"Yes, ma'am. I think I see you coming," answered the Marine at Jumper One. "Swing to your left a ways-there you go. Major, unless the Colonel gets back here soon, we're gonna have to hunker down and ride this out in place. He's the only one who can fly us out."
Rodney dug his fingers into the arm of the seat, repressing the temptation to bang his head against something. They hadn't bothered to ensure that there were two gene carriers per crew, because they'd expected to be able to trade personnel between jumpers if backups were needed. No one had anticipated the ferocity of the fires turning each jumper into an island; no one had believed everything could go to hell so quickly. Eucalypt oil, he realized. The tinder-dry brush might as well have been doused in gasoline instead of a thin coating of snow. Idiotic shortsightedness… Or was something more at play? Spot fires breaking out everywhere didn't make sense, unless-
"I'm at the jumper," reported Teyla, her voice finally betraying a hint of tension. "There is not much time left before the blaze will overtake us."
"I'm almost there," Jackson promised.
Ronon cursed viciously. "The wind just shifted and caught the trees around me. I've got nowhere to go!"
"Sirs, Jumper One's throwing all sorts of warnings at us," said Barnett. "I think it knows the temperature's getting dangerous."
"Jackson, where are you?" Lome called.
"Still moving." Jackson's voice was starting to give out. "But the fire'll get there before me. Teyla, close the hatch."
"But-"
"Do it," Ronon yelled, "or none of us will get out of this!"
From his marginally safer place inside Jumper Two, Rodney shut his eyes and fought the urge to be sick. Jackson and Ronon had just signed their death warrants. And Sheppard's — if the Colonel was even alive. For all they knew, the virus could be activating in any one of them. Maybe that was the reason the other Marines, Edwards and Koslov, hadn't made it back yet.
Not again. Rodney would be damned if he'd bear witness by radio while more friends died. He launched out of his seat. "We can track them by their locator beacons. If we take off now-
"Not yet. We've got two men on their way here, and they'll be just as screwed as the others if we leave." Allowing no debate, Lome tapped his radio. "Edwards, Koslov, sit-rep!"
After a pause, a voice answered, coughing. "Sir… should be only a hundred yards out."
"You waiting for an invitation?" the Major thundered, sounding more like a drill instructor than Rodney had thought him capable of. "Haul ass!"
When he belatedly remembered Lee's presence, Rodney glanced over. Seeing the other scientist all but cowering in a comer of the rear compartment, wide-eyed and close to hyperventilating, almost mitigated some of Rodney's own anxiety. Almost.
"For a while, I considered trying to join an actual SG team," Lee said quietly. "Maybe I'll rethink that."
"You get used to the constant panic," Rodney told him.
Lee met his eyes, curious. "Do you really?"
The sense of utter helplessness was intolerable. This was one time where nothing he did could help a damn. "No."
Chapter twenty-eight
Pam, along with a chaotic jumble of perceptions, yanked John back to consciousness. He had a disorienting sense of being tossed around inside an enclosed space for what seemed like ages. When everything finally stilled, he closed his eyes against nauseating dizziness and struggled to recall what had happened.
The cave entrance. The jumper. Rebecca freaking out. Memory returned in snatches. They'd just gotten a weather update a few minutes ago, warning of a massive incoming storm. The snowfall was only the edge of a frontal system that would develop into howling northerly winds by dawn, feeding the flames. The change in wind direction had added a new wrinkle to the plan by placing the cave entrances right in the path of the advancing fires. John had ordered the Marines to retreat to their jumpers in case a rapid withdrawal from the area became necessary. The Australian troops had justifiably shifted their priorities to helping local residents evacuate or defend their homes.
Following a pointed comment from Rodney about the obvious effects of global warming, John had glanced at Rebecca and gotten one hell of a scare. She'd been trembling uncontrollably, arms hugged tightly around herself, and the look in her eyes had been almost feral. As soon as he'd touched her shoulder, she'd bolted, and it had taken him a second to shake off his shock and chase her. Jackson had been shouting over the radio at him, telling him that Landry had just checked in with a bizarre report on Rebecca's DNA test, and Teyla's voice had mingled in as well, warning him that she sensed something powerful and unrecognizable but decidedly Wraithlike.
Both calls had only confirmed what John had already started to suspect; there was no other explanation. Something had just flipped Lilith's modified retrovirus switch in Rebecca, and in a big way.
After that, he remembered nothing until that horrific fall.
He dragged his eyes open, attempting vainly to focus in spite of the pounding in his head. It was dim, and blood obscured his vision, but he was able to make out the shape of a person next to him, shuddering, moaning wordlessly behind tightly closed lips.
"Rebecca?" he tried to say, but the motion radiated agony down his jaw and into his neck. She jerked back and scrambled away from him, climbing out through what looked like a broken car windshield. That explained where they were-sort of. How the hell he'd gotten into the vehicle in the first place was still a major question mark, though it came in a distant second behind figuring out what had triggered the virus.
It took him a while to understand that she must be fighting the urge to feed on him. When that sank in, he recalled the intensity of his own experience in that dark realm and spared a moment's gratitude for her willpower. Then he tried to reach his radio-and, through a haze of pain that threatened to gray his vision completely, it slowly dawned on him that her restraint had only bought him time. His right arm was pinned under the upended seat; his left lay broken and useless next to what was left of the radio. The dashboard pressed insistently against his ribcage, reminding him with every breath that something was very wrong inside. In this temperature, he knew he wouldn't last long without help.
Once the flare of additional pain caused by moving subsided to something marginally more tolerable, a noise outside filtered into his awareness. An animal, sounding about as happy with the world as John was. He managed to turn his head just enough to rest it against the warped doorframe of the vehicle and found the source of the noise: an injured cow.
Under an eerie russet glow that had to be a result of the approaching fires, John watched Rebecca stagger toward the wretched animal and sink to her knees in front of it. She reached for her holster and then appeared to change her mind, stretching out her hand to touch the cow's flank. Instantly, its cries stopped, its thrashing head falling limp, and its body began to wither in a bizarre, possibly merciful version of a Wraith feeding.
Finally, Rebecca slumped forward over the carcass. Caught between fascination and disgust, John couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. Blood now ran freely into his eyes, and he couldn't clear it. Even if she'd needed to feed on him, there was little left of his life to take.
Time passed; he didn't know how much. It was no longer snowing, and while he still felt the cold-blood loss, no doubt-there was a warm, gritty wind on his face. His team would be looking for him and Rebecca, but if a choice had to be made they'd do their jobs and focus on ending the Lilith threat. He only hoped they wouldn't waste too much of what had to be a limited window of opportunity on a search for him.
A thought struck him, one that he would much rather have avoided. Whatever had triggered the retrovirus in Rebecca might also have triggered it in the population at large. In which case… He didn't want to consider that notion, but his mind insisted on playing all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios, fed by every B-grade sci-fi movie he'd ever seen. The situation was made all the worse by the fact that he was utterly powerless to do anything to stop it.