by James Axler
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Morgan said. “Dr. Markus said you were recovering nicely and resting, and I thought I would simply sit and wait until you woke up.”
“That’s...quite all right, Morgan. I just...didn’t expect to see anyone sitting right there when I woke up.”
He nodded. “How are you feeling?”
“Better...but I’m awfully weak.... Feel like I was just out marching through the desert with no water for days.” Mildred licked her lips before asking the next question. “Do they know what happened to me?”
A faint line appeared on Morgan’s forehead. “The preliminary tests show that you had ingested some sort of poison. They’re still trying to analyze samples to find out what type. This is going to sound like a very odd question, but...you haven’t knowingly taken anything poisonous, have you?”
Mildred had heard that the best way to defeat a lie detector test was to think of a question that corresponded correctly to the answer that you wanted to give, especially if that answer was a lie to the question asked by the interrogator. So she just kept thinking the soap was nontoxic, the soap was nontoxic while she looked at him and shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
A brief smile flitted across his mouth but didn’t come close to his eyes. “Of course not. Forget I asked.”
“Well, now that you mention it...” In for a penny, in for a pound. “The day you folks caught me, we ate some of the scavvies’ food, and to be honest, I thought that some of the meat didn’t taste quite right. It’s possible I got a case of food poisoning. I mean, I did throw up earlier, right after we visited the Mind. Does that help any?”
“Perhaps. I’ll mention it to the doctor.” He hesitated a moment, then seemed to come to some sort of internal decision. “Have you thought any more about our conversation outside the bathing room?”
Mildred tried not to smile. This was ground she could cover with him. “I have, and I do have some questions about it.”
He leaned forward slightly. “Of course. I’ll answer whatever I can. If there are more complicated ones, you may have to speak to the Mind directly.”
“I just have a few fairly simple ones right now,” she replied. “Although it doesn’t look comfortable, I assume it doesn’t hurt very much...as it goes down?”
Morgan’s answering smile was real this time. “I can tell you it is a bit uncomfortable at first, kind of like you’re choking on a huge bite of squishy meat, but once it’s past the esophagus, you hardly notice it’s there.”
Mildred nodded. “That was the other thing that confused me. A symbiote enters its host through the mouth, I got that. But surely they don’t reside in the stomach or intestine, right?”
Morgan actually laughed at that. “I think you’re the very first person who ever asked about that. You’re correct. Once the symbiote is in the stomach, it creates a slit—healing the cut after it goes out, of course—and exits to settle into the body. Typically they flatten out and align along the spine. It’s the easiest place to access the nervous system. Once they’re settled, you don’t even know that they’re there.”
Of course not, because they’re already influencing your every thought—or taking over control entirely. “Thank you, Morgan, that is very helpful. I’ll probably have some more questions later, but I’m still pretty tired and would like to rest now.”
“Yes, please do,” Morgan replied. “We’ll talk again after you’ve recovered a bit more. I look forward to it.”
“Me, too.” Mildred leaned her head back against her pillow, the implied message clear. Morgan nodded and rose from his chair, taking it back to the nurses’ station before leaving the room.
Mildred closed her eyes until they were mere slits. The rest of her plan relied on stealth, timing and more than a bit of luck. She had only one more major problem to overcome—how to get to the brain without being detected on the way?
As she stared at the ceiling, thinking and thinking, she noticed the nozzle of what looked like a water sprinkler above her head. Mildred opened her eyes wide and looked over to see two more in the room, making her smile.
I couldn’t have asked for a better solution to the problem....
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ricky shoved the truck’s throttle forward, making the vehicle shoot across the desert floor.
“Faster, Ricky!” Jak shouted, holding an M4 with one hand and on to the roll bar with the other.
“Not so fast that you get us killed!” J.B. shouted right after him. He’d slung his longblaster over his shoulder and was holding on to the safety bar with both hands, flexing his knees to absorb the jouncing as the truck rattled over the desert hardpan. “You might as well sling that.” He nodded at Jak’s rifle. “No way you’ll get a shot off bouncing around like this.”
“Mebbe—” Jak started to reply as J.B. saw the lights of the truck they were pursuing bounce crazily for a moment.
“What was that, Ricky?” he shouted into the cab’s open sliding back window.
“I don’t know. Hang on!” he shouted as he slammed the throttle ahead to its farthest point.
J.B. only had time to see the gully appear in front of them before the truck raced off the edge, falling through the air to crash onto the ground with a bone-rattling impact. J.B. barely had time to brace himself, but he managed to stay upright even as something smacked painfully into his ankle. But even with his phenomenal reflexes, Jak had been caught off guard and was nearly thrown out of the truck bed. He hung on to the roll bar with one hand, dangling above the blurring prairie and scrub brush as it passed under his feet.
“Hold on, Jak!” J.B. worked his way over, but before he could grab him, the truck suddenly slewed hard to the left, making him almost fall over. The direction change shoved Jak against the side of the truck as Ricky almost sideswiped the rock wall. But before he could push off it to scramble back inside, Ricky gunned the electric motor, and they took off again.
“Take my hand!” J.B. reached out with his left while keeping a death grip on the bar with his right. Jak grabbed for it once and missed, but the second time he connected. The instant his grip was firm, J.B. hauled him back aboard. He pulled so hard that he toppled over, with Jak falling on top of him. “Dark night, get off me!”
Jak started to rise just as a burst of bullets cut through the air where he would have stood up. Ducking again, he crawled to the tailgate and peeked up over it.
“Second truck!” he shouted. “Gimme longblaster!”
J.B. looked around and found it had slid to the right side of the truck. He grabbed the barrel and passed it over to the albino. “Ricky, you still on Ryan’s?”
“Yeah,” the teen shouted back. “Were those gunshots?”
“Yeah—second truck’s following us! Keep your head down. I’m going to take them out!” J.B. shouted back as Jak let loose with his carbine on full auto. “That is, if trigger-happy there doesn’t blow through all our ammo first,” he muttered.
He unslung his longblaster and slid back to end up next to Jak. “Stop spraying and praying, dammit! We don’t have unlimited ammo! Switch to three-round burst and pick your shots!”
“I was!” he shouted back as more bullets passed overhead, several of them putting holes in the back window. “I just fired three in a row!”
“One at a time! Like this!” J.B. popped up and aimed at the driver’s side of the windshield. He was just squeezing the trigger when the truck swerved underneath him, making his burst go wild.
“Like how again?” Jak asked.
“Shut up. The truck moved. It wasn’t my fault!” J.B. poked his head up again, only to see the pursuing truck was now less than ten yards away. The shooters, firing from behind the cab, peppered the bed with bullets, forcing Jak and J.B. to huddle behind the tailgate, which was already punctured by several bullets. For
tunately, both trucks were bouncing so hard over the terrain that accuracy was almost impossible. Meanwhile, the chase truck got closer and closer, until it slammed into their rear bumper.
“This bullshit!” Jak shouted.
“I’m open to suggestions!” J.B. called back.
“On three, both fire at the blasters above!” Jak shouted, conspicuously flicking his selector to full auto.
“Oh, what the hell.” J.B. did the same. “You ready?” Jak nodded.
“Ricky!” J.B. called to the cab.
“Yeah?”
“Find a smooth spot and tell us when you hit it, okay?”
“Oka— Now!”
“Shit—go!”
The two popped up and unloaded the rest of their magazines at the top of the cab. J.B. still fired bursts, longer ones that he walked over the top and into the shadowy forms standing behind the cab. Jak was less methodical, trying to aim for a spot the size of a dinner plate and put all his rounds into it.
The flare from the longblasters in his face made the driver reflexively turn his truck away, hard enough that one of the shooters fell out, his body tumbling over the hard ground and sliding to a stop as the trucks sped away. J.B. was grimly satisfied to see that he didn’t get up.
“Coming back!” Jak shouted as he reloaded. “Last mag!”
And there was still one blaster in the chasing truck, as the scattered bursts of bullets proved.
“Damn, this guy doesn’t know when to die!” J.B. said. He rested the barrel of his M4 on the top of the tailgate and put a burst into the windshield, but the glass only starred, it didn’t break. “Son of a— The windshield’s bulletproof!”
“Got idea,” Jak shouted. “Get him closer!”
“Ricky, slow down a bit!” J.B. called to the front. He felt the truck slow a touch, and sure enough, the driver behind them took the bait, accelerating to within ten yards again. “Okay, now what?”
“Closer—closer!”
“Black dust, Jak, how far up our ass do you want him?” J.B. asked, just as the truck surged forward and smashed into their bumper again.
“That works!” Jak said as he stood up and stepped onto the edge of the tailgate.
“Jak, no!” J.B. saw what he was doing too late and moved to grab him, but the albino was already in the air.
Using only his good leg, Jak leaped up and onto the cab of the pursuit truck, landing nearly in front of the remaining blasterman. The move was so unexpected that it completely stunned the shooter, allowing Jak to slide across the rooftop and plant his boot sole into the guy’s face. His head snapped back, and both he and his weapon went flying, him down into the truck bed, and the longblaster away into the night.
J.B. couldn’t see what was happening after that, but there was a bright flash and a blinding series of explosions, as if something had detonated inside the cab, and it immediately began slowing down.
“Ricky, hold up!” J.B. peeked out and saw both of the truck doors open and white smoke billowing out. Two smoking figures fell out of the cab to the ground and started crawling away. Then the truck, its cab still filled with smoke, started moving forward, seemingly by itself. In a few seconds it had pulled up alongside theirs, the smoke rapidly dissipating to reveal Jak behind the wheel.
“What waitin’ for?” he shouted. “Let’s get Ryan and Mildred!”
“Right, hang on!” J.B. jumped from his cargo bed into the other truck’s and swung into the passenger seat just as a blaster shot shattered the back window. “Go, go, go!” Needing no more encouragement, Jak hit the throttle, and the truck rocketed forward.
“What happened back there?” J.B. asked while he reloaded his longblaster.
“Fuckers threw flash-bang gren into back,” Jak said while hunched over the wheel. “Tossed back in. Went off. They got out.”
“Nice. Sure you’re good to drive?” J.B. asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Jak replied.
The two trucks followed the single set of tire treads left by Ryan’s vehicle into the dark night. Eventually they left the arroyo and climbed up onto the other side of it.
However, the moment they did, both came under withering fire from a half dozen longblasters. Ricky and Jak cranked over their steering wheels, peeling off right and left respectively as their windshields starred into uselessness under the assault. Unable to even try to return fire, J.B. hunched in the passenger compartment, praying that the electric engine was solid enough to stop the fusillade coming their way. Feeling a stinging pain in his leg, he knew it hadn’t stopped all of them.
A loud grinding noise erupted from beneath the vehicle, and it shuddered and ground to a halt partially on a small rise. The bullets kept coming, but then slackened off, allowing J.B. and Jak to shove the doors open and hit the dirt. Staying low to the ground, J.B. searched for the truck and the shooters and saw them speeding off to the north. He rolled out and took aim with his M4, but the vehicle disappeared behind a hill before he could get a bead on it.
“Dammit!” His wounded leg throbbing with each movement, J.B. crawled out past the front of the truck, which had been wrecked by the streams of 5.56 mm bullets that had quite simply pounded it into ragged, shattered metal. “Jak? You okay over there?”
“Yeah...” He appeared around the front, still hobbling on his sprained ankle. “You’re bleedin’.”
“One of the rounds tagged me.” He sat up and took a look at the injury, a through-and-through wound that had carved through the backside of his left thigh, fortunately not coming close to the femoral artery. “I think there’s a first-aid kit in the cab, if it didn’t get shot up. Get it, and then collect whatever weapons we have left, will ya?”
Jak found the box, which had a bullet hole through it, and tossed it to him. J.B. swabbed the holes with alcohol, the sting making him grit his teeth, then plugged both wounds with gauze and bandaged them. “That’ll do till Mildred can sew them. I won’t be going anywhere fast, though.”
Weighed down by an M4 slung over his shoulder and two Berettas stuck into his waistband, Jak reached a hand down. “C’mon, let’s go find others.”
J.B. grabbed it, and the wiry albino pulled him up and slung the other man’s arm around his shoulders. It took a few steps for them to get the rhythm of walking with only two and a half good legs between them, but soon they were bumping along at a fair clip.
“I can’t believe you were that crazy to jump to that truck,” J.B. grumbled as they lumbered along. “What if you’d bounced off the windshield? You could have gotten killed!”
Jak shrugged his free shoulder. “Yeah, but didn’t.”
J.B. snorted. “This time. Always said you had more guts than brains.”
“Still worked. Got another truck, too.”
J.B. shook his head. “Lord, save me from the young. Next time, let’s just shoot them, okay?”
The other truck wasn’t far off and looked even worse than theirs. Both run-flat front tires were shredded, and Ricky had apparently maneuvered it into a small hill, where it had gotten hung up and tilted over at an odd angle.
“Hold up.” J.B. took a couple of breaths. “Hail the truck!”
Two longblasters poked out, one from each end, then just as quickly raised toward the sky as Krysty and Ricky emerged from cover.
“They got you, too, huh?” Ricky asked.
“Yeah, shot the hell out of it and winged my leg. You both okay?”
“Through Gaia’s grace, yes—still not sure how,” Krysty said as she glanced at the demolished front. “For a minute, I thought we were both buying tickets on that last train.”
J.B. turned to where the truck tracks led off into the distance. “They can’t be far, but with his ankle and my leg, we aren’t going anywhere fast.”
“Hey! Someone need a ride?” Everybody turned to
ward the new voice.
Tully sat in the cockpit of her windrider, with Latham in his next to her. “Sorry it took us so long to get here. We got moving as soon as you all left.”
“You can still track them?” Krysty asked.
“Course we can. How’d ya think we found you all?” Latham replied. “Got a good night wind kicking up, too.”
“Can you guys take two at a time?” J.B. asked.
“It’ll slow us down, but we took the antelopes,” Tully said. “I reckon we can haul two of you apiece. C’mon!”
Jak and J.B. hobbled over to Tully’s vehicle while Ricky and Krysty ran to Latham’s and hopped aboard. Within a few seconds, they were rolling north-northwest, tacking across the tire tracks that ran straight ahead.
The land sailers picked up speed quickly under the two pilots’ expert handling, and they were soon shooting into the night. J.B. kept a sharp eye ahead of them, squinting to try to see the oncoming landscape, but he first heard a strange sound that made him tap Tully’s shoulder.
“Stop!”
She did so, with Latham braking next to her. “What—” Ricky began.
“Listen.... Hear that?”
“Yeah—alarm going off?” Jak asked.
“I think so. Let’s get closer and find out.”
They started moving again, but stopped after seeing lights in the distance, and hearing the alarm much louder now.
“Pull up here,” J.B. said, pointing at a large hill. “I think we might be able to get up there and get a look at what’s going on.”
The pilots stopped their vehicles behind the hill, and Krysty and Ricky took off for the top, with Jak and J.B. bringing up the rear. When they crested the hill, all of them stared in wide-eyed wonder at the scene below. They had found the base, all right—and its inhabitants.
Several dozen men and women, most in various states of undress, milled around in the cold desert air. A dozen armed guards had established a perimeter and ushered more people emerging from what looked to be an open rock wall toward designated assembly points.
