Emergence (Book 4): Eradication Page 2

  Reisner knelt down and removed a small plastic specimen vial from his vest, carefully scooped up some of the gray discharge, then sliced out a section of muscle tissue from each creature’s right bicep. The cross-section of cells would provide Selene with enough information on how the bioagent affected the circulatory system of the drones. This would help her to find out if anything could be done to modify it to create a similar lethality against the alphas. When he was done, he glanced over at Porter near the entrance. “You OK, buddy?”

  He pulled his left shoulder back, his face wincing slightly. “Yeah, just felt like a boulder dropped on my back is all.” Porter moved closer, scanning the corpses. “I’ll take killing drones this way any day—best damn news we’ve had since this fucking pandemic started.”

  Connelly moved in closer while keeping her rifle trained on their exit. “I can’t believe we’ve got a weapon to finally beat them—Selene’s a genius.”

  “Just the drones—the alphas seem to have mutated differently than the drones, and there are still going to be a hundred thousand of them around the world to contend with,” said Reisner as he stood up and tucked the last vial into his vest. “And battling those is like going up against ten drones.”

  Moving towards the entrance, he heard the scraping of metal in the tunnel ahead and saw a large metal grate in the floor being thrust upward like it was cardboard. A second later, the frenzied creatures began pouring through the opening, cutting off their escape route. Reisner looked at Porter’s pack. “Tell me you’ve got another canister left.”

  “Sorry, boss,” he said, leveling his rifle at the first drones as all three operators began firing.

  Chapter 3

  They reduced the crowd quickly, choking the subterranean passage below with mangled corpses so they could slip by. Reisner could hear the sound of more creatures desperately thrashing underneath as he passed beside the hole. He yanked a frag grenade off his vest and let it drop between the tangled torsos until it clanked on the ground below, then he sprinted ahead, hoping Nash wasn’t going to reveal any more threats waiting ahead.

  The explosion rocked the floor, causing him to careen against the curved wall. As the dust began to settle, Reisner coughed while staring at the collapsed tunnel behind him in dismay. So much for a surgical strike and a hasty retreat. He thought back to their success with the aerosol inside the drone nest, and his mind began racing at the implications. We’ll be able to reduce the enemy quickly now—no more need for prolonged battles or skirmishes like this one.

  He turned around and patted Nash on the shoulder while grinning at the others. “This is going to go down as a historic day in human history, my friends! The illustrious Doctor Selene Munroe just brought light into a very dark world.” He made sure his ear-mic was clicked on so Selene could hear him.

  “It worked then?” she fired back into his earpiece. “My God, it worked.” He could hear her voice crackling, followed by the sound of the other lab workers in the background clapping. He wanted to be back at the CDC right now to give her a hug and join in the celebration, but right now, he just wanted out of these tunnels.

  Nash pointed back over his shoulder at the collapsed passage that Reisner had blown. “I wonder how many more drones are hidden in similar passages under the city. Maybe we shouldn’t stick around here too long.” Thermal imagery had its limitations and had only revealed the numbers of the enemy at a certain depth under the streets. That there were deeper levels and more drones had come as a surprise, and Reisner had had his fill of those in recent weeks.

  “What if their numbers in cities around the country are greater than we think?” said Porter. “Not all of them must have retreated to the nuclear sites as we first suspected.”

  Reisner looked at the west tunnel, where they had first seen the alpha appear. Once he let his eyes adjust, he could see an open hatchway in the ground. He glanced back at Connelly. “Tell me what you heard earlier coming from that direction.”

  “Not sure,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she studied the dim passage. “Sounded like metal scraping against metal—I thought it was just something mechanical, from a water pump or something, but...” She shrugged her shoulders. “It seemed like there was another sound for a second—a faint cry.”

  “But you’re not sure?” he said.

  “Boss, we accomplished what we set out to do—the bioagent was a success. I say we hightail it out of here and drink a toast to Selene back at the lab,” said Nash as he scanned the other corridors. “Besides, I hate being in tunnels as much as you do.”

  “If there were more drones below they would have emerged by now, and I’d sure like to know what the hell that alpha was doing down there.” He patted his helmet, removing the small camera attached to the front. “Just to be safe, I’ll lower this down into the passage to get eyes on what’s ahead before we attempt to descend.”

  He glanced at each one of his team members, then waved his hand for them to follow. Forty yards into the west tunnel, they came upon the opening in the ground. This one wasn’t a steel grate but an actual hatch, similar to those found on a submarine. Reisner angled the barrel of his M4 down, allowing the weapon-mounted flashlight to illuminate the entrance. There were wrought-iron handholds anchored in the cement that led down to a narrow passage that angled to the left. He only saw one set of muddy footprints on the ground and assumed those were from the alpha. He slung his rifle and removed a wad of 550 cord from a side pouch of his pack, tying it off on his helmet cam, which he then lowered into the passage. Pacelle’s voice spoke in his earpiece again. “The tunnel is devoid of movement and appears to be only twenty meters long. What is beyond that, however, is unknown.”

  “Copy that. We’re heading down below. Inform Ivins of our plans and tell him to be ready for a hasty exfil if things get dicey.”

  He looked back at the rest of his team, motioning for Porter to remain behind this time. If, by chance, there were any survivors below, Nash had greater medical experience from his past work as an Army Special Forces medic. He slid his rifle across his back, removing his Glock and quickly descending the steps, then dropping to the ground, where he swept his pistol along the curved walls. This level smelled of raw earth, and the walls lacked the spray-painted graffiti that he’d seen above. In some places, the cement had peeled away to reveal a cross-section of old wiring that Reisner surmised was from the 1940s based upon some old military barracks he’d seen in Eastern Europe years ago.

  Once Connelly and Nash were beside him, they crouch-walked forward for thirty feet until the passage terminated at a small control room. The sixty-foot circular chamber contained antiquated water treatment devices, sedimentation basins, and sludge pumps.

  Reisner scanned the walls with his flashlight, locating two other tunnels whose entrances had been sealed off with mortar and bricks.

  “Looks like a place the city probably used for treating effluence and rainwater back in the day,” said Nash.

  Connelly swung her flashlight over to a row of cement basins built into the east side of the chamber, as if dozens of deeply furrowed fingers had crept out from the foundation. “Did you hear that?” she said, moving closer to the nearest basin. “Sounded like someone sighing.” The ground was littered with the remains of several olive-drab backpacks and military-grade radio equipment amidst a cluster of holstered handguns still attached to their belts. Spread around the floor to the right were a half-dozen elongated canisters resembling fire extinguishers, but with green-and-black stripes, along with a pile of recently used IV bags.

  The eight-foot-long basins were roughly a foot deep and filled with some kind of substance resembling lard. There was something underneath the surface but she couldn’t make it out. Her flashlight moved up to the right side of the trough where it joined the wall. Connelly jerked her weapon at the sight of a woman’s head resting motionless against the sloped incline of the basin, her body constrained up to the chest in the foamy material.

  “What in t
he fucking hell is this?” said Connelly, gasping while taking a step back as Reisner and Nash moved up alongside her, their flashlights illuminating the other basins, each of which contained the bodies of three more women. All of them were in their twenties, with their hair resting neatly behind their heads as if they had just lain down to sleep. Three of them were clad in camouflage military fatigues, while the woman before Connelly was wearing a tattered red t-shirt.

  “Looks like they’re immobilized in the kind of foam the firefighters use to blot out large flames,” said Nash, glancing back at the depleted fire extinguishers. “God, the alpha must have done this, but to what end—it doesn’t look like it was feeding on any of them.”

  The swollen eyelids of the slumped figure nearest to Connelly began fluttering.

  “She’s alive,” snapped Connelly, holstering her pistol and moving towards the struggling woman.

  Nash raised his hand, motioning for Connelly to stop. “Easy—we’re not even sure if she’s been turned.”

  Connelly pulled her gloves tight on her hands, then rushed up to grab the blond-haired woman by the armpit as Reisner moved around to the other side to do the same. They slowly extricated her from the spongy material, which gave off an odor of moldy bread. Once she was free, they lowered her down against the wall.

  Reisner examined her bruised arms, then scanned her delicate figure. Her skin was pallid, and most of her fingernails were broken off and her fingertips abraded. He looked back at the basin and the particles of hardened foam. “It looks like she tried to claw her way out of there after she was put inside.”

  “God—she was conscious when this happened?” said Connelly.

  Nash knelt down beside the woman and removed his med kit, then shined a small penlight in her eyes and examined her mouth and the back of her throat before scanning along her limp body. “I don’t see any obvious signs of trauma, but she’s dehydrated as hell and obviously in shock—maybe from some internal bleeding.”

  “We’ve gotta get her out of here,” said Connelly.

  Reisner stood up, making his way over to the other basins. “Agreed, but let me check these other three for vitals first.” He panned his helmet cam down so it would record the macabre scene before them. He hadn’t heard Selene or Pacelle’s voice since they descended and knew the audio signal must have been disrupted when they dropped down to this level.

  He shook his head when he felt a lack of pulse on the second woman’s carotid. Reisner noted their uniforms and figured they must have been with the Arizona National Guard. Probably called up for duty during the early days of the pandemic. Both of them looked to be young women who were most likely enrolled in college, or perhaps young moms whose promising futures were ripped away from them only a few weeks ago.

  “Look, this is going to sound crazy coming from the medic in the group, but are we sure we want to risk taking her back with us?” said Nash. “What if she’s like that guy Morgan in L.A. who was infected with something the alpha planted inside him? We waltzed him right into the prison with us and he brought down the whole security network.”

  Reisner tapped his fingers on his vest, remembering the horrific events of that afternoon and their narrow escape from Los Angeles. He knew Nash was right, but they couldn’t just leave her here, and Selene was going to want to identify what bizarre undertaking had been unfolding at the hands of the alpha.

  “Dose her with some tranquilizers to keep her sedated, just to be sure. Once we’re back at the CDC, she can go into one of the isolation chambers and be monitored from there. Those are BSL-4 level security features, so we should be safe if anything does happen.”

  The longer they remained there, the smaller the chamber seemed to become, and Reisner felt his heart pressing against his ribs with each breath. He glanced back at the pale woman being carried by Nash, then back at the other victims lying motionless in their cement tombs. Good Lord, what were they planning on doing to these women—and is this going on in other places around the world? He shook his head, trying to focus on the breakthrough with the aerosol instead. We need to manufacture this goddamned bioagent on a larger scale. We need to end this battle—the means to destroy these monsters is within our reach. He turned to retrace his steps back through the tunnel, hoping the human race could still pull itself back from the brink.

  Chapter 4

  West of Lake Havasu, Near the California/Arizona Border

  The sun had only risen an hour ago, and already three more people in Kelly Ivins’ group had been slaughtered. Peering out from under the crumpled frame of an overturned bus along the two-lane highway, she could see a dozen ravenous creatures milling around the periphery of the burning van that she had been driving in just minutes ago. The tattered clothing of the monsters was soaked with fresh blood, and Kelly knew the people who it belonged to. She pulled her daughter Cassie close, burying the head of the eight-year-old girl in her side so she didn’t have to bear witness to another scene of abject horror.

  “Can’t see shit with all the smoke,” said Erica, a wispy twenty-four-year-old who was resting her elbows on the crumpled bus door while squinting. She kept biting her lower lip beside a silver hoop-ring. “Looks like Pete and Terrence went down shooting before they blew up the van.” She said it without emotion. “Damn, those guys were worth their weight in gold.” Erica looked at Kelly and her daughter with disdain.

  Kelly stroked her daughter’s hair and then did the same to the blond hair of the doll in the girl’s hand, whispering, “We’re gonna be OK, sweetie—we’ll find this place called Raven’s Keep that we heard about on the radio.” She looked ahead at the growing crowd of creatures, whispering under her breath. “If only your daddy were here…” Kelly was interrupted.

  “Christ, I gotta hear this again—your hubby, the shit-hot Navy SEAL who’s off saving the world. If only he were here, he’d swoop down on all those things and save our asses then sweep you and your momma off your feet.” Erica waved her hand around while staring at Kelly. “But he ain’t. He left you and your little girl high and dry, just like men always do.”

  Kelly clenched her fists and scowled. “Don’t even pretend that you know something about us, and don’t you ever talk to my daughter like that again.”

  “Or what, princess—you’ll work me over?” Erica chuckled then slid back, the teardrop tats on her right cheek peeking out from behind her black bangs. “Nobody owes you anything,” seethed Erica. “You have to take what you want from this world, especially now.”

  “Why don’t you raise your voice a little louder so those things can pinpoint our location,” said Frank, a fifty-four-year-old who spoke with a raspy voice. He was crouched in the shadows on the other side of Kelly, a nasal cannula creeping down from his nostrils to a small waist pack that contained his oxygen canister. “We drive across a hundred and ten miles of sand and rock only to be stopped a mile from the goddamned finished line by those creatures—now, you are gonna make sure this is our final resting place so you two can win an argument.” It seemed like he had just run uphill, and he struggled to get out the last few words. He glared at Erica then clutched the shotgun in his hand, looking to the east towards the sloped terrain that led down to the Colorado River. On the other side was Arizona and the destination known as Raven’s Keep. At least that’s what the shortwave radio broadcasts had indicated. The message of hope was what had led Kelly Ivins down this road, leaving her family’s old winter home in the desert near Joshua Tree three days ago with a ragtag band of survivors. With her supplies running out at the house and the other remaining residents in the isolated community wanting to make their way to a safer location, she felt little desire to remain behind. The hope of her husband Tom Ivins ever finding her, if he was even alive, dwindled with each passing day, and she knew her daughter’s survival and her own depended on banding together with others. Now, Raven’s Keep was the only sliver of optimism they clung to as their options for survival seemed to diminish with each sunrise.

  K
elly tried to recall her husband’s conversations about escape-and-evasion tactics, but right now her head was too clouded with terror to think of anything but darting in a straight line for the river. If only he was here with us—where he should be instead of off on some mission on the other side of the globe, or maybe even lying de— She forced the latter image away, focusing on what she recalled from their conversation during the early days of the pandemic. How he said they were flying one last personnel recovery mission and then returning to the USS Reagan before embarking for Pearl Harbor. Kelly could still hear his voice—weary but confident, as it often was during deployments. That was almost seventeen days ago and another world away. She wanted to reach back in time and pull him into her arms. He has to be alive—I know he is out there. She felt so alone—everything and everyone she had known from her life in San Diego near the Navy base was swept away in one week. Her family, friends, the other SEAL team wives—all erased off the face of the earth while she sat helpless at her family vacation home in the desert. From her years working as a nurse, she felt the need to drive away the pain that was filling her heart and focus on the dire facts before her—they needed to find water, food, and some place to hide. Life was that elemental and brutal now. That was her new reality, and wishing for anything different was only going to prolong their ordeal in this desert. The world isn’t going to change back to the way it was before the pandemic, so get your ass in high gear. Kelly thought back to the words of an elderly patient in the hospital that she had spent time with before she died. The cancer that was consuming her frail body couldn’t blot out the peace in her eyes as Kelly held her hand. Hard times don’t create heroes. It’s the hard times in life that reveal the hero inside of you. She could hear the woman’s calm voice as if she were beside her, and she knew now, as she did then, that the saying was directed at Kelly as if the woman had seen a time when she would need to draw upon such words. Kelly grit her teeth then took several deep breaths. You have to be braver and stronger than you’ve ever been. She held her daughter tighter and steadied her shaking hands, knowing they would have to make a run for the river as soon as the monsters in the distance dispersed.