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.
Chap. 4
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 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, and 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.
The air was filled with a 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 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.
Bunny twisted under it, and slammed an elbow into the monster’s side, and squirmed out from under. He was drenched with blood. I didn’t know how much of it was his own.
“Cap!”
I turned at the yell and saw Top being driven backward against the wall. He had his M4 jammed sideways and pressed against the chest of a creature whose face was something out of nightmare. The eyes were human, but that was all. Its face was covered with thick scab-like plates, some of them overlaid like dragon scales, others standing alone on human skin. The nose was nearly gone, flattened against the armored face, and the mouth was a lipless slash surrounded by wriggling antennae. The creature was naked to the waist, the rags of fatigue pants hanging from its spindly legs.
Before I could close on him and offer help, Top pivoted and chopped out with a low, short side-thrust kick that shattered the creature’s knee. As it reeled back, he came off the wall and swung the M4 in a tight upward arc, crushing its chin with the stock of the rifle. The blow was so powerful that the telescoping stock cracked and bent, but the thing that had once been a soldier flipped over backward and crashed down on the ground. Top stamped a foot onto its chest, and put two rounds into the misshapen skull.
I had my own troubles. Three of them swarmed at me in a three-point close. They tried to run me back against the wall, and if they had, I’d have been trapped and torn apart. They were so close that I only had enough room to bring my M4 up and hit the closest one with a burst to the chest. The impact flung him back, but the creature to his right lashed out and swatted the rifle out of my hands. It was a hugely powerful blow, way too strong for a man of his size. Whatever the doctors had done had amped up his strength. Or maybe he was mad with horror and rage and was pumping adrenaline. The rifle sling kept the weapon from flying away, but I lost my hold on it, and the creature reached for my throat with gnarled black fingers.
I parried and ducked and came up on the far side of his arms, then shoved him hard into the other attacker. They crashed into the wall, which gave me a short second of breathing space, so I grabbed at the rapid release folding knife clipped to the edge of my pocket. It was positioned to release into my hand, and I gave it a flick and felt the blade lock into place even while my hand was moving. There was a flash of green fire, and then the second of the monsters was spinning away, trying to staunch the flow of black blood from his throat.