Operation Caspian Tiger

by Addison Gunn

  But that idea got battered out of his head in two hammer blows.

  The first was Harris’s cold reply, “As I said earlier. The truck was transporting key indoor agricultural equipment: lighting, power supplies and hydroponics. We can’t do without them for the oil tanker conversions. It was also carrying other need-to-know essentials. Which you would know if you had been listening, Mr. Miller.”

  The second hammer blow fell from Lewis’s lips, a harsh whisper that carried all the way down the table. “Go easy. Boy nearly got killed by one of the bombs.”

  Harris grunted.

  Miller remembered pointing a gun at the man. He debated pawing up his Gallican and doing to Harris what he’d done to the bomber, but the mood around the table wasn’t quite right for that.

  The other team heads were looking at him like a liability, a useless appendix. Cobalt was the smallest security team by a long shot, despite its former glorious role. Interrupting hadn’t won him any points.

  Miller smacked his lips closed and leaned back, alternately holding his head and refilling his water glass from the jug on the table as Harris went on.

  “We will develop the tankers into factory farms. This delay will not slow us down. We will not allow the Infected to set the pace of engagement. Now, as it’s clear that there is a strain of the parasite which is immune to the anti-parasitic drugs being distributed to the refugee population, based on the body recovered—”

  Body. Not bodies. Body. Miller’s team had nailed the only known attacker within the compound. There had been an escape—almost a hundred and forty civilians ran out through the breaches—but no one knew how many of them had been Infected. Maybe none of them.

  Miller couldn’t blame them for wanting to get out.

  “—it seems clear that we have more quislings in our midst. We will find them and we will exterminate them. The only barrier between us and our rightful ownership of this city are the Infected. They are stupid and they are violent. They are our enemies. Little better than animals. There must be no compunction in killing them, even when they appear to be our friends and allies...”

  Miller made eye contact with Lewis, and shook his head ever so slightly. It’d come to that, had it? Sanctioned extermination?

  Lewis nodded back.

  The worst of it was when the other security team heads, following Hannesy and the other Shankers’ leads, started smiling, nodding. A few even applauded before Harris could finish his hateful oration. No plan, no solution, no direction, but hate and murder. The purge was called Operation Caspian Tiger.

  “We will root them out from every corner,” Harris promised. “Every uncooperative refugee will be checked, every staff member who fails to carry out their duty investigated. We will cleanse ourselves of the Infected.”

  Miller poured himself another glass of water, and wondered if Doyle had anything stronger than anti-depressants.

  7

  COBALT MIGHT HAVE been the smallest security team, but that came with advantages. Not for Cobalt themselves, of course. Wherever Harris—and increasingly Harris was calling the shots—needed a small team for an errant task, rather than break up Shank or Bayonet, he could just pick on Cobalt. Day to day, they were plucked from whatever they were settling into, with very little recognition of anything they might need, and sent on a new wild goose chase.

  One day it was escorting a team of medics armed with a new set of saliva tests to try and find the new, drug-immune Infected within the executive staff. The next it was hiking out into the city to try and track down what was left of escaped civilians for ‘interviews.’ Miller wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to feel joy at finding no trace of them beyond torn backpacks and a single abandoned shotgun, but there would be no interviews, Harris would go unsatisfied, and Miller was happy enough with that.

  And that was Operation Caspian Tiger. Pansy-ass bullshit. Snatching at straws.

  They were getting enough sleep, at least, and they were largely away from the killing fields. Regular movie nights and a supply of moonshine bought off the refugees with more ammunition kept them comfortably numbed, able to heal a little. But the jobs were getting weirder.

  One day they were sent to secure the compound’s septic tanks and wastewater outflow. The sewage went straight into the East River every day when the tides pulled it most quickly out into the ocean. That had been an odd one, just quietly walking in and taking the keys and holding the local staff in place while medics showed up.

  Then there had been the hunting trip. They’d dumped a bunch of dead rat-things in the middle of a city street and killed everything that came in to feed. Harris had them taking blood samples out of each new monster.

  Today, they were bringing home a small convoy. That was all that they’d been told before being sent out before dawn in two Bravos, one turreted, the other a salvaged ex-Army vehicle sprayed over in corporate black.

  As du Trieux drove, stone-faced, Miller sat in the passenger seat of the front-most Bravo and eyed the city as the convoy zipped through what was left of the streets. He brushed away a brief moment of nostalgia as they rumbled through an area that used to be Brooklyn. Now, it wasn’t anything.

  The animals ruled now. Not just titan-birds in the sky, but rat-things and terror-jaws swarmed every foot of the ground. The thug behemoths were scavenging for something under the concrete. What the big creatures were looking for, Miller couldn’t say.

  The thugs, big enough to push even super-predators off their meals, stood smack dab in the middle of the roads in packs of two and three, and rooted their massive front tusks into the concrete, shearing away chunks of the street and sidewalks like it was nothing. He had a brief memory of when pigs used to root up truffles for fancy sauces in high-end restaurants, and almost smiled.

  They were making the mission trickier than it needed to be, though, and his smile fell before reaching his lips. Du Trieux kept changing course, making sharp turns down alleys and side streets in order to avoid the things, not wanting to waste ammo or time in herding them out of the way.

  There must have been at least twenty in a ten-block radius. The Bravo and following transport zigzagged and doubled back to avoid them, and the fungal blooms that piled up across the streets like snowdrifts. At times it felt like they were traveling in circles.

  Miller said nothing. Du Trieux was giving the thugs a wide berth, which was for the best, lest they think the Bravos were competition for whatever it was they were searching for under the concrete.

  From the back seat, Doyle suggested the thugs looked like a pack of hippos had gotten randy with a shark, but Miller didn’t laugh.

  As they passed the famous Park Place brownstones, now in ruins, doubt gnawed at the back of Miller’s mind.

  What a waste of time.

  These missions were starting to get to Miller. It was as if they were being kept away, or, at least Miller was; pushed to the outskirts of the inner circle. He supposed he should be glad of the break—it certainly beat the shit out of murdering Charismatics or chasing down bombers—but something was off. It just didn’t sit right.

  No sense in stewing about it, though.

  If Lewis or Gray knew what the grand scheme in all Harris’s plotting was, they weren’t about to share it with the likes of Miller, and even if they were, Miller wasn’t certain he wanted to know—not when there was a job to do, bombs to dodge, staff to keep alive, and monsters to evade. Although throwing him to the monsters could have been the whole point, he mused.

  He wouldn’t be much trouble to Harris if he were dead.

  Du Trieux whisked the Bravo around another sharp corner, sending Hsiung, who drove the transport behind them, to the airwaves to complain, again, but before anyone bothered to respond, du Trieux slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop in front of what looked to be an abandoned four-story office building.

  Down a half a block from there sat two transport vehicles: a big rig and a passenger van.

  Miller tapped his earpiece. “Cob
alt to transport: Rumor has it you need a lift?”

  “Oh, thank God,” a feminine voice responded. “Not a moment too soon. We can’t manoeuvre the rig around these behemoths and there’s a pack of terror-jaws down that alley to our left, and they look hungry.”

  “Sit tight,” Miller answered. “We’ll clear out the alley and then get you and the cargo out of here.”

  “My hero,” the woman responded.

  Du Trieux’s eyebrows popped high as Doyle snorted from the back seat.

  “Shut up,” Miller said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” du Trieux smirked.

  Outside in the alley, the terror-jaws were stripping the corpse of a baby thug, which was still as big as a full-sized hippopotamus. Once Miller, Doyle, and du Trieux cleared them out, Hsiung and the others set to work moving the cargo from the rig to the smaller transport vehicle, while Doyle and du Trieux watched the perimeter for more terror-jaws.

  Miller went to meet the female voice from the radio, which belonged to Dr. Gwen Davenport, a serious-looking brunette with a clipboard tucked under her arm. She climbed out of the big rig and shook Miller’s hand harder than necessary. There was another scientist, an older gentleman who climbed out of the passenger van with a few technicians, and the two drivers, who looked more like delivery men than soldiers.

  Upon Miller’s arrival, the drivers held back, covering Hsiung and the others as they unloaded barrels and crates from the back of the rig. Meanwhile, the techs gathered around the Bravo as if waiting for permission to enter.

  Miller couldn’t shake an odd feeling in the base of his skull. “I’m going to need to see a copy of your inventory,” he said, nodding toward the clipboard tucked under Davenport’s arm. Technically, he should be escorting her to the Bravo, but that odd feeling wouldn’t go away.

  Her congenial smile fell and she adjusted the clipboard with her free hand. “Food supply gear,” she said, eyeing Hsiung as she ambled by with a crate.

  Now that wasn’t suspicious at all. “Uh-huh,” Miller said, pursing his lips. “And where did you come from again?”

  Davenport swallowed then shifted on her feet. Her boots looked clean and hardly broken in. They creaked as she altered position. “Boston.”

  “What facility in Boston?”

  She scratched her cheek. “Does it matter?”

  Miller raised an eyebrow. “No. Not as much as what’s in the inventory.”

  “Look, they tell me where to go, I go,” Davenport said, her face reddening. “I don’t have a beef with you, okay? Can we just go? We’ve been stuck here for hours and if I see another one of those terror-jaws ever again in my life, it’ll be too soon.”

  “You don’t have terror-jaws in Boston?” Miller asked, knowing full well the answer.

  She sighed. “Of course we do, but I don’t usually get out of the lab much. Can we go?”

  “The ‘food supply gear’ lab?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she burst, thrusting the clipboard into Miller’s hand and stalking off toward the Bravo. “Go ahead, Linus!” she bellowed. The older man and the other technicians scrambled inside the vehicle like children.

  Miller held up the clipboard and frowned.

  From his left, du Trieux appeared and squinted at the paperwork. “How are we supposed to read this chicken scratch?” she asked.

  “Says here, ‘Food Supply Gear,’” Miller said. “But I doubt it. They’re too jumpy.”

  “Wouldn’t you be jumpy, stuck out here for three hours?” Shrugging lightly, du Trieux walked back toward the Bravo and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Doyle called the drivers from the perimeter and, eyeing the thugs in the distance, barked at Miller, “Let’s roll.”

  Undeterred, Miller walked past the Bravo to the transport, where Hsiung and the two drivers were getting inside.

  Hopping up onto the back bumper, Miller leaned over the railing and examined the cargo. There were six metal barrels, each painted black. Next to them were four wooden crates, which were nailed shut.

  Why would they transport food supply gear in sealed metal barrels?

  Miller jammed the edge of his thumb under the lip of one of the barrels. Pulling upward, he popped the top off. His stomach lurched.

  Inside were clear acrylic cylinders, labelled with a strip of paper secured by a single strand of browning masking tape. The label read, ‘Engineered yeast.’

  “Supply gear, my ass.”

  “Put the lid back on, the seal is supposed to be air-tight,” Davenport said from behind him.

  Miller rammed the lid back on the barrel, punched the edge down with the side of his fist. “You want to explain to me why my men have put their lives in danger so we can courier yeast?”

  “Get in the car, cowboy,” Davenport frowned. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  DU TRIEUX PUNCHED the accelerator and the Bravo lurched ahead, turning around to head back the direction they came.

  Miller turned from the passenger seat and eyed Davenport. “Okay, now do you want to give me that explanation?”

  Davenport sighed from the seat beside Doyle in the back and cleared her throat. “The yeast in those barrels was originally created at a perfume company some years ago as an attractant pheromone.”

  “Gwen!” snapped the older man.

  “They have a right to know, Linus.”

  “We’re transporting perfume?” Doyle scoffed.

  “It’s not perfume,” Davenport corrected him. “I assume you’ve heard about the wasps? Well, this yeast combats their hibernation cycle in the Infected. We’ve made some headway back in Boston, so they wanted a sample of it here.”

  “That’s more than a sample,” Miller interjected. “You’ve got half a dozen barrels of it back there.”

  “Yes, and those crates are filled with samples of a breed of wasp—a larger, nastier one from South America, which was originally trapped using the same pheromone, as it turns out. But you didn’t hear any of this from me,” she clarified.

  “Hold up,” du Trieux interrupted. “They’re experimenting on the Infected in South America? That’s what started the whole mess here.”

  Miller kept his mouth shut.

  “How else would you have us defeat this?” Davenport snapped. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s certainly had better results than anything BioGen and Schaeffer-Yeager has done.”

  “By experimenting on people?” du Trieux spat.

  “They don’t think they’re people, remember?” Miller grunted. “Besides, I thought the Infected were drug-resistant?”

  Davenport’s eyes widened then narrowed in one swift fluid movement. “This is different. We’re not fighting the Infected with anti-parasitics. We’re attacking the wasp’s gestation period inside the Infected hosts.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Doyle snapped.

  “So much for reversing the effects on the Infected, then. Is that it?” du Trieux asked, swinging the Bravo into a hard left and sending Davenport’s lurching against the door. “Sorry, another pack of thugs just ripped up Alabama Avenue.”

  “Better buckle up,” Miller said as Davenport struggled to regain her seat and Hsiung cursed from the airwaves.

  “I wouldn’t say we’re giving up on saving the Infected,” Davenport said. “Just that our focus has shifted. Oh, stop giving me that look, Linus. We’re all on the same team.”

  “I have a feeling there’s a hell of a lot we don’t know,” Miller said. Reaching up, he rubbed his throbbing temple and turned his eyes back to the road.

  Another herd of thug behemoths came around the bend and stampeded in the opposite direction.

  Du Triuex pitched the Bravo around another sharp corner, tires squealing.

  “What the hell are these thugs after under the concrete?” Doyle asked. “Won’t be long before we can’t bloody well drive anywhere.”

  “I don’t know what they’re after,” Davenport confessed, snapping her belt across her shoulder and peer
ing out the window. “But you’re not wrong. The planet’s not ours anymore.”

  “I’m not sure it ever was,” Miller said, still pressing on his temple.

  His whole mind ached. It felt to him like the pieces of the puzzle were all there, lying before him. But his head hurt, and his eyes ached, and the answer remained just outside comprehension. He peered out the window at the remains of Brooklyn and suppressed a sigh.

  No doubt the landscape was shifting, again, even from the start. Phase two of the planet’s adjustments had begun. Roads were gone. Buildings were overrun with creatures and fungus. New York City had gone wild, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

  If there was one thing you could count on, it was the planet’s adaptive ability. Miller only wished humans came by it as naturally.

  THE BOARD ROOM was climate-controlled and well stocked with padded chairs and cool water. Compared to other, less hospitable, portions of the compound, this was a veritable paradise. Still, Miller couldn’t get comfortable. He’d crossed and uncrossed his legs at least a dozen times in the last half hour, trying to settle in. It wasn’t going to happen.

  Lewis seemed to be having the same issue. Seated beside him in the corner of the room—in two chairs propped against the wall as almost an afterthought—Miller noticed Lewis reach down and scratch at the stump of his left knee, a nervous habit of which Lewis was clearly unaware.

  Honestly, Miller wasn’t surprised they were both so distracted. Harris was on another tangent and had been droning on for a good ten minutes. Miller was doing his best not to listen, but failing miserably.

  “There is no reason to delay. The order has been given,” Harris was saying calmly, and a little too coolly for Miller’s taste, considering what he’d just announced to the board.