by Greig Beck
Torben was at his side in an instant, staring into Joshua’s face. He pressed his nose hard into the boy’s stomach, then released, and then repeated it, as though trying to pump his lungs.
Joshua coughed and rolled over, and his eyes opened wide. “Dad!”
Immediately his blue-gray eyes turned luminous white and his jaws clamped together.
I’m coming, he projected, hard.
After another moment, tears of determination, anguish, and pain ran down his cheeks. Around him there began a swirling tornado of debris as his mental torment began to manifest as a physical force – books flew from his shelves, papers lifted from his desk, and clothing rose from the floor. A track and field trophy launched so hard from its shelf that it buried itself in the wall, and the windows blew out as the glass was turned to powder.
Aimee burst into the room. “Joshua!” Her eyes widened and her face drained of color.
“Can’t. Get. To him.” The boy’s head turned to her. “Need. Air.” The veins in his neck stood out like rope as he turned to the windows and their wooden frames began to splinter and then fly away into the night’s darkness.
“No, no, no.” Aimee tried to get to her son, but the violently rushing air in the room slowed her down. She lowered her head, held her arms out and tried to push through it.
“Need air.” The boy ran toward the open second-story window and leaped out into the night. The huge dog followed him through without a second thought.
Joshua landed easily and rounded the corner at speed. He crossed Vincent Road and then the highway, making cars jam on their breaks and blast horns, especially when the huge dog followed him. The boy headed into Allandale Woods, still choking and clawing at his neck.
Half a mile in he slowed and went to his hands and knees, on the grass, coughing.
Under a tree a group of youths stopped drinking beer and passing around a few fat joints of their favorite blend of Critical Jack weed and turned to stare.
“What the fuck is this?” The eldest boy, with arms covered in homemade tattoos, crushed his beer can, belched from the side of his mouth and then rose to his feet.
Joshua threw his head back. “Help him!” he screamed and threw his arms up toward the night sky.
“The hell is wrong with that little asshole?”
One of the young women in the group went to approach.
Her girlfriend grabbed her arm. “Wait up – there’s something wrong with him.”
“Ya think?” One of the larger young men also stood. “Hey kid, got any money?”
“He’s wearing pajamas, dickhead. Where would he hide his money – up his ass?” The woman shook her head. “Leave him be.”
Joshua lowered his forehead to the ground as if praying.
“He looks rich to me.” The tattooed guy grinned and popped the top of another beer, slurping noisily. “Wonder if Mommy would pay to know where he is.”
“I’m too stoned; forget it,” another youth replied.
Tattoos half-turned. “Nah, just doing my civic duty. You know, maybe there’s a reward for handing him in.” He winked. “And an even bigger reward for handing him in undamaged.” He laughed corrosively.
He began to approach Joshua but when he was within ten feet, Joshua lifted his face to him; his eyes were totally white.
“Cold!” Joshua screamed and then his clawed hands dug into the ground in front of him. A ring of grass around him immediately bleached white. It crackled, and then turned brown as it shrivelled.
“Fuck that. He’s a freak.”
“Did you see that?” Tattoos pointed at the ground. “That wasn’t there before.”
“Needs a net thrown over him.” A youth with white hair frowned.
“Maybe he’s sleep walking,” one of the girls whispered.
“Then wake him up.”
“Good idea.” Tattoos drank more of his beer, and then tossed the half-full can at Joshua. It bounced off his shoulder. “Wake the fuck up, weirdo.”
Joshua’s head jerked up. The tattooed guy’s grin dropped, and he began to make a strangling noise in his throat. Then, to the group’s horror, his body was torn down the middle from his forehead to his groin. The two halves were flung aside. There was no spray of blood, just a cold mist, as if everything had been snap frozen.
The youths screamed, a few backed away, and two of the other, bigger, guys took a step forward, indecision and fear twisting their features.
The huge form of Tor appeared, growling, and approaching with his head lowered. His eyes were like luminous gun barrels, and he bared finger-length teeth.
As the group watched with gaping mouths, the animal rose up on his back legs to stand nearly seven feet tall. His roar was like a physical force, and whatever bravado they had left vanished as the group turned and fled into the dark park.
Tor kept his eyes on the direction the group had fled for a few more seconds before he dropped down to grab Joshua by the neck of his pajama shirt and began to drag him backward, then away into the darkness.
A car’s tires screamed as it skidded to a halt, and Aimee ran down the grass slope toward them. Tor let Joshua go and sat back.
Aimee cradled the boy’s head in her arms, and Joshua looked up into her face. His eyes returned to their normal blue-gray, but still wouldn’t focus.
“He’s in trouble.” He blinked a few times as his eyes watered. “And I can’t help him.”
* * *
“Your … guests are here, sir.” His receptionist-cum-gatekeeper’s voice was strained.
“Thank you, Margie,” Colonel Jack Hammerson replied. “Send them in.”
Fuck, he hated spooks. These guys with their black-book funding, and operational units with names like Special Psych-ops and Strategy Oversight were like an all-seeing, all-annoying eye that watched and heard everything. They knew about the boy going for his midnight run last night and suddenly they wanted to put a flea in his ear. Jack Hammerson’s jaw jutted for a moment. As if he didn’t have enough going on.
Hammerson stood as the door to his office opened. Three men entered, the first in his fifties, with a shaved head, and slightly stooped shoulders like a vulture – Mr. Green. He’d be the mouthpiece today. With him came two torpedoes, both in dark suits, broad shoulders, and with chins like granite shelving. And they wore dark sunglasses.
“Let me guess, the Men in Black,” Hammerson said.
“Very good, colonel,” Green said. He didn’t introduce his two watchdogs, who remained on their feet while Green sat down without being invited. “Take a seat,” he said even though he was in Hammerson’s office. The man dripped with condescending authority.
Hammerson sat on the edge of his large desk and folded his brawny arms. He looked down on Green. “What can I do for you? Kinda busy right now.”
“You let the boy get out,” Green said flatly.
“He’s not a prisoner. He was never out of our control.” Hammerson shrugged. “He let off a bit of steam. No big deal.”
“He killed a boy and injured others – that’s more than a bit of steam. Plus, he displayed his abilities to the public.” Green’s gaze was flat. “He is under your management because you have somehow convinced the general you have the boy supervised. I think you do not. In fact, I think you are out of your depth.”
“We got this.” Hammerson stared back for a moment more before checking his watch. “Is there anything else? Cause we’ve got bigger issues to deal with.” He stood. “And by the way, you got a problem with me, take it to the general. I don’t need to deal with the pencil pushers.”
Green’s eyes took on a hard glint. “If you remember, another time you said you ‘got this’, the boy was nearly extracted by enemy agents. He’d be an anti-asset and could be deadly in enemy hands.” Green also rose and stepped into Hammerson’s space. “You can’t control him, but we can.”
“No.” Hammerson’s gaze was unwavering.
Green smirked. “Then we’ll have to take him from you.”
“Really?” Hammerson’s smile held zero humor. “Okay, this meeting is over.”
Green jabbed a finger into Hammerson’s chest. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. If I have to teach the boy – and you – a lesson, I can and will.”
Hammerson knocked the finger away. “You’re the one who doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. Get outta my office, asshole, or I’ll throw you out myself.”
Green’s eyes widened, obviously not used to the disrespect. He turned to the two men he brought with him and gave them an almost imperceptible nod – they moved in quickly.
Hammerson knew how they’d come at him – he’d seen it before, had experienced it too many times to count, and now he even trained his HAWCs in how to deal with a double adversary attack.
The closest man went for a flat-handed strike across Hammerson’s windpipe, meant to throw his head forward, and into the fist of the second operative. Jack Hammerson was in his mid-fifties with iron-gray crewcut, and iron-hard muscles from training, ferociously, every single goddamn day. He went under the strike and came up with an upper cut that would have felled Mike Tyson. The first man’s head snapped up with a crack, and he fell backward like an oak tree.
Hammerson then used a back kick into the knee of the second man. There was a crunch of cartilage, and the guy staggered. While he was off balance, he bravely tried to throw a straight left into Hammerson’s face.
It was too easy to block the off-balance punch, and then throw a combination left-right to the lower ribs, followed by a left-cross to the cheekbone. Hammerson knew that the key to throwing a devastating punch was not to strike at where the target area was, but to strike just a bit past it so the punch contained the full power of the momentum of the fist, arm, and entire upper body.
His final straight right landed with the wet noise of splattering blood, and the guy fell to the side, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
Hammerson turned to Green. His gaze made the man shrivel before him. “I’m not a nice guy. But I have great self-control. Because if I didn’t, I’d wipe the features off your face right now.”
Hammerson reached out, making Green flinch. He pulled out the handkerchief tucked decoratively into Green’s breast pocket, and used it to wipe some of the blood from his knuckles then jammed it back into the bureaucrat’s pocket.
“Now, you get the fuck out of here and take the Men in Black with you before I change my mind.”
Green looked down briefly at his fallen men, and then lifted his gaze, his eyes suddenly furtive.
Hammerson caught it. “Oh, and if you came back with more torpedoes, I’ll introduce you to some of my HAWCs. Then you’ll all wake up in hospital. Or not at all.” Hammerson leaned in nose to nose and roared, “Now get the fuck out of here!”
Green held up shaking hands, then helped one of his men to his feet. Together they dragged the third man out.
Hammerson followed them and at the door, Margie, his receptionist, smiled to them. “Your car is already waiting for you, gentlemen. Thank you for coming.”
She and Hammerson watched as the trio entered the elevator and the door shut. She looked up at him.
“Everything okay, Jack?”
“Yeah. Just a little chain-of-command education session for some of our boys from the back office.” He smiled. “We won’t be seeing them again.”
CHAPTER 52
Baikonur Cosmodrome Spaceport, southern Kazakhstan
“But we have no conf—” Major Alexi Bilov’s grip on the handset tightened as he listened. “Any specimens have to – but quarantine is necess— sir, you must –” Bilov’s mouth snapped shut and he came rod straight. “Yes, sir, of course, sir. I’ll see to it immediately, sir.” He closed his eyes. “You can count on –”
The line went dead. He looked at the phone for several more seconds before swallowing noisily, and then he hung up.
Senior technician Uri Andilov watched and waited.
Major Bilov sighed. “Quarantine be damned; by order of the president, they are to be allowed to land.”
Andilov’s mouth dropped open. “Impossible! Trajectory analysis has them coming down in the center of Moscow.”
“I know. But they have already sent an order to clear the streets. The president wants to be there to greet the arriving astronauts personally. At a time of national turmoil, he believes it will be a great opportunity to show the world some Russian precision and technical advancements, as well as unite the people.”
Andilov shook his head. “What?”
“He said the quarantine issues are our problem.” Bilov turned and smiled ruefully. “From a political perspective, apparently the optics are too good to let go by.” He pointed to the screen. “Uri, show me exactly where the craft is expected to come in.”
Andilov’s hands flew over the keyboard and a dotted line on the screen updated, and then overlaid on a map of Moscow. The map expanded and drilled down.
“Mokhovaya Street.” Bilov snorted softly. “Of course it would – the road right alongside the Kremlin.”
“You don’t think this is a little too … perfect?” Andilov asked and sat back. “I mean, one of the main streets in Moscow and right outside the Kremlin and Red Square. How will quarantine be effectively carried out?”
Bilov shrugged. “We don’t know if they secured the samples. And if they did, what state they were in. Or even if were they dangerous. Voloch, we can’t even contact them.” He threw his hands up. “A nightmare.”
“A nightmare that might become a bigger nightmare,” Andilov breathed.
“The decision has been taken out of our hands. So now, all we do is carry out our orders,” Bilov replied. “How long now until they enter our atmosphere?”
Andilov read from his screen. “Eight hours and twenty minutes.”
“Any more contact, any more ways to try and reach them?”
The senior technician shook his head. “They’ve gone dark, either by equipment failure or by design. They’re not talking. Why is that?”
“That is the question.” Bilov turned slowly back to the trajectory map. “And if it is by design, then may God help us all.”
CHAPTER 53
Casey Franks sprinted to the rec room. She had seen what was happening to Alex Hunter on the monitor and was going in to get him come hell or high water.
She had her suit in full combat mode and when she arrived, she bulldozed the crowd out of her way, and fired a bolt into the wall on each side of the door to secure herself.
Briggs rushed to the front. She retracted her visor and turned to him. “Open the fucking door!”
He held a hand up. “No, it’ll evac the entire base. Forget it, they’ve gone. No one can survive that.”
She turned the bolt gun toward his chest. “He’s not like us. Open it, or you’re fucking dead.”
“Crazy.” He gritted his teeth. “Fucking crazy.” Briggs turned to the crowd. “Get out! Everyone out!”
People scattered, and the base commander grabbed a hand hold and punched the button. There came a maelstrom of furiously rushing air as the door slid back.
Casey Franks’ visor closed over her face and she gritted her teeth as she strained against the roaring air. She let out some line but still needed to use the suit’s powerful MECH hydraulics to hang on and drag Alex and the two base personnel inside to the corridor. She nodded to Briggs, who shut the door.
Casey untethered herself and dropped to her knees to feel Alex’s neck. She rose, and pointed to several men way down the corridor watching her with wide eyes. “Hey! You, you, and you – get over here and get these people up to the med lab. And you damn run.”
She telescoped the armoured visor up off her face and turned to get nose to nose with Briggs. She spoke through her teeth. “You were gonna leave him out there, you motherfucker.”
“He told me to shut the door. I did as he asked. No one could survive that.” Briggs pushed the HAWC in the chest but found he couldn’t budg
e her.
Casey eased back, knowing the guy was right, but her anger still demanded she strike out at something. So she punched the door opposite, leaving a large dent in the steel.
She turned to jab one blunt finger into his chest. “If he had died, I would have thrown you out there myself.”
“It’s over. Let it go.” Briggs stepped back. “So, what now?”
“It could still be here. This room has been breached, and it might be among them. We should put everyone here in quarantine, but there is nowhere to do that.” She looked at the people, some sobbing, some hugging. “So, we need to move everyone into the larger control room. It’ll be tight and uncomfortable, and high risk, but no choice now.”
Briggs nodded. “They’ll prefer it.” He looked up. “How’s the test going?’
Casey shook her head. “It isn’t. Didn’t pan out. We do have something that’ll inoculate some of us against it, but only enough for a few necessary people. I suggest you get a dose.”
Briggs shook his head. “I’ll pass. Was that it? I mean, all of the creature?”
Casey shrugged. “Doubt it.” Most of the group had returned and were staring at her and Briggs. “Like I said, for all we know, one or more of them could still be infected. It hides inside you.”
“That’s a shit thought.”
“Yeah, and right now everything is shit.” She headed for the door. “Get everyone to the control room.”
* * *
Alex groaned.
“Take it easy,” Marion said softly.
He felt her hand on his bare shoulder, and when he opened his eyes, it was all blackness. They hurt, and so did his mouth, and inside his nose, and there was a hollow echo in his ears. In fact, he felt like he’d just had the crap beaten out of him ten times over.
He sat and reached up a hand to feel the bandage over his eyes.
“Leave that there for a while,” Marion urged. “Your eyes have suffered significant trauma from the vacuum. You may even be –”
