Emergence (Book 4): Eradication Page 3

  “God—what are they doing?” said Frank, who had a frozen expression as he stared through a slit in the mangled side of the bus. Kelly and Erica pressed their faces closer and watched as three drones pulled the charred bodies of the men from the smoldering wreck and began feasting upon the crisp remains. The cracking and popping of bones and ligaments filled the still morning air as burnt entrails spilled onto the blacktop. Five more creatures greedily entered into the fray, shredding the black flesh from the limbs and then tearing through the stringy muscle fibers. Kelly felt bile surging up into her throat. She heard her daughter gasp and then shriek, the face of the shocked child peering over her shoulder at the revolting sight then dropping back down to her mother’s side as she cried. Kelly covered the girl’s mouth to muffle the sound.

  The drones stopped feasting and turned, staring at the side of the bus. Two of the blood-soaked creatures stood up, bits of viscera and rib fragments clinging to their lips. They began walking towards the bus, their mouths still busy chewing on the remains of the dead men.

  “Get outta here, hurry,” said Frank, his voice becoming more bronchial. He looked at Kelly then grabbed her arm, squeezing it tight. “You and your girl still got a chance at life—now run and make sure she sees tomorrow and the day after that.” He coughed just saying the words, his face ashen from his poor circulation.

  Kelly clutched her small daughter’s hand firmly and pulled her along, finally stopping to scoop up the eight-year-old as they crawled out the back of the bus. Cassie’s small doll got caught on the jagged metal and the girl cried as it slipped out of her hands. Erica was right behind them as they sprinted in plain sight for the river. Kelly could hear the relentless stampede of creatures running along the pavement behind her, then the sound of shotgun blasts. Shrieking filled the air, and she knew Frank didn’t have more than a few rounds left in his weapon. Two hundred yards farther and she felt a shockwave slam into her back, followed by a wave of heat as the fuel tank of the bus erupted after the final round from the old man’s shotgun. She fell forward, still clutching her daughter, instinctively rolling to the side in the soft sand. Kelly turned, shrimping on her hips and staring at the conflagration in the distance. Body parts, metal, glass and bone fragments were still raining down upon the former location of the bus. She pulled her daughter in again to shield her from any debris while scouring the area for any signs of creatures.

  Frank. She felt a pang of loss for the good man that he was. Though she had only known him a few days, he had treated her and Cassie with kindness despite his gruff manners.

  “That old fuck got ’em all,” said Erica, who was squatting on one knee while grinning. She waved her pistol in the air like someone at a parade.

  Kelly shook her head at the comment, realizing her purgatory was not solely confined to the monsters borne of the dreadful virus. She caught something to her right and swiveled around, placing her daughter on the ground as she sat up. Two charred drones were shambling towards them. One was missing half of its face and its detached eyeball hung out of the socket. The other had its red shirt melted to its torso, which made its chest look like plastic.

  Erica thrust her HK pistol out, firing without aiming. Each 9mm round ricocheted off the twisted metal of the bus behind the creatures.

  “Stop before you burn through all your ammo,” yelled Kelly. She removed the Beretta pistol from her waist then looked down at her daughter. “Keep your ears covered, sweetie, and look away, OK?” She wasn’t an ace with a pistol like her husband, but she knew her accuracy had to be better than Erica’s.

  Kelly moved onto one knee and fired two rounds at the mangled creature on the right, striking it once in the chest and then finally in the head. It collapsed back into the blood-addled sand as she took aim at the red shirt, sending one round into the ear and another into the right cheek. Its head splintered apart, dropping it in its worm-riddled tracks. She scanned either direction for movement then flicked the safety on and placed the pistol back in her belt.

  Erica stood up, biting her lip and twisting it, then looked over at Kelly with a smug grin. “Your first shot didn’t do shit—hit ’em in the chest.”

  Kelly raised an eyebrow and let out a sigh, looking at the woman whose moods seemed to oscillate between rage and depression. This is a survival ordeal just with her present. She reached down for Cassie’s hand and motioned for her to get up while brushing her fingers along the girl’s blond hair. She glanced at the terrain ahead along either side of the river—nothing but miles of boulders and sand dunes interspersed with the occasional mesquite tree. She had done enough camping in the desert with her husband to know how the temperature could drastically swing between night and day. Since it was mid-November, she realized they could be in for a very cold night if they didn’t find shelter. Kelly looked back at the road they had come from, angry that she had fled the van without her backpack. Now, all they had were the clothes on their backs and their half-empty pistols. She raised one hand, screening her eyes from the intense sun, and studied the rock-strewn ground that led to the river. At least we won’t have to worry about water.

  “See somethin’?” said Erica, whose head was swiveling around.

  “Looking for a place along the river we can hole up for a while—maybe find some food.

  “Yeah, me too—maybe a McDonalds so we can all get Happy Meals.”

  Kelly narrowed her eyes at the woman. “I don’t know what you’re on or if this is how you normally are, but maybe you could just shut up for the next mile if you can’t say anything constructive.”

  “Sure thing, Barbie—why don’t you lead on.”

  Kelly turned away from the woman, holding Cassie’s hand as the two began to walk towards the river. She looked at the heat waves already beginning to roil off the rocks in the distance. She could feel the sun pounding on her forehead. Maybe I’m already in hell.

  Chapter 5

  CDC, Phoenix, AZ

  After changing out of his soiled fatigues from the storm drains and getting something to eat, Reisner headed down to the lab on sub-level three. Selene was sitting in her office, a plethora of monitors on the wall showing Doctor Victor Tso and Doctor Noveck with some of the medical staff in the BSL-4 chamber performing tests on the woman that Reisner had rescued.

  Selene smiled when she saw him enter, then turned her face back towards her laptop, studying the woman’s vitals and other data they had already assembled. Reisner stood behind Selene, resting his hands on her shoulders and commencing with a brief massage before sitting down next to her.

  “I missed seeing you at lunch—you could have had a beef stroganoff MRE with me but now you’ll just have to hear all about it.”

  She winced. “Please don’t go there—those things are atrocious and I’d rather not think about what’s coming up for dinner. That’s the kind of gruel we were forced to consume in the refugee camps I worked at in east Africa years ago. Even the refugees preferred trapping rodents over eating that stuff.”

  “One day, a proper dinner is in order then—I promise.” He looked up at the monitor, watching Tso take notes on his tablet. “It’s good to see Victor back in his element—and working with you again. You two make a great research team.”

  “Thanks—and yes, it is. And yes, we do.” She smiled without looking up from her laptop. “So, the woman appears to be an otherwise healthy female in her mid-twenties with no obvious internal or external trauma. She does have some slight contusions along the back of her head so she could be suffering from a concussion. We’ll know more once Victor is done. The initial CT scan doesn’t show the presence of any parasites, which is a relief, but her bloodwork indicates an unusually high amount of melatonin.”

  Reisner shrugged his shoulders when she looked up at him. “So…”

  “So, melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain—it helps regulate our sleep cycle. In fact, it was often sold as an over-the-counter sleep aid for insomniacs and other high-strung types.�
� She turned her eyes upon him with the mention of the last few words.

  He smirked. “Better than the opposite. Besides, you don’t seem like the type who’d settle for someone low-key.”

  She returned to analyzing the data. “The fact she has unusually high amounts in her system means that either her pineal gland is being overstimulated to produce it or,” she paused, glancing at the laptop again while dragging her index finger along a chart full of numbers, “or, it was introduced into her system by someone—or something—else.”

  “Why is it every time you uncover something new about these creatures, it always comes back to being connected with hormones of some kind? I mean, the alphas need a regular supply of adrenal hormones, and you’ve said before that the parasites seem to cluster in the cerebral cortex near a gland there.”

  “True. The parasite’s wellbeing seems inextricably connected to the hormones produced within the human body—at least within the alphas. But, just what this woman was doing with so much melatonin in her system and the cocooned position you found her in along with the others is another mystery in a long line of mysteries. To date, I’ve not heard of any other cases like this around the world, so hopefully it’s an isolated incident.”

  He placed his hand over hers and gently squeezed. “Then you’re the right detective for the job.”

  “Maybe so but it’ll take more than this weary brain to decipher what the hell is going on. My staff and I have been going non-stop to make more of that bioagent, so you’ll have to excuse my bleary eyes. I sent off canisters of the agent on the helicopter that left this morning for Creech Air Force Base, northeast of Las Vegas, and they’ll take that to the agency ship that Runa reacquired in the Gulf to produce larger quantities of the bioweapon for the other assault teams to use.”

  “Last I spoke with Runa, he said the Lachesis was anchored off the Florida coast now, about twenty miles from MacDill. That vessel is going to be a tremendous asset in this war.”

  She sat back, tapping her fingers on the edge of her desk while looking at the comatose woman on her screen. “I sure hope she gains consciousness so we can talk to her about what happened in those tunnels, but it seems unlikely. She’s…she’s pretty much brain-dead at this point.” Biting her lip, she manipulated the mouse and pulled up the video footage from Reisner’s helmet cam. Scrolling down until she was at the scene in the underground water treatment chamber, she zoomed in on the camouflage uniform of the first deceased woman encased in the trough.

  “Corrigan,” she whispered as she stared at the woman’s name patch. “All of these soldiers were with the army, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is there a way to get their personnel records so I can examine their health histories?”

  Reisner sat up in his seat, leaning forward to study the frozen image on the screen. “I can get General Dorr on the horn and see what his people can pull up from the DOD records.” He stood up, patting her on the arm, his eyes darting up at the ceiling. “Let me get back with you shortly on this, OK.” He rubbed the back of his neck while taking a deep breath.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing to worry about—you’ve just given me an excuse to talk with Runa again, which means I can sneak in a brief conversation with my sister with any luck.”

  “That’s a good thing, Will. Why do you seem stressed about it?”

  “It’s not stress, just this feeling of…” He folded his arms, his jaw tightening. “I should be there with her. I told her I would get back to her and I’m just not sure when the hell that’s going to happen.”

  Selene stood up, sliding both her hands along his neck. “She’s safe with Runa, and from what you’ve told me about him, that’s like a lion watching over his pride.” She placed one hand on his cheek. “Besides, she’s in the most secure military compound in the country, surrounded by hundreds of special ops guys just like you.” She smiled, pulling her hands back and kissing him. “Well, not exactly like you.”

  He smiled then kissed her back before turning to walk away, hoping she was right about Jody’s wellbeing but knowing that there was no place left that was completely safe from the monsters lurking in the shadows.

  ***

  On his way upstairs, Reisner stopped by the small conference room that had been turned into their makeshift tactical operations center. He wanted to pore over some of the schematics for the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant again. Walking inside, he saw Ivins standing with his arms folded while studying a map of western Arizona that had been hastily tacked onto the wall. Reisner moved up alongside him, wondering if Ivins even noticed his presence given his obsessive gaze upon the map.

  Ivins rested his index finger on a ribbon of blue by the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas, then traced its length down to Yuma, Arizona along the Mexico border. “They have to be here somewhere,” he said. “I just can’t find any dwelling or community called Raven’s Keep—that’s the place Kelly mentioned in her note that I found at the family retreat outside of Joshua Tree.” He pulled his hand back, curling it into a ball. “She just wouldn’t pick up and leave like that unless she had somewhere certain to go.”

  “These are uncertain times, my friend—she may have been desperate or out of food. From the note you found, it sounded like she was with other survivors so they may have made it to this Raven’s Keep and are in a better place.” Reisner thought back to the conversation he had with Ivins after his rescue from L.A. The man was shaken but hopeful after discovering news about his family, but Reisner knew that pinpointing a seemingly obscure place in the remote desert regions to the west would take time. And what would they find out there exactly?

  “I’ve scoured past satellite images and aerial photos of that region but there are only a handful of settlements and none of ’em with the name of Raven’s Keep, so it has to be some kind of community that sprang up as a result of the pandemic.”

  “Any chatter on the shortwave?”

  “I asked Murphy to look into it but nothing so far. There were a few isolated broadcasts emanating out of eastern California somewhere along the Colorado River but the transmission suddenly ceased a few days ago before an exact location could be pinpointed. And Dorr’s resources are all focused on Operation Overlord so there’s no use in trying to trouble his staff with a request for intel on that area.”

  Reisner rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You know, we’ll only be a short flight away from the Colorado River after the mission to Palo Verde, assuming everything goes as planned.”

  “I thought of that—but that’s outside the scope of my orders. Dorr won’t grant that request or he’d have to let everyone under his command go off, looking for their families.”

  “Then put it on me—say it was the crazy agency guy again going off on another unsanctioned op.”

  Ivins let out a partial grin, shaking his head. “You and your crew do operate by another set of rules sometimes—or no rules at all.”

  “See, it wouldn’t be hard to convince him, and Runa would, of course, smooth things out on his end.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “We’re family, bro.” He patted him on the shoulder then walked towards the door. “Well, you’re still a Navy guy, so more like a retarded cousin.”

  Ivins chuckled then flung a dry-erase marker at Reisner, who swerved to the side as it sailed past his head. “Next time that might be a blade,” said the SEAL.

  Chapter 6

  Twenty Miles West of Savannah, Georgia

  The blue Dodge Ram bobbed along the slick dirt road at a snail’s pace as Carl Hathaway tried to avoid grating the axle on another series of potholes carved out by the recent rains. His creased hands gripped the steering wheel, and he could feel the throbbing in his shoulder where he’d had a joint replacement three years earlier.

  “Gettin’ old is hell,” he said with a wince as they hit another bump in the road. The twenty-one-year-old man named Dylan in the passenger’s seat was silent as he stared
out through the mud-dappled windshield. Carl looked in the sideview mirror and could see the comforting sight of a steady wisp of black smoke coming from a steel pail bolted to the rear bumper. It contained a handful of glowing charcoal and several strips of rubber, which produced copious amounts of foul smoke that skewed the senses of the drones. Word of the technique had spread along the ham radio broadcasts throughout the globe, and it had become a useful method amongst civilian groups like Carl’s, enabling his small group of survivors to venture out from their cabin hideout for supplies.

  Along a smooth patch of road where it passed under a thick canopy of elm trees, he eased up with one hand and massaged his aching shoulder.

  “You ding that arm up in our last fight with the freaks?” said Dylan.

  “Nah, mule kicked me a few years ago during a vet visit to a client’s farm. Damn thing smashed my rotator cuff. It was my own fault—all my years of workin’ on animals and I got careless, stepped the wrong way at the right time and bam.” He slammed his other hand on the steering wheel. “Just lucky he didn’t get me in the ribs, I guess. That’d be worse.”