The Tide: Deadrise (12 page)

He stowed his gun in his pack. He didn’t want to appear threatening to whoever was inside. Wood creaked underfoot as he walked across the porch. He rapped on the door, lightly at first. “Hello? Anyone there? I’m from the US Army. We’re looking for shelter.”

Nothing. He peeked into the windows. Curtains blocked his view. He returned to the front door and tried again. This time harder.

“Hello? I’m Commander Jacob Shepherd from the United States Army.”

He thought he heard rustling from within and pressed his ear to the door. Still, no one responded. He turned to Rachel and Rory. Both were well hidden. He held out his hands. “Doesn’t seem like—”

The crash of breaking glass sounded to his left. Something small barreled toward him. It came at him on all fours, growling and snapping. The thing leapt, and he barely had time to catch it. It was no Skull. Instead, it was covered in fur.
A goddamned dog.
It was a mutt, about the size of a Labrador. Its muscles rippled as Shepherd wrestled it to the ground.

“Come on, doggy,” he said between grunts, trying to soothe it. “I’m a good guy.” He did his best to gently restrain the animal, but it didn’t give up. Froth formed around its lips as it bit the air and growled. He didn’t want to hurt the dog, but he was afraid the damn thing was rabid.

“Commander!” Rachel yelled.

Another window burst open. Glass shards pelted Shepherd, but the dog’s attention didn’t waver. He heard a low growl, and this one didn’t belong to a canine. Shepherd threw the dog off him and spun in time to catch a Skull’s wrist before the claws impaled his chest. The monster swiped again, and he caught its other wrist. The Skull wore a plaid shirt and jeans, both mostly intact. Small knobs grew out of its forehead, and its teeth were just beginning to turn into pointed fangs. It hadn’t been a Skull for long.

Another Skull, child-sized, came through the window, trailed by a second, even smaller one. A fourth, an adult female, followed. Shepherd realized the whole family had come to greet him. He shoved the plaid-shirt-wearing Skull into the other three. The dog barked and growled, and the Skulls let out terrifying wails.

Shepherd ran for the cover of the tree, where Rory was guarding their packs. “Fire!”

The midshipmen’s rifles cracked into the night. Birds roosting in trees nearby took flight. One of the smaller Skulls and the plaid-shirted one dropped immediately in the flurry of bullets. The other two Skulls ran, absorbing gunfire with their overgrown, bony ribs and plates. Shepherd retrieved his rifle and turned on the creatures. He joined in the fray by sending a volley of gunfire into the mother Skull. The creature fell limp into the grass. The smallest Skull bounded over her, but its charge was ended by a round from Rachel’s rifle. The dog ignored the fate of its family and, baring its teeth, pounced at Shepherd again.

“What is wrong with you, mutt?” he yelled and backhanded the dog. It yelped and flew into a tree trunk. Its head thudded against the bark, and its body flopped to the ground. Its tongue lolled from its mouth, but its ribs moved up and down slowly. It was knocked unconscious, but not dead.

Rory stared slack-jawed at the Skulls. “They only just turned,” he said. “And the dog, it was acting crazy. What was that about, sir?”

“No idea,” Shepherd said. “Rabid? Maybe protecting its masters until the very end?”

The light upstairs still flickered. It must be a lantern, still burning long after the family turned. The distant hunting cries of Skulls sounded throughout the dark woods. The creatures had heard the gunfire. Shepherd eyed the house. They might get lucky. They could try to hide there and hope the Skulls would leave of their own accord. But Shepherd preferred relying on wits over luck. He ran to the Skull that looked to have been the father and rummaged through its pockets.

“There!” He fished out a key ring that glimmered in the moonlight. Taking the SUV would get them out of here faster than going by foot, but the increasingly loud moans of Skulls through the woods told him that might not be the best plan. 

Rachel and Rory watched him expectantly.

“Back to the river!” He ran to the docked motorboat. Rachel and Rory followed. They threw their packs in, and Shepherd primed the outboard. He yanked the starter rope. Nothing. He pulled the choke on his next attempt and tried to start it again.

Rory unscrewed the cap to the fuel tank. “It’s empty!”

“There’s got to be fuel around here somewhere!” Shepherd said.

“I don’t think we have time to find it,” Rachel said.

Shepherd looked up. All along the woods that bordered the house, Skulls were creeping from beneath the trees. Their eyes searched the area, and their heads swiveled back and forth. Dozens had come to see what had caused the clamor. Shepherd and the midshipmen were separated from them by the wide yard, driveway, and dock. The creatures hadn’t spotted them yet, but he knew it wouldn’t be long.

***

D
espite the guns trained on her back, Lauren felt calmer in the laboratory. If she focused on the slides under the microscope or the assay results spitting out on the computer monitors, she could almost ignore the heavy breathing of the guards. She’d played her cards right. Coupled with Thomas’s promises, the videos had done the trick. She and her team had been granted a probationary period to perform research.

“You try something funny,” Smith had said, “and the whole team gets shot.”

She didn’t plan on trying anything funny.

At least not yet.

“Check out what I found in the Goliath tissue,” Peter said, pointing to a monitor. “GHRH.”

Sean shot him a quizzical look.

“Growth-hormone releasing hormone,” Lauren clarified. She carefully cut off a small cube of tissue from a gory block of Goliath meat that Miguel had brought from Boston. “See if we find the same results in this sample.”

“That stuff smells putrid,” Smith said, shifting near the lab hatch. “Sure it isn’t dangerous to handle?”

“I don’t think so.” Lauren shrugged. “But I guess we can’t be one hundred percent certain.”

The guard took a step back, pressing himself against the bulkhead to get as far from Lauren and the sample as possible. Seeing him react to their dissection of the Goliath and Drooler tissues provided her a bit of guilty satisfaction. She almost smiled, remembering how his face had turned a brilliant shade of green when they’d first brought out the samples.

“GHRH,” Sean said, tapping on a keyboard at another computer terminal. “That means there’s a good chance their pituitary glands are messed up.”

“It’s a chain reaction, isn’t it?” Divya added. “Something alters their GHRH production, which influences the pituitary gland, which leads to a cascade of overproduced growth hormone.”

“And then, bam,” Sean said, flexing his skinny arms. “You get a Goliath. Massive muscle and skeletal growth.”

Lauren stepped away from the computer monitor and pointed to a whiteboard. Lines and arrows and chemical names graced the board, all documenting the proposed manners in which the Goliaths had been affected. To Lauren, the display looked like one of the corkboards she’d seen on TV shows where detectives were trying to map all their evidence to pinpoint a suspect. She supposed that wasn’t too far off from what they were doing here.

“All this leads back to the hypothalamus,” Lauren said.

“What in God’s name is that?” Smith asked.

“Part of the brain,” Lauren said, not bothering to turn around and look at him. “Links the brain to the pituitary gland via the endocrine system.”

“Whatever,” Smith said. “But this doesn’t sound like the cure you promised. Just sounds like a bunch of science mumbo jumbo.”

Peter let out an exasperated sigh. “We have to do the
science mumbo jumbo
to find out why the Goliaths and Droolers are mutating. If we do that, we’ll be better equipped to stop it.”

Smith didn’t seem convinced, but he retreated to his spot near the hatch, silent again.

Lauren studied the whiteboard. “I have two guesses here. Either the hypothalamus is being altered by the prions or it’s experiencing undue pressure thanks to the bony growths in the Goliaths’ skulls.”

The other members of the medical team mulled it over. One by one, Lauren watched their faces fall as they understood the implication of what she’d said.

“That means there’s not much we can do to change how the Oni Agent affects Goliaths,” Peter said. “Short of curing the Oni Agent, there’s no way to protect the hypothalamus and prevent the overproduction of growth hormone, is there?”

Divya and Sean nodded.

“So that’s it? Nothing you can do against those big bastards?” Smith asked.

“Not quite,” Lauren said, feeling the eyes of the medical team on her. “There is one thing we can do. We might not be able to reverse the neurological changes, but the growth hormones rely on a very specific ingredient to form all those new muscles that make Goliaths so deadly.” She waited for someone else to pipe in with the answer, but the others appeared too discouraged to offer a solution. “Protein. They need massive amounts of protein to fuel their muscle growth. The most effective way we can stop more Skulls from turning into Goliaths is to take their food away from them. The more civilians caught defenseless in Skull-infested cities, the more Skulls will continue to feed and mutate into Goliaths.” She stared straight at Smith. “Kinsey must organize an evacuation of all survivors.”

“Easier said than done,” Smith said.

“Easier than fighting a Goliath? Have
you
ever faced one?”

Smith stood in silence, shaking his head.

Lauren smiled coldly. “Pray you never have to.”

––––––––

M
eredith watched Dom’s brow furrow. “The pet store?” he asked.

“Trust me,” Meredith said. They pounded down the last couple of steps to the street. Choppers swarmed overhead, their gunners blasting streams of lead at the hordes of Skulls. The entire block near the gun store was up in flames now. “You can go with the others. I’ll grab the antibiotics and meet back up with you.”

“No,” Dom said as they joined the Hunters behind the vehicles lining the streets. “I’m coming with.” He turned to address the group. “Move to the woods and head south. Meredith and I are making an antibiotic run. We’ll call for the rendezvous later.”

Miguel seemed about to protest.

“Move, now!” Dom bellowed. The others followed his command, flitting between vehicles and rubble, moving away from the raging battle.

“Just you and me,” Meredith said, grinning. “Like old times.”

“Like old times,” Dom agreed.

As young operatives, they’d served together in the field on plenty of perilous missions. But Meredith had never dreamed they’d be partners in a bombed-out American city crawling with hostile monsters and indiscriminately aggressive helicopters overhead.

“You remember where that pet store is?” Dom asked.

“I think so.” She pressed her back against a semi-trailer. The sounds of the chaos all around them made it difficult to tell if there were creatures nearby. She crouched and leaned around one of the trailer’s large tires. Across the street, the alley they’d come through was now filled with Skulls, churning and running out in all directions. They wouldn’t be able to use that route again.

The loud clack of claws against metal caused her to turn. She aimed her rifle up toward the roof the semi-trailer. A Skull leapt at them, but Dom caught it with a burst from his SCAR-H before she could pull the trigger. The gunfire echoed off the brick wall. The noise attracted a fresh wave of Skulls.

“Can’t stay here,” Dom said.

“There!” Meredith pointed to a minivan with a wide-open side door. They ran to the vehicle and ducked inside. Skulls clamored behind the semi-trailer in their search for the source of the new noise. Meredith moved to the other side of the van to survey the street. Her boots cracked something, and she looked down. The scattered remains of finger bones crunched underfoot. More bones littered the van’s interior. Some were split open with their marrow sucked dry. Not a morsel of flesh or sinew was left. She tried not to think about how small those bones were and avoided looking at the children’s brightly colored backpacks abandoned on the seats.

With the back of her hand, she wiped away the grime coating the van’s window. “Looks like—”

“Duck,” Dom whispered. He dragged her to the floor of the van and pressed his body over hers.

A pack of Skulls poured around the van. Their claws clanged on the roof and kicked up debris as they ran past the vehicle. The mob mentality of the creatures was spiking with all the excitement of the gunfire and other frantic monsters cramming the streets. They all ran to the semi-trailer, where Skulls were now stabbing at the metal panels and tearing through the stacks of cardboard boxes inside.

Fear coursed through Meredith. She was helpless to stop this tide of monsters. If they were spotted now, she and Dom wouldn’t last long. Each scraping footstep and bloodcurdling wail set her nerves afire. She could hear Dom’s breathing, shallow and quiet, beside her. The worry in his eyes was evident. He couldn’t hide it from her. Not after the decades they’d known each other.

The stampede started to dwindle. Meredith peeked around Dom’s shoulder and watched a smaller Skull scramble over the windshield. One of its claws stabbed through the already fractured safety glass. It struggled to free its foot. The glass shook, and the fractures grew. Its claw soon came away, and Meredith exhaled. She waited a while in quiet as Dom slowly lifted himself off of her.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” she said, rising to her knees. “I think they’re gone.” She inched between the driver’s seat and front passenger seat. Through the dust covering the spiderwebbed windshield, she thought she saw movement. She soon realized it was a silhouette in the distance. Something far more massive than an ordinary Skull. A Goliath.

It was barreling down the street. The monster lobbed a small Honda into a building. Bricks and broken glass fell around the crumpled car. With its massive claws, it continued tossing aside any cars and SUVs in its way. There would be no hiding in the van while they waited for this Skull to pass.