step up the ladder. “Irwin John Finster?”
It took him a moment to react to his name. I’d have held that against him, but I was the same way. Hardly knew my own anymore. Maybe he was a clone like I’d said before — the last of a long line. Then he faced me — but just his head. His shoulders didn’t turn at all, his chair didn’t swivel. His eyes were bright blue.
“You are the clone,” he said. “You found your progenitor in the lab.”
His voice was weird. I’d thought it had sounded metallic because we were hearing it through the PA system, but it sounded the same in person.
“My progenitor’s progenitor,” I said.
I kept my gun on him as I climbed the rest of the way through the window, then beckoned to the others waiting below me. “He’s here! I got him covered! Come on up!”
I heard the ladder creak behind me, but didn’t look around. Neither did Finster. He sat there looking at me, face as blank as a dead TV screen as one by one Angie, Ace, Athalia, Hell Razor, Thrasher, and Vargas came up through the window and put their guns on him too. It took two minutes. I didn’t see him blink once.
Once they were all in, Vargas spoke. “So… we have some questions.”
“Very likely.”
Vargas opened his mouth to continue, but Angie butted in first. “You can’t be the same man who was in charge of this place when it opened, can you? You’re a clone, right? Like Ghost here.”
“I would not say that clone was quite the right term,” He turned his head toward her — again, just his head. The rest of his body stayed in exactly the same position it had been in when I first noticed it. “But, yes, I am not quite the same Irwin John Finster that founded this facility. When important work needs to be done, that which is necessary for its completion must be created. That is what I did, though the sacrifice was great.”
He stood, and it was such an abrupt change from sitting to standing that we all stepped back and raised our weapons. He didn’t seem to notice.
“So,” he said. “Your questions.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Vargas. “First one. What the fuck are you doing? I mean, I think I understand the original reason for this place. Trying to find ways to help humanity adapt to harsh conditions in the event of the apocalypse and so on, but the apocalypse happened and we’re not doin’ too bad — physically at least. We don’t need fancy new lungs to survive. We don’t need steel porcupine quills covering our bodies. So why are you tryin’ to make animals that can live in conditions that don’t exist?”
Finster’s head descended into what should have been a curt nod, but never rose again. He just froze like that, with his chin tucked to his chest.
“They do exist,” he said. “How big is the area of Arizona in which you can survive without the aid of a rad–suit or a breathing mask? Two hundred square miles? Three hundred? Four? Now, how much of the Earth is covered by clouds of toxic radiation? How much of the Earth will you never be able to explore because you can only go so far before your rad suit fails or you run out of filters.”
His head rose again and those motionless blue eyes fixed on Vargas. “If we could breathe that air, if we could thrive in that radiation, the whole world could be ours.”
I glanced at the others to see if that had sounded as sane to them as it had to me. They were frowning and nodding, so I guess I wasn’t alone.
“Okay, fine,” said Angie. “You’ve got a point there, but what’s with irradiating everybody who worked for you? And don’t tell me it was an accident, ‘cause I’m not buying it.”
Finster’s eyes switched to her. “It was not an accident. As you saw out there, I had reached a dead end with my human experiments. With each generation they became more infantile and weak. Then, when my lead researchers rebelled against me and tried to stage a coup, I realized that the fault was not with my experiments. Instead it was inherent in mankind’s internal makeup, a fatal flaw that would always make them destroy themselves and the world around them. For the world to live and grow and again be returned to the pristine paradise it once was, mankind cannot be a part of it. The species must be eradicated, and a new breed of sentient being allowed to evolve to take its place.”
There it was! There was the crazy! Suddenly it was as clear as day that we were all closer to the moon than Finster was to sanity.
“Wait,” said Angie, “you just said, “If we could thrive in that radiation the whole world could be ours.” What happened to “we” all of a sudden?”
“We as in my family,” said Finster. “The world will be ours, not yours.”
Vargas choked, then laughed. “Okay, putting aside the fact that you’re calling for the death of all mankind, evolution takes a long damn time, doesn’t it? It would still take thousands and thousands of generations before those porcupine wolves out there started rubbing sticks together and making fire — maybe millions. You’d be long dead before you got what you wanted, and I have serious doubts any sane person would want to continue the process after you died. It just ain’t gonna work.”
Finster smiled. At least the co
rners of his mouth went up. It still didn’t look like a smile. “It will work, because I will not die. I have left the human lifecycle behind. I can wait as long as it takes. Then my children, who will grow and thrive under my care, will repopulate the earth, making it again the Eden God intended. What foolish human wars destroyed, I and my guided–evolution family will make anew.”
“Sounds quite cozy and megalomaniacal,” said Athalia, “but what about the robots coming from Base Cochise? They’re going to roll over this place long before your “children” have evolved the defenses to protect themselves. Your plan won’t last this generation, let alone a thousand.”
Finster’s eyes flicked to her. “Yes. The robots.” His face made the non–smiling smile motion again. “The robots are the reason I have let you live this long, and have patiently answered your questions.”
“Gee, thanks,” said Hell Razor.
Finster kept talking like Hell Razor hadn’t spoken. “The robots must be dealt with — as must the computer that is creating them — and you ‘rangers’ have the skills and firepower to deal with them, while I, currently, do not. This is why I want you to become part of Project Darwin — my security team, if you will. In exchange you will have the pick of the housing in Darwin Village and any mate you want from my pool human test subjects. Also, I have a security pass for Sleeper Base One which will give you access to advanced armor to help you win the fight.”
Angie laughed like a hyena. “Join you after you just told us that you’re planning to wipe out the whole human race? Are you out of your ever–lovin’—”
“Angie!” Vargas cut her off with a chop gesture and a roll of the eyes.
She glared at him. “What?”
“Just… shhh.”
He turned back to Finster and cleared his throat. “Despite my colleague’s hesitation, you’re making a lot of sense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that stuff. If you’re willing to give us the sec pass that gets us that armor, then we’re willing to put aside our differences and go after the robots which are a threat to us both. Sound like a deal?”
Ghost Book One: The Earth Transformed Page 8