* * *
REV FOUND A METAL LADDER on the container and climbed onto the top motioning Flint to follow him. The little automaton had no problem reaching Rev’s hiding place and concealed himself.
“Let’s take a little ride and have a look-see,” said Rev to Flint as the container started to move. Another automaton pulled a manifest from the container and placed it into the computer tray watching the data download. Soon it reported that it successfully digested the information causing the container to jockey into position behind more of the containers and wait its turn to be offloaded to the interior chamber. To Rev it seemed like hours before his container arrived at the tunnel to the next part of the bay.
Finally the container offloaded to a conveyor and was dragged through a pliable screen. The rogue investigators found themselves looking into a cavernous warehouse filled with millions of containers. Each lined up and stacked according to make and model. Their container gained speed when it reached its specific lane and took off so fast that both of them had to clench tightly to a rail or be flung off. The air whipped hard against Rev’s eyes; he had to close them to keep from tearing up. The ride went on for minutes, Rev didn’t even try to count the number of intersections they crossed. When it appeared they’d ram into another adjacent container, they’d slow for a moment and the other container would dart along. At these speeds it was amazing no accidents occurred but the automaton drivers kept their timing perfectly.
Rev could see their destination as the container they rode slowed to a near stop. Rev tugged on Flint’s arm and crawled down from his hiding spot. He waited for the container to stop completely. He then jumped to the ground and Flint took his usual position next to his partner. They had to move quickly to avoid the next container. The container they rode slid to the side of the lane and instantly shot up to a vacant spot high above them.
“How many containers do you think are stored here?” asked Rev.
“Millions. Maybe billions. It’s hard to tell.”
“Enough body parts to fill a world?”
“Many worlds,” said Flint. “In fact, there’s enough raw material to repopulate all the known Alliance systems if they were to be used all at once.”
Rev stroked his chin thinking. “This would make one hell of an army. Good thing Earth’s not vying for a fight with Tsunam. We’d loose from the sheer numbers that could be sent to war.”
“Why so many?” pondered Flint out loud. “Tsunam isn’t warlike.”
“It looks like you guys have been stockpiling citizens for years just in case.” Rev found an unoccupied trolley and sat himself on the passenger seat. “Let’s go partner.”
“Where to?” Flint fit his body perfectly into the driver’s cockpit.
“I haven’t the foggiest notion.”
Flint pointed to the control panel. “It seems to know where it wants to go. Should I let it take over?”
“Why not? Someone’s been planning our adventure since we arrived from Earth anyway. Let ’er rip.”
Flint released the controls and the trolley ramped up speed, tearing off down the endless rows of containers. Flint wondered how Rev could stay so calm when he knew they were being manipulated. But he watched the human kick back both feet and relax. Rev crossed his arms and closed his eyes. Soon there were wheezing sounds. Flint surmised the human was fast asleep.
Flint emulated Rev and leaned back. Of course he didn’t have any legs, but he crossed his arms and mimicked his partner. Well, if Rev wasn’t worried then he shouldn’t be either. Unfortunately, he didn’t convince himself. He tried to turn his circuits over to trying to triangulate their position from when they entered the warehouse. He couldn’t get an accurate fix and had to continually recalculate every few seconds as the trolley zipped along.
After an hour or so the trolley slowed and came to a stop at an empty section of the warehouse. A stairwell led up from a platform and ended in shadows. The trolley jerked as it parked. Rev mumbled something about being here already as Flint flew off to the stairs.
“Wait for me,” called Rev. “What’s the rush?”
“I’m a little anxious I guess,” said the automaton. “We’ve traveled over two hundred Earth miles since you fell asleep.”
“No doubt. I could use some more sleep too,” said Rev yawning. “It feels like days since I got a decent rest.” His stomach growled. “And I’m starving too. I’m not like you. I need to eat once in a while.”
Rev dug in his pockets looking for anything he could consume but found nothing to eat—not even the crumbs from a half-eaten nutribar. He did find a stick of gum. He wadded it up and shoved it into his mouth licking his lips.
“I can’t help you with food or water until we get topside,” said Flint. “But I’ll make it a priority to locate sustenance that is suited to humans.”
Rev found a wall and ducked behind it. Flint followed but Rev pushed him back.
“Give a guy a little privacy will you? It’s been just as long since I’ve been to the can.”
“The can?”
“You know,” came Rev’s voice from behind the wall.
Flint heard a trickle of water and a long sigh from Rev and he finally got it. Rev zipped his fly and reappeared from the darkness behind the wall. He felt a hundred times better. Now all he needed was something juicy to eat. A burger with greasy fries sounded heavenly. Too bad the Tsunamians didn’t relish the finer dining experiences of good old Earth cuisine.
“Okay,” said Rev feeling fully relieved. “Let’s find out where those stairs lead us.”
Chapter 30
NOTHING COULD HAVE PREPARED them for what they found on the upper level. The smell of cauterized flesh and ozone from heavy weapon fire stung Rev’s nose. On the upper deck they found the remains of a large open bay that had obviously been used as a teleport station. Transmat tubes were lined in rows like clear dominoes, two deep by a hundred or more long. All around on the floor were the remains of Tsunamian soldiers and civilians; contorted and broken. Small combat vehicles smoldered; black fumes from grenades or surface-to-air missiles swirled all around. Scattered among the dead were the remains of several beasts hacked to pieces with God-knows-what weapon. This fascinated Rev as he tried to envision what produced such wounds.
“What could do this?” asked Rev pointing to the chunks of a beast.
“I don’t know,” said Flint. “It’s clear that they were dismembered but not by las-weapons.”
“Not even by knives,” put in Rev, “or we’d see more blood. It’s as if their bodies decided to detach themselves at the joints.”
“Another mystery,” said Flint.
They moved from one battle scene to another and realized that the civilians were defending themselves against the soldiers who appeared to destroy beasts and civilians alike.
“I’m confused,” said Rev shaking his head. “It looks like the military fought the civilians and beasts and won at a very high price.”
“It does seem so,” said Flint.
“But if that’s true, then the civilians were colluding with the beasts.”
“I wish there was a survivor we could question,” said Flint. “No one appears to have survived this battle.”
“That’s the other part that bothers me,” he said pulling the head of a soldier to one side and investigating the charred hole in his temple. “This man was executed after the battle.”
Flint did the same to a civilian body. “This man has the same wound. So everyone who fought and survived was summarily executed after the battle?”
“Strange isn’t it, seeing them lined up and shot like they were . . . It’s as if someone was making sure that nothing survived. Like they do when there’s a bio-hazard contamination.”
Flint thought Rev had something there. He moved along a row of the dead including both civilian and military personnel. All of the deceased who didn’t have clear evidence of battle on them had similar execution-style wounds.
“Maybe
it was a bio-hazard accident,” said Flint. “You saw how the tendril creature attacked you. Couldn’t these men have been infected by them much like you?”
“That makes sense,” said Rev. “But that leads to someone who knows about the way the parasites work. If that’s true, then that person is someone we need to find.”
Flint held up an arm and opened his mouth to say something but stopped.
“What is it?”
“I had an odd thought,” he started. “We were meant to see this.” Rev agreed.
“The planet is on the verge of extinction with all the self-terminations. It’s easy to see that the stockpile of body parts are larger than the live population.” Flint didn’t like what he was thinking. Rev saw the angst in Flint’s manner and he waited patiently. “Well,” continued Flint, “it seems to me, the government wants the population smaller so there would be less of a population to be infected. This limits the enemy forces, if you see what I mean.”
“Oh,” said Rev. “Tsunam doesn’t have a large military to start with. The government must’ve calculated how large an opposing army they could handle.”
“Yes,” said Flint. “Could the government be condoning the reduction of the population?”
“Good question,” said Rev. “Maybe they don’t have any other choice but to allow fewer free civilians. Since we know that the parasites are highly infectious. Without a cure they might be reducing the potential hosts in an epidemic.”
“They don’t know that there is a cure yet,” said Flint.
“You mean me?”
“Correct,” replied Flint. “We need to get your sample analyzed and get those results to the person who could use it against these parasites.”
“That person is the one who was in charge of this battle,” said Rev. “Why fight here?”
“It looks like a military outpost,” said Flint. “So we can safely assume that the government was charged to defend against the intruders.”
Rev agreed with Flint’s assessment. “Governments have outposts to either contain the threat of invasion or to guard something. In this case they look like they were doing both.”
“The invading part is easy to see,” Flint indicated the many dead lying about. “But what do you think they were guarding?”
“That, my friend, is the big question,” said Rev. “Something obviously very important.”
“Important like the survival of the Tsunamian race?”
“I think so. The sooner we find out the better.”
They traveled in silence with their thoughts. Soon they came to an area of the bay that had so many dead that the bodies were heaped on top of each other. The last standoff against the storm of invaders. Here they found more beasts dismembered neatly among hundreds of soldiers. It must have been a fierce battle, thought Flint. The soldiers looked as if they had fought the creatures hand-to-claw with many of them torn apart or mauled to shreds. The military forces held their position with dogged determination. All had valiantly remained at their posts, defending to the last man before overcoming the beasts. One headless man clutched his weapon tightly still aiming at a dead creature while his equally headless buddy was dressing his torn forearm. A beast must have grasped them both in its talons and bit their heads off before receiving its fatal blow.
“I think we found the hot spot,” said Rev. “This was the last stand before the military forces won.”
“So they were protecting this area from the invasion?”
“It seems so,” said Rev. “Something behind that wall meant more to these poor bastards than life itself.”
“I hope it was worth so much bloodshed,” mumbled Flint sadly.
* * *
THEY LEFT THE BATTLE scene and found themselves in a sophisticated command center. Vidi-screens and computer consoles were sabotaged neatly and efficiently. Rev gathered that the data held within them was too valuable to be left in enemy hands. Nothing was saved. Terminals were scorched, they still smelled hot even though they were no longer smoking. Not a soul was found throughout the strategic center.
Apparently no enemies had reached the inner sanctum of the government outpost, since the pair found no evidence of the battle within the walls. They moved from room to room in hopes of locating what was so important. It could have been just the information itself but Rev didn’t think that seemed entirely right. Data can always be wiped clean or transferred to a secure location. He surmised that the data was safely locked away from this site. They surely were here to protect something or someone physically important from the enemy. And he was determined to locate the answer.
Flint discovered a heavily armored portal and stopped at the access panel waiting for Rev to catch up. He attempted to gain access but the security vault refused to budge. Rev pulled his hand out of his pocket and wiggled his fingers in the face of the little automaton.
“Let me try. I’ve got the magic touch for these things now.”
He put his palm on the reader and sure enough, the access panel accepted him. The seals released, snapping huge pins back into the frame, allowing the door to slide free. Inside they found something more gruesome than they ever imagined. The chamber was a laboratory with more equipment than the control center along with gurneys lined up in rows for observation. On each gurney was the body of a woman. None of the women were Tsunamian but appeared to be from Earth. Some were older and some young, but all were naked, whole and dead, sealed in portable stasis fields. They had been surgically explored with bodies sporting multiple incisions. Their lower abdomens were butterflied open exposing their wombs. At once Rev was overcome with anger at the torture the women had been put through and his blood boiled. “What the fuck is this!?” he yelled losing his temper.
Flint counted the gurneys. There were fifty-two to be precise. All female patients of various ages and all definitely dead. “These are Earth women,” stammered Flint reading the workup chart on the vidi-screen next to one of the older women. “This one’s name is Mary Tides from Chicago.”
“What?” screamed Rev rushing closer and looking into the older female’s face. “I know this woman. She’s older than I remembered her but it’s certainly her now that I see her face.”
“You knew this woman?” asked Flint.
“Years ago we were close,” he said. “I was in the military then and she was a statistician for the government before the Earth Collision formed.”
“How do you suppose she got here?” wondered Flint.
“Oh, my God,” said Rev looking around at the faces of the other women. “They’re all here.”
“Who’s all here?”
“Every woman I ever had sex with.” Rev gestured his arms wide in disbelief. “I don’t recognize all of them, just most of them.”
“Everyone?” Flint questioned.
“Everyone except—”
“Cassie?”
“Yes.” Rev paced along the rows, seething with anger. Tears welled in his eyes as memories hit him. He turned to Flint and wiped his eyes clear. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “They’re all here. Everyone I’ve ever loved. Who could do such a thing?”
“What about the other women? Is there any connection to them and yourself?”
“I don’t recognize the others,” he stammered. “Just these over here.” He indicated with the wave of his hand.
Flint went to an unrecognized woman and brought up the video chart scanning the data. He located an entry in the chart and stopped.
“What did you find?”
“An odd statement here under personal data.”
“Tell me,” demanded Rev.
“It might be nothing but I found something similar on Mary’s chart.” Rev clenched his fist and held his temper while Flint continued. “On Mary’s chart she had an entry under relationship that states ‘TS3’ and a date around fifty Earth years ago.”
Rev made a calculation in his head, nodding. “That’s about the time I was with Mary.”
“That’s
my guess too,” said Flint. “This woman has a similar entry of ‘MB6’ about the same time.”
“Sonuvabitch!” swore Rev enraged. Flint moved back a little from his partner.
“MB, Magnus Blackheart. Then the TS is for me, my initials. Someone has cataloged all the women in our lives. Some bastard’s murdered every woman we ever knew.”
“The number must be a reference to the patient,” said Flint. “This other woman must be the sixth woman who had sexual relations with Magnus.”
“Why would anyone kill all these women just because we had sex with them?”
Flint flicked off the vidi-chart and hovered close to Rev. “I don’t know. But it does appear that these women all had sexual relationships with either you or Magnus.” He paused and waited for Rev to look him in the eye. “All except Cassie.”
Like a revelation Rev snapped out of his funk and suppressed his anger from the shock of the situation. “Right.” Rev pumped his closed fist. “We have to find her before she winds up on one of these gurneys. I’ll never forgive myself if she’s . . . .”
Rev stopped and looked at Flint—a look Flint never saw from Rev before. It frightened him.
* * *
FLINT NEARLY SQUEALED in delight after he read the detailed entries of each woman. The surgery done on the women was performed to extract their uterus for study. Apparently the eugenic engineers on Earth stumbled on a strange phenomenon. Both Rev and Magnus, being created composites, possessed a certain unique hormone released during sex which altered the women. No other male could fertilize the women, assuring the two enhanced males’ control over the women to procreate. Not only did Rev and Magnus have this extraordinary trait; this seemingly random alteration provided the missing ingredient in the beast production. Apparently, the affected women’s physiology reacted with the extracted hormone enhancing the parasitic creatures, altering their hosts into what Rev and Flint knew as the beasts. Unfortunately, the women hadn’t survived the extraction process.
Flint related all he understood from the chart.
The Beast of Tsunam (Rev Smalley: Galactic P.I. Book 1) Page 24
