by John Inman
Terry stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Then you know where we’ve been. In the old research facility in town.”
“The abandoned brick building, yes. And the way you ran out of the place, I have a pretty good hunch that building has something to do with what you want to tell me.”
Terry glanced at all the soldiers eyeballing the three of them. He saw the weapons in their arms, pointed down at the ground now, and he also took note of a variety of bigger guns mounted on Army vehicles lined up behind the police cars. He knew this was only one checkpoint in the line of defense against the creatures escaping. He didn’t want to think about the bombs he couldn’t see.
“We’re not the only two people left in there.”
Briggs nodded. “I know.”
“Then you also know you’ll be killing innocent civilians if you carry through with your threat to bomb the area.”
Briggs didn’t look happy when he said, “We’re aware of that, son. But letting the creatures escape to wreak havoc across the planet does no one any good either.”
“I understand that,” Terry said. “But what if I can pinpoint the location of the creatures for you? What if I can tell you exactly where they’ll be?”
Briggs studied him closely, shifting his gaze to Jonas for a moment, then back to Terry. “I’m afraid it won’t matter,” he said. “Not unless you can guarantee us that every single creature on that mountain and in that town will be in the very same spot at any given time. Can you do that?”
Terry felt Jonas’s eyes on him. He stared up at the news helicopter, still watching—and filming for all he knew—as it hovered overhead. He thought of the creatures spilling out through the broken factory windows, pulled away from their nest by the scent of fresh blood. Human blood. How could he guarantee that every creature would be inside that building at the same time? And how could narrowing the bombing raid to one particular building work at all if he couldn’t guarantee it.
His mind raced while Briggs stared. The older officer didn’t look impatient; he merely looked resigned, knowing he had given Terry an unsolvable problem. And no matter what Terry thought should happen, there could really only be one outcome, and it was the outcome the colonel had been planning all along.
“I’m sorry,” Briggs said. “I know you want to save your homes. But blanket bombing is the only way to ensure the creatures are exterminated. Unless you can think of a better plan, the bombing will begin on schedule.” He glanced at his watch. “In thirty-nine hours and twenty-seven minutes to be exact.”
Jonas jumped, and both Terry and Briggs turned to stare at him. Jonas grabbed Terry’s arm and gave him a shake.
“I know how we can do it!” he blurted out. “I know how we can make sure every single creature is inside that factory at the same time!”
Terry opened his mouth to ask how, or to ask if Jonas was nuts, or maybe simply to ask what the hell Jonas was talking about. But he didn’t get a chance.
Jonas simply lifted his head, eyeing the helicopter above. He raised his arm, extended his hand, and gave the cameraman the finger. A moment later, looking defiant and sexy as hell (Terry thought), Jonas rested his eyes on Briggs instead. His fingers tightened around Terry’s hand. “It’ll work. I know it will. Give us a chance, sir. You can monitor us, and if we succeed in getting all the creatures inside that building, you will know. You can launch a pinpoint bombing run, drop a shitload of bombs on that one tiny target, and if we fail, you can still do a blanket bombing run later and take out the whole town and mountain. But we can do it, sir. We can get the creatures in there. I know we can! When we’ve succeeded, we’ll signal you from the ground.”
Terry couldn’t imagine what Jonas was thinking of or what kind of plan he was talking about, but he wasn’t about to argue. If Jonas thought he had a plan, then who the hell was Terry to doubt him?
Terry turned to Briggs to back Jonas up, reassuring himself that the colonel knew exactly what it was he and Jonas wanted his Army to do. “When we give the signal, we want you to bomb the old deserted factory. The building you just saw us leave. Don’t take out the rest of the town. Don’t bomb my mountain or my house or the Tastee Freez on the corner of Tenth and Juniper. I love that Tastee Freez. Just annihilate the one single abandoned fucking building we’re telling you about. That’s where their nest is. That’s where their queen is.”
Briggs’s eyes popped open wide. “What do you mean, their queen?”
“It’s how they breed, sir,” Jonas explained, “and it all takes place inside that building.”
“Take out the queen,” Terry explained, “and you take out their ability to reproduce. Take out the building and you take out the workers and all the freshly spawned young that can’t fly yet but one day soon will. This is your only chance to get them all together and wipe them out in one big kablooey.”
Colonel Briggs was clearly biting back a grin. “In military parlance, we don’t really call it that, son.”
It was Jonas who leaned in and tapped Briggs’s chest with a fingertip. “We don’t care what you call it. Just so long as you do it. All right?”
Briggs laughed out loud. “Jesus, boys, go round up your monsters. You get ’em in one place, and I’ll tear them a new asshole. Believe me. I can send a single napalm-tipped SSM and hit a spot six inches in diameter within five minutes of your signal.”
“What’s an SSM?” Terry asked.
“Surface-to-surface missile, son.”
“Oh.”
“What kind of signal should we send?” Jonas asked.
“I don’t know. Hell, son. Wave your little white hanky again. Seemed to work the last time. Just make sure you get yourselves to a safe distance away from that building before you call in that strike, or it’ll be your own assholes that go up in smoke.”
Jonas grinned. “Well, that’s descriptive.” He turned to Terry. “Wasn’t that descriptive?”
Terry laughed. He shot an apologetic wink at the colonel. “My friend gets a little excited. Bear with him. It’s been a hell of a few weeks. What with falling in love and everything.”
Briggs eyed them each in turn. He was still looking fairly amused, Jonas thought. And a little confused.
Without commenting on the “love” remark, Briggs pointed skyward at a tiny drone, humming about forty feet up. “We’ll monitor you with that. When you wave your white hanky, the one you were waving when you barreled through our quarantine line, then we’ll know we have a confirmation that the creatures are inside the building. We’ll give you five minutes to get away before we strike. And trust me. It’ll be a big, hot kablooey when it comes. So get yourselves to a safe distance. Understand?”
“Yes,” Jonas and Terry said in unison. “We understand. And thanks.”
The smile faded from Brigg’s face. His eyes grew serious. “You realize that if we think we missed even one of these critters with this pinpoint bombing strike you’re asking for, the original plan will go back into effect. We’ll blow the whole town and the whole mountain right off the map. Is that understood?”
Before either could answer, Colonel Briggs turned away and started yelling orders. Soldiers jumped to attention, then scurried away like ants.
Jonas stared at Terry for a long somber moment before heading for the Jeep.
Terry shook his head and followed, hoping to hell Jonas knew what he was doing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ONCE AGAIN, Terry manhandled the Jeep along the same route they had taken to talk to the colonel. With their face masks pushed up and out of the way, they had to squint against the wind rushing through the torn canvas roof. Spangle was coming up fast, and Jonas knew Terry still had no idea what his big plan entailed. Terry didn’t know because Jonas didn’t have it all figured out yet either. He sat hunched over in the passenger seat, mumbling to himself, trying to lay it all out inside his head before explaining it to Terry.
But Terry wasn’t looking particularly patient. Obviously, he wanted to know now. After all, a big ch
unk of the United States Army was back there waiting for them to do whatever it was Jonas had promised they were going to do. Who could blame Terry for wanting to know how they were going to do it?
Terry tried for the third time to worm it out of him. “Just tell me this,” he demanded. “How are we going to account for every single creature and make sure they are all inside that building at the same time?”
Jonas snuck him a glance. Suddenly he didn’t seem as sure of himself as he had back when he was poking his cocky finger in the colonel’s chest. “I do have a plan, you know.”
Terry’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he plowed into another tumbleweed. It flew back over the roof of the Jeep like a gigantic soccer ball. “Yes, dear, I know you have a plan. But what the hell is it?”
“It’s sneaky,” Jonas said.
Terry heaved a sigh. “Sneaky’s good. Can you be a little more specific?”
They were speeding down Spangle’s main drag now. Two blocks up, they could see the stained brick walls and shattered third-floor windows of the bankrupt and abandoned supplement factory. Hovering alongside the factory walls, Jonas pointed to the tiny drone that Briggs had sent to keep an eye on them.
Terry nodded to indicate he had seen it already. “Plan,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Tell me your plan.”
Still two blocks away from the factory, Jonas cried, “Stop!” and Terry slammed on the brakes. The Jeep lurched up onto the sidewalk and took out a parking meter. Nickels and dimes rolled off in every direction. The guns in the back seat clattered to the floor.
“Oops,” Terry said.
He gazed questioningly at the storefronts nearby. Doctor’s office, hobby store, small appliance repair shop. Blood bank. Ice cream parlor. They were two blocks short of the research facility where the queen resided, and Terry clearly still didn’t know what was going on. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“I love you,” Jonas said, his eyes as big as he could make them. Puppy-dog eyes, he hoped. Because frankly, if Terry didn’t like his plan he suspected the big burly redhead was going to wring his neck. Puppy-dog eyes might be Jonas’s only avenue of defense. He brought out the big guns as well, laying a gentle hand on Terry’s muscled thigh, which, in spite of everything happening around them, still made Jonas’s dick give an anticipatory twitch inside his pants.
Good to know that in spite of it all, the testosterone was still pumping.
He slid his hand to Terry’s crotch and felt a definite shift of priorities there as well, as some sort of intriguing bulge began growing beneath his fingertips.
Terry narrowed his eyes and glowered. “As you can undoubtedly feel, I love you too. Now what’s the plan?”
Jonas pointed to the storefront closest to the Jeep. “That’s the plan.”
The store sitting next to the doctor’s office had a big red heart painted on the window. Terry blinked, staring at it.
Jonas grinned, watching him. “I can hear the wheels turning inside your head. You’re starting to get the picture, right?”
Terry tore his eyes from the storefront window and focused on Jonas with serene blankness. “It’s the blood bank,” he said. “So what?”
Jonas gave a cluck. “Maybe it wasn’t your wheels I heard turning after all.” He jabbed a thumb through the open Jeep window at the building Terry was still gaping at. “They store blood in there. Human blood. We swipe it, haul it into the bat nest, and use it for bait. The smell will draw every creature within a dozen miles, if there are any that far away. When the creatures are all there, slurping up the blood, presto!” And he hauled out his little white hanky and flapped it in Terry’s face.
Jonas was pleased to see a little more life pop into Terry’s eyes. “Now the wheels are turning,” he said, with a wily squint. “I can hear them creaking.”
Terry eyed him warily. “You really think it’ll work?”
“Got any better ideas?”
Terry frowned, licked his lips, scratched his ear, and finally smiled a cagey smile. He slapped open the car door and leaped out. “Excellent plan!” he cried, grabbing the shotgun. “Let’s do it!”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Besides, what else have we got?”
Jonas shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Jonas mumbled to himself in relief that Terry had accepted his plan so easily. It still sounded a little goofy to him. He reached down to the back floorboard, grabbed the .38, and stuffed it into his holster.
Two seconds later, Terry was smashing a hole through the blood bank’s plate-glass window with the barrel of the shotgun. He diligently knocked a few leftover shards out of the frame and climbed inside with Jonas at his heels.
Terry scratched his head, looking around. “Now what?”
Jonas pointed to a Medical Personnel Only sign on a swinging door at the back of the room behind the reception desk. They skirted the desk and banged their way through the door. Inside they found two reclining chairs with IV stands alongside where the blood was donated. Past the chairs, another set of swinging doors led farther into the interior with more signs telling nonmedical personnel to stay the hell out. Only nicely.
Jonas and Terry poked their heads through the second set of doors together. “Bingo!” Terry laughed.
Beaming proudly, Jonas followed him into the lab. Three large stainless steel refrigeration units stood in a row along the back wall. They looked like gigantic refrigerators, but Jonas knew better. He had given blood a few times in college to finance the occasional drunken weekend. He knew how blood banks worked.
The refrigeration units weren’t locked. He yanked the door open on the first one and there in front of his eyes hung row after row of clear plastic transfusion bags filled with blood. Jonas didn’t know if this was whole blood or not, and he wondered if it would be enough to attract the little bat fuckers and keep them in the research building long enough for the Army to light them up. Now that he was here, he seemed to find a few unexpected holes in his plan. Platelets, plasma, red blood cells, who knew what really drew the creatures in? Or what would work best for bait.
Terry tapped one of the bags. “RBC. Red blood cells,” he said. “It’s labeled right here. This is close to whole blood. At least I think it is. We’ll use these.”
He started yanking the red IV bags off the hooks and dumping them on a tabletop nearby. Jonas found a cardboard box and, handling them carefully, stacked the bags inside. It wouldn’t be prudent to tear the bags open before they get to where they needed to go. Otherwise the creatures might think they were offering themselves up for bait.
When the box was full, Terry shot him a wink and said, “Let’s go.”
Jonas nodded, all businesslike even while taking a brief moment to slide his hand along the bristle of Terry’s five-o’clock shadow, which he loved to touch.
Terry kissed his hand with a teasing glint in his eye, then tugged him toward the door. Once outside, Terry ordered, “Wait here.”
To Jonas’s surprise he disappeared into a thrift store on the other side of the doctor’s office, once again smashing his way through a plate-glass window with the barrel of his shotgun. Looter extraordinaire. He was in and out in seconds, and when he did return he had two brand-new backpacks, one blue and one yellow, draped across his shoulders. Two minutes later, Jonas was back in the Jeep, cradling the backpacks stuffed with infusion bags filled with human blood in his lap while Terry gunned the Jeep down the street and swerved around to the alley at the back of the research facility.
They climbed out, staring upward at the rusty fire escape attached to the wall above their heads. As they gawked, a swarm of creatures tore through the broken third-floor windows. Jonas and Terry ducked, but the creatures ignored them, winging away to the south where somebody was about to have a very bad day.
“Let’s climb,” Jonas whispered, and without waiting for an answer, he began scaling the fire-escape ladder, one backpack dangling off his back.
Terry gave him a friendly pat on the ass and mounted the ladder to follow, the second backpack, the yellow one, hanging from his shoulders.
Jonas paused below the shattered third-floor windows and scanned the skies around him, praying he wouldn’t see any creatures returning. And he didn’t. But from below, Terry tapped him on the ankle and pointed to the north. Jonas saw it then. A tiny drone, hovering about fifty feet away, monitoring their movements with its small but efficient camera.
Jonas shot the drone a thumbs-up and could have sworn he saw the tiny rotors dip in response. He scooted the rest of the way up the ladder to tumble through the broken third-floor window. Terry landed in a heap beside him. There they were once again bombarded with the reek of death and rot and corruption. Both men immediately lowered the visors on their crash helmets, but it didn’t help much. The stench was too powerful. In the distance, the mewling of the infants, slithering around in their placental slime, could be faintly heard rising from below.
Where the queen was, Jonas didn’t know. Nor did he really want to.
Moving carefully now, Jonas led the way. He edged along the catwalk toward the first staircase leading down. By the time he got there, as he knew they would, his eyes began to adjust to the dark.
Moving as quietly as he could, Jonas headed down the metal stairs, one squeaking step at a time, clutching tightly at the backpack on his shoulder. The sound of Terry’s boots and the swish of Terry’s clothing assured him Terry was trailing along behind.
The familiar, frightful smells brought an all-new flood of terrors rushing over him. He tried not to think about what lay in the shadows below. Or the girl the creatures had torn apart only an hour before. He hesitated, stumbling to a stop, his heart hammering a mile a minute.
“Keep going,” Terry whispered when Jonas paused. Determined, but scared out of his wits, Jonas finally did as Terry insisted. He kept moving forward.
A moment later, they stood side by side at the head of the last staircase leading down into the depths of hell. Jonas clutched the backpack in his sweaty hand, uncertain how to proceed.
