Extinction Game (15 page)

Oskar pressed his bunched fists to either side of his head. ‘Just
shut up
, will you?’

‘You’ve got your lucky card, right?’ said Haden. He leaned out the window of the SUV and looked back at me. ‘Better than plate armour any day.’

Oskar glared at the other man. ‘Don’t try and wind me up, you silver-eyed freak. I’m not in the mood.’

‘Oskar used to be a professional gambler,’ said Haden over his shoulder, as I got in the back of the SUV. I nearly got a mouthful of fur when Lucky leaped into the back next to me,
and I began to wish I’d got in the front instead. Haden reached up as if to scratch his ear and slowly twirled one finger next to his ear. ‘You should ask him some time about his lucky
card. Ace of Spades, right?’ he said, looking at Oskar.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Oskar groused, and I wiped one hand across my mouth to hide my grin. Haden meanwhile leaned back out of the open window beside him, and gave the rig technician a
thumbs-up. The technician nodded and put down the book he’d been reading, and within seconds the air began to flicker and shift around us. I closed my eyes and held my breath as gravity
slipped away for an instant.

When I next opened my eyes, I found we had materialized in the open air. The SUV was at the centre of a portable transfer stage, which consisted of a dozen foot-high
field-pillars arranged in a wide circle on scrubby grass. Beyond I saw woodlands and a motorway bridge arching over a lake, its far end collapsed. Farther away I made out a cluster of skyscrapers,
a number of which looked to have been reduced to near-skeletons.

At first, the sudden shift from late evening to warm sunshine had sent my senses reeling, but I recovered quickly. From the position of the sun, I could see that it was morning. I knew by now
that just because it happened to be evening in one alternate, it didn’t mean it would be the same time in any other. And until I had a better idea of exactly where in the world we were, I had
to also consider the strong likelihood that we were in an entirely different time zone from the one that Easter Island occupied.

So far, so post-apocalyptic. But what really caught my eye was a jarringly alien-looking structure that rose up higher than the skyscrapers next to which it stood. The thing was
vast
.
It looked like a patchwork egg, its outer surface a mottled canvas of grey, silver and brown. There was something tumbledown and rough-edged about it, as if it had been assembled from random found
materials. Even from this distance, I could see what appeared to be enormous angled struts enmeshing and supporting the structure’s lower half.

I looked around until I saw a second, apparently identical, structure, rising above the treetops in the other direction, and separated from the first by a distance of maybe ten or fifteen
kilometres.

Oskar carefully guided the SUV out between two of the field-pillars, then parked next to a full-sized EV and a second SUV. A standard-issue jeep stood nearby, along with a charging station used
for powering and storing aerial surveillance drones. I also saw a tent crammed with crated supplies next to the charging station.

We got out and went to join Casey, Nadia and Winifred, who were studying a map spread out on a fold-down table. A couple of Major Howes’ troops from the Easter Island compound stood
gathered in a knot by the jeep, smoking and chatting. Casey wore the same floppy leather cowboy hat, and the same gun holster strapped to his thigh, as when I had first met him a week before.

‘What are those things?’ I asked, pointing to the nearest of the skyscraper-sized eggs as we joined the others.

‘Those are Hives,’ said Casey. ‘Now, apart from Jerry,’ he continued, looking around, ‘most of you have already made multiple exploratory trips on this alternate.
This time out, however, we’re solely concerned with data retrieval before the bee-brains have a chance to demolish our target locations.’

‘Just out of curiosity,’ said Oskar, ‘do we have any more idea yet whether the bee-brains are even aware of us?’

‘Can’t tell you,’ Casey replied, and rapped the map with the knuckles of one hand. ‘But remember, they’re hostile with sufficient provocation.’

‘Somebody,’ I said, ‘is going to have to tell me why we’re here, and what the hell a bee-brain is.’

Casey’s eyes narrowed. ‘They briefed you, right?’

I shook my head. ‘Schultner wasn’t available. I was told I’d be briefed on arrival.’

Casey stared at me for a moment, then looked over at the soldiers loitering nearby. ‘Hey,’ he yelled. ‘Was Arnold Wotzko expected to be here? Or Schultner, the other guy in
charge of briefings?’

One of the soldiers dropped a cigarette stub and rubbed at it with his boot. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Just us.’

Oskar gave me an
I-told-you-so
look, while Nadia just shook her head. ‘Another fuck-up by our glorious leaders,’ she muttered.

‘So I was supposed to have been briefed by now?’

I saw Oskar reach inside his shirt and take a firm grip on one of the many fetishes he wore around his neck. ‘It’s a bad omen,’ he moaned. ‘We should head home before
it’s—’

‘Shut
up
,’ snapped Casey, stabbing one gloved finger at Oskar. ‘I’m tired of your superstitious bullshit, Oskar. Nothing’s going to go wrong.’

‘For a change, I hope,’ Nadia said under her breath.

Casey shot her a deadly look.

‘Well, seriously,’ said Nadia, looking at everyone else, ‘am I the only one who double-checks every piece of equipment they give us?’

‘Should we be
expecting
problems?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘Not outside of the usual snafus, no,’ said Casey. ‘And you can blame the Authority for all the substandard gear. There’s only so much you can do with the tools
you’re given.’

‘Those SUVs don’t look too shoddy to me,’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ said Casey. ‘That’s why we grabbed them when we found them. They’re infinitely more reliable than the jeeps. Now
focus
,’ he said, rapping
his knuckles on the map once again. ‘And Jerry, if you’ve got questions, feel free to ask them. You’re assigned to Nadia’s team, so maybe she can fill you in on anything I
miss out once we’re all under way.’

I looked at Nadia and she nodded. ‘Okay,’ I said to Casey. ‘So where are we, exactly?’

‘Just south of Sao Paolo, in this alternate’s Brazil.’ Casey nodded in the direction of the skyscrapers and the nearest Hive. ‘The bridge leading over the reservoir and
into town is wrecked, but the water’s shallow enough to ford in the SUVs. Then we follow the road into the city centre.’ He moved his fingers across the map. ‘These red circles
indicate the location of three properties belonging to a French research outfit called Retièn Biophysique. There’s a research lab, and also a separate government-financed facility they
used for long-term cryogenic storage. Lastly there’s an office suite, making a total of three locations for them in this vicinity.’

I saw that the three circles were quite widely separated. Lines connected them to each other by what struck me as very indirect routes indeed.

‘Now,’ said Casey, ‘we’ve already ripped the cryogenics facility apart, and we dug up a lot of stuff, but the other two places we’ve only scouted at a distance.
That’s mainly because they both sit more or less directly on the territorial borders between the two Hives that dominate the city. Bee-brains from either Hive have been fighting whenever they
run into each other. If we wait too long, could be they’ll wind up demolishing Retièn’s labs and offices before we get a chance to look inside.’

‘How certain are we that Retièn is responsible for the extinction event here?’ asked Haden.

‘Near as damn sure,’ Casey replied. ‘We’re going in as two teams to do a quick reconnoitre and grab every piece of computer equipment or paperwork we can load in the cars
before rendezvousing back here no later than nightfall.’

‘What happened to the people here?’ I asked, wondering yet again what possible use the Authority could have for such information.

‘They were all infected by a highly modified variant of
Toxoplasma Gondii
,’ explained Winifred.

I looked at her. ‘And that is?’

‘A parasitic agent that normally triggers suicidal behaviour in some mammalian species in its unaltered form, particularly rats and mice,’ she explained. ‘At heart, it
reprogrammes mammalian behaviour via infection. Imagine being able to spray a whole advancing army with a gene-spliced variant so they all went crazy, or turned on each other. Or even better, it
made them so terrified of the enemy that they put down their weapons and ran away.’

‘And how does that connect to those things over there on the horizon?’ I asked, nodding at the Hives.

‘Somewhere down the line,’ said Winifred, ‘they got funding from the military to create genetic chimeras, through new gene recombination techniques they’d developed. It
seems the original idea was to use genetically modified insects as a vector for delivering the parasite. Something went wrong, and a very unpleasant mutation got loose and interbred with the local
bee populations. Then the bees infected people, and they in turn became active vectors for spreading the infection yet further. It took maybe a year for the entire globe to be subsumed. The people
here are still alive, but . . . they aren’t really people any more.’ She shook her head wistfully. ‘I’d kill for the opportunity to carry out a long-term study of the
bee-brains. They’re not merely infected. They’re a kind of chimera themselves, almost a new species, in fact, born of a symbiotic relationship that reached its apotheosis in the night
patrols.’

‘You had shots, right?’ said Casey, before I had a chance to ask Winifred what a ‘night patrol’ was.

‘Sure,’ I said, rubbing at the exposed skin of my arm as if I had already been stung. The sound of buzzing insects in the nearby woods now took on an ominous quality.

‘Then you’re safe from infection,’ Casey continued. ‘But you need to keep a serious fucking distance from the bee-brains in case they attack you. See this?’

I leaned forward, watching as he moved his finger along the zigzagging lines joining the target circles to each other. ‘These are safe routes in and out of the city,’ he explained,
‘meaning there’s a low probability of running into trouble so long as we all stick to them.’ He looked around the others. ‘Me and Nadia are taking charge of a team each.
Jerry, Oskar, you’re going for the labs with Nadia. Myself, Haden and Winnie are heading for the office complex.’

Nadia stepped around the table and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Stop looking so goddam worried. This is a low-risk operation. We’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how things work on
this alternate. We’ll have remote drones in the air the whole time we’re out there.’

‘Here,’ said Casey, handing a copy of the map to Nadia. He next picked up a thick envelope and handed it to Oskar. ‘Everyone check your weapons and gear, and get ready to move
out in ten. Jerry, grab a rifle from the supplies tent.’

All this, I thought, just to retrieve what I imagined would amount to little more than some paper files and computer disks.

I stepped past the drone-charging station and pulled a rifle from a rack inside the supplies tent. I slung it over my shoulder by its strap, then followed Nadia and Oskar over
to the second SUV, with Lucky darting ahead of us. I made sure to get in to the front passenger seat this time and felt the undercarriage sway slightly as the enormous hound climbed in the rear. It
hung its massive head over my shoulder in exactly the way I’d worried it might, hitting me with a full blast of its sickly sweet breath.

Suddenly the dog whined and jumped back out again. Oskar tried to coax her back in, but to no avail. In the end he had no choice but to grab hold of the dog and literally lift her back inside
the car, no mean feat given that the animal was nearly the same size as its owner. Nadia, clearly amused, watched Oskar struggle in the rear-view mirror.

‘What the hell is wrong with that animal?’ I grumbled, as Oskar climbed in next to the dog, pulling the door shut before it could stage another escape attempt.

‘Beats me,’ said Oskar, stroking Lucky’s thick fur in an attempt to calm her down. ‘She doesn’t normally get like this.’ He frowned at me. ‘She
ain’t gonna bite you, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘I’m not crazy about dogs,’ I admitted.

‘As long as you’re not anything like Wallace Deans,’ Oskar replied, ‘you’ll get along just fine.’

‘What did Wallace do?’ I asked.

Oskar had finally got the dog settled, although she whined and shifted as Nadia reached for the ignition.
Something
was making the animal nervous, but I was damned if I knew what it
was.

‘The murderous asshole tried to kill Lucky,’ said Oskar.

‘That’s not quite how it was,’ said Nadia.

‘He tried to
run her over
,’ said Oskar, his voice rising in protest.

Nadia leaned towards me as she pulled on her seatbelt. ‘The drunken idiot got behind the wheel of a jeep after a night at the Mauna Loa and nearly hit Lucky.’

‘I noticed he likes a drink,’ I said, then stopped myself adding:
and so do the rest of you
.

Oskar laughed harshly. ‘You think?’

Casey pulled ahead of us in the SUV we had first arrived in, waving out of the window to us with his battered leather hat.

‘Wallace used to be a more-or-less functional alcoholic,’ said Nadia, echoing my earlier thoughts as she sent the car bouncing over the grass. ‘Although he’s been getting
less and less functional with each passing day.’

‘So he’s always been like that?’ I asked.

‘It only really got bad after his arrest,’ said Oskar.

I looked at Nadia for explanation. ‘Some of Greenbrooke’s men caught him smuggling contraband from an alternate we’d been exploring,’ Nadia explained, seeing my
expression. ‘They kind of went to town on him.’

I stared at her in surprise. ‘Does that kind of thing happen a lot?’

‘You mean contraband? More than you’d think. Alcohol, cigarettes – just the usual stuff. Anything that’s an improvement on the shit the Authority supply us
with.’