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Authors: Jonathan Maberry

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BOOK: Joe Ledger
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“Okay, run it down for us,” I said to him.

“We’ll talk on the way down,” he said, and we piled into the golf cart. The security guy drove it into an elevator that began a descent of over a mile.

“I’m Dr. Goldman,” said the guy with glasses. “I’m the deputy director of this facility. This is Lars Halverson, our head of security.”

I shook hands with Halverson. His hand was firm but clammy, and his face and throat glistened with nervous sweat.

“You’re Captain Ledger?” Goldman asked.

I nodded and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “The old man behind me is Top Sims and the kid in diapers is Bunny.” In my peripheral vision, I saw Top scratch his cheek with a middle finger.

First Sergeant Bradley Sims was hardly old—but at forty-one he was the oldest field operative in the DMS. He was nearly as tall as me, a little heavier in the shoulders, and though he was a calm man by nature, he could turn mean as a snake when it mattered.

The big kid next to him was Staff Sergeant Harvey Rabbit. Real name, so no surprise that everyone called him Bunny. He was just a smidge smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes, and somehow, despite everything we’ve been through together while running black ops for the Department of Military Sciences, Bunny still managed to keep his idealism bolted in place. My own was wearing pretty damn thin, and my optimism for rational behavior in people who should know better was taking one hell of a beating.

“What were you told?” asked Goldman.

“Not enough,” I said. “You believe there’s one or more infiltrators operating in your facility. You have one casualty, is that right?”

I caught the quick look that passed between Goldman and Halverson. It was furtive as all get-out, and at that moment I wouldn’t have bought water from either of them if my ass was on fire.

“Actually,” Goldman said slowly, “we have four casualties.”

The engine of the elevator car was the only sound for a while. I heard Top clear his throat ever so slightly behind me.

“Who’s dead?” I said sharply.

“Two of my people,” said Halverson. “And another of the research staff.”

“How and when?”

“We found the second guard half an hour ago,” Goldman said. “The others were killed sometime last night. They didn’t report for the breakfast meeting, and when the security teams did a search they found them dead in their rooms.”

“How were they killed?”

Goldman chewed his lip. “The same as the first one.”

“That’s not an answer. I asked ‘how?’”

He turned to Halverson, but I snapped my fingers. Loud as a firecracker in the confines of the elevator car. “Hey! Don’t look at him. I asked you a question. Look at me and give me a straight answer.”

He blinked in surprise, obviously unused to being ordered about. Probably thought his rank here at the facility put him above such things. Life’s full of disappointments.

“They were…
bitten.

“Bitten? By what? An animal? An insect?”

Halverson snorted and then hid it with a cough.

Goldman shook his head. “No…they were bitten to death by the…um…terrorists.”

I stared at him, mouth open, unable to know how to respond. The elevator reached the bottom with a clang, and Halverson drove us out into the complex. We passed through a massive airlock that would have put a dent in NASA’s budget. None of us said anything, because all around us klaxons screamed and red emergency lights pulsed.

 Halverson stamped on the brakes.

“Christ!” Goldman yelled.

“OUT!” I growled, but Top and Bunny were already out of the cart, their guns appearing in their hands as if by magic. I was right with them.

The floor, the walls, even the ceiling of the steel tunnel were splashed with bright red blood. Five bodies lay sprawled in ragdoll heaps. Arms and legs twisted into grotesque shapes, eyes wide with profound shock and everlasting terror.

The corridor ran a hundred yards straight forward, angling deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Behind us, the hall ran twenty yards and jagged left into a side hall. Bunny put his laser sight on the far wall near the turn. Top had his pointed ahead. I swept in a full circle.

“Clear!” Bunny said.

“Clear,” said Top.

“Jesus Christ!” said Goldman.

Halverson was saying something to himself. Maybe a prayer, but we couldn’t hear it beneath the noise of the klaxons.

Then the alarms died. Just like that.

So did the lights.

The silence was immediate and dreadful.

The darkness was absolute.

But it was not an empty darkness. There were
sounds
in it, and I knew that we were far from alone down there.

“Night vision,” I barked.

“On it,” Bunny said. He was the closest to the golf cart, and I heard him rummaging in the bags. A moment later he said, “Green and go. Coming to you on your six.”

He moved through the darkness behind me and touched my shoulder, then pressed a helmet into my hands. I put on the tin pot, flipped down the night vision, and flicked it on. The world went from absolute darkness to a surreal landscape of green, white, and black.

“Top,” Bunny said, “coming to you.”

I held my ground and studied the hall. Nothing moved. Goldman cowered beside me. He folded himself into the smallest possible package, tucked against the right front fender of the cart. Halverson was still behind the wheel. He had a Glock in his hand and the barrel was pointed at Top.

“Halverson,” I said evenly, not wanting to startle him. “Raise your barrel. Do it now.”

He did it, but there was a long moment of nervous indecision before he complied, so I swarmed up and took the gun away from him.

“Hey!” he complained. “Don’t—I need that!”

“You can’t see to shoot. Do you have night vision?”

“I have a flashlight.” He began fumbling at his belt, but I batted his hand aside.

“No. Stay here and be still. I’m going to place your weapon on the seat next to you. Do not pick it up until the lights come on.”

“But—”

“You’re a danger to me and mine,” I said, bending close. “Point a gun in the dark around me again, and I’ll put a bullet in you. Do you believe me?”

“Y-yes.”

I patted his shoulder—at which he flinched—and moved away.

“What are you seeing, Top?”

He knelt by the wall, his pistol aimed wherever he looked. “Nothing, seeing nothing, Cap’n.”

“Bunny?”

He was guarding our backs. “Dead people and shadows, Boss. Look at the walls. Someone busted out the emergency lights.”

“Captain Ledger,” began Goldman, “what—”

“Be quiet and be still,” I said.

We squatted in the dark and listened.

A sound.

Thin and scratchy, like fingernails on cardboard. Then a grunt of effort.

Top and I looked up at the same time, putting the red dots of our laser sights on the same part of the upper wall. There was a metal grille over an access port. The grille hung by a single screw, and one corner of it was twisted and bent out of shape, the spikes of two screws hanging from the edges. The grille hadn’t been opened with a screwdriver; it had been torn out.

No.
Pushed
.

The scratching sound was coming from there, but as we listened, it faded and was gone.

“It’s gone,” whispered Goldman.

I noticed that he said
it
, not
him
or
them.
I could tell from the way he stiffened that Top caught it, too.

But Bunny asked, “What’s gone? I mean…what the hell
was
that?”

The scientist turned toward Bunny’s voice. His green-hued face was a study in inner conflict. His eyes were wide and blind, but they were windows into his soul. I doubt I’ve ever seen anyone as genuinely or deeply terrified.

“They…they’re soldiers,” he said.


Whose
soldiers? We were told this was a potential terrorist infiltration.”

“God,” he said hollowly. “There are a dozen of them.”

I moved up to him and grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

“Stop screwing around, Doc, or so help me God—”

“Please,” he begged. “Please…. We were trying to help. We were doing good work,
important
work. We were just trying to help the men in the field. But…but….”

And he began to cry.

We were screwed. Deeply, comprehensively, and perhaps terminally screwed.

Something moved in the green gloom down the hall. It was big and it kept to the shadows behind a stack of packing crates. It made a weird chittering sound.

“Is that a radio?” Bunny whispered.

I shook my head, but I really didn’t know what it was.

“It’s
them
!” Goldman said, and he loaded those two words with so much dread that I felt my flesh crawl.

“I got nothing down here,” said Bunny, who was still guarding behind us. “What are you seeing, Boss?”

“Unknown. Top, watch the ceilings. I don’t like this worth a damn.”

The chittering sound came again, but this time it was behind us.

“What’ve you got, Bunny?” I called.

“I don’t know, Boss, but it’s weird and it’s big. Staying out of range, just around the bend.”

I turned.

“This is the U.S. Army. Lay down your weapons and step out into the hall with your hands raised.”

My voice echoed back to me through the darkness, but whoever was around the bend did not step out.

The chittering sound was constant.

I repeated the challenge.

The sound changed, fading as the figure retreated. It was gone in seconds. I turned again, and the one ahead of us was gone as well.

“Cover me,” I said, and Top shifted to keep his laser sight next to me as I crept over to the wall below the grille. I stood on tiptoes and strained to hear.

The chittering sound was there, but it was very faint, and as I listened, it faded to silence. Whatever was making that sound was too far away to be heard, but I knew that didn’t mean it was gone.

I turned to the others. Doctor Goldman sat with his face in his hands, weeping.

“We’re all going to Hell for this,” he sobbed. “Oh, God…I’m going to Hell.”

 

Chap. 3

 

The Vault

Forty-six Minutes Ago

 

When I finally got Goldman to stop blubbering and tell me what the hell was happening I was almost sorry he did.

Halverson was able to lead us to the breakers, and we got the main lights back on. The rest of the research team huddled in the staff lounge, a few of them with improvised weapons—a fire axe, hammers, that sort of thing. The lounge had a single door, and the filtration system vent in that room was the size of a baseball. We locked ourselves in and had a powwow.

Goldman said: “This facility was originally built as a secure bunker to house the Governor and other officials during a nuclear war. After the Cold War, it was repurposed for genetics and biological research.”

“What kind of research?” I asked.

“That’s classified.”

I put my pistol barrel against his forehead. “Declassify it.” 

“Listen to the man,” murmured Top in a fatherly voice—if your father was Hannibal Lecter.

Everyone gasped, and Halverson’s hand almost strayed toward his sidearm. Goldman licked his lips. “We…we’ve been tasked with exploring the feasibility of using gene therapy for military asset enhancement.”

“What kind of gene therapy?”

“Various.”

I tapped him with the barrel. “You’re stalling, and I’m disliking you more and more each second, Doc.”

He winced. “Please…I can’t think with that….” He gestured vaguely toward the gun. I moved it six inches away.

“Talk.”

“We…I mean the government, the military,
see
the way things are going. The biosphere is critically wounded. Global warming is only the beginning. That’s the pop-culture talking point, but it’s a lot worse than that. Seas are dying because pollution has interrupted or eliminated key links in the food chain. Plankton and krill are dying while seaborne bacteria proliferate. Coral reefs are dying, the sea floor is a garbage pit, and even Third World countries are building centrifuges by the score to refine uranium.”

“Yeah, I watch CNN. Life sucks. Get to the point.”

“Some key people in government want to ensure that no matter what happens we’ll still be able to maintain an effective military presence capable of response under all conditions.”

“What kinds of conditions?”

“Extreme. Deep pollution, blight, even post-conflict radiation environments.”

“Meaning?”

Goldman’s face was bleak. “Meaning, that if you can’t fix the world, then alter the inhabitants to adapt to the ambient circumstances.”

I sat back and laid the pistol on my lap, my finger outside of the trigger guard.

“How?” asked Bunny. “How do you
make
people adapt?”

“Transgenics. Gene therapy. And some other methods. We explored some surgical options, but that’s problematic. There’s recovery time, tissue rejection issues, and other problems. Genetic modification is less traumatic.”

“Let me see if I get this,” I said. “You and your bunch of mad scientists down here alter the genes of test subjects to see if you can make them more adaptable to polluted and devastated environments.”

“Yes.”

“What kinds of genes?”

“Insect,” he said. “Insects are among the most successful life-forms. Not as durable as viruses, or as hardy as some forms of bacteria, of course, but otherwise, they’re remarkable. Many can live on very little food, they can endure great injury, and there are some who are highly resistant to radiation.”

“You mean cockroaches?” Bunny asked.

Goldman shot him a quick look. “Yes and no. The idea that cockroaches would survive a nuclear war…that’s a distortion based on urban myths. Cockroaches are only a little more resistant to radiation than humans. Four hundred to one thousand rads will usually kill a human. A thousand rads will cause infertility in cockroaches. Sixty-four hundred rads will kill over ninety percent of the
Blattella germanica
cockroaches. No…for increased resistance to radiation we explored genes from wood-boring insects and the fruit fly. Some species of woodborers can withstand forty-eight to sixty-eight thousand rads without measurable harm. It takes sixty-four thousand rads to kill a fruit fly; and if you’re talking real endurance, the
Habrobracon
, a parasitoid wasp can withstand one hundred and eighty thousand rads.”

BOOK: Joe Ledger
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