“Sophie!” she shouted, unable to hear even herself.
Her sister was standing again, this time somehow managing to hold the bench up by her bindings. Her mouth was open in a scream, blood trickled from the corners of her eyes, from her ears.
Tennant felt wetness on her own face. She managed to pull her palms away from her ears only long enough to realize there was blood on her hands.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Martha
Martha found the others in the room at the back of the ranger station, Harbin standing up at the whiteboard and the others sitting around the oak table. A pot of coffee sat between them, along with several half-eaten sandwiches. The board was covered in loosely organized text in shaky handwriting—
Natural Event:
Tornado
Flash flood
Pressure vortex
Heat fissure
Unknown storm type
Man-made:
Biological weapon
Sonic weapon
Space-based?
Extraterrestrial?
Misc:
Virus
Mass hysteria
Suicide pact?
In the top left corner, he’d written DEAF! DEAF!
As Martha entered the room, Harbin was busy drawing a line through flash flood. “The ground was dry, there was no evidence of residual water, and today’s weather wasn’t ideal to dry the area out as quick as it would need to for this to be plausible.” He looked up at Martha and pointed at a shelf near the door with the tip of his blue marker. “They brought us a wide assortment of sandwiches—bologna on white and bologna on wheat. They taste like someone made them a week ago and just remembered they left them in their car. Better than nothing, I suppose.”
“I don’t think I can eat right now,” Martha replied, falling into a chair. She’d spent the last several hours helping Dr. Fitch conduct autopsies, and her stomach was in knots. By the time she emerged, the sun was gone.
She told them what they’d found.
Reiber was first to speak. “Same thing with all of them?”
Martha nodded. “The ones found in the village died of wounds created by immense pressure. The ones found in the crevasse were…cooked, apparently suffering from an extreme fever.”
“At what kind of temperature?” Harbin asked.
She didn’t really have an answer, not a viable one, anyway. “The highest human temperature on record was an Atlanta man named Willie Jones who in 1980 somehow survived heatstroke with a temperature of 115.7 degrees. At anything greater than 111.2 Fahrenheit, brain damage, convulsions, shock, cardio-respiratory collapse, organs liquefy…Death is almost a certainty.”
Harbin put the cap back on the marker and set it in the tray under the board. “I don’t mean to press, but you didn’t answer my question. What temperature would be necessary to facilitate the damage you found in the autopsies?”
Martha looked at the faces around the table, not sure she wanted to say it aloud. “One-twenty, maybe one-twenty-five. Not just a spike, but for a sustained period of time.”
Brenna Hauff sat slumped in her chair, her skin horribly pale, still visibly shaken. More to herself than to the group, she said, “I touched one, and he was hot. Hotter than a living person. His eyes were filled with blood, gorged with it, ready to pop.” The word pop seemed to amuse her. She repeated it again, barely a whisper. A grin edged the corner of her lips, vanishing when she realized Martha was watching her.
Fravel took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a napkin. “Suppose for a moment the human body could generate a fever that high, what would be the cause?”
Martha turned nervously from Hauff. She had discussed this at length with Dr. Fitch. “It would have to be something viral. We took blood samples from bodies found in the village and in the crevasse, though, and found nothing abnormal.”
Tomes reached for his coffee and slowly turned the Styrofoam cup in his hands. “Microwave.”
Harbin’s eyes narrowed. “Microwave?”
Tomes nodded at the cheap white microwave next to the coffee maker. “Microwaves heat from the inside out. Maybe we’re looking at some kind of microwave-based weapon.”
Harbin considered this, picked up the marker, and took the cap off. He started to write microwave under Man-made and paused. “Microwaves occur naturally, too, don’t they?”
Tomes nodded, but when Harbin looked over at Fravel, he waved him off before he could ask the question. “Solar flares contain microwave radiation, but it’s minimal, barely detectable by the time they reach Earth. If it were possible for one to get here with the necessary targeted strength, you’d see half this mountain missing, the electrical grid would be down, major chaos.”
“Even if microwaves were responsible for the heat, they wouldn’t explain the injuries derived from pressure,” Reiber pointed out.
“She’s right,” Tomes said. “What we witnessed was twofold, heat and pressure.” He held out each of his palms in turn, then brought them together. “Someone or something paired these two forces together…intentionally.”
Harbin nodded in agreement, returned to the board, and finished writing microwave under Man-made. He added the word weapon, then took a step back. “By something, I suppose we’re back to extraterrestrial again, aren’t we?” He circled the items under Man-made and drew an arrow pointing back at Extraterrestrial.
“When Aliens Attack,” Hauff said in a low voice. “Told you.”
“Where is Holt?” Martha asked. “He said he’d share additional information after he filed his report. Did he come by here?”
“Bastard turned tail and got on a chopper before we could corner him,” Reiber said. “We think he went back to the anomaly.”
“How long ago?”
“A while. Probably right after he left you in the medical tent. Apparently, the two-hour window doesn’t apply to spooks.”
“Shit.”
Harbin looked around the room. “Where’s his sat phone?”
Reiber plucked it from a counter behind her and tossed it to him. “Gonna phone a friend?”
“Hoover, if I can remember the number. It’s been awhile.” He half-looked down at the display, while tapping the side of his head, coaxing it out. When it came to him, he dialed. After a few seconds, he put the call on speaker. The line rang for nearly a minute before timing out. No voicemail, just three quick beeps in succession and dead air. He hit several buttons and frowned.
“What is it?” Martha asked.
“The call log self-erases. No record of whoever Holt has been talking to.”
Martha looked over at the corner where Holt had set down his briefcase earlier, but it was gone.
“He took it with him,” Harbin said, following her gaze.
“Figures.”
“What about that forest ranger, Rayburn? I haven’t seen him since we got back.”
Tomes gestured toward the newly built wall outside. “My guess? There’s no place here for a civilian without clearance. They probably sent him packing after he showed them how to turn on the lights.”
Martha let out a sigh. She’d liked Rayburn.
Harbin returned to the board and studied all they had written down. “We’ve listed known items when our answer is clearly an unknown.”
Fravel rubbed his temples. “Known is all I’ve got. I left my crystal ball back in Boulder.”
“I need sleep,” Hauff said, her eyes on the dark window. “Nobody told us where we should sleep.”
“What time is it?”
Tomes glanced at his watch. Analog. Apparently, he’d been allowed to keep it. “Nearly eleven.”
Zigzag had gotten oddly quiet, Martha noted. The constant thump of helicopter rotors was gone. Even the buzz of people around the tents seemed to have slowed. Only the patrolling soldiers along the perimeter appeared to be out.
“I need a shower,” Reiber said, still wearing her jogging clothes from morning. “I saw a tent earlier tagged
as Latrine, showers and sleeping quarters can’t be far.” She stood and stretched. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but tomorrow I’m done. Fuck Holt, fuck all of them.”
Hauff got up, too. “Hear, hear.”
The others began to stand. Fravel said, “There’s a shower in the back of this building. Down the hall and to the right.”
Still looking up at the board, Harbin cleared his throat. “Let me leave you with one last thought, something Dr. Chan pointed out to me earlier. Whatever we saw today, Holt’s anomaly, took place after they rounded all us up. That means they either caused it or had reason to believe it would happen.”
“Because it happened before?” Fravel speculated.
Harbin nodded. “And could happen again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fraser
Without making a sound, Fraser held up his closed left fist. The five Army Rangers behind him immediately froze.
Back at 45-121, he’d listened to the recording. He’d then been shown the storm cellar carved into the ground at the center of what had once been a barn. He’d studied the footprints in the cellar’s dirt floor and had casts made. The voice on the tape had been female, young, probably a teenager. The larger of the two sets of prints most likely belonged to her. The smaller ones were clearly a child between four and eight. The two had fought; there were clear signs of a struggle. That struggle had continued up the steps, through the remains of the barn, and out into the forest. The younger of the two was either being dragged along or shuffling her feet—her steps were too close together to be considered a normal walking gait.
He’d gathered the small team and followed the tracks into the woods.
The note from Holt was in his uniform’s breast pocket.
Contain them!
Like him, the Rangers deployed to 45-121 were hardened, the elite. Past experience of war and death hadn’t prepared any of them for what was found here. These people weren’t killed by the known weapons of war. And while he wasn’t frightened by the unknown, he had a deep respect for it.
He’d been told more than a hundred people from this village were missing and believed dead, the cause still unknown. Information indicated there were only two survivors, the two girls he now tracked.
If not a contagion, what kind of threat could two young girls possess?
He was under no illusion children couldn’t be as dangerous as adults. In Iraq, he’d witnessed a twelve-year-old girl walk up to a Humvee with an explosive vest hidden beneath her clothing and detonate. But what happened here wasn’t caused by a bomb, not one he recognized, anyway. He’d seen enough of this so-called anomaly to know that.
Unknown.
Children.
Fraser stared down at a bloody rag in the path. Looked like it had once been part of a shirt.
The two girls had followed the anomaly west for several miles, then veered north. The girls weren’t simply wandering through the forest; they had a destination in mind, though their path was nothing more than footfalls. Aside from the girls’ prints, he found a handful of tracks from adults taking care not to leave evidence. He had yet to find any kind of booby trap, but he was fairly certain they were out here.
According to his GPS, the bloody rag at his feet was nearly three miles from the center of 45-121, the village, but their route had taken them nearly perpendicular with one of the feeder trails. Even though he couldn’t see it through the thick woods, he estimated they were no more than a quarter mile from that particular trail, slowly converging with it.
When he touched the cloth with the tip of his finger, he found the blood to still be tacky—no more than a few hours old.
He turned to the Ranger behind him. “Any heat signatures?”
Holding the small scanner at arm’s length, she slowly panned the surrounding trees. “Too dense, sir.”
“What about from the air? Can we get one of the choppers to scan?”
The communications officer stood next in their single-file line. He shook his head. “The tree canopy is preventing sat-comm—no line of sight. I can try again if we find a clearing or higher ground.”
Fraser nodded and turned back to the bloody rag. From his pocket, he retrieved a plastic Ziploc bag. He placed the rag inside and put it back in his pocket.
The girls’ tracks continued north.
Standing, he raised his M4 carbine rifle again and continued after them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Martha
Martha rolled onto her back, and her cot let out a soft squeak. Although the temperature couldn’t be more than sixty degrees, her clothing was soaked with sweat, and while she didn’t remember falling asleep, she must have. Through the tent window, the moon had crossed nearly half the sky. Thin beams of light cascaded down, bluish-white, the heavens dotted with stars never visible in San Francisco. She tried to forget all the horrors she had seen today, the unnerving knowledge that Holt had not yet returned. Focus on the beauty of nature instead.
It wasn’t working.
Reiber snored softly from the cot beside her. Hauff one over, her body jerking slightly as she outran some monster in dreamland.
Fravel, Harbin, and Tomes were in the next tent.
Their names, all six, were written on white tape on the doors—women in one, men in the other, both tents side by side. They’d searched a number of the other tents, too, and found them empty.
Before disappearing into the mouth of the men’s tent, Harbin had leaned over to Martha and said, “I counted six different helicopters earlier. There’s only one here now. Where are the others?”
Martha rolled back onto her side.
Zigzag was accessible by road. It was meant as a way station for tourists, after all, but she hadn’t seen a single nonmilitary vehicle since she arrived here. She wondered what they were telling the carloads of adults and children as they approached the roadblock, what excuse they offered before ruining their weekend plans of camping and hiking.
Martha forced her eyes to close. When she did, icy-blue eyes stared back at her from beneath a matching blue swaddled blanket. Icy-blue eyes surrounded by the pale, cold skin of a dead child. The baby’s mouth opened, let out a horrified cry.
Eyes open. Christ.
She was exhausted, her body needed rest, but her mind wouldn’t let her. If it wasn’t images of death, her thoughts filled with the girl who had made that tape, wandering in the woods. She thought of her own kids, Emily and Michael, alone and scared out there. From the sound of her voice, this girl couldn’t be much older. Martha remembered a Stephen King book she’d read years back, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, little Trisha McFarland lost in a New England forest, a wendigo on her heels. From somewhere in the corner of her half-conscious brain, her mind reminded her that Trisha’s wendigos thrived out east, not here.
We have our own monsters here. Sometimes they have baby blues or matted gray hair. Oh, my, how they screamed before—
Her heavy eyes snapped open yet again, and this time she sat up with a frustrated sigh. Hauff and Reiber both continued to sleep.
Oh, how she envied them.
Pulling on her hiking boots, she crossed over to the mouth of the tent, peered out, and saw no one. With one more glance back at the two sleeping women, Martha slipped out into the night air.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Martha
Martha found Harbin sitting on a crate outside his tent smoking a cigarette. There were three more crushed butts on the ground near his feet; he’d been there for a little while. He watched her walk over with a tired eye, slid to the side, and patted the space next to him. “I suppose we should worry about those who are able to sleep after what we’ve seen today. I think I’ll dodge those demons just a little bit longer.”
He dropped the cigarette to the ground, stomped it out, and removed another. He offered one to Martha, but she declined. “I gave them up in college.”
“Wise girl.” Lighting the tip, he held the smoke for a moment, then let it
slowly drift out from the corner of his mouth. With his free hand, he gestured off to their left. “I found Holt’s tent. He’s three over in that direction, but aside from a muddy pair of socks balled up in the corner, there was no sign he even set foot in there. Sheets and blanket are still folded on his cot. He hasn’t slept in it.”
“You went inside?”
Harbin offered a sly smile. “I’m not above riffling through that sly piece of shit’s possessions, if given the opportunity. There was nothing in there, though. No bags, no computer, no notes, no nothing.”
“He can’t still be at the anomaly?”
“He’s somewhere other than here, and he’s most certainly not alone. How many people do you think we have in this little camp of ours?”
Martha thought about this. “Maybe a couple hundred. Between the troop carriers, all the soldiers erecting the tents, construction of the surrounding barriers, civilians. There may have even been more, it’s hard to tell. Why?”
He gestured in the opposite direction. “Those long tents over there are troop barracks, meant to hold fifty each. I took a peek in those, too, and I only counted twelve soldiers. We’ve got a handful of others on patrol around the perimeter and guarding the equipment, two working the mess hall, four more near the medical tent where you conducted those autopsies earlier. I counted twenty to thirty total, plus our little ragtag team of six. Even if I’m conservative and assume there are others hidden away in some of these tents, a large number of people appear to be missing.”
“They might be back at the anomaly, or maybe they returned to their base for the night. There are several military installations around here, probably more comfortable and better equipped. There’s no reason for them to spend the night here. Maybe that’s where Holt is, too.”
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