Emergence Series (Books 1-3), A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 23

  Runa squinted, his eyes piercing the forest near the front meadow. The air was filled with leaf litter from the commotion of thousands of creatures flooding through the forest like a wave of locusts.

  “Forget what I said,” he yelled. “We gotta go now.” He unslung his AR and moved to the open door, taking a knee. “Grab the woman and get her in the rig then pull around the side. I’ll meet you there.”

  The creatures had increased their pace upon seeing them move and Runa focused his sights upon the first row of six gangly drones heading down the driveway. He took his time sniping a few at a time near the entrance to the road. In between his hail of bullets splitting open skulls, he could hear Jody and the others scurrying out the back door for the barn.

  Another line of creatures took over, stepping over the bloody corpses without removing their gaze from Runa. He felt the presence of a thousand eyes upon him as he kept his trigger finger busy dispatching more. The driveway and surrounding meadow were soon covered in skull fragments and gray liquid rife with worms as he continued emptying his magazines into the unrelenting horde. Eighty yards out, near a large hickory tree, he saw one of the dominant creatures pacing. Its head was bald and stood out amidst the brown bark of the pine trees behind it. Its piercing utterances penetrated the trembling footfalls of the drones. Runa pressed his shoulder against the doorframe to steady himself, then took aim through the red-dot scope on the rifle. “Let’s hear you whistle a tune after this, motherfucker.” Upon exhaling, he let out a single round, which struck the creature in the head, above the ear. It instantly collapsed, causing a temporary disruption in the cadence of the other creatures.

  Runa stood up, backpedaling for the dining room and then rushing downstairs to Will’s vault. He grabbed a backpack and began jamming in magazines for the ARs and Glocks. He filled another backpack with some trauma kits and MREs, then slung them on either arm. He reached down and yanked up one metal ammo box and lugged it up the stairs, checking both directions before heading to the side door.

  Swinging open the door, he trotted down the steps just as Jody was exiting the barn in the Bronco. Runa heard an uncanny screech as four creatures rushed at him from around the corner of the house. He dropped the ammo and swung around, hitting two of them with his backpack. He was surprised at how easily they collapsed, as if they were mannequins, then remembered the drones relied on sheer numbers, not on strength. Runa kicked one in the bottom of the jaw, causing its head to make a sickening snap, followed by dozens of gray worms bursting forward from the ruptured trachea. He stepped back, raising his AR with one hand, and fired off several wild rounds into the chest of the creature to the right. It staggered for a second then continued rushing at him, its teeth gnashing at the air and its bloodshot eyes fixating upon him.

  Runa heard the unpleasant sound of nearby bullets whizzing past his head and then saw the drone’s neck fray apart. Mark was shooting haphazardly into the two remaining creatures, causing Runa to duck. “Shit—what are the chances I get killed by friendly fire on my own soil?”

  He shook his head, realizing how close he’d come to having his brains sprinkled upon the lawn, and then grabbed the ammo box. Runa took a wide berth around the approaching Bronco as Mark continued hanging out the window of the vehicle, shooting into another group of drones pouring in from the left.

  “Cease fire,” Runa yelled as he opened the passenger’s door and flung the packs inside. “Save your ammo.”

  Jody plowed into a kneeling drone that was attempting to stand, its bullet-riddled chest pumping out gray ooze and worms. She peeled around to the right, the back wheels spitting up entrails and bone fragments as she maneuvered towards a narrow dirt road behind the barn. Runa saw the massive herd of drones growing smaller in the side-view mirror as the Bronco sped off into the forest. He let out a gravely exhale while looking back at the farmhouse, the last physical reminder of Will Reisner. Hope you are faring better than we are, buddy.

  The bumpy road jarred Runa and he felt a spike in his adrenaline again. He swung around and glared at Mark. “You almost added me to the bodycount back there, hotshot.”

  “What are you talkin’ about, old man? I saved your ass,” snapped Mark.

  Runa thrust his hand back, grabbing Mark by the collar and twisting the fabric until the young man was gagging. “In another land, I would have buried your ass by now.”

  Runa let go, shoving Mark back into the seat.

  Mark coughed and went to throw a punch, but was held back by Megan. He glared at Runa, who slowly turned around. “You show up here a few days ago, telling all these Jason Bourne stories about you and Ms. Reisner’s brother and then ordering us around,” said Mark. “Now, you’re gonna ride my ass for plugging a few freaks back there.”

  “That’s enough—everyone take a breather,” said Jody, shooting a stare back at Mark in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us and you do not want to piss off the driver.”

  Jody came to an intersection in the dirt road and turned to the right, slowing enough to glance over her shoulder towards Jason, who was seated in the very back next to the injured woman. “How’s she doing?”

  “The same, but her color looks better. She was pretty pale when I first saw her on the porch.”

  “What if she’s infected?” whispered Megan. “How do we know she isn’t gonna turn into one of those things?”

  Jody gave a sideways glance to Runa. “Because her skin would already be wriggling with those worms and she’d have a gray complexion by now,” said Runa, who reflected back on the agents that had become infected back at Langley during the initial attacks. So many people had died during those first two days after the dead reanimated. He looked out the window at the forest, which seemed at once serene and indifferent. Part of him wanted to stop and walk off into the wilds and forget about the horrific pathogen that his boss had unleashed upon the world. The other part of him wanted to fight to take back the country—or what was left of it. He had never questioned his commitment to battling foreign combatants before, but they were always in far-off lands, not in his backyard. His life had been dedicated to protecting the U.S. and taking the fight to the enemy, but he knew this was going to be a war unlike any he or anyone else had ever fought. And the toll wasn’t going to be remembered by what nation suffered the most fatalities but by how much of the human species survived. Runa rubbed his sore neck and knew he had to focus his energy on the little picture in order to maintain his sanity. The road to Franklin comes next, and if that fails, then we head to Florida. From countless missions abroad, he reminded himself that accomplishing small objectives was the key to achieving the grand ones. For now, their immediate survival was all that mattered. He gave a half-hearted look over his shoulder at the pensive youth behind him. First, I need to get you trained or you’re just going to be a liability to this group. He envisioned what that would be like, especially dealing with someone as headstrong as Mark, who seemed to have fire in every sentence he spoke. Damn, I’d rather be blindfolded and dropped back in the Middle East than deal with teenagers.

  Chapter 7

  The high-pitched whine of the small circular saw came to an end, and General Lau stepped back, admiring the precise cut he’d just made on the thick cranium of the creature strapped to the table. Despite its thrashing and screams, he had managed a steady hand while removing the top half of the skull. Lau hadn’t realized how much he missed working in a laboratory setting until now. With an endless spate of test subjects and the absence of any oversight committees, he knew that some of his former bio-weapons projects could emerge from their dormant archives.

  He handed the bloody instrument to a pale-faced assistant to the right, then knelt down to inspect the gray matter that was teeming with hundreds of parasites. Lau’s breathing was heavy with nervous excitement, and the respirator attached to his biohazard suit seemed to struggle to keep up with his exhalations. An older man in his fifties, whose nameplate read Cheng, moved alongside him and til
ted his cloaked head to study the contours of the creature’s exposed brain structure.

  “As I mentioned before, this one is a worker, so it has a greater concentration of parasites riddling the frontal lobe than the two other types.”

  Lau heard the man but was busy prodding the center of the mass with a stainless steel probe. With each thrust, the beast shrieked and tried to escape the iron shackles on its ankles and wrists.

  “How is it that these things can feel pain? I would have thought that that function would have ceased after being brain-dead before they re-animated?”

  “I have been wondering that myself. It is a puzzling aspect, but after dissecting so many of these creatures now, I have come to find that the presence of the parasites after initial infection may have kept the brain in a low-functioning state that was imperceptible to the instruments of hospital physicians after the victims were declared dead.”

  Lau shot straight up and swiveled his head towards the man. “So, the patients never completely died then?”

  “Well, I treated many patients myself during the first few days of the outbreak. They were clinically dead. But what I’m suggesting is that the presence of the parasites around the cerebellum somehow kept feeding nutrients to the more primitive parts of the cortex. Such activity would have been cloaked from the standard devices used by a hospital physician.”

  “Since brain death occurs in a normal human in five minutes or so, that would mean that most of the cases from the initial virus weren’t true fatalities then, but…” Lau’s eyes darted beyond the clear pane of his mask to the ceiling, then back down at the moaning creature. “These things were in a dormant state after they were presumed dead. And the parasites were concealing that somehow.”

  “I believe so.” Cheng moved around to the side of the examination table. He removed a small flashlight from a nearby table and flashed it into the jet-black eyes of the creature. “Now, if you’ll notice the expression on this one—it definitely has a primitive, enraged look to the eyes. If we released it right now it would go on a killing rampage. Its only instincts seem to be to attack.” He put the flashlight down and pointed to the wall behind him. “The creature in the next room is quite different. It’s one of the pack leaders, an alpha or dominant being, if you will, that your men ensnared outside the city after cutting down over a hundred creatures like this beast on the table.”

  Cheng walked around towards Lau. “I’ve already performed some initial tests on the leader and it has almost…” He paused, searching for the words. “…a look of understanding and even anguish in its eyes. I suspect that it has more of its cerebral cortex intact. I’ll know more once I cut it apart.” He tapped his gloved finger on the side of the skull. “I can tell you this—while you were cutting up this beast, I can almost guarantee you that the one in the next room was shrieking in pain as if it was also being harmed, even though these are soundproof rooms.”

  Lau’s eyes widened and his eyes studied the blue-gray veins snaking out along the creature’s bare chest, the nearly opaque skin, and the powerful limbs. He knew it was no longer a human being, but the more advanced ones like the pack leader in the other room fascinated him, and he wondered if any of the former person was still left, trapped inside the abomination it had become. So many questions flooded through his fatigued mind. He let out a deep exhale then stepped back. His cyber-security team was waiting for him upstairs to discuss the second phase of attack upon the remaining power centers in the U.S.

  “I have duties to tend to elsewhere right now, but keep me apprised of what you learn from the other specimen.” He walked towards the sealed door that led to decontamination, pausing to gaze back at the macabre scene and reflecting on the revelation that the doctor had just imparted. He wondered what fate his deceased wife and daughter had met, though hardly registering any feelings of loss. Surely they are not mindless rabble like that one there.

  He glanced over at the doctor. “And don’t shred the mind of the leader. There are some tests that I would like to run myself, so keep it alive for now until I return.”

  Chapter 8

  McKenzie was sitting in his quarters, staring at a crate full of notes that had been secured from Professor Hayes’ research lab on Jebwe Island four days ago. The obvious medical files he had turned over to Selene so she could begin to connect the dots between the current scourge consuming the earth and whatever Hayes had initially developed.

  With the sheer volume of material before him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to efficiently sort through it all and quickly separate out the pertinent classified material that linked Hayes’ work to the CIA. He sat back and ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, then looked up at a framed photograph resting on his bookshelf. It showed his wife and two daughters sitting in their backyard next to a liver-shaped swimming pool. Where are you? Did you make it? His heart skipped a beat at the thought of them being left alone to fight the hordes of creatures that had probably swept through their neighborhood north of San Diego.

  He felt his shoulders growing heavier as the responsibility for so many lives weighed upon him. Managing the day-to-day affairs of thousands of crew members on board the Reagan was harrowing enough under normal conditions, but now his tiny armada of ships represented some of what could be the last vestiges of humanity left in the Pacific. His present goal was to get them all safely back to Pearl Harbor and await further orders from Central Command, whose remaining base of operations had shifted to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. And somehow he had to contain the awful secrets contained in the files in front of him—secrets that would put not only the CIA and its members on board in jeopardy but implicate the U.S. government in the destruction of the world. The morale of the military would be shredded to pieces and he needed every able-bodied soldier, sailor, and airman to be ready for the battles he knew would be coming in the dark days ahead. McKenzie pulled a black hard-drive from the pile and forcefully squeezed it, as if some revelation would leak out through the sides.

  If Hayes or that bastard Siegel were still alive, there’d at least be a face to put up on trial for the world to see. Now all I have as proof that this was the doing of two madmen is these files. He let out a sigh. How can this be the new reality?

  He heard a knock on his door, which caused him to sit up, jolted back to the present.

  “Come in,” he said, flinging the hard-drive back into the crate and closing the lid.

  Ivins walked in, then closed the narrow cabin door behind him. “Sir, you requested to see me.”

  He waved his hand to the chair on his right. “Please, sit down. We have a few things to discuss and I thought this would be a better location than the bridge.”

  Ivins pulled up the chair, casting a brief glance at the crate then back at McKenzie.

  “I’m sending Agent Reisner and his team on a mission to California to extract one of the Agency’s former assets from a location north of Sacramento. They’re flying out tonight.”

  Ivins pulled his shoulders back and crossed his arms. “I see—and we’re providing support again on this one,” he said with a slight hint of irritation in his voice.

  McKenzie could see a slight leer forming on Ivins’ face. “Something on your mind, Lieutenant?”

  Ivins stood up, craning his head around the room. “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He moved over towards the crate and tapped it with his boot. “It was my understanding that my men and I extracted Reisner and his team along with Dr. Munroe from Taiwan because they were high-value Agency personnel that could help with fighting this virus.” He put his hands on his hips and paced around the small room. “Then we accompany Reisner to Jebwe Island to gather intel on a site that was possibly connected with the origins of the virus. And the entire time there and back, Reisner is stone-faced on whether the Agency is involved, at what appears to me to be a CIA black site.” He waved his meaty hand towards the crate. “So, imagine my surprise when I see t
hat the hard-copy items we acquired on the island don’t appear to have been examined yet by any of our intel staff, and now Reisner is heading off on another mysterious mission.”

  Ivins turned to face McKenzie, who sat motionless with his gaze locked on the younger Navy SEAL. “My men and I left Jebwe Island with more questions than answers, and I just have to ask—were Munroe and Hayes connected to the origin of this virus and Reisner is just their mop-up guy? Because that’s what this looks like.”

  McKenzie could feel Ivins’ blue eyes penetrating beyond his skull. He knew it was a look of determined inquisitiveness and not insubordination, though in a lesser man, he would have reprimanded him for the latter.

  “Lieutenant, all I can tell you is that Munroe is a civilian who was caught in the wrong place at the right time. She has no connection to Hayes or the island as far as I can tell.” He let out a deep breath. “As for Reisner, he is the capable operator he appears to be, whose presence in Taiwan seemed to coincide with Munroe’s.” He wasn’t lying to Ivins, but he also wasn’t divulging all the truth of what he had learned about Hayes’ research vessel, the Atropos, the possible Chinese retaliatory strike, and Siegel’s involvement. “With regards to the lab on the island, I am still sorting through the materials obtained there, so until I do, I would keep our conversation here to yourself. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ivins gave him a scrutinizing gaze. “If that was an Agency black site then why not turn this crate over to our intel staff and let them separate out the pertinent details? Better now than a few weeks later after rumors have circulated. People on board are going to start talking, if they haven’t already been. I can keep my men under wraps, but eventually the rest of the crew is going to be wondering what our strike teams brought back from that island and what Munroe is doing in her little lab.”

  McKenzie tapped his fingers on his desk. He wanted to grab the crate and fling it overboard. He wished he’d never gotten that desperate call from Jonas Runa to retrieve Reisner and Munroe. Now, in addition to protecting the lives of his crew and wondering about the fate of his own family, he had to figure out how to navigate through the silty waters of deceit that Siegel had left in his wake.