Carolyn’s voice could still be heard in both of their headsets as she whispered to herself, “Come on… Almost there…”
Josh continued. “The New Mexico Highway Patrol found the car — and the body — and it was taken care of by the facility’s rapid response team. The two infected FBI agents died in a car crash not long after they’d left the body. They went straight into a bridge abutment at a hundred miles an hour. After the fire, there wasn’t much left. They were running — like that worker — from whatever Gemini was making them think. We got lucky that time.”
Garrett could now understand why the Vanguard facility was built as it was — to prevent that type of event from ever happening again. He was suddenly very glad to be wearing his extensive protective gear. Carolyn’s voice startled him.
“Oh dear God,” she said.
General Rammes walked over to Carolyn’s side. “What is it?”
“It’s Gemini, all right. Just like I thought. But there’s more…”
Josh peered over her shoulder, looking at the set of blinking numbers on the screen. “That can’t be.”
“The numbers don’t lie, Josh.”
“Twins?”
“Twins.”
General Rammes sounded confused. “Twins? What are you talking about?”
Carolyn turned to the general. “Sir, have the things stopped? Other than getting out of the light, have they stopped?”
“Yes, they stopped last night.” He suddenly realized Carolyn wasn’t aware of all that had happened. “All five waves of the things stopped at the same time—”
“Five waves?”
“Five separate groups, headed straight for the five nearest cities. They all stopped at the same time and burrowed underground.”
Carolyn sighed heavily, as if she knew the answer to her next question. “General, I need to know if they’ve… Are the things in any sort of chrysalis? Cocoons?”
Rammes’s brow furrowed behind his protective mask. “The creatures are encased in some sort of thick, bone-like casings. They’re trying to bring one up for analysis right now.” He glanced at his watch. “If they’re on schedule, they should have it on a plane to our location within the hour.” Rammes wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer to his next question. “How did you know about the casings, Carolyn?”
“Are the five cities evacuated?”
“It’s ongoing, but—”
Carolyn’s voice was calm, cool, but her eyes flashed bright with fear. “General, if I’m right, as soon as darkness falls, we could be facing a much larger threat.”
CHAPTER 32
Floodlights illuminated the crater as the sunlight dimmed even further. The sun was sliding below the horizon. Just a sliver of its fiery brilliance remained. Like an eye slowly closing.
The mining supervisor wiped cold sweat from his brow — he was scared to death. The repairs to the chain had gone quickly enough, but the casing had jammed in the hole three more times, wasting valuable minutes as the crew worked to dislodge the object without breaking the chain again.
Time had officially run out.
“How far?” the major asked.
“Less than ten feet.”
Both men watched as the hoist chain slowly spooled up, raising the casing at an almost mind-numbing pace.
“There it is!” they shouted in unison.
Suddenly, the top of a curved, grayish object revealed itself at the opening of the shaft. Within a few seconds, it was completely out of the hole, swinging in its harness a few feet off the ground.
“That’s it,” the major said. “Get your people out of here!”
“With pleasure. All right, people! Let’s get the hell out of—”
“It’s cracking!” One of the workers quickly backed away, staring at the object like it was an atomic bomb ticking away toward detonation. A long, jagged crack was visible on its smooth surface.
The major ran over to the hoist and grabbed the worker by the arm. “Was it cracked when you brought it out?”
“No! There were no cracks! I just saw it happening!”
The worker’s statement was verified a second later as a loud cracking noise split the night, the fissure on the surface of the casing visibly widening. Both men took a step back, startled.
Suddenly, the workers who remained ran headlong up the side of the blast crater, clawing and kicking at the dirt.
The major regained his senses. “Everybody out! Out of the hole now!” As he ran toward the sloping edge of the crater, the mining supervisor just a step behind, he felt a strange vibration in the ground beneath his feet. His blood ran cold.
The climb to the top of the crater seemed like crawling out of the Grand Canyon — it suddenly seemed much steeper, much deeper than it really was. He barked orders as he climbed, his words coming in raspy breaths. “Evacuate! Evacuate the area!” Behind him, more loud cracking noises echoed in the pit as the casing began to open.
As he stumbled across the edge of the crater, he heard a loud chattering noise, a strange clicking. Joined a second later by another series of the same noises. Unnaturally loud. Chilling.
The major turned and saw pieces of the casing lying scattered at the edge of the hole.
He also saw four yellow eyes burning like flames in the shadows outside the floodlights’ lamps, bouncing up the side of the crater. Incredibly fast. Toward him.
It was the last sight he saw.
THE THIRD NIGHT
CHAPTER 33
Andrew sat alone in his situation room. He’d just sat through one of the most difficult war cabinet meetings of his administration. Again, as he’d done after the brutal radiological attack on Cleveland, he’d listened to arguments for, and arguments against, the use of nuclear weapons.
But this time, the argument possessed an entirely different flavor.
This time, the target in question wasn’t on the other side of the world. The target—targets, to be more accurate — were in the United States of America.
American targets.
On American soil.
Killing American citizens.
It was a course of action that had initially crossed his mind when the creatures made their first furious advances, seemingly unstoppable in the face of the conventional weaponry the military could bring to bear in such short order. He’d considered it for only a split second, knowing in his heart that it was the absolute last course of action he was willing to take.
He looked up at the plasma screen and spoke to his vice president. “Allison, has it really come down to this? Do nuclear weapons seem like a recourse we’ll—I’ll have to resort to if these things can’t be stopped with conventional weapons?”
Allison was a valuable source of counsel for him. He could talk to her and bounce decisions off of her, like he could do with no other in his administration. He didn’t have a warm relationship with her, like the personal relationship he’d developed with Jessie Hruska, but when it came to the most crucial policy decisions, there was no one else he felt comfortable talking with. As the old saying went, Allison Perez — the vice president of the United States — was only a heartbeat away from the presidency. She needed to be intimately involved in the major decisions of his administration because if the heart were to stop, she had to carry those decisions forward without skipping a beat.
“Mr. President, I don’t believe we’ve reached that point yet. We’ve lost a large number of our people, and I know that alone is a compelling reason to try to wipe these things out as quickly as we can. But I think we need to take a step back from the situation and look at it objectively.” He watched as she shifted in her chair and brushed away a strand of jet-black hair that had somehow escaped from the tight bun she wore at the back of her head. “We don’t know this enemy yet. We haven’t had time to study the findings from the analysis being carried out — at this very moment — on the dead bodies of the things. We haven’t had a chance to analyze the casing that’s being taken from the ground. All we know is we have large numbers of mutated animals and human beings on a killing spree in the middle of the country. What caused it? We don’t know. How long will it last? We don’t know. Are they going to start moving again, or will they be underground for an extended time? We don’t know. What I urge you to avoid is making a decision based on incomplete information. If we were to use nuclear weapons—”