General Rammes spoke into the tiny microphone in his sealed helmet. “It’s okay, Lieutenant Ewing. Colonel Hoffman is cleared.”
“Thank you, sir.” He continued. “The Gemini agent escaped one of their clean rooms and infected one of their workers. Unfortunately, their protocols weren’t as rigorous as they are now—as I’m sure you’ve witnessed since you’ve been here at Vanguard, Colonel—and he was allowed to leave the complex before they knew exactly what had happened.”
“You mean it got out into the open?”
“Yes, sir, unfortunately, it did. The agent’s initial effect was a form of temporary insanity—massive, rapid chemical changes in the brain tissues causing a paranoia-like state—and the infected worker made it out of state before they caught up with him. The FBI got to him first and eliminated him, but the agents who killed him were also infected. They left the body in the trunk of a car and left it out in the New Mexico desert. At that point, the agents probably weren’t thinking too clearly.”
Carolyn’s voice could still be heard in both of their headsets as she whispered to herself, “Come on . . . Almost there . . .”
Josh continued. “The New Mexico Highway Patrol found the car—and the body—and it was taken care of by the facility’s rapid response team. The two infected FBI agents died in a car crash not long after they’d left the body. They went straight into a bridge abutment at a hundred miles an hour. After the fire, there wasn’t much left. They were running—like that worker—from whatever Gemini was making them think. We got lucky that time.”
Garrett could now understand why the Vanguard facility was built as it was—to prevent that type of event from ever happening again. He was suddenly very glad to be wearing his extensive protective gear. Carolyn’s voice startled him.
“Oh dear God,” she said.
General Rammes walked over to Carolyn’s side. “What is it?”
“It’s Gemini, all right. Just like I thought. But there’s more . . .”
Josh peered over her shoulder, looking at the set of blinking numbers on the screen. “That can’t be.”
“The numbers don’t lie, Josh.”
“Twins?”
“Twins.”
General Rammes sounded confused. “Twins? What are you talking about?”
Carolyn turned to the general. “Sir, have the things stopped? Other than getting out of the light, have they stopped?”
“Yes, they stopped last night.” He suddenly realized Carolyn wasn’t aware of all that had happened. “All five waves of the things stopped at the same time—”
“Five waves?”
“Five separate groups, headed straight for the five nearest cities. They all stopped at the same time and burrowed underground.”
Carolyn sighed heavily, as if she knew the answer to her next question. “General, I need to know if they’ve . . . Are the things in any sort of chrysalis? Cocoons?”
Rammes’s brow furrowed behind his protective mask. “The creatures are encased in some sort of thick, bone-like casings. They’re trying to bring one up for analysis right now.” He glanced at his watch. “If they’re on schedule, they should have it on a plane to our location within the hour.” Rammes wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer to his next question. “How did you know about the casings, Carolyn?”
“Are the five cities evacuated?”
“It’s ongoing, but—”
Carolyn’s voice was calm, cool, but her eyes flashed bright with fear. “General, if I’m right, as soon as darkness falls, we could be facing a much larger threat.”
CHAPTER 32
Floodlights illuminated the crater as the sunlight dimmed even further. The sun was sliding below the horizon. Just a sliver of its fiery brilliance remained. Like an eye slowly closing.
The mining supervisor wiped cold sweat from his brow—he was scared to death. The repairs to the chain had gone quickly enough, but the casing had jammed in the hole three more times, wasting valuable minutes as the crew worked to dislodge the object without breaking the chain again.
Time had officially run out.
“How far?” the major asked.
“Less than ten feet.”
Both men watched as the hoist chain slowly spooled up, raising the casing at an almost mind-numbing pace.
“There it is!” they shouted in unison.
Suddenly, the top of a curved, grayish object revealed itself at the opening of the shaft. Within a few seconds, it was completely out of the hole, swinging in its harness a few feet off the ground.
“That’s it,” the major said. “Get your people out of here!”
“With pleasure. All right, people! Let’s get the hell out of—”
“It’s cracking!” One of the workers quickly backed away, staring at the object like it was an atomic bomb ticking away toward detonation. A long, jagged crack was visible on its smooth surface.
The major ran over to the hoist and grabbed the worker by the arm. “Was it cracked when you brought it out?”
“No! There were no cracks! I just saw it happening!”
The worker’s statement was verified a second later as a loud cracking noise split the night, the fissure on the surface of the casing visibly widening. Both men took a step back, startled.
Suddenly, the workers who remained ran headlong up the side of the blast crater, clawing and kicking at the dirt.
The major regained his senses. “Everybody out! Out of the hole now!” As he ran toward the sloping edge of the crater, the mining supervisor just a step behind, he felt a strange vibration in the ground beneath his feet. His blood ran cold.
The climb to the top of the crater seemed like crawling out of the Grand Canyon—it suddenly seemed much steeper, much deeper than it really was. He barked orders as he climbed, his words coming in raspy breaths. “Evacuate! Evacuate the area!” Behind him, more loud cracking noises echoed in the pit as the casing began to open.
As he stumbled across the edge of the crater, he heard a loud chattering noise, a strange clicking. Joined a second later by another series of the same noises. Unnaturally loud. Chilling.
The major turned and saw pieces of the casing lying scattered at the edge of the hole.
He also saw four yellow eyes burning like flames in the shadows outside the floodlights’ lamps, bouncing up the side of the crater. Incredibly fast. Toward him.
It was the last sight he saw.
THE THIRD NIGHT
CHAPTER 33
Andrew sat alone in his situation room. He’d just sat through one of the most difficult war cabinet meetings of his administration. Again, as he’d done after the brutal radiological attack on Cleveland, he’d listened to arguments for, and arguments against, the use of nuclear weapons.
But this time, the argument possessed an entirely different flavor.
This time, the target in question wasn’t on the other side of the world. The target—targets, to be more accurate—were in the United States of America.
American targets.
On American soil.
Killing American citizens.
It was a course of action that had initially crossed his mind when the creatures made their first furious advances, seemingly unstoppable in the face of the conventional weaponry the military could bring to bear in such short order. He’d considered it for only a split second, knowing in his heart that it was the absolute last course of action he was willing to take.
He looked up at the plasma screen and spoke to his vice president. “Allison, has it really come down to this? Do nuclear weapons seem like a recourse we’ll—I’ll have to resort to if these things can’t be stopped with conventional weapons?”
Allison was a valuable source of counsel for him. He could talk to her and bounce decisions off of her, like he could do with no other in his administration. He didn’t hav
e a warm relationship with her, like the personal relationship he’d developed with Jessie Hruska, but when it came to the most crucial policy decisions, there was no one else he felt comfortable talking with. As the old saying went, Allison Perez—the vice president of the United States—was only a heartbeat away from the presidency. She needed to be intimately involved in the major decisions of his administration because if the heart were to stop, she had to carry those decisions forward without skipping a beat.
“Mr. President, I don’t believe we’ve reached that point yet. We’ve lost a large number of our people, and I know that alone is a compelling reason to try to wipe these things out as quickly as we can. But I think we need to take a step back from the situation and look at it objectively.” He watched as she shifted in her chair and brushed away a strand of jet-black hair that had somehow escaped from the tight bun she wore at the back of her head. “We don’t know this enemy yet. We haven’t had time to study the findings from the analysis being carried out—at this very moment—on the dead bodies of the things. We haven’t had a chance to analyze the casing that’s being taken from the ground. All we know is we have large numbers of mutated animals and human beings on a killing spree in the middle of the country. What caused it? We don’t know. How long will it last? We don’t know. Are they going to start moving again, or will they be underground for an extended time? We don’t know. What I urge you to avoid is making a decision based on incomplete information. If we were to use nuclear weapons—”
The president interrupted her. “I, Allison. My order, and no one else’s.”
“Yes, sir. If you were to use nuclear weapons now, and it later turned out from our analysis that the things only had a forty-eight-hour lifespan, well . . . You get my drift, sir.”
“You’re saying we need to know more before we take drastic actions. Permanent actions.”
“Exactly. Sir.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We allow the evacuations to continue and provide any and all support we can to make them as smooth as possible, with the understanding that more people are going to die. We have to accept that.
“Second, we wait for the analysis results to come in. Like you’ve said before, we need to know what makes these things tick. We need to know how to kill them. In the meantime, we pound the hell out of them with the conventional capabilities we have if they resume their movement.”
The president thought for a moment, resting his chin on his palm. “And if we can’t stop them?”
“Then, sir, we cross that bridge when we come to it. There’s too much we don’t know right now, which makes it impossible for me to provide you with any viable courses of action.”
“I know you’re right, Allison. But I viscerally dislike not having options.”
“As do I, Mr. President. As do I.”
The president leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms. It seemed like his whole body ached from lack of sleep. Getting older, he thought, was a definite pain in the ass. “You disagreed with Jessie Hruska pretty strongly.”
“It’s not that I simply disagreed with her, Mr. President. I’m concerned that Ms. Hruska isn’t providing you with the correct option at the correct time. Her advocacy for the use of nuclear weapons—on American soil—was very premature in my view. Like I said, it’s not—”
“—the correct course of action based on the information we have to date.” The president finished her statement for her. “You don’t have to sell me any further, Allison. I agree with you.”
He could see Allison pause, considering what she was about to say next. It didn’t take her long.
“There’s something else, sir.”
“What is it?”
“I spoke to General Smythe immediately following the meeting. He told me the information regarding the discovery of the level 5 contaminant was, in fact, up-channeled.”
“The first time I heard about it was when Ray Smythe told me himself. Who did he—”
“Sir, Ms. Hruska has taken it upon herself to channel all communications—minus mine, obviously—through herself first. She’s controlling access to you, sir.”
The president was dumbfounded. That was definitely not how the communication flow was designed to work. “Are you sure of this?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure.”
“I’ll take care of it,” the president said. But he figured it was explainable. She’d let him sleep, waiting to wake him until it was absolutely necessary when there was new information streaming in. It was obvious she was trying to protect him, keep him from being overburdened. The president decided he’d speak to her about it when they were alone the next time. “Is there anything else, Allison?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank you for your input. I value it more than you can imagine.”
“Thank you, sir. Just doing my job.”
“And I’ve got to get back to doing mine.”
An instant before the president terminated his communication with the vice president, the secretary of defense—with Jessie Hruska—burst into the situation room.
Tank’s eyes were wide with fear. “Mr. President, they’re emerging. It’s starting again.”
CHAPTER 34
“Carolyn, you mentioned twins earlier. What did you mean?” Garrett asked.
She was standing over the charred and torn body of the humanoid thing sprawled on a stainless steel examining table in front of her. She could see Garrett’s reflection beside hers as she stared through the thick Plexiglas. “It was what the Gemini agent was designed to do: genetically produce an army of superhuman night fighters. Two at a time.”
“Two at a time?” He was listening, trying to concentrate on what she was saying, but Garrett couldn’t help but stare at the thing on the table. In the artificial light of the lab, every single detail jumped out at him—every little crevice and fold in the fiendish face, every misshapen lump of restructured bone stretching against the skin, every single coarse hair covering its body—revealed in full Technicolor detail. He’d seen the things in the dark, in the shadows, lit only by frantic muzzle flashes. They’d been almost dreamlike in a way, blurred figures in the night moving so incredibly fast, with only pairs of intense yellow eyes slicing through the blackness to mark their passage. But in this brightly lit laboratory, the thing took on a new reality. It was no longer a nightmare creature from a bad dream. It was real.
He was repulsed by what he was seeing, but still, it fascinated him. He could see that it had been a person once; tattered clothes hung from its misshapen body, pieces of a leather belt clung to its waist, and what appeared to be a high school class ring was buried into the mutated flesh of the thing’s right ring finger. For all he knew, he may have passed this person on the street or driven past him in his car just a few days ago, but now, the it that person had become was just a dead, rotting monster.
“Garrett? Are you listening?” Carolyn asked.
“Sorry. Seeing this thing up close is really—”
“Yeah, I know. He’s quite a looker, huh?”
“Not your type, I hope.”
“No, not quite. I prefer a man who won’t eat me on the first date.” Carolyn unlatched the outer covers from two of the gloves attached to the case. “Josef Mengele was fixated on twins. He’d run endless experiments on them.”
“I know. My grandmother was at Auschwitz. When she arrived, she had a twin sister.”
When she arrived. The meaning was obvious. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. My grandmother survived the camp. She didn’t talk about it much, but when I was older I started to research it on my own. I found a lot of material describing Mengele’s experiments with twins. I could never find anything that explained what he was trying to prove, though. Lots of theories, but nothing concrete.”
“The real reason died with him,” Car
olyn said. “The bastard suffered a stroke while swimming in 1979. Brazil. Nazi hunters didn’t find the body until 1985. I personally think he was just a sick Nazi bastard who was trying to perfect Hitler’s ‘master race’ by trying to understand and exploit the genetic triggers that produce twins. That’s my theory.” Carolyn reached inside the Plexiglas box and carefully pulled a strip of burned fabric away from the thing’s charred flesh. “Josef Mengele sent most of his experimental data to Berlin for safekeeping when things started going badly for the Nazis. The Russians stumbled across it when they entered the city. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that they started trying to expand on the good doctor’s work.” Carolyn tossed the piece of fabric aside. “Gemini was designed to transform a person into a completely different being, a different species. A species designed to see in the dark.” Carolyn pulled more fabric from the thing’s body. “Back then, fighting at night was much more difficult than it is today. No night vision systems. Having an army of killers that could own the night would’ve given the Soviets an incredible advantage.” She tossed the fabric aside and started on another strip. “Part of the genetic code would trigger a reproduction sequence at a certain time. The things were supposed to double their numbers at timed intervals.”
“A reproduction sequence?”
“Not what you’re accustomed to when you think reproduction. There was no physical mating involved.” Another strip of fabric pulled free, tearing off small bits of mutated flesh from the exposed ribs. “Have you ever seen pictures of a cell dividing? Maybe in junior high health class?”
“Yes. Freshman year of college, too.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be patronizing. Were you a—”
“Biology major.”
“So you know what I’m talking about, then.”
“Not really. I switched to political science the next semester. Feel free to patronize.”
Carolyn smiled. “Now imagine that cellular division happening on a much larger scale. Millions upon millions of cells. All at once.”
The Gemini Effect Page 13
