He gulped involuntarily as he thought again of what he’d seen in the parking lot. It was something out of a horror movie, but wasn’t nearly as terrible as the larval forms, as Dr. Perrault called them. The oozing things that he’d seen on the television, and the focus of their mission here, were an abomination.
As they passed a shoe store, the cats started hissing and growling again. That, too, was something Garcia found to be terribly unnatural, but at least the cats were on their side.
One of the displays in the store fell over, spilling colorful shoes to the floor, and everyone on the team pointed their weapon in that direction.
“Let’s take a look,” Perrault called softly as she reined in the cats. The big black and white one, bigger than any cat Garcia had ever seen, was straining at the leash like a dog, his razor sharp canines gleaming.
Boisson gave him the hand signal to move toward the store.
“Watch where you step,” Perrault called. “And watch the ceiling.”
Right, Garcia thought. He already felt as if he were turning into a chameleon, with eyes swiveling independently in their sockets to look up and down at the same time.
He stepped quickly around one of the black pillars that flanked the entrance to the store, his finger tensing on the trigger.
And there, at the base of the toppled over display, was one of the things.
“There’s one in here, doctor!” His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been shouting all morning.
* * *
“Here, hold them.” Naomi handed the leashes to Boisson again. The FBI agent reached for them, but wasn’t prepared for how hard the cats were pulling, trying to get to the harvester, and nearly lost her grip.
“Jesus!” Alexander almost pulled Boisson off-balance before she got control of him.
Naomi shot her a look, but refrained from saying anything. Instead, she gestured for one of the men carrying the glass carboys to come with her.
The two of them moved into the store where Garcia stood, his gun trained on the oozing mass on the floor.
“Good, Garcia,” Naomi told him, patting him on the shoulder as she stepped past him toward the creature. Turning to the wide-eyed agent carrying the glass jug, she said, “Here, give me that.”
The man gladly handed it to her, then brought up his shotgun. Naomi wondered how he’d react when he discovered that he’d have to continue carrying the carboy, this time with the harvester inside.
The harvester was the size of a small watermelon, and had wrapped itself around one of the shoes that had been on the display rack. The plastic of the shoe was quickly giving way under the acidic assault of the creature, and even now the harvester was extending pseudopods toward the other shoes that had fallen around it.
Using the muzzle of her rifle, she moved those shoes away. She set the carboy down for a moment to remove the metal cap, then gently tipped it over on its side and pressed the open end right up against the larva’s bruised-looking, glistening flesh.
The thing didn’t hesitate. As if it smelled a gourmet dinner, it began to flow through the narrow mouth of the carboy.
Her plan worked perfectly, right up to the point where the harvester tried to pull in the partially digested shoe. The remains of the shoe were still far too large to fit through the neck of the carboy, but the creature had no problem elongating itself to reach the plastic bait.
“Dammit.” She didn’t want the thing to eat the beads and then ooze right back out again. “Knife! Does anyone have a combat knife?”
The agent who’d been carrying the carboy did. Without a word, he unsheathed it and handed it to her.
Taking a deep breath, she drew the knife in a smooth motion across the mouth of the carboy. The larva didn’t even flinch as it was cut in two. The part still consuming the shoe fell to the floor with a wet plop, while the other half pulled itself all the way into the carboy where it was greedily consuming the plastic necklaces.
Pulling the carboy back from the part of the larva that had fallen back to the floor, Naomi double checked that the cap had nothing in it but metal, then screwed it onto the neck of the carboy as tight as she could.
Picking up the container, she shivered as she watched the thing oozing and squirming against the side of the carboy, with only the thickness of the glass between it and her hand.
Turning to the agent, she handed him the big jug and its horrid contents. “Hold it upright, and tell me if it looks like it’s trying to force its way out the top. And don’t drop it.”
“Yeah, right.” The man gulped and took the glass container
“And I wouldn’t use this again.” She tossed his knife on the ground. She didn’t want to take the chance that any small bits of larvae were clinging to it.
The agent tried to hold the carboy out, away from his body, but Naomi knew that he’d only drop it. Naomi pressed it toward him. “You’re perfectly safe as long as it stays in the carboy. It can’t get through the glass.” A sudden vision of the equipment in the lab at the Earth Defense Society base after the first harvester larva had done its work flashed through her mind. The only three things that had survived its touch were concrete, metal, and glass.
“Is that it?” Boisson looked at the thing, which had gravitated toward the side where the agent held the carboy against his chest, as if it knew that just beyond the glass lay another tasty morsel.
The cats continued to hiss and growl, although now they were behind Boisson, trying to flee.
“Not quite.” Naomi turned back to the remaining half of the larva, which was still gorging itself on the shoes. “I’m going to need another one.” She would have taken this one, the second half of the pair that she’d created, but by now it had drawn in half a dozen shoes and was rapidly growing. Trying to play the same game she had the first time would be a bit trickier, and she didn’t want to take the risk.
Taking out the bottle of lighter fluid, she sprayed some on the creature and then made a small trail of fluid away from it. Kneeling down, she flicked her lighter and stepped back.
The fluid ignited with a soft whump. As soon as the flame reached the larva, the thing erupted.
“Christ!” The agent with the carboy stumbled back, almost dropping it. The others took an involuntary step backward as the harvester burned like jellied gasoline.
“Fire is our best weapon,” Naomi explained as she watched the thing die. “But we can’t use it indiscriminately, for obvious reasons.”
“Let’s go,” Boisson said, handing the straining cats back to Naomi, “before the fire extinguishers in here come on. I don’t like getting my hair wet.”
* * *
Thank God I don’t have to carry one of those things, Garcia thought as they continued deeper into the mall. He exchanged looks with Cardon, who was stuck with carrying the doctor’s specimen, and could see that the man was frightened out of his wits.
Garcia didn’t blame him one bit. He tried to imagine what it must be like having that little monster glommed onto the side of the glass right against his chest, whatever brain it had, if any, trying to figure out how to get through it to the meat on the other side.
“Garcia!”
He looked up at Boisson.
“Pay attention or you’ll be carrying the damn thing!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, feeling ashamed. Steady, man, he told himself. Focus on the mission. Just get the job done so we can get the hell out of here and go home.
Something wriggling on the floor caught his eye. “There’s another one!” The larva was making a beeline for another body that lay bloodied and broken on the floor.
Garcia couldn’t help himself. He went over to the body and dragged it away before the harvester could reach it.
“Good job, Garcia.” Perrault flashed him a quick smile as she passed by, again handing the cats, which had again gone berserk, to Boisson. The other agent with a carboy handed it to her, and she knelt down and poked the neck of the jug into the harvester. Just as before, it insta
ntly began to flow into the glass container, hungry for the plastic beads.
Garcia felt a sense of relief, knowing that once Perrault sealed the lid on the second little monster, they could get out of this tomb. The screams from elsewhere in the mall had stopped, and the place was far too quiet.
The cats were growling and hissing, carrying on like mad. Boisson was having trouble holding onto them, especially the big black and white one, Alexander. Garcia had learned very quickly, even in the short time they’d been in the safe house, that the cat was a big, purring cream puff. But the nice big kitty was gone. What Garcia was looking at now was an enraged predator.
Then he noticed where the cats were looking. They weren’t looking at the creature Perrault had coaxed into the glass prison. Their attention was focused on something above her.
Garcia looked up at the second floor walkway just in time to see one of the larvae ooze through the railing. But this one wasn’t small, like the one Perrault was capturing. It was the size of a fifty-five gallon drum. “Up there!”
His shout startled the agent helping Perrault, and he stumbled backward, firing his shotgun at the thing now hanging down toward the doctor like warm putty.
The others opened fire, too, but it had no effect on the creature. The bullets distorted the flesh where they impacted, but otherwise caused no damage at all.
Perrault stared upward, mouth open, her arms wrapped around the horror in the carboy as one of its larger brethren loomed over her.
The rest of the thing squeezed through the railing, and it fell.
Garcia took no time reflecting on the value of his own life as he charged. The two steps that separated him and Perrault was such a short distance, but seemed to take a lifetime. Wrapping his arms around her, he knocked her off her feet, his momentum carrying her out of danger. The huge larval form landed behind them with a loud splat, and was instantly wreathed in flames as the other agents doused it with lighter fluid or used their lighters and cans of hairspray as homemade flamethrowers.
As he and Perrault hit the floor, the bottom of the carboy between them struck the tile and shattered. Garcia’s eyes locked with Perrault’s, and for the first time he noticed that one of her eyes was brown, the other blue. They were open wide with terror.
“I’ve got this,” Garcia gasped. He rolled away from her, clutching the harvester larva to his chest. His hands, lacerated from the shattered glass, quickly sank into the sickly, mottled flesh.
The last thing he saw before the pain blotted out the world was Dr. Perrault kneeling beside him, tears streaming down her face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“I think we’ve got company.” Jack watched the plane, another An-2, as it cleared the end of the runway and climbed into the sky. “They must have found themselves a pilot.”
Mikhailov got to his feet and looked out the window, following Jack’s gaze. “What could they be thinking? They cannot shoot us down.”
“They can ram us if they get close enough.”
The plane behind them began to turn, then leveled out on a northeasterly heading.
“Slava Bogu,” Mikhailov breathed.
“I’m not so sure this is good news.”
Mikhailov turned to him. “Why do you say that?”
“What’s the range of a plane like this?”
Pondering a moment, Mikhailov said, “I believe a bit over eight hundred kilometers, if I remember correctly.”
“Then that’s how far the infection here might be able to spread if that plane goes the whole distance before it lands.”
“Oh.”
The two of them watched the other plane in silence until it disappeared, swallowed by the rising sun.
Jack glanced at Mikhailov in the bright light streaming through the window. His friend looked ashen, and he was holding both arms protectively to his chest. While he couldn’t hear his breathing over the muted drone of the engine, he could tell that Mikhailov was wheezing. “How are you feeling, Sergei?”
“I feel like I should have taken your advice and stayed in bed.” There was an angry shout from the cockpit. “Perhaps we should become better acquainted with our pilot.”
“I meant to ask you about her. It’s a good thing she wasn’t lying to you about being able to fly this crate.”
“Had I been at the controls when that thing was hanging on the tail,” Mikhailov said, “we would never have made it.” He offered a haggard, tired grin. “That is why I joined the Army and not the Air Force.”
“And then went airborne. The worst of both worlds.” Jack wrapped his arm around Mikhailov’s waist and helped him toward the cockpit. “Come on.”
Making their way to the forward end of the empty cargo compartment, which Jack thought resembled the unadorned framed interior of most of the military cargo aircraft he’d ever been on, Jack helped Mikhailov step up through the cockpit doorway to collapse into the copilot’s seat. Jack stepped up and stood between him and the woman flying the plane.
She looked up at him for a moment. “I thank you. You saved my life.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled. “My name’s Jack Dawson, by the way.”
“I am Khatuna Beridze.”
Jack glanced at Mikhailov. It didn’t sound like a Russian name to him.
As if reading his mind, Mikhailov mouthed Georgian.
“And I am Kapitan Sergei Mikhailov of the Russian Army.”
Khatuna nodded, then looked more closely at Mikhailov. “You are hurt. Badly, I think.”
“Da. Punctured lung. I think it is getting worse.” He shrugged.
Jack thought that, if anything, Mikhailov was even more pale than he had been before. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital, Sergei.”
“No,” he said, reaching for the headset that hung next to the copilot’s seat. “First we must warn of what happened at Ulan-Erg and Elista.” He leaned forward, grimacing at the pain, and tuned the radio.
* * *
Breathing was agony. Speaking was worse. Every movement seemed to jam the spear of broken rib deeper into his lung. But he had come too far now, and too much depended on them. On him.
Waving Jack away, appreciating the concern his friend showed, and also knowing that there was nothing Jack could do for him, Mikhailov tuned the radio to the international military aircraft emergency guard frequency.
His earphones crackled into life, and he sat back in shock. There should have been silence, for this channel was only used if there was a military aircraft in trouble. Instead, the frequency was alive with distress calls and controllers giving hurried instructions.
In the pilot’s seat, Khatuna turned to look at him, an expression of surprise on her face, as well.
Behind him, he heard Jack ask, “What?” He couldn’t hear because he had no headphones.
Khatuna pulled off her headset and handed it to Jack. He put it on, his puzzled expression turning grim. Mikhailov knew that Jack wouldn’t understand what was being said, but the simple fact that anyone was communicating on that channel was evidence enough of trouble.
“I guess we’re not the only ones up the creek,” Jack said, handing the headset back to Khatuna. The radio had two receivers, and while Mikhailov continued to listen to the military guard frequency, she tuned to the civilian emergency channel.
“So it would seem,” Mikhailov said. He and Khatuna listened for a few moments, and he repeated to Jack the names that he could identify. “Stavropol. Budyonnovsk. Mozdok. Salsk. These are military air bases in this area that are talking. Some I cannot hear directly, for they are still too far away at our altitude. But I can hear the aircraft. Those fields are diverting aircraft away or calling for assistance.”
“It is same on civilian emergency channel,” Khatuna added. “I count at least three, maybe five airports reporting emergencies.”
“But how could there be so many in the time since they broke out of the facility?” Mikhailov wondered.
Jack thought for a moment before answering. “N
aomi had no idea what their reproductive rate is, but it’s got to be ridiculously high. I mean, there were hundreds of the damn things just at Ulan-Erg, and who knows how many more at Elista. Then there are more at these other places. Most of the ones we saw were in their natural form, but they’re a lot more dangerous when they copy us, and there’s no way to tell how many of them are walking around as impostors.”
Like Mikhailov, Khatuna had slid aside one of the ear pieces of her headset so she could hear Jack while still listening in to the civilian emergency channel. She looked from Jack to Mikhailov with frightened eyes. “They came for us last night,” she told them. “Some people disappeared over last few days and never came back. Others changed. One of them was my father. He was gone for most of yesterday after he went to machine shop to get some parts, a trip that should have been an hour.” She shook her head. “When he came back to work at airport, he was different. No one else noticed, but I did. He spoke like my father, acted like him, but there was something wrong.”
“It must take a while for the harvesters to be able to mimic us perfectly,” Jack said. “Or perhaps they can never really fool someone who knows the victim as well as you knew your father. I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “Last night, fighting began in the town, in Elista, just before we were to go to sleep.” Khatuna blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to clear them. “Creature that looked like my father killed my mother. We were all sitting there together, and when we heard screams from other houses, it killed her. My two brothers fought with it. They begged me to run.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I left them. Left them to die. Creature tried to find me, kept looking for me, and others came to help it. I spent all night trying to reach airport.” She looked at Mikhailov. “It found me there.”
“It must have known you would go there to escape,” Mikhailov said.
“And it would make sense that they would try to kill anyone who knew how to fly and replace them so they could spread the infection,” Jack added.
Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Page 29
