The Plague Forge [ARC] (33 page)

Nothing. But in his thrashing he’d exposed a concrete base the signpost jutted from. Kneeling, he set to work clearing the sand around it. The weathered bulb of gray stone came free easily, smaller than he’d hoped. He’d wanted to use it as a crucible. Now he realized it could be a sledgehammer.

Russell took the improvised tool back inside and knelt on the hard, flat floor of the building. Sand brushed aside, he gripped the concrete ball with both hands, with the chain of the handcuffs wrapped underneath the ball. Careful to keep his elbows still, Russell thrust downward with both hands. The chain hit the floor, then the ball of concrete on top of it. Sparks flew. Chips of concrete danced away.

He grinned against his headache and brought the hammer down again. And again. A dozen times, maybe more, before finally the link snapped.

The chains dangled from his wrists as he emerged from the building. Russell shrugged out of the rest of the now-useless suit as well. Then he took stock of the situation.

Russell stood in the middle of a desert mining town, somewhere in Africa, with nothing but his underwear, a raging headache, and a full bladder.

Bladder, yes. He’d been holding it so long he’d almost forgot. Russell stood over the suit that, without a helmet that worked, was never going to be used again. Skyler could scavenge another one.

Business concluded, Russell studied his surroundings. There were several low buildings around him arranged in a rough square, with a rotted-out old vehicle in the center. The air tasted horrid, like a … he struggled to think of anything similar and gave up. A chemistry lab, he guessed, though he’d never been in one.

Russell ignored all of it and studied the landscape beyond. To the south he saw the receding cloud of sand as the storm continued its trek. West, the sun hung in the sky and stabbed at his eyes with brilliant daggers. Fuck that. He had started to turn north when something caught his eye. A pulsing glow near the horizon illuminated a plume of smoke that rose above the strange roof that had been constructed over most of the landscape.

“And you will know us by our path of destruction,” he said with a dry chuckle. The voice barely sounded like his own. Where he’d heard that line he couldn’t quite recall, the storm inside his head had apparently shook it loose. A song, or some schlocky old sensory adventure. Trying to pinpoint it sent little jabbing pains through his mind. He gave up.

His feet took him west before he’d even thought to go, a trail of shallow footprints in the freshly deposited sand. Shoes might be a good idea, he realized, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from walking west.

“Feet,” he said, looking down. “Stop, you twats. We need boots.”

Thinking felt like trying to decipher a dream while still dreaming, all while someone ground away at his skull with a jackhammer. He kept walking west with no apparent control over his own limbs, as if some distant gravity source had grabbed hold of him.
That’s not good.

Only one explanation made sense. Admitting it felt like opening a door he’d never be able to close.

SUBS,
he thought, and snorted.
Fucking perfect.

He wondered what emotion the plague would bring out in him, assuming he survived at all. Most didn’t.

For his legacy’s sake he hoped for fight over flight. It wouldn’t do to run like a frightened schoolgirl when he finally found Skyler. Worse, maybe he’d be nice to the guy. Fawn over him like Ana, even.
That would be the way to go,
he thought. “For my legacy’s sake!” he shouted, laughing. What goddamn legacy? He racked his mind for a single accomplishment anyone would remember him for with respect, much less fondness. Nothing came to mind. He couldn’t even think of a single person who would remember him, the person, well.

I haven’t a friend in the world—

Movement to his left. Russell glanced that way and saw …

“Holy shit,” he gasped. There were dozens of them. Scrawny, savage things. They worked their way along what appeared to be man-made crater rims to either side, moving in the same direction he did. Some ran, most lumbered. A few even dragged themselves along by their hands like some old shitty horror sensory.

Goddamn,
he thought.
Do I look like that? Am I one of these pathetic animals? Are they my goddamn friends?

He glanced down at himself. His body was clean. Muscled and well fed, a few scars here and there. He didn’t look anything like the filthy, shaggy monsters that now flanked him on both sides. He wore only the pair of underwear he’d had on under the environment suit. On a whim he yanked them off and threw them aside. The sight of his own manhood swinging lazily from side to side as he marched gave him a surprising respite from the fog that had settled over his mind. The headache didn’t go away—in fact it felt worse—but somehow now he seemed able to think
around
it.

One of them caught Russell’s eye and snarled at him. He glanced away, back down at himself. His legs still moved as if on autopilot, forcing him along in the same direction the creatures moved. They were the same, he and them. He’d joined their pack, which in a way he thought was good because it lowered the chances that one of them would bite his face off. But then again, it meant he’d dropped down a few rungs on the food chain. Russell Blackfield, primal edition. Perhaps the disease had actually improved him. The idea produced a rolling chuckle from his belly, along with a blinding sting of pain in his skull.

When that agony faded he found something odd in its place. Disappointment. Regret.

With an effort of will he forced one foot to remain on the ground. It did, but only for a fleeting instant. Whatever fate awaited him, he apparently had no choice but to meet it head-on. All he could think was,
This is it, mate. Last chance to leave a mark.

Ahead the ground sloped away sharply on two sides of an earthen bridge barely two meters wide. The pit walls that joined to form the narrow passage descended down into identical holes a hundred meters deep or more. Open mines, he realized.

He passed a corpse. A scientist or doctor from the tattered clothing. He walked on, not that he had any say in the matter. Even if he could stop the body, it didn’t look like it held anything useful. A few paces later he came across another dead form, this one wearing remnants of camouflage—green, for jungle use.
Wouldn’t desert gear have been a better choice, fool?
This corpse he did search, fighting his body’s desire to keep marching the whole time. He found no gun, but there was a single hand grenade on the dead man’s belt. He snatched it, enjoying the weight of the explosive in his fist.

Emboldened, Russell focused ahead of himself and … 
where were they?
He’d seen these aura towers before, in Belém and even in the secret video feed from that ill-fated rescue aircraft Tania had sent in. They were tall, and should have been visible by now, but he saw nothing.

Maybe they’d descended into one of these pits. Yes, that would hide them well.

A subhuman crawled on the ground in front of him. Gray hair hung in strands across the animal’s haggard face. Russell couldn’t control his own feet, not really, but he could move his hands. On a whim he reached down and pushed the creature as he passed, rolling it into the steeply walled pit mine. The thing went over the edge without a sound, rolling in a cloud of sand and dust.

There’d been no malice in it, no ill-will meant. He simply wanted to prove to himself that he wasn’t one of them. Not yet. Not entirely.

He half-expected the other subs around him to fly into some kind of rage at this assault, but they didn’t react at all. They viewed him as one of their own, even if the feeling wasn’t entirely mutual.

“Goddamn that hurts!” he shouted, fists pressed against his temples. His head felt like a bucket full of thumbtacks, shaken vigorously. The coherent thoughts, those that seemed to slide around the jagged edges of pain, were infrequent but not totally gone. In fact the headache seemed to have stabilized. There was time yet. He could still leave a mark. Something none of them would expect.

He was Russell Fucking Blackfield, striding naked toward his destiny, and he could still vary the pattern.

Chapter Twenty-One

Southern Chad

31.MAR.2285

“The breathing,” Ana said. “It’s stopped.”

She had it right. The rhythmic ebb and flow of warm air had vanished. At that instant, as if on a dimmer switch, the yellow glow emitted by the floor began to fade.

“Shit,” Skyler growled. “Run.”

Even as Ana turned, Skyler saw the barricade iris in around the tunnel through which they entered. Three plates, hidden in recesses around the passage, slipped silently into place. He glanced left and right, hoping against hope, and saw the same thing.

“No. No, no, no,” Ana was saying. “This is not good.”

The light continued to fall until it vanished completely. The room didn’t quite go pitch-black, though. Dull gray-blue light still spilled in from the hole in the ceiling above the dais.

A series of booming thuds shook the entire room. The sounds came from above.

“What is that?” Ana asked, breathless.

“I’ve no idea, and I don’t like it. Not at all.”

“Skyler,” she whispered. She was looking past him, toward the dais.

He turned and saw … nothing, at first. Then it registered. A yellow glow where there’d been none before, coming from the depths of the pit below the shell ship. The light grew brighter as he watched, then seemed to stabilize.

The deep, reverberating thuds from above continued. Explosions? No, they weren’t violent enough, he thought.

Skyler strode back to the precipice and looked down. Deep below, a half a kilometer or more, he guessed, a circle of blinding yellow light had appeared. It reminded him of looking directly at the sun, and of the silo below Nightcliff where he’d fallen through an iris floor into … something indescribable. Something that had saved him and not the creature that chased him there.

“Sky!” Ana shouted.

He whirled.

A shaft of light had appeared near the edge of the room, coming from a newly opened section of the ceiling. Shadows danced on the floor below and then something fell through. A body hit the floor with a grunt.

Skyler swallowed hard and aimed.

The lump on the ground moved. Hands stretched out, then it began to push up, revealing eyes that glowed with yellow laser light. It came to its full height, illuminated from the opening above like an actor on a stage. He could see it look from him to Ana, then back. At the same time the armored subhuman coiled and spread its arms out.

Without warning the light that shone down on it vanished as the portal in the ceiling closed, leaving just a pair of yellow eyes glowing near the edge of the room. The two glowing orbs hung there, unmoving.

His wits returning, Skyler slipped his finger over the trigger of his gun and began to squeeze.

Ana fired first.

He heard the
vump
from her launcher, saw the trail of smoke in the darkness between her gun and the creature’s chest. It staggered backward a step from the impact, slamming into the wall behind it. Skyler braced himself for an explosion, but none came. Instead a cloud of smoke began to hiss from the small canister that now lay on the floor. White smoke, so white it almost glowed in the shadows. Tear gas.

“To me!” Skyler shouted to her. The gas he guessed would have no effect on the creature. It might be human, but that coating over its body he figured had to be akin to an environment suit, not merely just armor.

Ana kept her body pointed toward the thing as she danced around the corpses on the floor. When the creature moved away from the wall again Skyler squeezed off a salvo aimed at its head. His aim was true; he saw the head jerk sideways. But the subhuman shrugged this off like a bothersome fly and turned to face him again, its glowing eyes like two stars in the growing cloud of tear gas.

Another shaft of light lit up the room off to his right, and another body fell through. Skyler spun and saw a third behind them, already up and surveying the room before it.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered. They were trapped, good as dead.

“What do we do?” Ana asked, her voice high with fear.

“Try the other canisters—just fucking shoot!” He fired as well, clicking the weapon into fully automatic and pouring bullets into the same creature he’d already shot.

Ana’s launcher took on a rhythmic pace as she emptied the remaining five rounds—two toward the right and three at the creature behind.

White gas began to fill the perimeter of the room. More shafts of light appeared. A fourth, a fifth. Soon there were seven of the armored creatures.

“What are they waiting for?” Ana shouted over Skyler’s gunfire.

Overwhelming odds,
he wanted to say, but a new sound cut off his reply. The noise began as a low rumble but quickly grew to skull-shaking volume, like standing near an aircraft that had suddenly ramped its thrusters to full power. The floor beneath him vibrated. Indeed, the whole building shook.

“What’s happening?” Ana shouted, her hand suddenly gripping his forearm as she almost fell. She righted herself and, impressively, began to slip a new set of canisters into the chambers on her gun.

“Nothing good,” he said back. His gaze remained on the creatures at the edges of the room. Their posture implied they were just as awed by the noise as he and Ana were.

Then it ended. Gone in a heartbeat, absolute silence in its wake.

Skyler began to feel his eyes itch, a slight burning sensation building as the gas began to fill the room.

The creatures stepped forward in unison and Ana fired again.

This time, though, she did not aim at the enemies surrounding them. She aimed at one of the barricaded doors instead, and the cartridge she fired exploded in a brilliant flash of fire and smoke. Chunks of debris rattled against the walls, the floor, the ceiling. One of the black-clad subs toppled sideways, limp. Struck in the head by shrapnel maybe. A shock wave of air pushed against Skyler. He winced as the heat of the blast pulsed across his face, pushed him backward a step. Chunks of material skittered past his feet and into the deep pit.