But still, even in the face of all the death and destruction that had been visited upon his country, America still remained the one place in the world where people believed in the meaning behind one single, simple word…
Hope.
Hope that things would get better. Hope that in the end, freedom would prevail and America — and the world — would be a safe place again.
Hope was holding his country together. It was a tenuous thing, but as long as people believed hope was still alive, it was as strong as the most hardened steel.
Hope was what Garrett saw when he watched Carolyn prepare the containment room for the soman gas. She still had hope. It was alive in her, in the way she spoke, in the way she moved. She was a beacon for others, a bright light that seemed to signal that all would be okay one day, as long as we didn’t give up. As long as we keep fighting until we can’t fight any longer.
As long as we keep fighting for the future.
Garrett knew every person on the Vanguard team was full of hope, in one way or another. Without it, they’d simply cower in a corner and wait for the end to come.
As he watched Carolyn punch in more commands, he had a sudden sinking feeling that the end, in fact, might be coming. All the hope in the world might not be enough to stop these things, unless people like Carolyn found a way.
He silently prayed that she would.
“General, it’s ready. I’m going to release the soman as soon as our little friend pops his head out of the ammo box,” Carolyn said.
“Soldier, you get your ass back behind that door as soon as you take your shot. They move incredibly fast.”
“Yes, sir. No sweat.”
“Lieutenant Ewing, get ready on that door. As soon as he’s clear, you slam that thing shut.”
“Yes, sir.” Josh placed his finger over the button that would slide the inner entrance door shut. The outer door to the clean room was still open — he’d shut it, too, as soon as the soldier made his exit.
“Carolyn, are you ready?”
“Yes, sir. Ready.”
Rammes turned to the other soldiers watching their comrade wrap his rifle sling around his left arm to provide added stability. “If that thing escapes, you kill it. Clear?”
As a single person, they answered, “Hooah, sir.”
Carolyn was going to have to ask Garrett exactly what that word meant.
Rammes counted down. “On my mark. Three…”
The soldier centered his sights on the lock. It was moving slightly, as the creature in the box continued its frantic efforts to escape.
“Two…”
The soldier took a long breath, let it out only partway, and started a gentle pull on his trigger. His rifle was set for a single-shot burst. One bullet.
“One…”
The box jumped. The lock swung back and forth…
“Mark!”
“Stand by!”
The shot didn’t come.
“Stand by… stand by…” The soldier waited for the lock to stop swinging.
The rifle’s report was a dull thudding sound, masked behind the thick Plexiglas wall of the containment room. Sparks flew from the hardened lock as the bullet slammed into it, disintegrating it in a small shower of metal fragments.
The lid of the ammo box was flying open even as the largest piece of the shattered lock was falling to the floor.
The thing was out.
The mutated creature slammed into the ceiling of the containment room, about five feet above the hospital bed where the box had been lying.
Josh Ewing watched the rifle barrel retract from the entrance and mashed the button to close the inner door.
The creature spun in midair, looking straight at the entrance. Looking straight at the soldier with the rifle trying to get away.
It hit the floor and leapt at the sliding door. It moved as a blur, incredibly fast.
The inner door clicked shut just as the thing slammed into it. It cried out with a terrible wail, a scream of fury, as it hit the floor.
Out of the corner of his eye, Garrett saw the soldier dive out of the door to the clean room, tumbling across the white, polished floor. The second door slid shut behind him.
Josh Ewing stepped back from the control panel and shouted, “We’re sealed!”
Carolyn hit a key on the keyboard, releasing the soman gas into the confined space of the containment room.
“All right, you little bastard. Take a deep breath.”
In the instant before the soman rained down on it from the jets in the ceiling, the mutated creature looked through the thick Plexiglas and saw the group of people standing just on the other side.
Yellow eyes, as bright as fire, burned with a hellish rage as it turned its head from person to person.
Its mouth opened, revealing long, black fangs glistening and dripping with saliva, a small string stretching to the floor in front of it, translucent and shiny. The noise erupted from its mouth, chattering, clicking, loud enough to be heard even through the four-inch-thick Plexiglas.
The soman fell from the ceiling like a gentle rain, a misting of small droplets, settling to the floor below.
The creature’s eyes squinted as the powerful muscles in its legs tensed. Just as it was about to leap toward the Plexiglas viewing wall, the first mist of soman settled onto its back. Into its eyes.
The effect was immediate.
Silence. The chattering and clicking stopped.
At first, the creature seemed confused, not sure what to make of the wetness that was descending from above. It raised its ugly snout and sniffed the air — now filled with a strange camphor scent, the smell of rotting fruit — its restructured senses trying to categorize the new smell, the new feeling that was at that very moment racing through its nervous system, through its blood.
It blinked, as if someone had just kicked sand in its face. It scratched at its eyes with its long, black claws, rubbing and pawing at them with its front legs.
Its mouth was suddenly covered with a foamy mass of saliva, its long brown tongue slinging clumps of the foam from side to side. Its right front leg suddenly stiffened, stuck out to the side like it had been pulled by an invisible chain, and then it started to twitch, almost vibrate, as the first convulsions set in.
The creature’s rib cage expanded and contracted grotesquely as the lungs started to fail, its mouth opened wide, trying to get a breath. Its tail stiffened behind it, and then began to vibrate along with the rest of the creature’s appendages.
Death throes.
The creature rolled over onto its back, and a stream of pale brown urine shot into the air as the thing lost control of its bodily functions. A liquid mass of brownish-red feces literally erupted from its anus, spraying across the floor and splattering the side of the hospital bed.
Garrett watched in horror as the soman ravaged the mutated creature on the floor just fifteen feet away from him, watched as it quickly died from the gentle mist that had dropped from the ceiling. He knew agents like soman had been used against people before, and he was sickened to think that they’d died in much this same way.
Deep down, though, he was glad. Glad that the thing was dying. Glad that it was suffering. He knew he was watching the end to all the terrible events of the last few days, as the mutated thing sprayed its bodily fluids and bodily waste around the room in a maddening display of malfunctioning nerves. All the little controls that keep a body running like a top had been completely destroyed in this creature — in a matter of seconds — and the thing was entirely out of control, twitching and writhing on the floor like it had been stepped on by a giant’s mighty foot. Squashed like a bug.
The convulsions were tremulous, and every single restructured muscle fiber in the thing’s body vibrated with incredible intensity—