“The generator can’t be out,” Goldman protested.
Halverson said nothing, but he looked stricken.
“What—?” Bunny asked.
The alarm took on a new tone as a pre-recorded voice shouted from all the speakers. It told us why everyone in the room was looking even more terrified than they had been only a minute ago.
“This facility has been compromised. Level One containment is in effect.”
The message looped and repeated. I turned to Goldman. “What does that mean?”
“It means that the generator is no longer feeding power to the airlocks or security systems. If the backup doesn’t come on, then the system will move to Level Two.”
“What happens then?”
“The whole place goes into lockdown,” said Halverson. “This is a biological research facility, Captain. If containment is in danger of total failure, then the whole system shuts down. The doors will seal permanently.”
“Did your test subjects know this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Goldman. “Probably. I know the first subject, James Collins, knew it. He made a joke about it once. But…really, everyone knows, and it’s posted on signs all over the facility.”
I went to the door and opened it. Halverson joined me. “Looks like the backup generators are still on line. See—they are pulling the smoke out of the hall. The flames from the burning generator are dying down, too.”
“I take it the backup generators aren’t in the same room as the mains?”
“No, of course not. They’re at the other end of the complex.”
I pointed to the damaged access panel high on the wall. “That’s the air duct system?”
“Yes.”
“Does it go all the way into the chamber with the backup generators?”
He thought about it. “No. It terminates outside. The backups are on a totally separate system. Different venting, too. Smaller. No way they could use them to get into the chamber.”
“How secure is it?”
“If you didn’t have a key, then you’d need tools. Heavy pry bars and a lot of time. They were intended to protect against all forms of intrusion. The generator room is even hardened against an EMP.”
“That’s something.”
I pulled Halverson out into the hall for a moment. “Tell me about James Collins.”
Halverson paled. “He…he’s a good kid. Young, in his twenties. No family, no one at home. No sweetheart or anything like that. It was one of the conditions. The men couldn’t have families waiting at home. Better that way.”
“Better for whom?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.
“Collins was smart. He did a couple of tours with Force Recon. One in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Took some shrapnel last time out. Lost a couple of fingers. It was while he was recovering at the evac hospital that he was approached about this project. He’s been here almost seventeen months.”
I stared at him. It was horrible. Some kid joins the Marines. Maybe he thinks he’s helping to save the world from terrorists, or maybe he thinks he’s saving his country. Or, maybe he’s just lonely. Someone with no one at home and nowhere to be, so he makes the Marine Corps into his family, and it’s a war so they’re happy as hell to have him. They throw him into one meat grinder and when he survives that they feed him into another. Then, when he’s battle-shocked and mutilated, they make him an offer. Maybe money, maybe promotion. Or maybe they play off his sense of duty. God and country. That kind of pitch. They bring him to this place, hide him down in the dark, and when he’s totally off the radar, they play God with him. If he lives, he’s the prize hog at the fair. Someone to trot out to appropriations committees. If he dies, who’s going to miss him?
But they never planned around a third option. What if they made him into a monster?
Hell, they wouldn’t think that way. They’re too limited, too conventional. They can make a monster, but to them it’s just science. Pure science, divorced from conscience, separated from ethical concerns because no one is watching. People like Goldman and his masters in the military always think they have everything under control.
I know firsthand that, too often, they don’t. I know because I’m the guy they send in to clean up their messes.
I don’t know who I hated more in that moment: Goldman, because he made a monster; or me, because I knew that I had to kill it.
In the air vents I could hear a faint scuttling sound. Like fingernails on paper. I stepped closer to the vent, straining to hear it in the gaps between the bleats of the warning bells. It was there. Faint, and growing fainter.
They were moving away from us. Toward the other end of the complex.
Damn.
(4)
The Vault
Twenty-two Minutes Ago
We left the others behind in a locked room. The emergency lights were smashed out along most of the hallway, so we flipped down our night vision. We had M4s from our equipment bags, and each of us wore light body armor. The stuff would stop most bullets, but I didn’t think that was the kind of fight we were likely to have. Would it stop Collins?
Only one way to find out and I didn’t want to. Not one damn bit.
As he ran, Top whispered, “That door back at the staff room.”
“Yeah.”
“You saw the way those things tore at that vent grille. No way that chicken-ass door would keep them out.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem too broken up about the thought of those things getting in there.”
“Are you?”
We ran for a dozen yards. Bunny said, “They’re still civilians, Boss.”
“Farm Boy’s right,” agreed Top.
“Yep. So, if you want to go back and babysit them, you have my permission, First Sergeant.”
Bunny cursed under his breath. We kept running down the hall.
We ran low and fast along the wall, guns out, moving heads and gun barrels in unison, the red eyes of the laser sights peering into every shadow. The Vault was enormous. It was all on one level, built into a series of interlocking limestone caves, but it spread out like an anemone, with side corridors and disused rooms and staff quarters and labs. There were three of us when thirty wouldn’t have been enough. Not without lights. Not with an enemy that could move as fast as these things could.
We looked for an ambush everywhere we went, and even then the monsters caught us off guard.
We were looking forward, we were looking side to side, we were covering our asses. Anything came at us in any normal direction we’d have sent it home to Jesus in a heartbeat.
They tore open the damn ceiling and dropped on us.
There was a puff of dust and then a screeching tear as the whole belly of the air duct tore open and they dropped out.
Like bugs.
The first one slammed down on Bunny. Two hundred pounds of it struck him between the shoulder blades and the big man went down hard, knees cracking against the concrete, the air leaving his body in a surprised and terrified whuf!
Top screamed and spun, sweeping his gun up, firing as the second one fell and the third. The rounds tore into them, punching through the dark, mottled skin, splattering the walls and ceiling with black blood. The creatures twisted in midair, trying to dodge the spray of lead but instead soaking up the bullets and shielding the others above them.
The air was filled with the high-pitched keening and screeching as the things climbed through the torn duct and dropped into the hall.
Bunny was screaming as the creature on his back tore at him with fingers that had grown strangely thick and dark, the fingernails and the flesh beneath fused into chitinous hooks. Its back was to me and I fired as I backpedaled, angling to shoot it and not Bunny. The creature threw back its head and screamed. Not like an insect, but like a man.