Joe Ledger (8 page)

I parried and ducked and came up on the far side of his arms, then shoved him hard into the other attacker. They crashed into the wall, which gave me a short second of breathing space, so I grabbed at the rapid release folding knife clipped to the edge of my pocket. It was positioned to release into my hand, and I gave it a flick and felt the blade lock into place even while my hand was moving. There was a flash of green fire, and then the second of the monsters was spinning away, trying to staunch the flow of black blood from his throat.

The third one growled at me, his voice filled with clicks and hisses, and he slashed at my face. I ducked, and felt his ironhard nails tear through the fabric cover over my helmet. I didn’t wait. I drove in low and hard and put my shoulder into his chest, driving him back against the wall. He hit with a crunch that tore a howl from his throat. I used a flat palm to knock his head against the wall, and then moved in to let the knife do its work.

He fell, and I pivoted, switching the knife to my left hand, drawing my pistol with my right.

And froze.

There was James Collins right in front of me. I knew immediately that it was him. Three fingers were missing from his left hand. He crouched ten feet away, legs wide to straddle the body on the ground.

Bunny.

Collins bent low so that he could touch Bunny’s throat with the fingers of his right hand. The fingers were long, the nails thickened into talons, and from where each tip dented Bunny’s throat, thin lines of blood leaked down the side of the big Marine’s neck. Around us, the alarms rang and the lights flashed, but nothing and no one moved. Collins raised his horror-show face and I could tell, even with those dark and alien eyes, that he knew as well as I did that we were all sliding down a steep slope into hell.

I raised my pistol and put the laser sight on Collins, right over the heart. He looked down at it for a moment, and his fingers pressed more deeply into Bunny’s flesh.

“Cap’n,” murmured Top from a few yards away, but I ignored him.

Even though Goldman and Halverson had told us what to expect, I could feel a scream bubbling in my gut. This was wrong, and it was ugly, and it was scaring the living shit out of me. Sweat ran down inside my clothes and my mouth was as dry as mummy dust. If I could have run, I would have.

I said, “Collins.”

The creature’s head jerked up, and his slit of a mouth worked for a moment. All I could hear were clicks. His face was covered with the same platelike scabs as the others. It wasn’t precisely an insect face, but it was too far away from human. There were tiny fibers or antennae around his mouth, and they twitched like stubby fingers. God only knows what sensory information those appendages fed that tortured mind.

“Listen to me,” I said, and my voice cracked a little. I cleared my throat, and tried it again. “Collins…listen.”

In the shadows, the other creatures clicked and hissed at the sound of my voice.

“I know you’re in there. I know Corporal James Collins is still in there.”

His mouth and throat muscles worked. Rasps and clicks, a stilted flow that was so alien and unnatural that it was painful to hear.

“J-J-J—”

I kept the red dot steady, my finger inside the trigger guard. I had my trigger adjusted to a five-and-a-half-pound pull, and I had about four pounds on it. Bunny was trying not to breathe, trying to sink into the floor, and he looked every bit as terrified as I felt.

“J-J-J-Jimm…J-J-Jimmy,” said Collins.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Holy mother of God,” Top whispered behind me.

“Jimmy?” I asked.

The misshapen head bobbed.

“You’re Jimmy Collins, is that right? Jimmy, not James?”

Another nod. There was a light in his eyes. Fear. Anger. Maybe—relief?

“The docs,” I said. “Jimmy—the docs said that you signed up for this.”

His eyes hardened. The others hissed.

“They said that you knew the risks.”

“Risks,” he snarled and I knew that just framing the word had to hurt his throat. He used his maimed hand to touch his face. “Not…
this.
”

“No,” I said emphatically. Almost a shout. “
Not
this. There’s no way they told you that this would happen. But did they tell you what might happen?”

He tried to answer, but emotion—or whatever was left for him to feel—stole what little voice he had. Eventually he managed to get it out. Two words.

“They…lied.”

“Yeah, brother, I pretty much figured that. That sucks more than I can describe, but listen to me, Jimmy….I can’t let you hurt my man there. He’s a good man. A friend.”

“A—Army?” Collins said.

“No. He’s Gyrene like you are. End of the day, though, he’s another pair of boots on the ground in someone else’s war.” I eased off of the trigger and slipped my finger outside the guard. He watched me do it. I didn’t lower the gun, though; and he saw that, too. “I know you never signed up for this, Jimmy. Who would? They think that because you enlisted and because you signed a piece of paper that they
own
you, that you’re just a lab rat to them. If that’s the case, if that’s what we’ve all been fighting for, then God help the United States. Or maybe God help us all, because someone’s missing the whole damn point. You with me on this, Jimmy?”

He paused, then nodded. It was impossible to read his face, hard to know if he was agreeing with me or giving me permission to keep talking.

“You want to know why I’m here? Why me and my team are here? The docs who did this to you called Homeland and said that this facility was being overrun by terrorists.”

“T-T-T-T—” He couldn’t even get the word out. The stubby antennae around his mouth twitched with wild agitation.

“Yes, sir, Jimmy. Terrorists. How’s that for a thank-you from Uncle Sam? They rang the alarm, and we were sent in to drop the hammer on the bad guys. But…here’s my problem, Jimmy, and maybe you can help me out with it.”

His black eyes glittered like jewels.

“I’m not sure who the bad guys are. I mean…you’re killing folks, and you know that I can’t let that happen. I can’t let it continue. But at the same time, I don’t think you’re doing these kills because you’re a terrorist.”

He said nothing. They all waited.

“I think you’re doing it because you’re scared. More scared than I am now, and that’s saying something. But you know I can’t let you go on killing these people. Even if I agree with why you’re doing it, I got a job to do, and I know you understand that.”

His antennae twitched.

“Now…
terror
is a funny word,” I said. “We use it all the time, but we don’t think about what it really means. Right now…I think my man on the floor there is feeling some genuine terror.”

Collins looked down at Bunny and then up at me.

“And you’ve got to be feeling it. All of you.”

The others clicked and hissed.

“And everyone else down here is feeling it because of you. There may not be any terrorists down here, Jimmy, but I have to stop the terror. That’s my job. That’s what I’m really here to do.”

Jimmy Collins’s eyes were wide, and dark, and wet.

“Can you help me with that, Marine? Can you give me an out here?”

Collins looked at me, and raised his eyes slowly toward my helmet. Not at the night-vision unit, but at the small cylinder mounted on the left side of my tin pot. He nodded at me. At it.

“That’s right, Jimmy,” I said with a smile. “That’s a video camera. We’re on mission time here, everything’s being recorded. Everything we’ve seen, and everything we’ve
heard
since we came down here is saved to memory in our helmet cams. Now how about that?”

Collins bent low until his deformed face was inches from Bunny’s. He whispered something that I couldn’t hear over the alarms.

And then he straightened and pulled his hand away from Bunny. The five little pinpricks still leaked blood, but there was no real damage. Collins took a step back, and another. Bunny scrabbled sideways and scuttled back toward me. He made a grab for his fallen M4.

“No,” I said.

Bunny looked at me in surprise, then at Top, who nodded, and then at Collins.

The hulking figure stepped farther back. His companions clustered around him. They made chittering noises, and God only knows if it was some kind of speech or the screams of the damned. Behind them was the door to the secondary generator. Collins turned, looked at the door and then back at me. His eyes were intense, pleading.

I swallowed a lump the size of a fist.

“Boss,” said Bunny, “if we get them out…maybe something can be done. Maybe there’s some way of reversing this….”

His voice trailed off as the huddled monsters chittered and clicked. It wasn’t words, but it was eloquent enough.

I shook my head.

“But…you know what they want to do,” he pleaded.

Top put his hand on Bunny’s shoulder. “If it was you, farm boy, what would you do?”

I raised my pistol. “Stand aside,” I said to Collins.

After a moment, he and the others moved away.

It took six rounds to blow the lock open.

Smoke hung thick in the air. The klaxons continued to bleat.

“Give us ten minutes,” I said.

Collins stared at me, his eyes unreadable in the green gloom of my night vision. Did he nod? Or was it simply the way his body trembled as he turned and slipped into the generator room? The others followed.

I holstered my gun and looked at Bunny and Top.

We ran like sons of bitches.

Chap. 5

The Vault

Now

The voice said: “Fail-safe is active. Hard lockdown commencing.”

It was a female voice, very calm. She began counting down from one hundred.

“Top, Bunny…get everyone into the elevators.”

“The generator—” Top said.

“…Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven….”

Halverson said, “The elevator has a separate power source. It’s topside. As long as we get above the three thousand foot line we’ll be fine. Below that charges in the wall will collapse the elevator into the shaft.”

“…eighty, seventy-nine….”

“Get moving!” I ordered, and my men began herding the remaining scientists, support staff, and security personnel into the elevator.

“…sixty-three, sixty-two….”

I lingered in the staff room, watching as Doctor Goldman finished downloading his research files onto a one-terabyte portable drive.

“Is that everything?” I said as he pulled it out of the socket.

“…forty-four, forty-three….”

“Yes, thank God. Everything was in packets for quick hard-dump. We have everything we need to start over.” He moved to the door, but I shifted to block his way.

“Give me the drive,” I said.

“…thirty-six, thirty-five….”

“What the hell are you
doing
? This is no time for—”

I kicked him in the nuts and snatched the drive out of his hand. Yeah, it was a sneak shot, but who cares? He uttered a thin whistling shriek and grabbed his groin, sinking to his knees in shock and agony.

I set the drive on a counter top.

“…twenty-eight, twenty-seven….”

I drew my sidearm and used the butt to smash the drive to silicon junk. Goldman screamed louder than when I’d kicked him. He made a grab for it, but I batted his hand away.

“What are you doing?” he croaked.

I moved to the doorway. The elevator was a hundred yards down the hall. I could make it at a dead run.

I said, “I’m doing what I believe is in the best interests of the American people.”

He stared at me and opened his mouth to say something, but a sound cut him off. Not the relentless female voice counting down. This was a thin, chittering noise that echoed out of the darkness at the far end of the corridor.

I holstered my gun, turned and ran like hell.

“…thirteen, twelve, eleven….”

“Where’s the doc?” Halverson demanded as I skidded into the elevator car.

“They ambushed us,” I lied. “Came out of nowhere. Now come on, get this damn thing moving!”

Halverson met my eyes for the briefest of moments, and I could see the realization in his eyes. He flicked a look out into the darkness. Maybe he could hear the skittering sounds. Probably not. The alarms were so loud that they even drowned out the sound of the screams.

He slammed the door shut and the car began to rise.

Three seconds later, we heard the
bang-bang-bang
as the steel doors dropped down and the thermite charges blew, fusing them shut. A moment later, the explosives in the elevator shaft blasted half a million tons of rock into the well of darkness below us. Dust clouds chased us all the way up into the light.

As the car slowed to a stop, I removed my helmet. The helmet cam was gone. I’d taken it off after we’d left Collins and the others outside of the generator room. The video file ended there.

Top, Bunny and I stepped out into the gloom of the building. State Troopers were everywhere, and soon there would be FBI, Marine Corps, and DMS choppers in the air. We didn’t care. The three of us stood there in the darkness and said nothing. I reached into my pocket to touch the helmet cam, and closed my fist around it.

In silence, we left the shadows and walked out into the light.

~The End
~

NOTE: This story takes place several weeks after the events in
Patient Zero
.

Chap. 1

Echo Team: Case File Report / DMS-ET 82fd1118

Events of August 16 / Prepared August 17; 11:30 a.m.

Team Leader: Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger

Preamble to the official statement of Dr. Rudy Sanchez:

I personally tested Captain Ledger and his men. Blood and urine, a full workup. There is no presence of alcohol or any controlled substance. Standard interview and psychological profiles demonstrate post-traumatic stress and nervous tension typical with recent combat, plus a degree of heightened nervousness that I believe should be ascribed to the unusual nature of the events as described by the members of Echo Team.