MacAlister took his men and moved off around the perimeter, heading in the direction of where they had seen the wave of lights disappear the previous night. Overnight, the red jungle had taken on a new menacing overtone. Not that it had changed in any way, of course, it was just that now they all knew something lurked in that thick mess of leaves and vines, roots and trunks. Something new to this planet.
MacAlister and his team edged their way cautiously through the thick fronds and plants of the jungle’s perimeter just beyond the security fence, using the barrels of their automatic rifles to push back the leaves. In seconds they had disappeared from her view, with only the occasional movement of one of the tall fronds to mark where they were heading.
Emily felt a pang of worry stab at her gut. What if that thing was waiting for them in there? What if it knew they were coming? She was surprised at just how concerned she was for the Scotsman. She had not realized until now how attached she had grown to him. Her affection for the man was all the more surprising considering the circumstances of their predicament. With the human race on the brink of extinction, affairs of the heart were still as distracting as they had ever been. Life had been so much easier before the end of the world, she decided.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous, she thought. What am I going to do? Stand here all day pining? No, there had to be something she could turn her hands to while they were out looking for signs of their fallen comrade. She needed to keep occupied, to keep moving. Idle hands are the devil’s tools and all that.
Reluctantly, she released her hold on the fence and headed back to Building One.
Emily occupied her mind by helping the remaining sailors chop through the plants still covering the space between Building One and the surrounding offices. They had managed to remove a good-size swath of the weeds between them when there was a yell from the sentry stationed at the main gate.
Emily looked up and saw MacAlister and his men stepping back into the base. She let out a long sigh of relief at sight of him and then mentally kicked herself for allowing him to get under her skin so damn easily. Sneaky bastard, she thought. She had always been a sucker for a man in a uniform, and when you threw in the accent…well, she guessed she could be forgiven for caring.
Emily dropped her machete and began walking over to meet them.
“No sign of Collins,” MacAlister was telling Captain Constantine as she drew closer to them. “The vegetation is so dense in there it might just as well be the jungles of Borneo. We could have walked right by him and never known it.”
“We are going to need to push that forest back if we want to maintain any kind of security around the perimeter,” the captain said, his hand methodically stroking his beard as he spoke. “Suggestions?”
“It’s going to take forever to chop that stuff down, it’s just far too dense and I wouldn’t be able to guarantee anyone’s safety while they were beyond the fence. Hell, I can’t even guarantee their safety this side of the wire, but I don’t see we have much in the way of a choice. I’ll start organizing teams once we’re done with clearing inside the perimeter.”
“Why don’t we just burn it?” Emily suggested.
“If we had access to flamethrowers, or some napalm even, that might work but we don’t carry anything like that onboard the sub,” said MacAlister.
“But there’s a fuel depot on the other side of the compound,” said Emily, pointing to the aboveground fuel tank she had recognized when they’d first arrived. “Couldn’t we just siphon it off and burn the vegetation line back?”
Both men looked in the direction she was pointing.
“It’s risky,” said the captain. “Keeping it under control is going to be difficult. All it’s going to take is a stray ember on one of these roofs and we could have a major problem on our hand. And fuel is going to be at a premium from this point onward, who knows if we’ll find more anytime soon.”
“If we put bodies on every roof we should be able to cover any risk of fire, so long as we choose the right time,” Emily explained. “And there’s a pretty consistent breeze coming in off the ocean that should push the fire and smoke away from us…probably.”
MacAlister and the captain stared wordlessly at each other as they silently thought over Emily’s suggestion.
“What do you think?” Constantine asked MacAlister.
“It’d have the added advantage of potentially driving back anything…” MacAlister paused as he searched for the right word “…undesirable that’s shacked up in there too, skipper. It could certainly take care of two problems.
“The vegetation isn’t dry,” he continued, “so that should go a long way to helping keep the chance of the fire spreading down to a manageable level. If we concentrate on small areas at a time, and have a crew ready to catch it before it spreads, we should be okay.” He shrugged and nodded, “Yeah. I think it could work.”
Captain Constantine considered the options. His hand was stroking his beard again in what had become an obvious tell of concentration to Emily.
“Alright, I’m convinced. Let’s give it a shot, shall we?”
“Good thinking, Emily,” said MacAlister as they walked across the newly cleared area of the camp. He smiled and gave her elbow a light squeeze.
Emily felt herself flush bright red. “Goddamn it,” she muttered under her breath, but enjoyed the warm tingle she felt anyway.
Two crews, most of them bare-chested and soaked in sweat by what had become an afternoon that hit the high seventies, cut a six-foot-deep firebreak around the edge of the west fence. One crew chopped away at the stubborn trunks and branches, another made sure the debris was moved clear of the slowly forming firebreak.
Emily helped cart off the debris and stacked it in piles along the beach. Rhiannon busied herself bringing water to the men.
The gap between the fence and the new edge of the jungle would give them enough space to keep the fire from leaping to any of the closer buildings. Captain Constantine ordered sailors onto each roof with at least two handheld fire extinguishers apiece that they collected from the buildings. Two “floating” pairs of sailors would be on standby, ready to mop up any stray fires that might flare-up around the camp.
If the worst happened, and the fire managed to get a toehold within the camp, they were all under orders to retreat to the beach and the safety of the sea.
When the break was completed all personnel not in MacAlister’s “pyromaniacs”—his name for the three-man team that would be setting the fires—were to retreat to a safe distance. They moved to the seashore where they could still have a decent view of MacAlister and his men as they set the fire.
MacAlister laid a line of gas from the start of the break then twenty feet out along the edge. As he walked back he doused the foliage and leaves with a second jerrican of gasoline. He emptied the last drops from the last jerrican and tossed it away, checked the wind direction one final time—it was good, blowing northwest, away from the camp—then lit a makeshift torch made from a broken broom handle wrapped with gas-soaked rags. MacAlister ducked as the flames from the torch flared dangerously close to his face. He held the burning torch at arm’s length for a few moments to ensure it was completely lit, then took two steps closer to the jungle and tossed it into the gas-soaked vegetation.
There was a bright flare and the front of the jungle bloomed with orange flames that sped along the path of the accelerant laid by MacAlister, who was quickly backing away from the conflagration. The flames leaped from plant to plant, and curling tongues of orange fire crept up thick trunks, consuming leaves and branches.
In seconds, what had been a lush, impenetrable jungle became a maelstrom of flames that leaped ten feet above the highest point of the canopy. A thick cloud of red-tinged smoke rose from the fire and then whirled into a funnel that began reaching toward the heavens, twisting and roiling as it was driven higher into the air by the hot a
ir beneath it.
Minutes passed and a line of smoking, blackened stalks that sprouted from the bare ground for about six feet back from the firebreak formed as the fire devoured the vegetation. Emily caught a whiff of the pungent smoke as it floated across the distance to her. It reeked of a chemical causticity so unlike normal burning vegetation that Emily couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the odor was. It reminded her of the smell of disinfectant that seemed to permeate every inch of any hospital she had ever spent time in. Whatever these plants used to draw their energy from the sun, it was not chlorophyll.
MacAlister was jogging back toward the gate, a wet cloth pressed to his mouth, his back to the fire now as it pushed away from him. His eyes caught Emily, Rhiannon, and Thor watching him, and he raised his right hand to give her a thumbs-up that turned into a wave.
Despite her best inner intentions, Emily found herself smiling and waving back. She glanced at Rhiannon and saw the little girl staring up at her, a huge grin on her face.
“What?” Emily demanded. Rhiannon said nothing, and turned to watch the show, giggling like a five-year-old.
“You’re an evil munchkin,” said Emily as she gave Rhiannon a gentle bump with her hip that sent the girl stumbling slightly, and brought more cackling laughter from her.
Emily and Rhiannon began walking toward MacAlister. The fire raged behind him, crackling flames dancing like dervishes against the gradually darkening sky, elongating Mac’s shadow to three times its normal length.
Something fell out of the fire, about halfway along the break. At first, Emily though it was a burning tree trunk that had toppled to the ground. An ear-piercing screech shattered the evening air, removing all doubt that, whatever this was, it was alive, and it was truly pissed. The thing leaped and rolled in the dirt, trying to extinguish the hungry flames licking the majority of its huge body. It rolled and tumbled for a second more and then it began to run.
Straight at MacAlister’s back.
In the few seconds before the burning creature reached MacAlister, Emily’s mind registered several things: The creature was easily ten feet long, although it was hard to tell exactly as it writhed and rolled so violently. It had four muscular legs that drove it across the ground like a lizard, but the thick body—at least, the parts that were not already a blackened, burned goo—was covered in a red fur that extended from the base of the tail all along its body to the head. The head was long and narrow, like a crocodile’s, but as the creature ran it let out another scream of pain, its jaws opening from right to left instead of up and down. There were teeth in that mouth, large, serrated teeth that Emily saw briefly before the jaws snapped together in agony. Its eyes were huge, raised on a broad skull and wide open, fixed on the back of MacAlister, who was still oblivious to the rapidly advancing creature as it pounded across the space between them.
Emily saw the sailors scattered around the edge of the fire line react as they spotted the creature, some dropped to a knee and raised their weapons to their shoulders, while others just began to fire from their standing position. The air was suddenly full of the sound of thunder as the weapons, set to fully automatic, unleashed a hail of bullets in the direction of the creature bearing down on MacAlister…
…who instinctively ducked and turned at the sound of the gunfire, just as the flaming thing barreled past him, its burning body sideswiping MacAlister and sending him flying toward the wall of flames. Emily saw him hit the ground hard, roll once as he tried to push himself to his feet before collapsing. The gunfire stopped momentarily when the creature careened into the Scotsman, and Emily felt her breath freeze in her chest; then it was gone, passing MacAlister’s motionless body, more concerned with outrunning the fire that clung to its skin than the puny human that it could have undoubtedly devoured in a second if it had been so inclined.
“Shit!” she yelled, but in her mind she was yelling at MacAlister, Get up! Get up, goddammit!
It looks like a dragon, she thought as she watched one huge foot come down close to the unconscious man’s head.
The gunfire began again as soon as the thing was clear of MacAlister and Emily saw chunks of skin pop from the creature as the sailors’ weapons finally found their mark. The barrage of gunfire and the effects of the flames began to take their toll on the creature and it slowed to a virtual crawl. That gave the sailors time to readjust their position, advancing on the creature as it continued to drag itself, one huge clawed foot laboriously after the other, over the still-smoking ground.
It’s heading to the ocean, Emily realized. The creature, undoubtedly mortally wounded now, was trying to extinguish the fire with water. It was intelligent then, clever enough to know what fire was and what water would do for its pain.
The advancing soldiers emptied clip after clip into the creature’s heaving body, until, finally, it stopped, shuddered once along its entire body, and lay still.
The shooting died away.
Emily was running then. Sprinting toward the prostrate MacAlister. As she drew closer, she could see his jacket was smoldering slightly, a thin spiral of smoke also rose from a patch of singed hair. She skidded to a halt beside him and heaved him over onto his back. His eyes were closed and a trickle of blood ran from his nostrils down over his cheek. There was a nasty burn on the left side of his forehead where the flaming creature had struck him; the skin was already blistering there. She dropped her ear to his lips: He was breathing. Thank God!
Rhiannon reached them, Thor pulling her along like the sled dog he was, his leash stretched to its limit. The other sailors seemed to be more interested in ensuring the creature was dead, most of them were advancing on it, the barrels of their weapons not straying from the motionless body. A couple of other men seemed frozen in place, unsure of what they should be doing or what they had just seen.
“Grab his arm,” Emily yelled at Rhiannon, struggling to be heard over the roar of the advancing flames, her eyes checking the fire line as it continued to rage and devour the jungle just twenty feet or so away. She could feel the heat beginning to singe the small hairs on her arms as she grabbed MacAlister’s left wrist. Rhiannon did the same with his right hand and they tried to lift him but he was just too heavy.
“Pull, don’t try to lift,” Emily yelled.
The two women dug their heels into the soft ground and began to tug the unconscious soldier back toward the fence line. He weighed a freaking ton, but inch by precious inch they dragged him away from the flames of the fire.
A pair of arms seemed to appear from nowhere, reaching past her, grabbing MacAlister by the collar of his combat jacket. Another pair of hands reached over her own and grabbed the front of the jacket as another sailor ran past them and lifted MacAlister’s legs off the ground.
Suddenly Emily was stumbling backward as Mac’s weight was lifted from her. Then she was running alongside the sailors as they carried his unconscious body back to the safety of the encampment and the waiting medic.
She felt a childlike fear grip her, irrational and overwhelming. But wasn’t that what fear was, at its essence? A direct conduit to the inner child, through all the armor and fortifications that we build as adults. Fear always managed to find that quivering child hiding in the center of every human, surrounded by darkness and cowering in the slowly dimming light of an exhausted candle.
As they ran for the gate they passed the smoldering body of the thing that had leapt from the fire. Flames still flickered along its flank. She could smell burning meat and the astringent reek of singed fur. It stank to high heavens and beyond. The creature lay on its side, its body twisted, huge jaws hanging wide open, a pink tongue, bleeding from where it had bitten itself in terror and agony, hanging from between razor teeth. One large round eye stared sightlessly toward the smoke-filled sky. The body was riddled with bullet holes.
They dragged MacAlister through the gates and straight to the waiting medic.
“Is he
going to be alright?” Rhiannon asked, as she pushed herself close to Emily.
“Hard to tell at the moment,” said Amar, as he ran his fingers around the cut on MacAlister’s head, trying to gauge how deep the laceration was. He pressed harder and the soldier’s eyes fluttered open, flicking first to Amar, then to Emily and Rhiannon, then back to the Amar.
“Do you make a habit of taking advantage of unconscious men?” MacAlister asked, his eyes on Emily again, his voice croaky, as though he had just woken up from a deep sleep. “Or is this what counts as a first date where you come from?” he added as he struggled to sit up.
“Why don’t you just lay there a while so I can get a better look at you?” Amar insisted.
“Not going to happen. I’m fine.”
With help from Emily and Rhiannon, MacAlister climbed to his feet. He wobbled for a second, leaning hard on Emily, and his arm slipped around her shoulder as his own hand found its way to her waist.
“You could have a concussion or a fractured skull for all I know,” Amar continued, his exasperation obvious.
“I’ve taken worse knocks from your grandmother,” MacAlister retorted. “Now, would someone like to tell me what the hell just happened?”
She had miscalculated.
Both the captain and MacAlister insisted that they were as much to blame, but it had been Emily’s idea to set the fire and she bore the responsibility completely for it getting out of hand. Her miscalculation had been in the ill-founded belief that the new plant life would react the same as the old; that if it wasn’t dry, it would not burn. They had been wrong. She had been wrong.
The alien vegetation seemed particularly susceptible to fire, far more so than any Earth fauna that Emily had ever encountered before the red rain had come. What had started out as an attempt at a small controlled burn had escalated quickly into a ravaging conflagration as the fire MacAlister set ignited acre upon acre of the alien jungle around the camp. It devoured the vegetation like some ravenous monster. A huge tower of smoke rose from the fire, rolling into the air and blocking out the sun through the rest of the evening and into the next day.
Revelations (Extinction Point, Book 3) Page 10
