“What are you thinking, Carolyn?” Garrett asked.
“This doesn’t make sense. I honestly didn’t think the soman would kill it. All the data I’ve seen from the Soviet experience with Gemini led me to believe the creature would’ve mutated. It shouldn’t be dead.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“No, not disappointed. Just a little confused.” She looked at him through her plastic face mask and smiled. “I don’t like to be wrong.”
“I guessed that.”
“Lieutenant Ewing, open the door,” Rammes ordered. “Sergeant Wilson, get in there and get it to the examination container as quickly as you can. If that thing so much as twitches, I want your men to fill it full of lead.”
“Hooah, sir.”
Carolyn couldn’t resist any longer. “General, just what the heck does hooah mean?”
“It can mean a lot of things, Carolyn. It can mean yes, it can mean great, it can mean shit hot, it can mean fuckin’ A, it can mean—”
“Okay, sir. I get the idea.”
“It’s just a very strong affirmative.”
“Got it, sir. Hooah.”
“Very nice, Carolyn. I’ll make a trooper out of you yet.”
“That may be harder than you think, General. I don’t like guns.”
“That’s okay. Neither do I.”
Josh Ewing opened both sets of doors, and Sergeant Wilson, rifle at the ready, walked confidently into the room toward the dead beast. He inched up to the body, holding his rifle barrel right next to the thing’s head. “Jesus! This thing made one hell of a mess. I’m glad I don’t have to smell this shit.”
“Pick it up and get the hell out of there, Wilson,” Rammes said.
“Yes, sir.”
Sergeant Wilson tried to pick the creature up with one gloved hand, but found it was stuck to the floor by the congealing mess of bodily fluids that surrounded it. He stood, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and stooped down to grab the body with both hands.
Carolyn saw the eyes first.
Two bright, fiery yellow orbs.
Before she could scream a warning, the thing was raising itself off the floor, clumps of its hair ripping away, stuck to the mess on the floor.
The biometric readings spiked.
It was alive.
“Get out of there! Get out!” Her warning was too late.
Sergeant Wilson was startled. He lost his balance and fell back on his butt, kicking with his boots to get some distance from the thing, trying desperately to untangle his rifle strap and bring his weapon to bear.
In a blur, the creature jumped at him and sank its fangs deep into his leg.
Sergeant Wilson let out a bloodcurdling scream. He raised his rifle above his head and brought down the butt of the weapon square on the thing’s head.
It wouldn’t let go.
“Jesus! Get this thing off of me! Get it off!” he screamed.
It was too late. The transfer had been made. The mutation of Sergeant Randy Wilson, United States Army, began almost immediately.
The other soldiers ran through the first entrance, rifles at the ready.
Sergeant Wilson fell back onto the floor, his head bouncing with the impact. His back arched, and he let out a tortured scream. Even now, just seconds after the infectious bite, the sound that escaped his trembling throat didn’t sound entirely human.
The creature released its vise-like grip on its victim’s leg, and crouched, preparing to jump.
Garrett pushed Josh Ewing out of the way, sending him sprawling through the air to land in a tangled heap against one of the examination tables, and mashed the button to close the inner door. It slammed shut just as the soldiers reached it, and just as the creature flew through the air, slamming onto the door with a sickening thud.
“Garrett! What are you doing! We’ve got to get him out of there!” Carolyn tried to reach the button herself, but Garrett held her back.
“He’s already dead, Carolyn! He’s already dead!”
Rammes ordered the remaining soldiers out of the entrance and closed the outer door. He walked to the Plexiglas and watched as the mutated rat jumped at him, slamming into the thick wall with a muted thud, snarling at him around oversized fangs, a foamy mass of blood — Sergeant Wilson’s blood — ringing its mouth. A red smear ran down the inner surface of the Plexiglas to the floor, where the creature had landed.
A few feet away, Sergeant Wilson’s body twitched and contorted in a macabre dance of death — but it wasn’t really death, it was a transformation. Rammes watched in horror as what was once Sergeant Wilson tore at the environmental suit, ripping it into shreds with his new hands, now clawed and built for tearing.
Carolyn quickly walked to the soman control panel. She adjusted the dials and hit the release button. Within seconds the room was shrouded in a fog of deadly nerve gas.
Through the cloud, two sets of burning yellow eyes shone back at them, one set at floor level, the other at eye level. The transformed Sergeant Wilson was standing. He was now a thinker.
CHAPTER 46
The president called an emergency session of his war cabinet immediately after learning of Ray Smythe’s suicide.
Assembled in the situation room were Hugo McIntyre, Tank Stone, Secretary of State Adam Williamson, and Jessie Hruska. The vice president and the directors of the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI were all video-teleconferenced in.
Jessie sat immediately to the president’s right.
“We’ve suffered a terrible loss this evening. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs — and my good friend — Rayburn Smythe committed suicide in the NMCC upon learning of his daughter’s death.” He paused, unsure of what to say. He knew a good man had lost his daughter directly because of his decision.
“Mr. President, it had to be done,” Jessie said. “The creatures were already on top of them — they’d almost reached the traffic jam where his daughter was stuck. She told her father she could see them coming closer.” She gently placed her hand on the president’s thigh, under the table. Out of sight. “She couldn’t be saved, Mr. President. None of them could.”
“How many did we lose?” the president asked, to no one in particular.
“Mr. President, there are no—” Hugo stopped midsentence.
“Go ahead, Hugo.”
“All the evacuees from Omaha and Lincoln are dead, Mr. President. We don’t have exact numbers yet, but the troops on the ground aren’t reporting any survivors.”
Andrew pushed that terrible news aside for the moment. He had to. “Did we kill the things?”
“Looks like it, sir. They dropped in place when the soman hit them. I think we’ve done it, sir. I think it’s over.”
“We’ve still got three more waves hitting us from the air, Hugo.”
“Yes, sir, but now we know how to kill them.”
“You want me to drop soman gas all over three — no, four more — cities that haven’t had a chance to evacuate at all yet, and hope that we kill every single mutated bird in the air?”
“We can release the soman in the air, Mr. President. Defense is looking at modifying some of the old National Guard aerial spraying aircraft. Some are being used by the forestry service, a couple are in ready-use status at the boneyard, and—”
“How long before they can be used?”
Tank answered, “We can have a couple ready by tomorrow night, Mr. President.”
“How much soman do we have left?”
“That’s not a concern, Mr. President. The Soviets had enough of the stuff to blanket the entire globe a couple of times.”