Carolyn stepped up to the nearest Plexiglas coffin. “What have you got so far, Josh?”
Lieutenant Josh Ewing turned around from his station. “Carolyn! I heard what happened. Thank God you’re okay.”
“A little worse for wear, but not too bad. Just some scrapes and bruises. It could’ve been a lot worse.”
“I’m sorry about your team.”
“I am, too.” Beneath her protective mask, Carolyn fought back the tears. Now was not the time to get emotional. Now was the time to focus. “General Rammes informs me there are traces of a level 5 in the blood. How close are you to—” The words stuck in her throat as she looked down at the thing in the Plexiglas box. It was more horrible than she ever imagined, now that she could see it up close.
One of the mutated rat-things — the size of a small dog — lay on its back on the white surface of the examining table, its legs splayed out. The right side of the creature was blown apart, probably, Carolyn thought, by shrapnel from the B-52 strike. The internal organs she could see were charred black and ripped into a mass of unrecognizable tissues, fused together by the searing heat of the shrapnel. The sides of the wound were what horrified Carolyn the most: the thing was covered with an incredibly thick layer of muscle. Dense muscle tissue, bound by heavy, cord-like sinew and tendon, ran the entire length of both sides of the open wound. The thing was built like a main battle tank.
“Carolyn? Are you all right?”
Josh’s voice snapped her back to reality. She’d only seen the things in the dark, and never clearly enough to make out any detail. The thought of thousands of these things killing everything in their path made Carolyn shiver. “Yes, I’m all right. Ugly little bastards, aren’t they?”
“Ugly doesn’t quite describe it.” Josh pointed to where the broken and smashed body of one of the humanoid things lay. “Our freaky friend over there won’t win any beauty contests, either.”
She had to force herself to look at it. Even smashed and torn from the bombing, the thing still resembled what she’d seen crawling inside the Chinook. The terrible beast that had killed her entire team. And almost killed her as well.
Although the sight of it filled her with terror, it also sickened her to realize that it had once been a living, breathing human being, mutated into a terrible beast by something they didn’t quite understand yet. She was surprised the thought didn’t sadden her… She was glad it was dead. It had ceased being human, and it had to be killed. It was as simple as that. After what she’d seen happen at Kansas City — and to Matt — there was no other solution. The things may have been human just a day before, but now they were a threat. Everything that had made them people was dead and gone as soon as they were transformed. They were now a threat that required complete extermination. Along with the rest of the mutated creatures.
She had to force herself to look away from it, as well.
“Like I was saying,” Carolyn continued, “General Rammes said CDC found traces of a level 5 in the blood. Have you been able to nail it down?”
“Not yet. There’s so many other compounds in the blood we can’t identify that it’s difficult to define the specific level 5. We do know it’s a DNA-based agent — the DNA of each of the creatures has undergone a complete transformation. It’s like they were reborn as an entirely new species.” He reached into the Plexiglas box and pried the rat-thing’s mouth open with his heavy, rubberized glove, careful to avoid the rows of razor-sharp teeth lining the thing’s mouth. “Just by looking at it, you can tell this was a rat. The bone structure of the skull, the musculature surrounding the jaw. It’s all pretty much like your common field rat, only larger, stronger, thicker.” He gripped one of the thing’s legs. “The legs have been restructured for running — slightly longer in proportion to the rest of the body, and more muscle than you can imagine. The claws have also lengthened and thickened.”
To Carolyn, they looked like a set of claws that belonged on a grizzly bear, not an oversized rat.
“The same can be said for our humanoid friend over there. You can tell it was once human by looking at it, but that’s about as far as it goes. Its DNA has been completely restructured, as well, every sequence right in line with our little furry friend here.”
“Josh, I think the level 5 may be related to 1Z65.”
“Gemini?”
“Yes, Gemini.”
“What makes you—”
“They’re sensitive to light, right? They stay in the shadows during the day and only move in the darkness. The Gemini agent was initially designed to create a genetically bred army of night fighters, remember?”
“Yes, I remember reading about it, but that agent by itself doesn’t explain the mutations we’ve seen.”
“I agree, it doesn’t. But, if it’s combined itself with other agents — maybe naturally occurring compounds — it could’ve mutated into what we’re seeing.” She strode over to one of the computer workstations and began tapping on the keyboard, digging into the rows of numbers that spelled out exactly what the creatures were made of, in a language only a few could understand. Carolyn knew that language like the back of her hand. “The Soviets abandoned it because of what happened at Kiev, remember? They couldn’t control it. The basic agent was much too unstable and unpredictable to ensure a uniform effect from its use.” She continued tapping on the keyboard. “Come on… You’re there somewhere…”
“But for a while, they still tried to refine it,” Josh said.
“That’s right. And that’s why the sample was smuggled out to us. It scared the living hell out of one of their researchers. At least one of them had the smarts to realize they were playing with fire. I wish we had, too.”
“You mean the New Mexico incident?”
“Exactly.”
Garrett had been quietly listening to the discussion in his headset. “The New Mexico incident?” he asked.
Lieutenant Ewing explained. “Once the Gemini agent was smuggled out of the Soviet Union, we started trying to figure out exactly what made it tick. We needed to know how to protect ourselves from it, just in case the Russkies decided to drop a vial of it somewhere in the United States.”
“So there’s another place like this in New Mexico?”
“New Mexico was where it ended, sir. It actually started in a biological warfare research facility located about fifty miles north of here.” Josh glanced at General Rammes, suddenly uncomfortable about telling this officer he’d never met about a highly classified subject, known only by a select few. It was definitely not meant to be common knowledge.
General Rammes spoke into the tiny microphone in his sealed helmet. “It’s okay, Lieutenant Ewing. Colonel Hoffman is cleared.”
“Thank you, sir.” He continued. “The Gemini agent escaped one of their clean rooms and infected one of their workers. Unfortunately, their protocols weren’t as rigorous as they are now — as I’m sure you’ve witnessed since you’ve been here at Vanguard, Colonel — and he was allowed to leave the complex before they knew exactly what had happened.”
“You mean it got out into the open?”
“Yes, sir, unfortunately, it did. The agent’s initial effect was a form of temporary insanity — massive, rapid chemical changes in the brain tissues causing a paranoia-like state — and the infected worker made it out of state before they caught up with him. The FBI got to him first and eliminated him, but the agents who killed him were also infected. They left the body in the trunk of a car and left it out in the New Mexico desert. At that point, the agents probably weren’t thinking too clearly.”