‘Vanessa, move away from that fire door.’ Coleman waved his rifle towards the dead creature. ‘There’s one still in there probably.’
Vanessa pushed herself away from the wall and crossed to the dead creature. ‘I sent the elevator to the basement. The fire extinguisher should distract those things a few minutes.’
She squatted beside the messy remains. Coleman joined her. This was the first time he’d seen a creature up close and not moving. Lying on its side, it looked as big as a horse.
‘So what is it?’ tested Coleman. ‘Where’d they all come from? An experiment?’
Vanessa shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen these things before. They’re no legitimate part of any research conducted here. But I know what they are, and I know who made them.’
Vanessa glanced meaningfully at his uniform. ‘But first, you had better tell me in exactly what capacity you’re here. Deal?’
Coleman raised an eyebrow, but didn’t bite at the impersonal comment. Can’t she set aside her feelings about the military for even one minute? A Marine probably just saved our son, and she’s still suspicious.
Coleman had grown sick of explaining his motives to her, a contributing factor of their break-up, but he reminded himself that today it was professional, not personnel. He pointed out the surviving members of Third Unit, naming them. ‘King. Marlin. Forest.’
Introductions done, Coleman explained, ‘We were escorting weapons inspectors into the Complex when we came under attack, first by these things and then by another armed force. We’ve been fighting our way through the Complex ever since. I’ve lost half my team, and we’re out of radio contact with the other four teams. The only other two FAST Marines we saw alive were sent down the evacuation tunnel behind the evacuees. The weapons inspectors are dead. They didn’t even make it out of the helicopter. I have to assume that your radio jamming hardware is still operating, so we have no way of getting a message out of the Complex.’
Coleman clipped out the details like he was reporting to a superior officer, delivering the most important points in the shortest possible time. ‘Any other questions, Doctor?’
‘Not yet,’ she said, ignoring his tone and absorbing the information without interruption.
Vanessa turned on the spot, her eyes roaming over the Marines. ‘Now, King, may I borrow that knife?’
King raised an eyebrow at Coleman, but before Coleman could nod affirmative, Vanessa snapped her fingers to reclaim King’s attention. ‘Hey, big fellah! I didn’t ask him, I asked you.’
King smiled and drew the heavy SOG combat knife from his shoulder drop-sheath. He flipped the knife over in his hand, catching the blade while offering the black, crosshatched handle to Vanessa. ‘Anytime.’
Vanessa tested the weight of the knife and examined the blade.
‘Stand back,’ she said, leaning over the creature and lifting the knife. Grunting, she stabbed into the creature’s abdomen between two tentacles. Using two hands, she inserted the blade to its serrated base.
Then she started cutting.
Coleman watched the creature’s skin resist the razor-sharp blade. At first he thought the skin was mottled with a grey camouflaged covering, but now he saw the truth.
The skin was transparent.
The mottled effect were the organs under the skin moving as Vanessa cut. No – not organs, but fibrous bundles, like muscles filled with liquid. The liquid-filled muscles undulated away from the blade.
The effect looked visceral, like those medical training dolls with revealed anatomies, or a skinned animal wrapped in plastic film.
Vanessa threw her full weight into the task, rocking backwards and forwards, sawing a large incision down the creature’s abdomen. White fluid gushed from the wound. She withdrew the knife and stabbed down again, repeating the process, but now making a curved incision to dissect a large wedge from the creature’s abdomen. She twisted the knife to excise the piece of flesh. Like slicing a wedge from a giant lemon, the wound presented a cross-section of the creature’s innards.
She peered into the creature. ‘It’s a crude dissection, but this will have to suffice.’
Coleman squatted beside her, taking his second good look at one of the creatures up close. The last time he had been fighting to keep his head out of the creature’s mouth.
It smelt of putrid, stagnant water. The smell of water stored for a hundred years in a rusty can.
Coleman ignored the smell and looked closer. Vanessa’s cut exposed a network of chambers honeycombing the creature’s abdomen. Ghastly white pockets dripping with milky fluid, each chamber looked as large as Coleman’s forearm. The chambers were arranged in rows, separated by valves, until they reached the tentacles. Dedicated sets of chambers served each tentacle.
‘It’s like a giant complicated heart,’ observed Coleman.
Vanessa scanned the antechamber. She pointed to where jets of the creature’s internal fluid had sprayed up the walls from the bullet wounds. The fluid streaked the walls like the arterial squirts of a murder victim. ‘These internal chambers shunt the hydrostatic pressure around the limbs. The pressure must be incredible. Each limb is basically a hydraulic jack. This creature’s entire anatomy is a giant pump. There are no stomach or digestive organs.’
She drew back thoughtfully from the creature. ‘Has anyone seen it feed?’
‘I have,’ answered Coleman, revisiting his disturbing memory of Private Gill’s horrific death. He moved to the front of the creature and lifted open its mouth. Its flesh felt tacky and slippery at the same time. The mouth spread open like a giant fleshy flower full of shark’s teeth. Coleman probed between the teeth with his knife tip.
‘Here’s one,’ he said, withdrawing the knife to extract one of the creature’s feeding filaments. ‘There’s hundreds of these between the teeth. After inflicting massive flesh trauma, it feeds with these filaments.’
Vanessa examined inside the creature’s mouth. ‘Absorbing its victim’s bodily fluids eliminates the need for a complex digestive system.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ began Coleman, ‘is how it can move so fast. It’s all arms and no legs, but I’ve seen them moving like a charging bull.’
‘So have I,’ she agreed, pointing into the dissection with King’s knife. ‘Their internal anatomy explains a lot. They move by shunting liquid around their limbs under high pressure. Their body is a giant multi-valve pump. The surge of pressure is more than enough to launch them forwards. Combine that with a dozen thorn-lined tentacles and you have a very fast predator. Its speed will vary depending on how many limbs it has contacting a surface.’
Coleman realized that Third Unit was lucky to have first encountered the creatures out in the open. In a confined space like a stairwell, the battle would have been very different.
‘So in a tight corridor it would move like lightning,’ reasoned Marlin from across the antechamber.
Vanessa moved to the least damaged part of the creature’s abdomen. She scraped King’s knife over the surface, then held the knife so everyone could see. Clear jelly dripped from the blade.
‘Their skin secretes a lubricant. They could fit down a tight passageway very fast. You might not even have time to squeeze your trigger before it was on you.’
She stepped back from the creature and offered the knife back to King. King took the handle between two fingers, grimacing at the messy blade.
‘And I’m pretty sure they can climb,’ she added. ‘I mean really climb.’
Coleman knew they could climb from his experience in the elevator. They must have climbed down the shaft after the lift. Those long tentacles and hooks would be perfect for reaching and grasping.
Coleman had a more important question. After seeing Vanessa distract the creatures with the fire extinguisher, he guessed she had reached the same conclusion. ‘They’re detecting our vibrations, right? That’s how they sense us. Through our vibration when we move or shoot. Otherwise they’re blind.’
Vane
ssa answered as she studied the creature. ‘Yes. They’re blind to light, but sensing vibrations is like x-ray vision. They can sense us from all over the Complex. Through the walls, through the floor, through almost anything. He’s used vibrations as their primary sensory function.’
‘Who is ‘He’?’ snapped Coleman quickly. ‘Who’s responsible for this?’
Vanessa quirked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Well, Francis Gould, of course. Only Gould could have made these. That’s why you’re here, right? Because Gould stole my genetic templates and we can’t find them?’
She was right. Gould’s theft had triggered the operation, and part of the weapons inspectors’ brief was to locate the missing genetic templates.
‘How can you be sure that Gould made these?’ tested Coleman.
‘I know Gould’s work when I see it,’ she answered. ‘Gould’s area of expertise is bio-mechanical interfaces. In particular, translating a plant’s sense of vibrations into electrical impulses. All plants sense vibrations through tiny fluctuations of pressure and chemical responses in their cells. If those responses can be measured and transmitted electronically, then you would have a plant that could act as a surveillance system, say, to monitor an enemy’s troop movements.’
Sensing Third Unit’s suddenly undivided attention, she continued, ‘Certain projects inherently help people, like purifying water or developing drought-tolerant crops, so that’s where we focus our research. But Gould’s interests were never in those areas. His research was consistently challenged by our ethics committee due to potential military applications. I assumed that he was studying the vibration-sensing traits of plants to produce a biological surveillance system, but really he was giving these creatures a sense of touch.’
She looked at the dead creature with a very strange expression. It was equal parts disgust and regret. ‘Perhaps I’m not so paranoid about the military after all, huh Alex? This is exactly the type of stuff we used to argue about, except now it’s right in front of us. These things were grown from my genetic templates. They’re a corruption of my bio-survive system. I’ve never included any of these offensive traits in my projects. They’re dormant and forced into genetic recession. Gould redesigned the templates to do the exact opposite. These things are designed to hurt and kill. Now I wonder who Gould is working for…?’
‘Are you saying these creatures are plants?’ scoffed Forest incredulously.
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ replied Vanessa. ‘Their genetic material comes from thousands of different plant species all meshed together.’
Coleman took a moment to form his next question. The entire situation felt so incredible it proved difficult to absorb everything she was saying. ‘Your bio-survive project is incredible, but nothing I’ve read explains how these things can be mobile.’
‘Exactly,’ cut in Marlin, clearly skeptical of Vanessa’s explanation. ‘How can those things be plants? How can a plant move like that?’
Vanessa’s eyes flicked up to Marlin. A small smile tugged one corner of her mouth. ‘These things move exactly like a plant. Specifically, they move like the species Impetus pespedus.’
Coleman clicked his fingers. He recognized the Latin name. ‘I’ve heard of that species. It was all over the news about three years ago. It came from Indonesia, but was wiped out by a logging company.’
She nodded. ‘Nearly wiped out, actually. Impetus pespedus was discovered in Borneo in 2004 by the botanists Cartwright and Johansson. You’ve probably never heard of them, but in the scientific world they’re highly regarded for studying species from the oldest remnant forests in the world.’
When none of the Marines recognized the names, she shrugged and continued.
‘They were searching for the cancer-fighting compounds found in some deep-valley fern species, but what they discovered was a population of small plants with the ability to travel fifteen centimeters an hour in search of sunlight. They published a joint paper with a very controversial theory. Basically, they claimed that Impetus pespedus was proof that under different evolutionary pressures, plants could evolve locomotion comparable to modern vertebrates.’
Coleman recalled seeing a discovery channel documentary about the moving plants from Borneo. They were nothing like the dead creature lying on the floor. ‘I don’t recall anything about those little plants in Borneo eating people.’
Vanessa pursed her lips at the dissected creature. ‘These aren’t plants the way you’re used to thinking of them. They’re a combination of genetic traits from thousands of plants all spliced together. Remember, many plants are very dangerous. Many are carnivorous. They’ve just never been mobile before.’
Forest summed it up eloquently. ‘You’re saying we just got chased one step down the food chain?’
Vanessa nodded. ‘It seems your weapons inspectors were coming with very good reason.’
She had basically already answered Coleman’s next question, but it still needed to be asked. ‘You think these have been designed just to kill people? You think they’ve been intentionally designed as a biological weapon?’
‘It’s more than that,’ she confirmed. ‘The strength of my bio-survive system lies is its adaptability to the local environment. These creatures suit this Complex perfectly. I can’t think of anywhere in this facility that the creatures couldn’t reach. I think Gould has designed these creatures just to hunt down and kill every person in this Complex.’
#
Four hundred meters south-east of Third Unit, in the Evacuation Center’s sealed antechamber, Corporal Harrison struggled to deal with the chaos of terrified evacuees.
Harrison smashed his palms down on the table.
At six foot four, he towered over every person in the room. With his broad shoulders and rangy features, he knew he cut an imposing figure. Especially when he scowled. Right now he sported a scowl that creased his heavy brow and drew his lips tightly over his teeth. He was no oil painting at the best of times, and especially not when he felt like smashing one of these smart-mouthed scientists’ teeth down the back of their throats. They didn’t seem to realize that everyone had lost friends today. Everyone wanted answers.
The guilt of leaving Third Unit behind still burned like concentrated battery acid in his chest.
How could I have just left them in there?
He couldn’t shake the image of Third Unit trapped within a closing circle of hostiles.
Abandoning the four Marines were the ugliest orders he’d ever carried out. The evacuees in front of Harrison didn’t seem to appreciate that the Marines had been every bit as shocked by the creatures as themselves.
It’s not their fault. They don’t seem to know any more than you do. Just calm down and get some control of the situation.
‘Listen!’ he yelled over their riotous demands for information. ‘For the last time! We don’t know what the creatures are. We don’t know how they got into the Complex, and we don’t know where they came from!’
The small group of disheveled scientists who had cornered Harrison in the antechamber looked stunned and outraged. Two of them had bandaged leg wounds. One had a dressing on his head and a badly bloodshot left eye. The other four had been faster on their feet, or just plain lucky.
Harrison took a deep breath and tried to sound calmer. ‘Now, please just get back to the tasks you’ve been assigned.’
The group stared to protest, but Harrison raised his finger steadily towards the open doorway. He articulated every word precisely. ‘Get…to…work.’
Protest cut short, the frustrated group filed reluctantly down the corridor back to the communal hall.
Harrison watched them go. They were only trying to get some answers.
But he had no answers. He was only now getting a handle on their current predicament.
The blueprints spread over the table showed the Evacuation Center operated completely self-contained. The Center was its own little complex. Recessed into the desert, the single-level, octagonal-shaped
structure proved just large enough to accommodate the two hundred or so evacuees. Surrounding the central common area, segments of the octagon were dedicated to dormitories, a medical clinic, quarantine services, communications and stores.
They were ready for anything, it seems.
Two exits led from the communal area. East from the communal area led up a close-walled cement stairwell to the top-deck. The top-deck was a small cement landing with a set of mechanically-operated steel doors. The doors opened to a helicopter pad on the roof. West from the communal hall led to Harrison’s antechamber, and then down the evacuation tunnel to the containment door.
The antechamber was the first room Harrison and Sullivan encountered when they followed the evacuees down the tunnel. The front wall of the antechamber, separating the room from the tunnel, was floor-to-ceiling plexiglass. Inside the chamber, a round table stood surrounded by banks of wall-recessed computer systems monitoring the conditions within the main facility.
Harrison had remained in the antechamber to watch the containment door and listen for more survivors, either evacuees or Marines. From where he stood, he could see down the short corridor into the communal area in one direction, and down the tunnel towards the heavy containment door in the other.
It felt like working in a giant fish tank.
After Captain Coleman ordered Harrison and Sullivan behind the fleeing evacuees, they slid under the containment door and joined the mass of evacuees streaming into the Evacuation Center.
Reaching the antechamber, both Marines were dragging two wounded civilians apiece and delivering first aid on the move.
Bloody shoe prints still covered the white antechamber floor.
They found the Evacuation Center in absolute human mayhem.
The fifty-meter-wide octagonal communal hall contained a disorganized nightmare of wounded and hysterical people. Some tried to fight their way back towards the evacuation tunnel for family and friends. Watching these frantic struggles with huge eyes, a group of six unattended children huddled in one corner. Scattered everywhere, the badly wounded appeared as equally at risk of being trampled as of dying from their wounds. A dozen different languages shouted through the din. Any voice calling for order was ignored.
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