“Level 2? I have no idea what you are talking about,” Bachman said. He wanted to shout at the scientist, but he simply didn’t have the energy.
“I need food and somewhere to sleep,” he stated.
“We should be so lucky,” he joked while laughing. He then realized Bachman wasn’t making a joke.
“General Gordon stated he needs you to analyze the situation on Level 2. The pod is acting strangely!”
“Pod?” Bachman’s head was pounding. “You got to be fucking kidding me, there’s a pod here?” Bachman wanted to strangle the man.
“Of course.” Doctor Tracey looked confused.
“I thought they destroyed the pod from Groom Lake? Why destroy the facility if they were just going to move it?”
“Oh, they did nuke it,” he said a matter of fact, “this is the pod that used to reside near Bear Lake in Canada. It was gifted to us by our neighboring nation. No one knows its here apart from a select few.”
“Un-fucking-believable!” Bachman gripped his head.
The stupidity of man will be our downfall.
“And we have to hurry,” Doctor Tracey stated all flustered, “from what I’ve been told, it’s reproducing.”
PART THREE
The Pods
46
Naomi, and the others
Mole Town hospital
A military installation outside New York City
Naomi’s mouth was dry. Cottonmouth would be a good description for it. In her opinion, it was the only drawback to the drugs she took.
She had just had the most bizarre dream. The infected were bloated beyond recognition, but instead of laying in wait, poised on the ground, they were floating around, bumping into buildings, exploding. Instead of spores, colorful jellybeans poured from their ruptured bodies, like piñatas. And on the floating bodies was miniature Sticky Sid’s, riding them like rodeo bulls. He had an overlarge white hat that he was swinging around in one skinny arm while screaming “Yeehaw!” His skin was all blue, with ruptured eye capillaries, and shit and piss running down his legs, streaming off into the wind like a flapping tail of a kite.
Naomi lay on her wide back. She kept her eyes closed. She had no interest in what the others were doing. They were annoying her though. They were banging and clattering around. The noise was what had originally woken her up.
Then a scream made her jerk up in bed. It wasn’t a whining, or playful scream; it was the sound of pain – someone was getting hurt.
While rubbing her aching eyes, Naomi realized what was happening. The ward was full of soldiers.
“Where are the others?” A soldier had Juan gripped around the neck, choking him.
“Leave my brother alone,” Bonnie shouted. She was slapped hard across the face, which made her fall back onto her bed.
“What the fuck?” Naomi swung her feet over the side of the bed. Am I still tripping?
“We don’t know where they have gone,” the Reverend stated, as he stood facing a wall with a barrel pointed to the back of his neck. “We mean you no harm. There’s no need for violence. We are American citizens!” Frank held his arms over his head in the sign of surrender.
“You’re not on a podium now, priest,” a soldier said as he rammed the butt of his rifle into the base of Frank’s spine. He dropped onto his knees.
Tierra tried to calm Dante down. His screams pierced everyone’s ears. It was making a dangerous situation tenser.
“Shut that kid up, or I will do it for you,” a brutish soldier shouted, who had a long scar down the left side of his face.
Tierra buried her sons head on her shoulder trying to muffle his cries. He was having none of it; he bucked and wiggled, trying to break free, while screaming louder.
“I don’t know where they went,” Juan said. His face was bright red. He wished he had his gun; he would have emptied the clip by now. “They simply upped and left,” he lied. He didn’t care if they were also captured, but right at this minute they were the only hope they had left.
The commanding officer came strolling in from the hallway. It was the same man from earlier, who had first surrounded their truck.
“Problem?” he questioned. They could hear the leather stretching over his gloved hands.
The soldier that was holding Juan around the neck, released him and pushed him face down on the bed.
“Four are missing, Captain Stitt.”
“Four?” He inclined his head to the left a little.
“Yes, Sir. The two black men, the skinny red neck and the youngish man.”
“They couldn’t have gotten far, now, could they?” He was stood looking down at Bonnie. He licked his lips.
Bonnie rubbed her face. She knew that look; it was a look her father always had on his face when he looked at her.
“Have the men put with the others, and explain the new situation to the women.” He turned towards the soldier holding Juan down, and sarcastically said, “And if you could check the cameras and find out where the others have got to, that would be great. And find out who’s manning them and why an alarm wasn’t sounded?”
Naomi was sat on the edge of her bed. The soldiers were ignoring her, presuming an overweight person wasn’t a threat. Or maybe they hadn’t noticed she had woken up yet.
A soldier was putting a cable tie around Jessica’s wrists.
“Don’t worry babe, I will treat you gentle,” he said as he gripped her hair and pulled her head back, and licked her face from chin to forehead.
Jessica struggled, disgusted, while whimpering.
The soldier slapped her ass, squeezing a cheek hard, making her wince.
“Don’t worry babe, I can be kind. I will bring you sweet things. Nice things.”
“I want nothing from you,” she spat.
“Oh, trust me; you have no choice in the matter. With none of your men to defend you, you will do anything we want.”
Fuck it! Naomi thought. She saw and heard enough, and still had enough drugs in her system to make her impulsive.
Naomi hopped to the floor; bent and gripped the chair with both hands, then swung her weight around, carrying the heavy chair at chest level. She then charged at the soldier who was roughly pushing Jessica back onto the hospital bed.
In the split second it took for the other soldiers to realize what was about to happen, it was already too late. Naomi caught the soldier in the back, pushing him along with her own momentum. The man hit the large window face first. His forehead cracked the glass as the rest of his body flew out the broken window, followed by the chair.
47
Alex and Troy
Mole Town hospital
A military installation outside New York City
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Alex said. “Why are they beating up civilians?”
Troy didn’t answer. He was checking the corridor for more soldiers. He slowly inched the door open wider after listening for a minute. Troy grabbed Alex’s arm and headed off in the direction the soldiers had come from.
“Maybe he did something wrong, you know, like steal, or attack a female, or something?” Alex was clutching at straws, deep down; he knew everything about this place seemed wrong.
“This way,” Troy muttered.
They reached the ground floor of the hospital. At the end of one corridor, there were voices. Slowly, they inched their way towards them.
The ER section had all the lights blaring, with machines pinging, beeping, and puffing. Military male and female medics wandered about between the sectioned off emergency bays. On each bed was a male. Each was joined to a machine. They were all unconscious.
Troy noticed Cody. His body was limp, attached to what looked like a morphine drip. Troy knew what a morphine drip was because he had been attached to one for two days when he had kidney stone’s several years back.
“Jesus, what are they doing?” Alex whispered.
However, Alex didn’t need a reply; it was obvious what was happening here. It didn’t t
ake much to realize they were a group of renegade soldiers. Most forms of communication had broken down the week before. Maybe they were slicing out a piece of land for themselves. Hoarding females, sedating men who could be a problem. For now, they were keeping males drugged. However, in another week or so they may decide that’s a waste of time and effort and just kill them.
As each day passes, man takes another step away from humanity. Who knows how bad the world will be in a month’s time? Alex wondered.
Troy scanned the rest of the ER. There were just two soldiers leaning against a counter, chatting with a few female medics. Both were facing away from them.
They backtracked a little and found a propped open fire exit. It led out into a back alley. They found themselves out in the cool afternoon air. Dark pewter clouds boiled above the gap in the buildings. It was going to rain soon.
One end of the alley was blocked by a wall. They slowly crept into the alley’s mouth.
The main street outside was empty. There were no sounds or people, just old Christmas decorations swinging in the breeze.
Suddenly, a crashing sound made them turn and look up. A window exploded outwards, quickly followed by a body, then a chair. The man, chair, and glass fragments sailed through the air in slow motion. The glass tinkled down onto the concrete. The man made a wet, smacking sound, accompanied by the cracking of bones. The chair shattered into splinters.
“Shit, was that where we were?”
Troy didn’t answer.
The ragdoll of a body twenty feet away was that of a soldier.
Troy ran over. He unclipped a handgun from the dead mans belt, then rummaged for ammo, as a pool of blood started gathering around the mans pulped head.
“Down there!” someone shouted.
Alex looked up.
There was a soldier looking out of the smashed window. A barrel of a gun swung over the window lip. Bullets sprayed down into the alley, ricocheting off the walls and ground.
“Fuck!” Alex shouted as he jumped back into the doorway as a bullet pinged off the large metal industrial bin.
Troy cocked the handgun and fired three shots up at the window. It was unlikely he had hit anyone, but the bullets stopped raining down as the soldier jumped back for cover.
“Run!” Troy shouted.
Alex followed as Troy headed out the mouth of the alley.
48
Terrance and Lindell
Mole Town hospital
A military installation outside New York City
Terrance crouched down by the window. They had just heard a loud shattering sound, as if a window had been broken. It was followed by shouting. Then a heartbeat later, gunfire. The gunfire echoed throughout the corridors.
“Shit, that sounded like it came from our ward,” Lindell stated.
They were looking out the wrong window. They didn’t see the body or chair sail past.
On hands and knees, they scuttled across to the entrance to the ward. They didn’t want to stand up too close to the window, in case the people below were looking up, trying to locate where the noise was originating from.
“We need to get back up there, see what is happening.”
Terrance nodded at his brother’s statement.
“God, what I wouldn’t give for a weapon right about now,” Lindell muttered.
Lindell was concerned with the people being herded into the truck below, but there was nothing he could do to help them. For now, he had to concentrate on himself and his brother, and see what was happening to the rest of their group.
Slowly, they made their way back to the stairwell. Whoever was up there using a weapon had obviously come from the other side of the hospital, because they didn’t pass anyone on the way down. Therefore, the likelihood was they would return the way they came. They hoped.
Lindell tapped his brother on the shoulder.
“Here,” he motioned with his head.
Lindell lifted a dusty heart monitor off the trolley and placed it on the floor. He then turned the metal trolley upside down. His brother realized what he was doing. Together they started unscrewing legs. When they finished they had a two-foot metal bar each, with a castor wheel at the end.
The wheel was wobbly and noisy, so with a little pressure against a wall, they managed to bend the supports enough to get the wheels to come away, leaving sharp metal on the end. Perfect.
Whoever was upstairs had guns. They needed all the help they could get.
With Lindell in front, they headed back up the stairs. As they stood looking through the small glass window of the door, they could see six soldiers marching the priest and Juan down the corridor. The officer they had met before was walking up front, with all the confidence of a man in command of a small army.
That meant the females were hopefully still in the ward. But were they alone?
As the group disappeared round the corner, the two brothers headed down the corridor. They listened to the footsteps recede into the distance. However, they could hear pleading and crying, then the sound of someone being slapped across the face.
Quickly, they jogged as quietly as possible to the entrance of their ward.
They felt responsible for the women; they brought them here. They should have followed their instincts when their guts told them something was wrong. But the world outside was so bad, and it was now humanity against whatever the creatures were; they presumed other humans, especially soldiers, would be on their side.
They rounded the corner of their ward. After a quick glance, they noticed only two soldiers were left behind.
Naomi was unconscious upon the floor, bleeding from a head wound.
Jessica was cuffed, with her clothing around her ankles, with her bare backside in the air. Her bra had also been ripped off and tossed to the floor; she was leaning over her bed, with a skinny, bearded soldier behind her undoing his trousers.
Bonnie was also tied up, with her top pulled up, showing her small colorful bra, and some of the buttons of her jeans were undone showing a strip of bright pink panties. However, a soldier wasn’t stood over her, instead the other soldier had a screaming Dante held in his arms, as he strode towards the window, while Tierra was hysterical, pleading with him, as she tried to grab her son back. The soldier kicked her in the stomach with his large black boot, as he hoisted the child up into the air to toss the annoying, crying kid out the broken window.
49
Doctor Bachman
Underground military facility
Quirauk Mountain, Pennsylvania
“You got to be shitting me?” Bachman cried. “They are meant to be destroyed!” He was following the scientist to the elevator.
“If we destroy it, then how would we be able to study it?” Doctor Tracey stated, with an exasperated tone, as if the answer was obvious.
Soldiers and other scientists strode past, unconcerned with the heated discussion. Shouting and arguing had become the norm over the last few weeks; people normally put their heads down and walked faster in case they were drawn into it.
“But the infected are being controlled by them. If one is still operational, then the creatures are still a threat. They can work as a group rather than individually.”
People can be so fucking stupid!
“And General Gordon was the main voice to have the pods destroyed!”
“True. He knew that if only one remained, and we could learn to control it, we can control all the infected. A ready-made army.”
“Jesus!” Bachman leaned against the elevator wall. He gripped his head as the lift silently descended.
“It’s all for the best; you’ll see.”
Bachman lowered his hands and looked at the doctor. He really did mean it. He thought everything would work out. Just because he has a PhD, it doesn’t mean he’s not stupid!
“How long has the pod been in this facility?”
“Going on eight years.”
“Eight!” He presumed it had been moved recently. That means when Ge
neral Gordon acted surprised at seeing Groom Lakes pod, he was doing it for the Directors benefit. He was eager to have our pod destroyed so when he convinced the Director to warn the President, he would have the only operational pod left. All cloak and daggers. Bastard!
Bachman decided to put the anger aside, it would gain him nothing, except raise his blood pressure.
“What have you learned?”
The tubby doctor became animated.
“So much, especially over the last three or so weeks. Before it was like it was dormant – sleeping. Then suddenly the monitors went off the scales.”
Bachman knew this already. The pod at Groom Lake acted similar. The release of the spores in Madagascar has stirred the pods to life.
“The pod is pouring out electromagnetic radiation, similar to a Dipole antenna, and very low frequency radio waves, in a pulse. The wavelength started of between the strength of a microwave radar and human body heat, and then it slowly started to intensify, becoming dangerous. It is now equivalent, to say between an x-ray and gamma ray in strength, and rising daily.”
“That’s a wavelength of around 10-18 to 10-20 meters?”
“About that yes.”
“That’s very strong. Is the pod isolated inside a shielded area?” He was concerned that all the time he had spent in the bunker he was being bombarded with invisible radiation, and the lift was getting closer to the source with every second it descended.
“Obviously, we are not amateurs, Doctor Bachman.”
Could have fooled me, keeping one of those things intact.
“The chamber is completely shielded, from all known wavelengths, and we will have to put on containment clothing to be able to approach it inside its chamber.”
“Why the hell would I want to approach it?”
“Because you need to see it up close. You studied the pod at Groom Lake longer than anyone in this facility. Your expertise is needed to evaluate the situation.”
The Sixth Extinction: America (Omnibus Edition | Books 1 – 8) Page 15
