“My theory is that the high radiation levels in the exclusion zone affect some alien microbes that might have been carried by the asteroid. This foreign matter might have either been dispersed in the air or corrupted the water supply, which the creatures then consumed. The organism then attacks the host’s DNA, and the radiation likely accelerates the mutagenic effects.”
“This is starting to sound like some cheesy sci-fi direct-to-video movie from back in the day.” Reznik chuckled. “Say, I thought the meteor landed in the ocean. What caused such high levels of radiation?”
“The asteroid, 192 Nausikaa, broke apart in the atmosphere, and part of it landed in what you used to call Oklahoma,” Rin replied quietly. “The largest part still landed in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Right,” Marcus agreed. “After the third Dust Bowl, the plains states went all-in with nuclear power in their bid to aid the world energy crisis since the land had become worthless for crops. It just so happened that there was a high concentration of nuclear reactors in the area most affected by the portion of the meteor that struck land. When the meteor impacted the ground, it caused the release of a lethal amount of radiation, leading to the designation of the exclusion zone.”
“The highest concentration of nuclear reactors in the former USA,” Rin added.
“So it became like Chernobyl all over again. Or Fukushima even,” Reznik said. He remembered hearing of the Fukushima disaster right before the DARPA project put him on ice. He let out his breath slowly. “How bad is the radiation now? Will we be able to withstand it?” he asked with a glance at Rin.
“Exclusion zone radiation absorption is estimated between ten and five hundred rads per hour, depending on the location and presence of hot spots,” Marcus said. “You’d definitely want to use bio-rad suits for unprotected people. For skins, the amount is not likely to cause any harm unless you plan on spending several days in the exclusion zone,” Marcus said.
Reznik looked puzzled as he exchanged glances with Rin.
“I’d highly discourage camping out there long term,” Marcus added with a laugh.
“I think we can handle it,” Rin said. “Do you have a location where these creatures might be hiding?”
“I can give you likely coordinates, but I’m not sure. We haven’t explored that deeply into the exclusion zone. Drone mapping reveals a series of chasms and what we estimate are underground caverns. The creatures likely live in the caverns since we haven’t been able to capture any on drone video yet.”
“That’s a lot of unknowns,” Reznik said grimly. “Shit… this is going to be anything but easy. I don’t think a frontal assault would turn out too well. Snatch and grab will be the way to go, I’d say. A distraction would be extremely useful, however.”
“I’ll see what I can do about providing a distraction,” Marcus offered. “I might be able to re-task a drone or something like that. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
Rin caught Reznik’s eye. “Well, you were looking for a challenge. Overcoming your kill switch while dodging warring factions of rebels versus evil power-mongering corporations wasn’t enough, so now you’ve got women to rescue from bloodthirsty mutants. All in a day’s work, right?”
Marcus couldn’t be sure if she was joking at first, but then she cracked a smile, and Reznik laughed. “If it wasn’t ridiculously long odds, then it wouldn’t be worthy of our time, eh?”
***
Reznik slowly pulled to a stop a good distance away from the outpost. A twenty-foot-high wall surrounded the small compound, which couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred feet across. A high, reinforced chain-link gate was shut tight before them. Inside, Reznik could make out a low concrete building, which didn’t look much bigger than a single room. What appeared to be small storage sheds stood on either side of the concrete building. A towering antenna rose above the compound with a bubble at the top holding a sensor cluster. A squat guard tower stood at the center of the compound with autocannons mounted on both sides. Reznik was sure more of the compound must have extended underground. He could just make out the nose and part of the tail section of a strange-looking aircraft parked inside the compound.
Three figures stood just inside the gate: a woman and two men. All three of them carried long-barreled guns of some type. The woman signaled to the guard tower when Reznik stopped the vehicle, and the gate slowly began to slide open.
Reznik had stopped the truck as soon as they had seen the autocannons lock in to track their progress. Fortunately, the truck had a loudspeaker system, and Marcus had identified himself to the outpost. The three figures had come out of the concrete building a short time later, and Reznik had slowly let the vehicle creep forward until he left about fifty yards between them and the gate.
The woman inside the compound was strikingly beautiful. She was tall and lithe, with lustrous dark hair and sparkling amber eyes. She wore a crisp black uniform with silver trim that accentuated her figure. Looks like the same type of uniform worn by that corpse the rebels hung. The woman held her weapon by the stock, casually leaning it against her shoulder, almost like the right-shoulder-arms position that Reznik remembered from rifle drills in the military. Something about her belied her casual attitude. She gave off a sense of coiled violence waiting to strike, much like the impression he got from Rin.
It was obvious the woman was in charge. The two men were deferential to her and could have been brothers—they both had crew-cuts and average looks with unremarkable features except for their powerful builds and large rifles held in a ready position.
“Thank you, both of you,” Marcus exclaimed from the back seat. He clapped both Reznik and Rin on the shoulder. “If there’s ever anything I can do to make this up to you guys, please don’t hesitate to ask.” He shook both their hands and then was out of the truck, walking briskly toward the trio standing at the gate.
“I recognize that woman,” Rin stated, staring intently at the group. “Not much is known about her, but it’s assumed that she works directly for Alistair Thorne.”
“It never hurts to sow some goodwill then, does it?” Reznik replied.
Marcus had reached the trio and the woman stepped forward and surprisingly gave him a warm embrace.
“They are obviously close,” Reznick continued, “so it can’t be all bad to have them owing us one, can it?”
“She’s bad news, that’s all I know. Let’s get out of here. I doubt she would recognize me, but all the same, it’s probably best to avoid a confrontation.”
“Oh?” Reznik looked at her questioningly. “And why would someone high up the Thorne food chain take a personal interest in you?”
Rin’s lips twitched in what could have been an ironic smile. “Let’s just say I’m not exactly on the Thorne invite list for their annual Christmas party.” She shrugged. “That’s something best discussed further at another time. We have work to do. Let’s go.”
Reznik complied, putting the vehicle in reverse. He saw that the Thorne woman was watching them intently. Marcus waved to them as they pulled away, and the woman nodded as if in thanks. Reznik spun the wheel, and they sped away.
Chapter 15
“How does it look?” Marcus waited anxiously as the medic gently unwound the bandage from his head. He sat on an examination table in the outpost’s medical bay. His filthy shirt, socks, and shoes lay discarded on the floor. He sat there in just his trousers as the medic peered at his head.
The bandage pulled at his skin where some dried blood stuck to the gauze. As it gave way, Marcus could sense Bethany leaning in to examine his wound as well. Fingers probed at his skull, and he winced as a twinge of pain shot through his head.
“You’ll live,” Bethany pronounced. “What do you think?” she asked the medic.
“I’ll have to run some scans to determine if there’s any brain damage,” the medic said. “It looks like he has a minor skull fracture, however. You’re damn lucky someone found you and gave you first aid as soon as they did.” The medic l
eaned in close as he shone a penlight into the ear canal of Marcus’s ruined ear. “Hmm… can you hear out of this ear?” Marcus shook his head. “You’ll probably need a cochlear implant at the very least. Barring the results of the tests indicating any brain damage, you’re going to be just fine besides the hearing loss. Take some painkillers and rest up for a while, and you should feel back to normal in a few days. You can always get reskinned, commensurate with your position, of course, if the scars bother you.”
“I know my Datalink implant is damaged. I don’t know how difficult that will be to repair or replace, but it might just be easier to get a new skin. Let me take a look.” Marcus stood up from the exam table and walked over to the mirror on the wall. Thankfully, he wasn’t overcome by dizziness—it would have been embarrassing to pass out in front of them.
Marcus gasped as he saw the ruin of what used to be his right ear. There was an ugly, ragged gash in his temple that had been crudely stitched up back at Planter’s Ridge. The wound ran all the way back along the side of his head, the flesh red and angry around the gash. He sighed in resignation. “This looks awful. Maybe I should just get reskinned. What do you think, Bethany?”
“It adds character,” she acknowledged after a moment. “Personally, I think it will be kind of sexy when it heals up. But it will definitely look better if you shave your head.” She came up behind Marcus. Her hand was warm as she placed it on his bare back, and their eyes locked in the mirror. “Scars remind us of the struggles we’ve faced. Every morning when you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror, you will see this, and it will remind you that outside of the sterile corridors and glass walls of your laboratory is an ugly world out there. That world did its best to kill you, but you overcame it. You are a survivor, Marcus, and nobody can take that away from you. Not now or ever. This scar will never be anything to be ashamed of, as far as I’m concerned.”
Her eyes were passionate and intense, and Marcus couldn’t look away from their amber depths.
“So I guess to answer your question: no, I don’t think you should get reskinned just yet.”
The moment lingered, and then Bethany broke eye contact and wrinkled her nose. “But you definitely need to get your smelly ass in the shower!” She smacked him on the buttock and left the room. The medic prepared to clean the wound and apply some surgical epoxy to seal the gash.
***
A small black-and-yellow radiation hazard trefoil symbol was affixed to a pole. “EXCLUSION ZONE—HARMFUL RADIATION LEVELS BEYOND THIS POINT. USE APPROPRIATE PROTECTIVE GEAR” a sign warned. Other than that, nothing else distinguished the exclusion zone from the rest of the wasteland. The ground was rocky and devoid of all life as it had been for the past several miles. An occasional gust of wind would stir up the reddish dust. For all Reznik knew, they could have been on the surface of Mars. It was late morning, and the sun was blazing down; according to the gauge on the truck, the temperature was 120 degrees. The term wasteland definitely is the most apt way to describe this.
He eased the truck forward, and within several yards, as if on cue, a bright yellow radiation warning popped up on his HUD. The needle icon flickered, and the clicking and crackling sound of a Geiger counter was audible. The needle currently hovered around ten rads. This is going to be like a slow cooker, he thought. I should look on the bright side: I won’t have to worry about the kill switch in my head if I cook from the inside out first.
Reznik was starting to like the truck he had commandeered from the slavers. The closest thing he could think of in comparison was a Unimov that had been configured into a crew-cab pickup truck, albeit one with three rows of bench seats. It was the perfect vehicle for the job—the broken rocky ground posed no problem for its huge forty-four-inch tires, and it had a surprisingly comfortable ride as well. The .50-caliber machine gun mounted in the bed was a big plus, too.
Rin slid into the air-conditioned cab through the window from the bed. “No sign of life anywhere,” she reported. She lounged on the bench seat in the back of the cab and watched out the window.
Reznik consulted the map on his HUD and saw they had 18.2 miles to go until they reached the area where Marcus had indicated the caverns were located. He set the vehicle at thirty miles per hour, which seemed the sweet spot between too bouncy and too slow. The miles rolled by uneventfully, and he noticed after a time that they seemed to be descending into a vast depression. Visibility decreased as the air became hazy. The reading on his internal Geiger counter fluctuated between ten and fifty rads.
“Look at that!” Reznik exclaimed.
Rin sat up straight in the back seat and looked out the windshield.
Off in the distance, a massive crater had become visible through the haze. The crater had to be the result of the smaller piece of the meteor striking the ground over twenty years before. They were still several miles away, and he couldn’t clearly see the other side of the crater, but Reznik’s rough guess was that it had to be three or four miles across. The lip of it was puckered up several hundred feet, almost like a volcano. He could only guess at the crater’s depth. The Earth’s crust had been shattered for dozens of miles around, rending it apart into great chasms that spider-webbed outward, much like a rock impacting a windshield. Reznik had to slow the truck as the terrain became much rougher. The radiation intensified the closer they traveled toward the crater. Once, the radiation exposure spiked over one hundred rads, and Reznik chose a different route to circumvent that area.
They continued for a couple more miles until the ruptured hulk of an old nuclear reactor loomed ahead in the distance. The cooling tower had fallen over and split open like some alien cocoon. The air was hazy from dust stirred up by the wind. Again, Reznik had to hastily choose another path as the radiation levels spiked alarmingly over six hundred rads as they approached the old reactor.
“I wonder if the captive women, assuming they are alive, will have radiation sickness,” Reznik said. “These levels are spiking pretty high.”
The rad level retreated below one hundred again as they skirted the area around the ruined reactor. In the distance, the skeletons of large, ruined buildings were faintly visible in the haze.
“If they were taken below ground, they will most likely be shielded from the brunt of the radiation. It’s the exposure during the time on the surface that they need to be worried about.” Rin looked out the window at the surreal landscape as they passed.
After another ten minutes, they neared the coordinates of the cavern system. Reznik stopped the truck about a quarter mile away, and they dismounted from the vehicle. The rad level fluctuated between twenty and fifty. They cautiously scanned the area but couldn’t see any signs of life.
Reznik briefly checked to make sure the ammo belt was loaded in the .50 cal in case they had to make a hasty retreat. He carried the Tachibana rifle in a ready position and had the AK-47 slung over his back. The .45 revolver was a comforting weight on his hip, as usual.
After walking for a ways, Reznik spotted a number of tracks on the dusty ground. He crouched down and observed the large, heavy footprints of bare humanoid feet. Shit, some of these things could wear a size-24 shoe! A small object caught Reznik’s eye. He uncovered a small plastic hair clip from where it had been crushed into the dirt beneath a huge foot.
“This is the place,” he said quietly, holding the hair clip up to Rin. She nodded grimly and walked to the edge of the chasm, her hand on the hilt of her katana.
“There’s the entrance.” She pointed down the side of the chasm.
A large cavern opened up about fifty feet down. A steep trail descended along the edge of the chasm before opening up to a small ledge at the mouth of the cavern. The fissure was much smaller than the one they had crossed at the bridge a couple days ago, but smaller was a relative term. It curved away as far as the eye could see, and although it was only about twenty yards across, it also appeared to be bottomless.
There was no sign of the creatures thus far. “I assume there’
s another entrance to the caves around here somewhere,” Reznik said as he consulted his HUD map. “Judging from the coordinates Marcus gave us, it’s likely the entrance is about a mile to the west of here. Let’s try to find that before we go. I don’t like the idea of having to make a quick escape with a bunch of possibly wounded women up that treacherous slope if we are being pursued.”
“Good point,” Rin said.
“Hopefully, we can find it quickly and get back to town to consult with Ichiro. It would be nice to have his firepower backing us up. From the nighttime attack on Planter’s Ridge, and based on what we’ve seen, or haven’t seen rather, of these creatures, I think it’s safe to assume they prefer to operate at night. I’d like to be back out here late afternoon and use what advantage the remaining daylight will give us.”
As they prepared to return to the vehicle, Reznik dropped a stone into the chasm. He waited about a minute, and even with his boosted hearing, he could hear no sign of it hitting bottom.
***
“You want to do what with one of the drones?” Bethany eyed Marcus with raised eyebrows. She was reclined in one of the executive chairs with her boots up on the conference room table. They were several levels underground in Outpost Echo, and Marcus had sought her out after a shower, a nap, and lunch. “I think not. I just finished a videoconference with Serrano, Bogdanovic, and Carbajal. There are some matters that have come up in my absence that I need to take care of.” The individuals she referred to were all big shots in Thorne’s inner council, none of whom Marcus liked much. “I had planned to get out of here and back to civilization this afternoon,” she continued. “You should report back to Doctor Barbosa. Besides, why should I care about what these wastelanders are doing?”
“Feel free to go back and take care of your duties. Just let me do this one thing—I owe a big favor to the people that saved me from the slavers.”
Extensis Vitae: The Shattered Land Page 12
