a-wandering-imagination

[a-wandering-imagination]

Epilogue

Hundreds of miles away to the southeast, Dr. Garvey crouched behind an abandoned desk in one of the darkened empty offices of the communications wing of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He had escaped the telecommunications network center after sending the message to Miles and the email to Muskie… but just barely. Miles had no idea what he’d done when he disabled the locks to release the Indra subjects. Indra was just one of various black bag projects flying under the radar at Los Alamos and it wasn’t even close to being the most dangerous. Even though the small office where Dr. Garvey was currently hiding was sweltering and stuffy, he shivered violently as his mind raced over the events of the past 48 hours. Miles had released something far worse than those misshapen Indra rejects. The security doors on the subterranean vaults below the facility had also been compromised. Those vaults housed all sorts of dirty secrets, many never slated to see the light of day ever again. But one in particular had held a very unique denizen. The organism in that vault had been recovered from the wreckage of an unidentified aircraft that had crashed into the desert near Roswell, New Mexico on that fateful July day back in 1947.

That crash had become the source of endless stories of government conspiracy and alien invasion. Through the years, Roswell had become the de facto mecca for the Sci-Fi fringe and mindless new age prophets. Dr. Garvey, however, knew better. He knew because it was that very incident that originally had brought him, and his expertise in sequencing and splicing DNA and RNA, to Los Alamos. That organism, a lifeform from beyond our solar system, was his first project here at Los Alamos. When they first called him in, they thought the creature was dead and had called in Dr. Garvey to analyze the remains in hopes of identifying the biological identity of the creature. They soon learned, however, that it was not dead… and it was not friendly. After the unexplainable deaths of several staff and the even more inexplicable actions of others involved with the project, Dr. Garvey had recommended that the organism be isolated completely and all tests be suspended until the safety of the team of scientists could be assured.

The military brass balked at this suggestion and urged Dr. Garvey to continue his testing on the creature. When he refused, they threatened his position and his future. Eventually they even threatened his life, claiming they would lock him in the facility and let him rot there. Garvey maintained his stance. The dangers he had observed at the hands of this organism defied scientific explanation and he didn’t want it to escape the facility and threaten the populace at large. It was at this point that the military finally admitted why they had been pressing so hard for results. The aircraft the organism arrived in hadn’t actually crashed but was instead shot down. The US military had tracked the incoming aircraft as soon as it broke into the stratosphere. The craft's trajectory had been a beeline directly towards the National Laboratory at Los Alamos. When the craft failed to deviate from its course and the government saw its intended target--and knowing full well what the government was working on at that time in Los Alamos--they felt they had no choice but to shoot down the aircraft. At first they had assumed the aircraft was terrestrial, a prototype of some sort secretly developed by one of our enemies. But when the crew arrived on site at the crash zone, that hypothesis was quickly obliterated. The ship and the occupant were immediately recognized as being ‘not of this world’. Which made the military even more nervous, knowing that the ship had been headed directly towards one of their most secret facilities.

And now the creature was free once more.

Garvey knew he didn’t have long to live even if the creature didn’t find him. Garvey had been a young medical student in 1947, showing promise in fields that were almost unheard of at the time. His ideas had been revolutionary. But 1947 was still sixty-six years ago. Garvey was now a very learned, but very old, man. He’d just celebrated his 94th birthday last month. And now he found himself wondering if anyone now living on this god-forsaken planet would survive through the next year. Not if that thing gets out of here, Garvey mused as he huddled under the desk awaiting oblivion.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 48

Miles stared at the young girl. She made no move to approach and she said nothing. She simply stared. Miles stood up slowly, holding the rifle at the ready. His eyes never left the girl and she stared right back. He racked the bolt on the rifle, ejecting the spent shell, and slapped it forward once more, chambering a fresh round. His skin was tingling. He didn’t know what to make of this. The appearance of the girl had set him off. He couldn’t imagine that she had been the cause of the ricochet, but he had no other explanation. The girl, if she had taken the hit, looked no worse for wear. And that worried him. Miles was fast. Fast and strong. But he was not bulletproof. He slowly brought the rifle to his shoulder once more, drawing a bead on the girl. At this range he didn’t bother sighting with the scope. Instinct alone centered the rifle’s aim on the little girl’s head. The girl, in her turn, had shifted her gaze from his eyes to the end of the barrel. Miles stretched his trigger finger and then cupped it back over the trigger. He had just begun to apply pressure when he saw a shimmer behind the girl and he froze. In a split second the man was there--the one at whom he had been aiming just a few moments before… the man who had been nearly a mile away. Now he was standing behind the girl with his hands resting on her small shoulders. She looked up at him and the man met her gaze for a moment, smiled, and then both turned their gaze back to Miles.

A drop of sweat eased its way down Miles forehead and into the inside corner of his right eye. He quickly blinked it away, trying to keep his eyes on the two standing in front of him.

“You must be Miles,” the man said. Miles noted there was no fear in his voice. The man’s voice was emotionless, calm… almost peaceful.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Anton,” Miles said, lowering the rifle.

Anton jumped a little at the mention of his name. How did Miles know him and why was he waiting for him? It was Miles’ turn to smile now. “My profession is all about knowing, and knowing first.” He brought his finger up to his temple and gave it a soft tap as he winked at Anton. “Remember all those cameras in the old courthouse in Seattle? Where do you think all that data goes?”

Anton’s eyes widened. “You watched that?”

“I did. I saw what happened to Muskie there. I thought you had killed him. Was kinda glad, in fact. That would have saved me from having to do it. One less thing on my list. But apparently he lived.” Miles paused for a moment. “And that’s why I couldn’t contact you directly when you arrived. I wasn’t sure it was you. I knew Muskie was on that plane… I’d know his stinking psychic signature anywhere. But the thing coming with him seemed darker, bigger, somehow. I didn’t think someone like you would feel so powerful or so dark… sorry, but I had to be sure Muskie hadn’t brought something else with him entirely. He’s a sneaky little shit, that way.”

“So you saw the monster that attacked Muskie?” Anton asked.

Miles paused for a moment and patted his pockets. He found his cigarettes and shook one out, lit it and took a long drag. “The video was pretty sketchy there. I didn’t actually see what attacked Muskie. There is a lot of static and strange shadows…” His voice trailed off as he stared at Anton. After a moment, he continued. “Very impressive, by the way. Muskie is not your average commando. Besting him is no easy task. Believe me, I know.” Again he paused. This time his gaze fixed on the ground at his feet and he flicked his cigarette there and ground it into the sand with his toe. “That video was why I changed my plans... drastically. I was actually working on finding a way to get out to Seattle to find you. But Muskie saved me the hassle.” Miles smiled again.

“But Muskie said you were the one behind all this,” Anton said, gesturing with his arms as he spoke, “all the death and sickness. Is that true.”

Miles took a long drag on his cigarette and picked at a hangnail with his thumb for a moment. Then he looked directly at Anton. “Yes. I am. I snuck the virus out of Los Alamos. I used one of the Indra subjects since we are immune to the virus. We can carry the virus but it doesn’t make us sick; it was perfect. That gave him time to pass through several international airports. A normal human host most likely wouldn’t have made it to Albuquerque, let alone the airport.”

“Why did you do it?” Anton asked. He could feel his pulse quickening and the anger rising in his throat. Memories of his wife and daughter and the peaceful life he had in Juneau leapt to his mind.

“Someone had to. For all of us.”

“What?!?”

“I’m sure you lost people dear to you, Anton. I am truly sorry for that. I lost all of mine a long time ago. That’s why I was uniquely qualified to pull this off. I am alone. I have been for many decades. I am an only child. My parents are long dead. I married my high school sweetheart right before I went off to war. She died of pneumonia a year later. That was almost 80 years ago. I have no children.” He paused for a moment staring at the ground and then looked Anton in the eyes once more. Anton saw pain there and even a tear forming. “I don’t have any emotions left connecting me to our current society. I am able to stand back and look at it with an unbiased view. And I think you will admit, we all knew where we were headed. Pollution, corruption, global warming, extreme weather, social unrest, ever-increasing poverty and hunger, drug-resistant bacteria… and strange new viruses… I just threw one more into the mix to hurry things up a bit.”

“But why!?! You wanted to destroy the entire human race?”

Miles looked at Anton for a long moment. “Not all of it, Anton... Just enough. You see, that is the root of the problem. There are…” He paused and corrected himself, “WERE too many of us. We were destroying our ability to survive as a species. And we were going to do it much more quickly than most people realized. Like I said earlier, I have spent my life privy to information classified well beyond ‘top secret’.”

Anton looked stunned.

“The government had the same plan in mind, but they were going to let pollution, starvation and civil unrest reduce the numbers, while they sat protected in their ivory towers. You see, pollution, starvation and civil unrest don’t affect the rich. They only affect the poor.” Miles looked at Anton and Anton thought he saw pain in Miles' eyes. “I decided to make the solution a little more equitable. Viruses don’t care if you are rich or poor. They attack all hosts equally. Some survive, some do not. Those that do are better suited to pass on traits of survival. Darwin was right, you know.” Miles turned away and stared at the sun as it descended towards the purple mountains in the west. “I have given you a new world, Anton. A more peaceful one. One that is sustainable once again.”

Anton’s brow creased.

“Why am I here?” Anton asked. “You didn’t need me for any of this. You said you needed to find me. You were going to go to Seattle to find me. Why?”

Miles slowly turned back to face Anton. “Because only you can finish this.”

“Finish what?”

Miles stared at Anton for several moments. “I am not your average human, Anton. You know that. You’ve seen what we can do.” Miles paused for a moment. “I can run fast enough that most people can’t see me coming. I am strong, stronger even than Muskie. But I am still mortal. I can die and, more importantly, I cannot walk through walls. I might be able to break through some walls, but there are always stronger walls.” He kicked some dust with his toe and then looked directly into Anton’s eyes. “The walls that protect the few left who need to die are the strongest.”

Anton was flabbergasted. The realization of what Miles was talking about was starting to set in. “You’re talking about secured government facilities, aren’t you? You want me to kill the rest of our government?!?”

Miles stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Not all of them. Specific ones. I let Colonel Cooke live. He is a good man and wants to do the right thing. There are many more like him. But...unfortunately… There are some, in positions of great influence, who are not good. And the world will never be free while they live. They don’t understand anything but domination and oppression. I have destroyed their abilities to eavesdrop for quite some time. The Echelon system and several of the satellite communications systems across the globe have been permanently disabled by men that I have been sending around the world for nearly ten years. But there are places that even I can’t get into. And those places house the men who are truly responsible for the evil in our world. I cannot get to them, Anton… But you can.”

“How are they any different from you, Miles? Didn’t you do exactly what they were trying to do?”

Miles smiled. “In many ways, I’m not any different from them. I am a product of their world, a genetic experiment that has served its purpose. I think like they do. I act like they do. But I hope that my motives are somewhat better.” He paused and stared at Anton for a few moments. “You knew this was going to happen anyway, right?” Miles turned as he spoke with arms outspread, gesturing at the distant horizon. “The world couldn’t sustain us. There were simply too many of us. Scientists were trying to figure out how to grow ever more food, create ever more energy, build ever more homes… But the planet is only so big. There is only so much it can handle. This was happening long before I stuck my finger in the pot.”

“But you’re just trying to play god with what man created,” Anton replied.

“No, Anton. I am giving control back to God or whatever hand of fate you believe in. It is those men in their ivory towers that were trying to play god. They wanted you to die so they could live. In the end, that is what everyone wants. But not everyone has the power to make it happen. I leveled the playing field. The virus is indiscriminate. It kills the rich and poor alike.”

“But not you, Miles. It won’t kill you and you knew that when you let it go. You knew you would survive. Again, how are you different from the rest of those meddlers?”

“I’m different in a couple of ways, Anton. First, like I said earlier, I leveled the field. I gave everyone an equal chance. A chance that couldn’t be purchased or coerced. They would never have done that. They were going to hang you all out to dry. Face it, this was going to happen one way or the other, I just decided that good people should have an equal chance at building what was to come. People like you, Anton...rather than people like me. And I am not forcing you to go seek out and kill those men. I am merely providing you with information. You can do with that what you will.” Miles turned away once more to look out across the desert. For several moments no one spoke. Anton could hear the wind picking up again. He looked up at the cloudless blue sky. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Anton saw a sudden, jerking movement and he jumped back. Miles was now facing him, but he was holding his .45 pistol in his hand. There was a look of peace on his face as he slowly brought the gun up to his own head. “And now for the second difference between me and them, Anton. The rest of those fuckers would never do this.” The report of the gun sounded small and hollow in the vast expanse of the desert. Miles' body slumped on its side in the soft sand.

Anton stared at the vacant spot in the air where Miles had been standing, afraid to look down. His body convulsed with a shiver and he felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine. He exhaled slowly as his eyes touched on Miles' lifeless form. He stared at Miles for a moment and then turned and started walking back towards the Humvee and Niki. The soft warmth of the late afternoon sun on his back felt good as he walked and he became aware that his mind was clear and at ease. He felt better than he had felt since before the sickness began. As he walked he felt as if he was looking at the world with new eyes. Then his mind raced ahead to the woman who was waiting there in the distance and he felt growing hope as well.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 47

Anton and Niki were still leaning against one another when they heard the rifle shot from away south. Anton at first didn’t think it was possible that a shot from as far away as that sounded could have been aimed at them. But he realized immediately that it was. Niki jumped at the rifle’s report as well and they both heard the whine of the bullet’s ricochet. Niki watched as Anton turned toward the sound of the rifle, his eyes seeming to focus much further away than she could see.

“Wait here. I have to go,” Anton said.

Before she could argue Anton simply vanished--so quickly that Niki, who had hugged him instinctively at the sound of the shot, lurched forward in the void left where his body had been. “Holy shit!” she exclaimed and jumped back and stumbled, landing on her butt in the sand. She looked around frantically for where he might have gone, but Anton was nowhere to be seen. Slowly her head turned to the southwest in the direction of the rifle shot. Her eyes focused somewhere beyond the edge of her sight and a calmness came over her. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees and stared at that shimmering point beyond the undulating waves of heat where she knew Anton had gone, a soft smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 46

Just under a mile to the southwest, Miles was lying on a small dune, watching them. He had brought binoculars and the .338 Lapua Magnum rifle with him. The rifle was much more accurate than the old .30-06 he had used in WWII against the Germans and Miles was an exceptional shot. Even with the wind, he knew he would have no problem hitting his target at this distance. He put down the binoculars with which he’d been watching the couple as they examined Muskie’s corpse and brought the rifle to his shoulder. He adjusted the bipod that was attached to the forestock so that he had a stable shooting platform and then twisted the focus on the Nightforce NXS 8-32x56 scope and the couple snapped into focus. The heat rising from the desert caused their image to ripple as if they were standing behind a shimmering screen curtain, but Miles had made many much more difficult shots. He twisted the windage and elevation knobs to adjust for the conditions and then settled the rifle butt into his shoulder and snugged his cheek into the formed rest. He drew in a soft breath and exhaled slowly as he centered the reticle on Anton’s head. He wasn’t sure which of the two was the threat, but his gut told him it was the man. At this distance, the man’s head was almost entirely hidden behind the mildot in Miles' reticle. As the last of Miles' breath slipped from his mouth, he slowly squeezed the trigger. There was a loud boom and the familiar shock in his shoulder… but a strange sound followed immediately after. The whine of a ricocheting bullet. The whine of the ricochet hung in the air for a second. Miles blinked and looked through the scope and saw his view was now obscured. He blinked again and was about to adjust the scope when the dark shape blocking his view moved. Miles looked up to find a small girl, no more than five or six standing no more than five feet in front of him.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 45

It took the group most of the morning to get the Humvees packed up for the trip out of Dugway. Anton helped the group load the meager supplies they had on hand on the three Humvees that would carry the last of the survivors north to rendezvous with the others at Hill Air Force Base. Most of what they were carrying was extra gas that they had siphoned from the various vehicles around the facility. Each truck had four extra 11 gallon jerry cans strapped on the back. They left six full jerry cans at the hotel for Anton to use, if he was able to follow them north later on. Niki had helped the others pack the clothing and foodstuff they had scrounged from the houses, hotel and outbuildings into the trucks as well. There were just nine people who had made it out of the facility with Colonel Cooke, consisting of Vicci and his two soldiers, Tocarro and two other computer specialists, the medical officer and two maintenance workers. Niki made it eleven in total. Each Humvee had seating for four so the third vehicle had one empty seat, which they filled with additional supplies.

Anton stood alone by his Humvee, staring absently at the map in his hands. He had a bad feeling about this. He shifted his gaze and looked west out across the burning desert heat. Somewhere out there a man was waiting for him… a terrifying man. Anton felt a hand on his arm and turned to find Niki at his side. She had her backpack slung over one shoulder. As her eyes caught his, she swung the backpack off her shoulder and tossed it through the open passenger window of Anton’s Humvee. Anton started to disagree, but she held a finger to his lips. The touch of her finger on his lips sent a small shock through him. She looked into his eyes and without looking away slowly tilted her head upwards and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. “I am going with you.” She said.

His mind was caught between bliss and panic, but his fear jumped forward. “It’s not safe! I’m not sure I can protect you!” he hissed, grabbing her by the shoulders.

Her eyes were still locked with his as she said, “If you can’t, no one can. And I would rather die with you than live alone.” With the last word, Anton saw the strength and hardness return to her eyes. “Now let’s do this.” She stepped past him and jumped into the front seat of the Humvee. Anton turned to the others. Cooke and Vicci were the only two not already inside their vehicles and both men simply shrugged. Then Cooke turned to face Anton and snapped his heels together and brought his hand to his brow in a crisp salute. He held it there until Vicci did likewise. Then both men turned and jumped into their Humvees.

Anton and Niki watched as the three Humvees circled out of the parking lot, turned onto Stark Road and headed northeast out of town. Then Anton turned and slowly walked around the front of the Humvee to the driver’s side, watching Niki through the glass as he went. She held his gaze with her own, proud and defiant and ready for anything. As he started the engine, she reached across the center console and squeezed his arm. Neither spoke as Anton maneuvered the Humvee out of the parking lot and headed west on Stark, in the exact opposite direction of the others.

The road west of Dugway was empty and hot. The sun beat down on the truck as they travelled towards the airfield. Both Anton and Niki had their windows down but it didn’t do much to alleviate the heat. By the time they had turned north on North Wig Mountain Road, they were both sweaty and sticking to the seats. The miles rolled by slowly and the dust kicked up behind them held in the dry, still air long after they passed. Cooke was right, Anton mused as he looked in the rearview mirror at the cloud of dust behind them. Anyone out here would see them coming from a long way off indeed.

They found the road west off of North Wig Mountain Road without much difficulty. It really was pretty much the only road they had seen since they turned north. This new road, however, was not paved and was therefore even dustier. The front tires kicked up grit as well as dust and the sound of the small rocks pelting the underside of the truck as they drove took on a monotonous tone. Niki readjusted herself in her seat and smiled at Anton. Anton did his best to smile back, but he was feeling an ever-growing sense of doom. As bright as the desert was that they were driving through, Anton felt like there was a big black hole out there somewhere just waiting to swallow him. A hole so deep and so dark he might never find the bottom. The thought sent a chill down his spine even as the sweat was dripping off his brow.

Even before they came into sight of the last corner where the road would once again turn due west, signalling their proximity to the spot marked on the map, Anton knew they were close. This time, however, it wasn’t any sixth sense or foreboding feeling… it was instead the gathering of languidly circling crows and vultures he saw out over the desert about a half mile from the road. The distance was too great for him to see what was on the ground out there, but there were some birds already there fighting over whatever it was. Niki had seen it too and grabbed the handrail on the dash as Anton pulled hard on the wheel and the Humvee left the relative smooth of the road for the jumbled bumps and crunches of the rough, sage-lined desert plain. There were tire tracks crisscrossing this section in all directions and there were even some seemingly established paths but Anton ignored these and drove in a beeline for the circle of birds. The Humvee bounded and bounced over the rough terrain, but Anton kept his foot on the gas. Meanwhile his eyes were scanning the surroundings for any sign of where a sniper may be hiding. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he figured it would be some sort of vantage point or high ground that a shooter would prefer. Niki was concentrating on the birds. The ones on the ground were now looking in their direction and the fighting had stopped, they were still a couple hundred yards away, but they had the birds undivided attention. Those still in the air had stopped circling and were swinging away to the east as the truck bore down on the site.

Anton didn’t slow until he was almost upon it and the birds on the ground exploded in panic as the truck approached. As the Humvee skidded to a halt and the birds scattered, Anton and Niki sat staring at the form lying in the crusted earth. Anton knew immediately that it was Muskie. There was no mistaking the misshapen and deformed profile of the man’s body. Anton also knew immediately that Muskie was dead. He and Niki stepped softly out of the vehicle. Both scanned the horizon in sweeping half turns, but now, other than the squawks of the departing birds and the hard, hot wind that had kicked up, there was no sound. The desolate flat was baked hard and Anton and Niki saw nothing but rising heat waves causing liquid mirages to form in all directions. If anyone was out there looking at them, they would have to be a long way off.

Anton turned back to the bloody corpse on the ground. He grimaced as he deftly tapped the warped and sickly shrunken chest with the toe of his boot. The upturned face rolled to one side. The birds had been at the face pretty hard. The eyes and lips were gone leaving a gruesome skull like death mask on the small body. Muskie had died hard, Anton thought, as his eyes wandered over the broken limbs. Both arms and both legs were broken in several places. Muskies right foot was twisted at a macabre angle and it was swollen to the size of a football and was turning from purple to black in the heat.

Anton glanced at Niki. She was also staring at the body, but Anton noticed that she seemed to be analyzing it more than simply trying to comprehend it. There was something clinical about her watchful eyes as they traced the details of Muskie’s battered corpse. “Miles definitely did not like this guy,” she said at last. “He made him suffer before he died. Suffer A LOT.” She paused for a moment and squatted down and looked closely at one of Muskie’s broken legs. “I’ve seen worse in my line of work,” she said finally. Then she stood and stretched and turned back to Anton. “But not much. Miles is a pretty twisted fellow.”

Anton nodded and turned his back on the corpse. Once again he scanned the horizon all around the site. He could see no spot where anyone could be hiding.

“What now?” Niki asked, looking around as well.

“We wait.” Anton folded his arms across his chest and turned due west staring off in the direction of the descending sun, his shadow stretched out behind. Niki stood watching him for a moment and then walked up behind him, close, and leaned her head against his back. She closed her eyes and listened hard. She could just hear Anton’s heart through the clothing. He leaned back into her just a little, but otherwise didn’t move. Nikki smiled and closed her eyes, waiting for what she knew would come.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 44

Anton awoke to a soft knocking at the door. He looked around the room, groggy with sleep. There were a pile of blankets on the floor but no sign of Niki. Then he heard movement in the bathroom. Again, there was a soft knock. Anton rose and crossed the room and pulled the door open. Colonel Cooke was outside with Specialist Tocarro and Sergeant Vicci. Cooke was holding a piece of paper. They all looked worried.

“We found this in the entryway of the hotel this morning. Vicci was coming in from a security sweep and found it on his way in.” Cooke handed the note to Anton.

It was a single sheet of paper, hotel stationery to be exact. There was a ragged hole at the top. The only thing on the paper was a set of handwritten coordinates and a scribbled signature.

40°19’43” N 113°18’28” W

Anton couldn’t make out the signature and gave Cooke a questioning look.

“That’s Miles,” was all he replied.

Anton noticed there were a couple of small smudges of what looked like blood near the bottom of the page and there appeared to be blood around the ragged hole at the top. Anton flipped the page over and then back and then looked again at Cooke. “Where do these coordinates lead?”

“Near as we can figure from the paper maps we’ve found, it is about thirty miles northwest of here… out in the middle of the desert. That’s all part of the Dugway Proving Grounds Test Range. Nothing but baked earth out there as far as I know.”

“So why would he leave this?”

“We think he wants us to go there,” Cooke replied and glanced nervously at Tocarro and Vicci.

“What’s going on?” Anton asked. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Then it dawned on him that Muskie wasn’t with them. “Wait, where’s Muskie?”

“Vicci went to find him first. But he wasn’t in his room. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been there all night…”

Anton felt a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. “Where would he go?”

“Well, that’s the thing…” Vicci spoke up. “I went to find him first because I noticed that it was his knife that had been used to… ‘attach’... the note to the hotel entryway.”

“What?” Anton replied as the knot continued to grow.

“The knife was stuck through the note and embedded up to the hilt through one of the big iron girders supporting the awning over the entryway. It was punched clean through. Like a piece of cardboard. I couldn’t get the knife out. It’s still stuck down there.”

All three of the men stared at Anton. Anton knew that they were expecting him to provide answers for this and he didn’t have any. The knot in his stomach was making him a little queasy and he was breaking out in a cold sweat. What was Miles capable of? Where the hell was Muskie? Anton was feeling more and more out of his depth. Why was this happening to him?

“We won’t let you go out there alone,” Cooke said suddenly. The other two nodded. “We’ve already decided on that. We’ll take all the men we have and face this together.”

Anton noticed that Cooke didn’t look nearly as confident as he was trying to sound. Cooke saw Anton’s concern and reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a map. “Can we come in and talk about this?”

Anton stepped back from the door and the three men came in. Niki was now standing in the middle of the room watching them. She was dressed as she had been the day before, but her face and hair were washed and she looked refreshed. Cooke nodded to her as he made his way to the small table next to the window. He laid out the map and pointed to a spot that had a small pencilled ‘x’ on it. “That’s the coordinates.”

Anton studied the map. The point was located along a roughly north-south line between two small peaks. Granite Peak, the southern one, was about 15 miles due south of the point on the map. There was a smaller, nameless peak about 8 miles north of the point. East and west of the location, the desert was pretty much flat for 30 to 40 miles in either direction. Cooke was right. It looked like there was absolutely nothing out there. Anton’s gut, however, was telling him otherwise. Anton had a sinking feeling that they would find something there.

“Miles always was a good strategist,” Cooke said quietly.

“What?” Anton answered.

“The location. There is no way to provide cover. The distance is too great. Anyone within shooting range will be visible to anyone else in the area. If he’s out there already… and I am assuming he is… he will see us coming from a long way off.”

Anton's shoulders sagged a little.

“There’s one more thing,” Cook continued.

Anton and the others looked at him.

“I’ve not been able to verify it, but Miles told me he was a sniper for the Rangers before he went into Project Indra.”

“Shit!” Vicci hissed and he slumped down into the nearest chair. “We’ll be sitting ducks out there if he has any kind of decent hardware.”

Anton stared at the map for several moments. Niki walked up behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t turn. “Colonel. I’m going out there alone.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Anton…” Cooke began, but as Anton raised his hand he stopped speaking.

“He wants me alone. That’s why he wants to meet out there. No place for hiding. If you come, he will kill you. All of you. And that won’t do us any good.”

“But what if he kills you?” Vicci asked. Everyone in the room looked at Anton.

“Then it would be best if you were far, far away,” Anton responded. “I think you folks ought to pack up and head east when I go west to meet Miles. He is fast, but he can’t go two directions at once. Our best defense is to split up. He is going to concentrate on me, as I am the biggest threat. That gives you time to get away.” Anton paused and stared at the three men. They all looked like they were trying to figure out a different solution but Anton’s logic was sound. Anton saw the resignation in their eyes.

“Just show me on the map how to get out there,” Anton said finally.

Cooke stepped forward. “There is actually a road that runs fairly close to where that is. It’s just a dirt service road. There are a lot of test facilities scattered around so there are roads criss-crossing the desert out there. To get to it, you’ll need to head west again and go out past the airfield where we picked you up. About two miles past the airfield, Stark Road will hang south, to the left, and you’ll see a fork with another road that continues west northwest. Take that road.” Cooke pointed to the intersection on the map. “Follow that west till you get to this little evap facility. Don’t go in--gates probably locked anyway, just take this road that skirts it to the north. You’ll find North Wig Mountain Road there,” Again Cooke pointed to a point on the map. “You’ll take that north for about 10 or 12 miles to this little intersection here. You’ll see the big gravel pit off to the left as you approach the intersection. There you’ll cut west. This road has no name, but it is the only one going west from here. Once you’re on that road you’ll run west for another 10 to 12 miles. You’ll know you’re close when the road cuts southwest at a straight 45 degree angle here,” once more Cooke pointed to a point on the map. “This road skirts a little waste dump. It continues southwest for about a mile and a half, turns north there and continues for about another mile and a half. Once the road straightens out, and heads due west again, you’ll be within a third of a mile of the site. You can take the hummer across ground there.” Cooke paused and looked at the map. “I’m not sure how you will be able to pinpoint your exact location once you leave the road.”

“I think I’ll know the place when I see it,” Anton responded.

“I was kinda thinking that same thing... “ Cooke said, almost under his breath.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 43

Niki and Anton sat quietly by themselves in one of the rooms in the IHG Army Hotel. The survivors had gathered here after escaping the facility. Anton stared down at his shoes and Niki stared at him. “Do you think you can beat him?”, she asked.

Anton looked up into her eyes and saw worry there. “I’ve no idea,” he said. “I don’t know what I am capable of. I still feel like I am just being dragged along for the ride. But if what they say about this guy Miles is true… then the monster… I mean me… or whatever… is probably the only one who can stop him.”

Niki held his gaze for several minutes before she looked away. Anton still felt in awe of how someone could look so fragile and yet so strong all at the same time. His eyes traced the line of her jaw from her earlobe to her chin and then down her long graceful neck. She turned and caught his gaze and he quickly averted his eyes and felt the blush on his cheeks. 

“Why did you come here, Niki?” he asked, looking up at her once more. 

She again held his gaze for a moment before speaking. “I go where you go.”

Anton’s brow furrowed a bit but he didn’t look away. “Why?”

Her eyes bored into his with such intensity he felt as if she were looking inside him. “Because I can trust you.” Anton saw tears start to form at the corners of her eyes. She blinked and turned her head towards the window. “For me, that is saying a lot. I trust no one.” The whisper was barely audible. 

“But why me, Niki? Why do you trust me? You hardly even know me,” Anton continued. 

Niki didn’t respond. Instead she rose and walked over to the window and stared out at the purple evening sky. Her mind was full of questions and she needed answers. She couldn’t wait anymore. She was feeling something she had never felt before and was desperate for it to be real. She hoped that what she believed was true, but there was only one way to find out.

Anton remained sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her. The glow of the setting sun silhouetted her lanky form in the darkened room and Anton found himself thinking he’d never seen anyone quite so beautiful. He looked down at his hands and saw the ring on his finger and felt a stab of guilt. He tried to remember the faces of his wife and daughter but saw only images of death. He looked at Niki again and a sense of calm enveloped him. He thought for a moment that maybe he did know, after all, why she trusted him. And almost as if she could hear his thoughts, Niki turned and looked into his eyes once more and that mysterious hint of a smile tugged at her lips. She walked back over to the bed and sat down near him--not next to him...but near. 

“I’ll take the couch,” Anton said, rising from the bed. Niki said nothing and laid back on the bed. She watched as Anton unbuckled his tactical vest and set it on the coffee table and sat on the couch untying his hiking boots. With his boots off, he turned and stretched out on the couch, his feet propped up on one arm rest and his head resting on the other. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment and then closed his eyes. The events of the last few days had exhausted him. All his muscles ached. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He felt the soft blackness of sleep start closing in around him. His hand slipped from his chest and hung limply over the side of the couch as sleep settled in. 

In the drowsy fog that filled his mind, Anton only half heard the faint noises from across the room. Buckles unclipping, a zipper, soft movements followed by padded footsteps. He felt the cool touch of her slender fingers as they lightly grazed the skin of his forearm. He opened his eyes and saw her standing over him, the blanket from the bed wrapped around her shoulders and open just enough at the front for him to catch a glimpse of the smooth line of her inner thigh above her knee. In one motion she opened the blanket and spun herself onto the couch, nestling her naked form against him as the blanket settled over them. Anton, very much awake now, could feel the intense heat of her back against his chest and was afraid to move, thinking that any action on his part would make this dream vanish. Under the blanket, she pulled his free arm around her and cupped his hand to her breast. Anton felt her body tighten for a moment as his hand came into contact with the soft curve of her breast, but she held his hand fast, not allowing him to withdraw. Her breath was husky for a moment and then settled once and she leaned back into him and Anton felt her body relax. He pulled her close, allowing his head to fall into place on her shoulder, their faces resting cheek to cheek. The soft smell of her hair and the warmth of her skin was intoxicating. She said nothing but tightened her grip on his hand. As Anton drifted off to sleep, strange images filled his mind--windblown desert sand, clear blue sky, a dust devil sliding away in the distance and Nikki’s bright green eyes. The images disappeared and reappeared almost as if pulsating and Anton felt, more than noticed, the dark heartbeat keeping time as the images faded from his sight. He felt a deep longing in his chest, a desire to share his future with this strange and exotic woman lying quietly in his arms. He felt that desire reach out of himself, down through his arms, through his hands and then he felt a slight tingle in his fingertips against Nikki’s soft skin. She gasped a little and Anton thought for a second that he had actually shocked her, but her hand tightened once again and the image of her face flashed before his eyes. Her face was radiant and shining, and the image increased in brightness until soft whiteness filled Anton’s mind, bright and soft and white… like mist in the morning sun. Behind it all, the dark heart beat slower...a soft, deep thrumming beat lulling Anton to sleep. Just as he was slipping into blissful oblivion, he heard it. 

-Yes-

“Did you say something?” Anton whispered into Nikki’s ear as his breathing slowed. Nikki said nothing, but once again pressed herself into the curve of him and pulled his arms even tighter around her. And although Anton could not see it in the growing darkness, Nikki was wide awake, eyes shining. A satisfied smile crossed her face as she closed her eyes.

Outside, not a hundred yards from where Anton and Niki slept, Miles stood in the darkness. He stared at the window of Anton’s room.  Miles knew that the ‘thing’ was there. He knew it with his entire being. He wanted to go in and kill it, but the doubt still crawled around in the back of his mind. He had a feeling that whatever it was in that room, it never really slept. He would never catch it unawares. No. It was too soon. Miles had to bide his time and plan his attack. Tonight was no good. He turned to walk back towards the base when he saw the faint glow across the parking lot. Someone was standing in the dark, smoking a cigarette, in the shadows of the trees lining the street. The lit tip cast a faint glow on the grizzled face. Miles didn’t have to guess who it was. 

So tonight I deal with Muskie, Miles thought. Why not? I’ve nothing better to do. As he started to move, the light went out and somewhere in the darkness, much further away, there was a sound of sudden and terrible impact--the sound of two great forces colliding--and then nothing. 

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 42

The Dugway facility had no common network with the Michael Army Airfield, but Miles knew… without a doubt… when the jet landed. He had sensed an ominous presence approaching for nearly a half hour before the jet touched down. By the time the plane was on the tarmac, the blackness in Miles mind had expanded to the point he was nearly in full panic mode. He was angry with himself for being fearful of something he hadn’t even seen, but that didn’t stop the profuse sweating and the palpitation of his heart. His mind was racing with thoughts of impending doom and he was doing everything in his power to avert those thoughts from being realized. He had locked down the facility completely. The front gate had a blast shield that could withstand a nuclear attack and he had closed the massive blast doors. He had cut all outside network access and was running the place on minimal emergency power. The lighting in the facility was sporadic. He had turned off everything but the emergency lighting. Miles had always relied on his augmented senses anyway and felt more comfortable in the dark. If I can’t see them then they can’t see me, he’d always say.

He had armed himself with two pistols and his knife. There was no need for rifles in close quarters, especially with the dark interiors and Miles’ speed and stealth. Now, he sat in the control room, scanning the closed circuit camera monitors for any activity outside the base. In the late afternoon sun, all was still. Each of the cameras showed still, lifeless desert baking in the hot sun. The camera at the front gate showed an empty road running north towards the housing subdivision. Miles knew that they were out there somewhere, waiting… planning. Another shudder shook Miles and he got up and did another walk through of the facility. He had done several since the Colonel had left with the last of the soldiers, but the doubt and fear racking his mind made him second-guess himself. Maybe he had missed a closet or under a desk. Maybe someone was still hiding inside and would get a lucky shot when he was otherwise occupied. He hated feeling this panicked. It was totally out of character for the cool and collected man of mystery he had become over the last seventy years. But his mind wouldn’t let him rest. Was he finally succumbing to the side effects of the Indra Project genome splicing? His thoughts returned to the labyrinth of cells in Los Alamos where the crazed project subjects raged against restraints and beat themselves against the hard stone walls. No, I can’t go down that path, he thought, shaking his head vigorously. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He did a short mental check of his thought processes… no, it’s the fear doing this. That thing, whatever it is, that Muskie brought, is messing with me.

The thought of Muskie brought a smoldering anger to the front of his mind. That psychotic little shit deserved to die. Miles had read Muskie’s dossier when he had been selected for inclusion in Project Indra and the record of the atrocities he committed under the guise of ‘enemy interrogation’ in Viet Nam had left Miles hating the man before he even met him. And then when the guy showed up and he looked like a little Jewish watch repairman, Miles had hated him even more. Miles had wished that Muskie would simply succumb to the aging insanity that the other subjects had, but he was not so lucky. Muskie survived. He became ever more vile to look at but ever more powerful as well. And the guy was no dummy, Miles reminded himself. You can’t be a top notch interrogator without knowing quite a bit about human nature and general psychology. No, Muskie is one sneaky, smart, sonofabitch, Miles mused as he finished his latest walkthrough of the facility. I can’t let my guard down with him around. Miles checked the last of the rooms and then returned to the control room and the cctv monitors. He was alone... For now. Time to rest.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 41

Colonel Cooke looked out across the Utah desert as the Humvee he was riding in clipped along Stark Road between Dugway and Michael Army Airfield. Another Humvee followed close behind. Cooke was accompanying Vicci and his two soldiers and specialist Tocarro to the airfield to see if they could find a working airplane that would accommodate their survivors so that the could get far away from Dugway as quickly as possible. Tocarro also thought they might be able to salvage some equipment so he could build a shortwave radio, so he had volunteered to accompany them. Monitoring shortwave frequencies probably would lead to other survivors more quickly than anything else, Cooke mused. 

“There it is,” Vicci said as they crested a rise and Michael Army Airfield came into view. The place was abandoned and looked a little worse for wear. No planes were visible, but there was a large hanger on the premises. There might be a plane inside, Cooke thought.

Vicci slowed as they approached the guard shack at a junction in the road. One road peeled off north leading to what looked like support facilities while Stark Road continued on into the main development of the base with housing and other related outbuildings. The hangar and airfield facilities were located there as well, so Vicci continued on straight ahead.

They drove straight to the hangar first. The large doors stood open and there was nothing inside. Cooke stepped out of the Humvee and turned to look across the tarmac and down the runway. There were no planes or helicopters of any kind. “Shit,” he muttered. Tocarro was jogging towards the tower with one of the spec/op guys in tow. Vicci pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket and offered one to Cooke. Cooke accepted and the two smoked in silence for several minutes.

“Well, maybe Tocarro can build us a radio at least,” Vicci said. “And who knows, maybe there are some rations in some of those houses…”  His voice trailed off as he exhaled. Cooke noticed that Vicci had cocked his head a bit. 

“What is it?” Cooke asked. 

Vicci’s gaze hardened as he stared to the northwest off past the end of the runway. “Plane, up high, way out, coming in fast!” He pointed northwest and Cooke saw the small speck just above the horizon. There were light contrails trailing behind. 

“That’s a jet, Vicci!” Cooke exclaimed, “and it looks like they are headed this way!”

Vicci turned towards the tower. His soldier was waiting by the door. He whistled sharply and the soldier looked over. Vicci pointed at the sky, “Incoming!” He turned to Cooke. “Let’s get out of the open!”, he hissed and jogged towards the tower and administration buildings with Cooke and the second spec/op soldier right on his heels. The first spec/op had ducked inside the tower and was with Tocarro now up top. Both had their assault rifles trained on the runway. Vicci, Cooke and the last spec/op slipped inside the admin building. Vicci and Cooke hunkered down behind a table with a view out the window of the runway. The other spec/op soldier was lying just right of the door with his gun aimed through the small slit he’d left open.

No one made a sound as they listened to the approaching jet. The high whine of the engines increased in volume and within minutes the plane was approaching the end of the runway. All five men watched as the small jet set down and taxied towards the admin building. The pilot cranked hard on the rudder and the plane turned in a small half circle so that the nose was pointing back at the runway and the engines were shrieking directly at the admin building. Then the engines stopped. Everyone waited for movement. The door of the plane remained closed. Cooke and Vicci watched intently for any sign of movement, but whoever was in the plane obviously was in no hurry to get out. Cooke looked at Vicci. Vicci shrugged. “We have the upper hand in this situation. I say we wait for them to make the first move.” Cooke nodded and they both turned back towards the window. That’s when they heard it. Footsteps. Behind them. All three men in the room turned as one, panicked that someone was approaching them unseen from behind. The sight that met their eyes caused them all to gasp at once. There, standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by three armed men, was a little girl. She looked like she wasn’t more than six or seven. She had a ponytail and a puffy jacket, jeans and little glittery sneakers. She said nothing. She looked from one man to the next and then her gaze settled on Cooke. She walked directly towards him. Cooke watched the girl while Vicci and the other soldier alternated between watching the girl and watching the plane. The girl walked right up to Cooke and held out her hand like she wanted to introduce herself. A chill ran up Cooke’s spine. Something was not right. How did this girl get here? She looked like she had been outside for awhile. Her hair and face were kind of dirty, with smudges of dirt around the corners of her mouth. But her eyes were soft and kind and she had a pleading look on her face as she stood there, hand outstretched, looking up at him. Cooke tentatively took his right hand off his rifle, which was pointed near the girl but not directly at her, and reached out to take her hand. When their hands touched, he stiffened almost as if he’d been shocked. Vicci jumped up but before he could do anything, Cooke had fallen backwards and was sitting on the floor staring at the girl with a terrified look on his face. 

“What the hell!?!” Vicci hissed. “You okay? What’s going on?”

“She spoke to me… I mean… It spoke. Shit!” Cooke was crab walking backwards away from the girl. She stood still with the same imploring look on her face, staring at Cooke. 

“She didn’t say shit!” Vicci rasped. “What are you talking about!?”

“She did. I mean he did. It was in my head. I could hear it in my head when I touched her hand. But it wasn’t her voice. It was a man’s voice. I think it’s the guy on the plane.”

“What the hell are you yapping at?” Vicci was looking worried now and kept glancing out the window at the plane. 

“When I touched her hand, I heard a voice in my head. It said ‘We’re friendly, please don’t shoot us.’” Cooke turned to look at Vicci. Vicci gave him a concerned look and all Cooke could do was shrug sheepishly. “That’s what she said… What it said… whatever that is…” he said, nodding towards the girl.

“That’s a five year old kid!” Vicci said.

“No. It looks like one. But it’s not.” Cooke responded. Both turned to look at the girl once more. She was still gazing intently at Cooke but now her expression changed to one of concern. Her small brow furrowed and she walked towards him once more, again with her hand outstretched. Cooke looked at Vicci. Vicci’s face hardened and he shouldered his rifle and aimed at the girl’s head as she walked towards Cooke. Cooke looked at her, now face to face as he was still sitting on the ground. She stood in front of him, waiting, with hand outstretched. Cooke glanced back at Vicci. Vicci flexed his trigger finger and then gave Cooke a curt nod. Cooke reached out and took the girl’s hand once more. The feeling was the same, but not unexpected this time. He jumped a little but did not let go. 

-We have Muskie with us. He has come to help you. We have come to help you.-

Cooke was flabbergasted. How did this person know about Muskie? How did they know that HE knew about Muskie? His mind raced and he began to panic again.

-Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I can see your thoughts. That’s how I knew who you are and what you are running from. We are going to get off the plane now. Please don’t shoot us. We will have our hands up.-

With that, the girl let go of his hand and then turned and smiled at Vicci, who was still staring down the barrel of his gun at her. Vicci looked at Cooke with no small amount of concern in his eyes.

“She says that they are here to help us and they are coming out of the plane. They will have their hands up.”

Vicci turned towards the window again and Cooke saw the door on the plane open. 

“What the FUCK!?!?” Vicci shouted

Cooke nearly jumped out of his skin. “What are you yelling about!?” he screeched.

“Where the FUCK did the girl go!?!”

All three men looked around the room. “Did anyone see her leave?” Vicci asked. Cooke and the spec/op soldier both shook their heads slowly, panic rising in their eyes once more. All three turned towards the plane just in time to see a very beautiful, dark-haired woman emerge. She was wearing a tactical vest and there was a .45 in the holster mounted on the chest, but both her hands were in the air. She was looking directly at them. She held eye contact for a moment, then looked up at the tower and gave a little wave, and then turned to look back at Cooke. She then stepped lightly out of the plane and turned to look back up the steps. The second individual exited. It was a young man, probably mid-thirties, with long black hair and a beard. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing a tactical vest as well with a holstered gun. Both of his hands were also in the air. He stepped down onto the tarmac and the two of them turned once again to look at Cooke through the window. 

“Is that all of them?” Vicci asked.

“Nope. There is at least one more. And from what I’ve heard, he is pretty unmistakable.” 

“Where is he?”

Cooke stepped over to the door. The spec/op soldier there gave him space to open the door while keeping his gun trained on the two outside. Vicci was still standing at the window with his gun trained on the two as well. Cooke opened the door, keeping most of his body behind it, and called out. “Where’s Muskie?!”

“Right behind you,” Muskie replied. 

Cooke and Vicci both spun to see a very creepy looking old man holding the spec/op’s rifle. The soldier was unconscious on the ground. The little old man was wearing blue jeans and a navy blue cable knit sweater. He also had a small watchman’s cap on and heavy work boots. Other than that, he was unarmed, with the exception of the soldier’s rifle he now had trained on the two of them. The soldier on the floor moaned a bit and shifted slightly.

“Better safe than sorry, fellas,” Muskie stated softly. “Would you mind settin’ those guns down so we can talk?”

Vicci and Cooke both lowered their rifles to the floor and then stood with their hands up. Muskie smiled, dropped his rifle to the floor and kicked it out of reach of the unconscious soldier. He then waved for the two other passengers outside to come in. “Now we can be friends!” Muskie exclaimed as the two newcomers entered the room. Cooke and Vicci just glared at the old man.

Muskie stepped forward and extended his hand to Cooke, who took it warily. “We’ve not been formally introduced but you seem to know who I am. I expect we have a mutual friend. Tall, thin, dark haired gentleman. Pretty slick with his hands?” Muskie winked at Cooke “And you are?”

“Colonel Cooke, formerly of the Rangers. My last post was the Echelon site at Dugway.” 

Muskie smiled and tapped his forefinger to the tip of his nose. “You’re the spook that Miles was shadowing.” He then turned to Vicci. “And you are?” 

“Master Sergeant Vicci, Rangers,” was Vicci’s reply and he didn’t bother to shake Muskie’s hand. 

Muskie shrugged and smiled. He then turned to the man and woman who had entered. “This is Anton Peters and Veronika Tkachenko.” The two nodded in turn. Cooke nodded back.

“How do you all know each other?” Cooke asked. 

“Oh, we’ve only just met ourselves,” Muskie replied. “I ran into these two up in Seattle and they convinced me to give them a ride down here to help you out with your predicament.”

Cooke turned to the couple. “Who are you two?” 

Niki spoke first. “I’m with Interpol. Or… I was.  I worked in the human trafficking division, mostly in southeast Asia. Got stuck in Seattle when the shit hit the fan.”

Cooke turned to Anton. “And you?”

“I’m nobody. I’m just a survivor looking to find what’s left of society. I’m from Alaska. Found my way to Seattle via some unexpected circumstances,” he glanced at Muskie and Cooke noticed the look of criticism there. “I met up with Niki and some others in Seattle and then we hitched a ride with Muskie here.”

Cooke turned to Muskie once more and stared at him for a moment. “Do you think you can beat him?”

Muskie smiled and winked again. “Don’t look at me, sir. I’m purely support on this mission. Anton here is the big dog in this fight.”

The look of confusion was immediate on Cooke’s face as he turned once more to Anton. “I thought you said you were just along for the ride. You said you’re nobody, right?”

Anton shrugged and looked at Niki. Niki stepped forward. “Anton is still working his way through his abilities. He’s not quite sure yet just what he is capable of. He’s feeling a little overwhelmed.”

“What do you mean ‘his abilities’?” Cooke asked.

“You saw the girl, right?” Niki responded.

Cooke stiffened. 

“Don’t panic. We know you saw her because she is actually him.” She pointed at Anton. “She didn’t sound like a little girl did she?”

Cooke bristled. “How is a little girl going to help us with Miles?”

Now it was Muskie who spoke up. “I can vouch for that. The girl, as soft and innocent as she looks, is no slouch. All part of the same beast that is our buddy Anton here. The real kicker, though, is the one that comes out when he gets upset. This boy has all my abilities and many that I do not have--ones that even our friend Miles has only dreamed about.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it,” Muskie continued. “I am fast. Fast like Miles. But we are still constrained by certain laws of physics. I am strong enough to go through most walls without slowing down, but there is going to be one hell of a hole when I’m done. That girl showed up in here, behind you, before we even opened the door to our plane.”

The look on Cooke’s face showed Muskie that the comprehension was setting in. 

“It gets better. She is flesh and blood. You held her hand. But then *poof*... she up and disappears.” 

Cooke nodded slowly. 

“And… AND… she knew what you were thinking, some of it when you didn’t even know you were thinking it. That’s how she… or more correctly ‘he’... knew that you knew me. He saw it in your head.”

Cooke looked nervously at Anton. Anton nodded softly.

“So, you are saying he can send the girl in to find out where Miles is and what he is up to so that you can catch him unawares and kill him?”

Muskie smiled condescendingly. “No sir. Like I said, I’m just support on this one. Pilot and an extra pair of boots on the ground. Mind reading is just one of Anton’s talents. Another is mayhem. Mayhem on a scale of which I don’t think you have ever seen. You have seen what I can do. At least a little. And I am guessing, since you are running away from your former facility, you have seen what Miles can do?” Muskie turned to look at Vicci now.

Vicci nodded and there was a bit of fear in his eyes when he did.

“Well rest assured gentlemen. Anton here is much more capable than old Miles. MUCH more capable.”

There was a groan from the corner as the spec/op soldier finally regained consciousness. He slowly sat up and looked around and then spasmed as he saw all the unknown people standing in the room. “What the…?!?”

“At ease, soldier,” Vicci hissed. “What’s done is done. Mind your firearm.”

The soldier stood up and retrieved his weapon and stood with his back to the wall facing the others.

“Sorry for the crack on the noggin, son,” Muskie said to the soldier. Then he turned back to Cooke and Vicci. “Where was I? Oh yes, mayhem! Our boy Anton has already disposed of one of the Project Indra subjects up in Alaska and he has nary a scratch to show from it. Likewise, he laid waste to a goodly number of bad folks there in Juneau before he hightailed it out of there. I was sent to find him when we lost contact with our other Indra soldier, Johnny, and I picked up Anton’s trail in Juneau and connected with him in Ketchikan. He was rather unaware of his own abilities then so I was able to get the drop on him there. Knocked him out and took him to Seattle for some interrogation at our facility there.”

“The old courthouse?” Cooke asked.

“Exactly!” Muskie said. “I almost forgot you’re the spookmaster. You probably heard most of my communiques with Los Alamos.”

“Miles was most interested in them.”

“I’m sure he was since I was tasked with tracking down and killing the men he had sent to destroy the Echelon installations.”

Cooke nodded. 

“Well, anyways, I had Anton strapped to a chair in a windowless interrogation room in the basement complex at the old courthouse. He woke up and I began to question him. Then I was beaten nearly to death and didn’t wake up for nearly an hour. Never even saw what hit me. But one thing I do know. Anton was tied to that chair the whole time.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Everyone stared at Anton. 

Anton shrugged once again. “I don’t remember much of that. I too was unconscious for a bit.”

“There’s more,” Muskie continued. “After I woke up I was furious that someone had beaten me so easily. I was angry and scared. Scared like I’d not been since before Indra did their work on me. I was looking to get out of Dodge and lie low for a while. As I made my way out of the building, that little girl, yeah the same one, she shows up in the middle of the communications room, three floors below ground in a secured facility.” He looked around at the others. They were all hanging on his every word. “Anyways, I’m jittery as hell, this girl appears out of nowhere, so I’m done. I head for the door. I turn my back on her and head for the door. But as soon as I turn around, BAM there she is in front of me again. Didn’t say a word. Just standing there staring up at me. Now I am more than a little unhinged. I freak out and grab this girl by the throat, with BOTH HANDS, and I’m set on choking the living shit out of her… “

“What happened?” Cooke asked.

“That’s just it. Nothing happened. I could no more squeeze that girl’s neck than you could squeeze a steel pipe with your bare hands. It was like she was made out of titanium or something. I flew into a rage and tried to pick her up and throw her and I nearly broke my own arms when her body didn’t budge one centimeter. It was as if she were a solid stone statue bolted to the floor...” Muskie’s voice trailed off again. “Then I heard his voice,” he said and pointed at Anton. “He told me we had to come here and stop the feller that was causing all this trouble. He said I needed to bring them here… Well, it was pretty convincing. What with the terrifying shadow the little girl was casting in that dark basement. Looked just like the shadow of the beast thing that beat the shit out of me in the interrogation room.”

“Wait, what? Beast? What Beast?” Now it was Vicci who spoke up.

“Anton’s other persona, the one you haven’t seen yet, is rather terrifying. It is a massive monster. All black. Faster by far than I am and unfathomably strong. Anton is some sort of shapeshifter and the beast personifies that. You can’t identify any particular feature other than its size and strength. It has claws, though I’m not sure how many on each hand or even if the number is constant. The face of the thing is ever-changing. It is like looking at two videos being played on the same screen. But the eyes… the eyes are constant. Pure blackness and they see right through you. It is the eyes that paralyze you. That thing looks at you and you're done. That’s what showed up in that interrogation room and beat the shit out of me. That’s what freed Anton. And it is the sole reason why I agreed to bring them here. I wanted that beast hunting Miles rather than me.”

Cooke and Vicci looked at Anton with renewed interest. “So, do you think you can beat him?” Cooke asked.

“Really, I’m not sure. But circumstances have led me to believe that I may be able to do the things these people claim. I have survived two attacks at the hands of these ‘supermen’,” Anton pointed at Muskie at this point, “and have escaped pretty much unscathed. The first guy was killed right in front of me by the beast that Muskie described. And I saw the same beast attack Muskie in the interrogation room just before I blacked out.”

“Wait, you blacked out, but the beast was still active?” Vicci asked.

“Yes,” Anton replied. “There is a connection between us, but we can act independent of each other. Much of what the beast did in Juneau I think it did while I was sleeping. Likewise, the girl is able to act and communicate with others when I am not around.”

“Then how do we know that you are the one controlling them?” Vicci continued. 

“I was just as doubtful. At first, the only reason I believed it myself is that the monster and the girl are always with me. I left Juneau. They were still with me. I left Ketchikan on jet, unconscious… and yet they followed me to Seattle somehow. But after today, I’m pretty sure the other two are just parts of me. I was able to project the girl and communicate using her. I was able to control it. That’s how I announced our arrival on the plane to you. Niki convinced me to try it. I started trying when we were still fifty or sixty miles out because I figured that if we weren’t here yet, you’d be less jumpy about talking to a little girl. But I couldn’t make it work.”

“Was the distance too great?” Vicci asked?

“No, I don’t think so. I think it was just that I didn’t know how to do it. When I quit trying and just started thinking about what we should do when we landed I suddenly saw you two hiding in the room. It was like I just appeared there, behind you. Not knowing what else to do, I walked up to you. I tried talking but nothing came out. Then I remembered what Niki had said about only hearing me once she touched the girl, so I held out my hand. Once you touched me, I got this flood of images from your mind and I knew you were the person we were looking for. I saw your interactions with Miles and his reports on Muskie and Project Indra. I got all of that information in just a flash.”

Cooke looked nervous. “How much did you get out of my head?” 

“I think I only get active memories. You were still worrying about Miles and wondering about Muskie so I could see that. But I can’t see things that aren’t on your mind. Like, for instance, I don’t know what your old school teacher’s names are or where you grew up.”

Cooke nodded slightly. “Can you read thoughts without the girl?” 

“I’m not sure. I’ve not been able to actively do it, but I’ve heard thoughts on two separate occasions when the girl wasn’t around.”

“Can you hear any thoughts now?”

Anton stood still and stared at the floor for several minutes. “Not really.”

“Not really? What does that mean?” Cooke asked.

Anton’s brow knitted a bit. “It’s kind of like whispering. I can’t make anything out, but I can tell two people are coming from the tower. And that they are worried.”

Vicci looked out the window. “Tocarro and Davis are on their way over here.”

The two men entered and Colonel Cooke filled them in on the details surrounding the new arrivals. Then Cooke explained to Anton and Niki about the situation with Miles. Muskie filled in a lot of the background on Project Indra and Miles’ history with the program. An hour later they were all in Humvees headed back towards Dugway where the rest of the survivors were hiding, awaiting their return… and where Miles was waiting in the secured Echelon facility.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 40

Miles sat in the darkened control room listening to computers hum and whirr. The sound of the last of the exiting soldiers had faded into the shadows. He looked down at his bloody hands, one still gripping the small tactical knife he had used against the spec/op commandos, and smiled a bit. It had been even easier than he had thought. When he had planned the attack, he figured he’d need to kill all six of the commandos at the bare minimum to gain control of the facility. Colonel Cooke was well-trained, but had long since passed his prime. Miles knew that Cooke would have offered little resistance when the time came. He had assured himself of that with the little circus stunt with the ashtray. He had seen the fear in Cooke’s eyes then and felt the blackness in Cooke’s mind. He knew Cooke wouldn’t be a problem. The spec/op guys were the only resistance and they had fallen in seconds. Vicci had tried to save one but then had been pulled into the rec room by the remaining two soldiers. Miles had thought of just busting down the door, but decided not to. No sense in it. These guys would never be able to sneak up on him. They were no threat and they were terrified now. They would run given the chance. It served no purpose in Miles' plan to kill everyone. He had to leave survivors. The race had to survive. Humanity was teetering on the edge of the abyss and, at the moment, he was the one who got to decide who lived and who died. He reached into his jacket pocket and fished out another Indian cigarette and lit it up. The taste of the smoke was rich and soft on his tongue. He leaned back into the chair, turned his face upwards and exhaled in little, concentric smoke rings.

It was all going as planned… Well, that wasn’t entirely true, he thought. He would have to hunt down the last of the Project Indra subjects and terminate them--especially Muskie. Muskie could be a problem because he was no dummy. He might just be tricky enough to lay in wait somewhere and pick me off unsuspecting. Nope. That’s not gonna happen. I’ll find him first. He’ll be trying to contact Los Alamos and when he does, I’ll be listening. Miles looked up at the ceiling and smiled again and closed his eyes, his mind swimming through the endless possibilities that lay in front of him. It was during this moment of self-satisfaction that the little tingle went off in the back of his head. 

Miles sat bolt upright and scanned the room. He had learned long ago to never ignore that feeling. It always meant danger. He listened quietly for several moments and heard nothing but the soft murmurs of the computers working away. Had someone come back into the facility? He pushed himself into his mind, examining the tingle, trying to sense the location of the danger, but he could not. He got up and walked over to the security console and scanned the perimeter cameras. There was no one about. This troubled Miles. He had never had this feeling before without an immediate threat being evident. He was sensing something that was further away than those fleeing soldiers. He closed his eyes and pushed himself out, reaching for the source of the warning, but nothing but fear and blackness responded. Miles didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all. He felt like there was something out there making its way towards him. Something that was far away but very dangerous. And the part that worried Miles the most was that it felt like whatever it was knew where it was headed and was coming as quickly as possible. 

Miles hurried over to the communications center and checked for any military broadcasts. There were none. Nothing had crossed the wire in several days. Muskie had logged on from a terminal up in Seattle. Miles knew that. But Miles also knew that there was no one left for Muskie to check in with at Los Alamos, so Muskie had gotten nothing from them. Then a small doubt crossed his mind. He pulled up the history of Muskie’s last connection from the courthouse in Seattle. It had lasted nearly five minutes. Muskie hadn’t spoken with anyone. Why had he remained connected for five minutes? Miles sat down and tapped some commands into the terminal. He connected to the mail server at Los Alamos almost immediately. He scanned the user files and found Muskie’s account. There were no files there. Now anyways. Miles stared at the notice on the screen. “No files” it said. “Last file deleted 2014-08-09:18:38” That timestamp coincided with Muskie’s last login. 

“Shit!”, Miles hissed. Garvey had posted a message in Muskie’s account. Miles knew this without even having to verify it. He knew it because it is what he, himself, would have done in the same situation. Garvey could post to the local server without being intercepted by an outside facility because both computers were on the same network. Miles never knew it was there because he had simply monitored communication between Los Alamos and their assets in the field, their primary asset being Muskie. Once Miles had verified that everyone at Los Alamos had been ‘decommissioned’, he’d not paid much attention to Muskie’s communication attempts except to keep track of where he was connecting from. This little communication had slipped under the radar. Miles now had to assume that Muskie was privy to what had happened at Los Alamos and probably had orders to ‘liquidate’ Miles on sight. Miles wasn’t worried too much about facing Muskie. No, what worried him was that Muskie was very smart. The fellow was an evil genius. He had survived by playing to his own strengths and against the weaknesses of others. Miles was sure that Muskie knew he could not beat Miles one on one. No, if Muskie were tasked with liquidating me, Miles thought, he will not be coming alone. 

There was that tingle again. This time it was stronger and Miles could sense an ever-expanding blackness behind it. Something so large he felt it could swallow the whole world along with him in it. Miles tasted bile at the back of his throat. He realized he was panicking a little and with that realization came another that it had been decades since he had felt such fear. The last time he had felt like this was when all hell was breaking loose on the Dnieper River long before he had been selected for Project Indra. He could smell the cordite and blood even now and his heart began to race. Muskie was coming and he was bringing something with him. Something that Miles had not encountered before. Something big. Something strong. Something very, very old.

Miles was about to turn and leave when he noticed the new file names listed on the terminal connection in Seattle. He clicked on one of the files. It was surveillance video from the interrogation room cameras. There were several new files. Someone had been using the rooms recently, Miles mused. “What were you up to, Muskie?” Miles whispered to himself as he clicked on the first file and waited for the video to load.

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 39

Jake didn’t even raise a fuss as Anton and Niki explained to him that they were both leaving. He hugged her and shook Anton’s hand. “Keep an eye on her… please,” he said, before releasing his grip on Anton’s hand.

“I will,” Anton replied and nodded slightly. 

The rest of the group said nothing, but a couple of them waved as the two shouldered their bags and headed towards the court building to meet up with the old man. He had told them to get their gear and meet him there and he would take them out to the jet. 

As they rounded the corner of Spring Street and 6th Avenue, heading towards the front entrance of the courthouse, they saw a military humvee parked at the curb with the motor running. The old man was in the driver’s seat. When he saw them approaching, he jerked his thumb towards the back door, motioning for them to get in. The both jogged to the passenger side and Niki hopped in the front seat and Anton took the seat behind her. They both tossed their gear into the empty seat behind the old man. He sat watching the both of them get situated. When they looked up he stared at them both for a couple minutes. Niki glanced back at Anton then back to the old man. Finally, the old man reached across the center console and offered Niki his hand. “I figure if we’re gonna be travellin’ together, we better get properly acquainted… Name’s Muskie.” 

Niki shook his hand but raised one eyebrow. “Muskie?... Isn’t that a name for a fish?” 

Muskie nodded. “A big, ugly one, with a lower jaw that sticks out like a bulldog. Like mine.” 

“I take it you picked that name up along the way somewhere…???” Niki asked. 

Muskie glanced down at his hands and was silent for a moment. “Yeah. I used to be called something else… but I don’t remember it now. I picked up the nickname in VietNam. They said I was like the fish. Mean and sneaky. Come out of nowhere and fuck you up.” He grinned and looked back at Niki.

“Well, I’m Veronika Tkachenko… but everyone calls me Niki. I worked with Interpol before all this.”

Muskie arched one eyebrow at the mention of Interpol. “Another interrogator in our midst, then…” He winked at her slyly. “And you?” he asked, turning now to look over his shoulder at Anton. 

“Anton Peters,” Anton replied. “Nothing exciting in my background. I worked as an effluent evaluation specialist at a wastewater facility in Juneau.”

Muskie’s brow furrowed. “A what?”

“I cleaned sewer water before it got pumped back out into the ocean.”

Muskie grinned a bit. “Bet your work clothes smelled worse than mine!” 

All three smiled at this and Muskie turned back towards the steering wheel and guided the humvee towards the freeway. They headed south, back towards the Boeing airstrip and the waiting jet. Once at the airfield, it took Muskie a couple hours to round up enough jet fuel to fill the plane. With full tanks, they could make Dugway easy, he thought. Probably not enough to make it back, though. Then he shrugged. Not much chance of any of us living long enough to want to come back, he thought, as he climbed into the cockpit and fired up the engines. He watched the other two as they got situated in the plane. Niki took the copilot’s chair and Anton sat in the passenger seat just outside the cockpit, behind Niki. They both looked much more optimistic than he felt. That was because they’d never been up against anyone like Miles, he thought. Then his mind slipped back to the basement of the courthouse and the terror he had awoken to when Anton had escaped. A shiver ran down his spine once more as he glanced at Anton over his shoulder. Maybe *one* of us will make it back, he thought, as he studied Anton’s profile for a moment. He turned his attention back to the controls and taxied the plane onto the runway and pointed the nose south. Minutes later they were climbing towards 15,000 feet and turning a little east southeast towards the Cascades and the Rockies beyond. Flight time would be less than two hours. 

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[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 38

I’m here.  

The words brought Anton out of his sleep immediately. He sat up and looked around the room. It was still dark, but he could see a faint glow away to the east. Niki was still sleeping soundly on her mattress and there was no one else in the room. Anton rubbed his eyes and looked around once more. He figured it had to be early, maybe three-thirty or four in the morning. He listened quietly for a moment and then, deciding the voice had been part of a dream, he was about to lie back down again when he heard it.

Now what?

But this time Anton was completely awake and this time he knew there was no one but he and Niki in the room. He also knew that even if there had been someone else, they wouldn’t have heard the voice because this time he was sure he’d heard it in his head. He sat still for a moment and his mind flashed back to the docks at Auke Bay and the voice he’d heard in his head when the man that tried to kill him had arrived. It had been the same experience, he thought. It was as if he was hearing the voice inside the other person’s head rather than someone talking directly to him. This voice sounded different, however. And yet familiar. The skin on the back of Anton’s neck began to prickle. He couldn’t place where he’d heard the voice before. He got out of bed and stepped quietly to the window and looked down at the street. It looked deserted. It was hard to see in the darkness, but he couldn’t see anything moving down there. His eyes scanned the windows of the building opposite, but still he saw nothing. 

Anton felt a prickle on the back of his neck once again, but still saw nothing in the street. Then, he closed his eyes and listened. The night was very quiet. He could hear the wind against the window and some distant bird calls. Then, at the very edge of his hearing, he thought he heard whispering. He cocked his head a bit, but couldn’t tell from which way it was coming. It was still very faint. He held his breath for a moment. He could hear his own heartbeat in his chest. And then he heard it.

She said to wait, so I guess I wait.

It was fainter this time, but definitely still the voice he’d heard earlier. He opened his eyes and looked at the building opposite once more. The windows were dark and he could see no movement, but he felt that someone was there, looking back. Anton’s eyes were drawn to one window in particular. The black rectangle looked no different than any of the others, but something had drawn his eye there. He stared hard for several minutes trying to somehow pierce the darkness and see what was hidden there, but still nothing moved. His eyes had just left the window when a flicker of light appeared there and he looked back. He could see a small pin-prick of red-orange light in the darkness. He crouched down and stared at the small light over the edge of his own window sill, trying to discern what it was. Suddenly the small light brightened and he realized it was a lit cigarette. The man smoking it had just taken a drag and the lit end of the cigarette brightened, softly lighting the man’s face with it’s red glow. Anton recognized the face immediately and backpedalled involuntarily away from the window.

“Shit,” he hissed in the darkness. “It’s that crazy old man! How the fuck did he find me?!?” He didn’t realize he was actually talking out loud until he heard Niki moan a bit and then sit up.

“What’s going on?” she said, seeing him sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. She looked around the room. “What time is it?”

“Late. Or Early. I think,” Anton whispered, his mind still preoccupied with the man across the street.

“Why are you whispering?” she asked, and she looked around again, now with a little panic in her eyes.

“Someone’s out there. In the building across the street.”

She jumped up and grabbed her gun. “Who is it?”

“Not sure… but I think I can hear him,” Anton replied, scratching his head a bit. 

Niki looked at him for a moment with concern. “What do you mean ‘you think you can hear him’?” she asked.

Anton looked at her for a second and then continued. “It’s kinda like with you and the girl. I can hear him in my head.”

Niki stood stone still for several moments. “I don’t hear anything,” she said. “What did he say to you?”

“I don’t think he was talking to me,” Anton replied.

“What?”

“I think I heard his thoughts. What he was thinking to himself.”

Niki stared at him again, long enough that it started to make him feel uncomfortable. “You telling me you can read minds?”

Anton shrugged. “Not sure. It has only happened once before and the last time it happened, the guy I heard was killed almost immediately after. But I don’t think this fellow knows that I heard him.”

“Well, what did he say?” Niki asked again.

“He said he was here and ‘now what?’. Then he said that ‘she’ had told him to wait so he was gonna wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Anton replied. “But I think he’s the guy that kidnapped me in Ketchikan.”

“What? Can you see him too?” Niki looked more than a little worried now.

“I saw him in the window of the building across the street. He is smoking a cigarette and the light lit his face for a moment.” 

Niki crept to the window and peeked over the sill. “Which window?”

“Third floor, I think it is the third or fourth from the left.”

Niki stared out the window for a few moments and then crept back to Anton. “I don’t see any light in there now. And I think that is pretty far for you to be able to identify someone’s face from the light of a cigarette.”

“Well, it wasn’t just the cigarette. I recognized the voice, first. I just didn’t know where I recognized it from. Then when I saw the face, it clicked. I don’t know how he found us, but this can’t be good.”

“I know how he found us,” Niki replied.

“How?”

“‘She’ told him to come here.”

“But we don’t know who ‘she’ is,” Anton replied.

Niki tapped her right index finger to her temple and gave him a sly look.

“What? You think the girl told him?”

“What other girl knows we’re here?” Niki asked, and stared at Anton waiting for an answer.

“Why would she, and remember--you think *I* am her, why would she bring him here?”

“That I don’t know. But there is only one way to find out,” Niki stood and walked back over to the window. This time she didn’t bother trying to hide. Not that anyone could have seen her from outside anyway, it was still far too dark. 

“What are you talking about?” Anton hissed.

“We have to go talk to him.”

Anton jumped to his feet. “Ain’t gonna happen. That guy almost killed me last time. I do NOT want to repeat that experience.”

“If I remember correctly, *he* got the worse end of that encounter. Didn’t you say you thought he was seriously wounded when you left him? I rather doubt he wants to tangle with you again either.”

“Then why is he here?” Anton stood with his hands on his hips.

“I don’t think he knows it’s you he’s here to meet.”

Anton cocked one eyebrow. “What makes you think that?” 

“Think about it,” she said. “Did he ever see you with the girl before he kidnapped you?”

Anton thought for a minute. The girl had gone missing right before he spoke to the native woman in Ketchikan and it was right after meeting her that he had been kidnapped. “But if it was the girl, why would he believe a kid.”

“She is rather convincing,” Niki stated flatly. “Especially when you hear the voice of a…” she looked him up and down, “thirty-something-year-old man inside your head when she speaks.” She smiled and knelt next to her knapsack and grabbed her gun vest. She strapped it on and slipped three extra clips into the pocket below the holster on her chest. 

“What? You’re going out there now?” Anton’s face registered a little panic.

“No time like the present. Or did you want to sit here stewing about what he’s doing over there for a couple more  hours?”

At this point, they heard a soft rap on the door. Anton opened it and found Ben standing there in full gear. “Everything alright in here? I thought I heard voices…” His voice trailed off as he saw Niki standing behind Anton. “Oh, sorry, didn’t know you were up here Niki.” 

“Glad to see you, Ben,” Niki replied. “I was just about to come looking for you.”

“What for?” Ben asked.

“There’s a man in the building opposite waiting for Anton and I. We’re gonna go over and have a chat with him. Wanted to make sure somebody here knew we were going out.”

“What? Who’s over there? What’s going on? Does Jake know about this?”

“Nope, you should probably let him know as well,” Niki responded. “I don’t imagine we’ll be very long.”

She slipped past Anton into the hall as Anton grabbed his jacket. Ben looked at him with suspicion as he passed. Anton shrugged. “I’m just tagging along, this is all her idea.” 

Niki was headed for the stairs, Anton and Ben followed. As they passed the 12th floor, Ben peeled off. “I’ll go tell Jake what’s going on.” 

Niki waved him on and continued down the stairs to the fourth level with Anton right at her heels. She paused in front of the elevator shaft, pulled the .45 from the holster and checked the action and fingered the safety off. 

“That won’t do you any good against the guy we’re going to meet. Trust me.” 

“My daddy always told me it is better to have something and not need it than to need it and not have it.” She smiled and kicked the rope ladder into the shaft and slipped over the side, climbing towards the lobby below. Anton paused a moment, shook his head and then followed her down. 

All was quiet and dark down at the street level. Anton and Niki made their way out of the east end of the breezeway towards 1rst Avenue. They stopped at the entrance and glanced up at the windows of the building across the street. They saw no movement but both were pretty sure someone was watching them. Niki stepped out into the street and casually looked both ways before walking across with soft measured, unhurried steps. Anton was at her hip the whole way, his eyes scanning the windows and the street for any sign of movement.

 

“Are you always this nonchalant when approaching a superhuman, homicidal maniac?”

She paused and looked over her shoulder at him. “Only when I’ve got a beast that has already kicked the shit out of him watching my back.” She smiled again and continued into the lobby of the dilapidated red brick building where Anton had seen the man waiting. The door had been busted off the hinges and the lobby was in shambles. It looked like it had used to be a gift shop of some sort. Niki was looking for the stairs when they heard movement at the back of the shop. 

“I think you two are in the wrong place…” a voice said from the shadows. It was low and gravelly and seemed to come from nowhere. 

“I think we’re here to meet you. We think someone sent you to find us,” Niki responded.  There was no answer. “I think you’ve already met my friend here.” Niki jerked her thumb at Anton. There was a sudden rush of air and the little old man was standing in front of Anton.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!” the man hissed. 

“I could ask you the same thing… seeing as how the only reason I am here is because you brought me here,” Anton replied. Even in the dark, Anton could see the old man stiffen as if he were about to strike, but somehow Anton knew he wouldn’t. He stood staring at the man. 

“Who told you to come here?” Niki asked. 

“Why in the hell do you think someone told me to come here?” 

Niki ignored this response. “Was it a little girl?” Again the man stiffened, but Anton sensed fear rather than anger.

“She’s with us,” Niki continued. “She told me yesterday that someone was coming to meet us. Is that you?” Anton was impressed with how deftly Niki controlled the conversation. He imagined she was probably a very good field agent. She knew how to give just enough information to gain the trust of her subject without divulging everything.

“Why is a kid telling you what to do?” the man responded, with a wary tone.

“She is rather compelling, is she not?” Niki waited for a moment. “I mean, you’re here… on the word of a little girl, correct? We could ask you the same thing. But that would just be a waste of time because we both know that little girl is not like any little girl any of us have ever met before. Did you recognize her voice?”

Again the man stiffened a bit and this time, he turned to look at Anton with suspicion in his eyes. “Was it you? What are you up to?” the man hissed.

“Not sure yet. I’m trying to figure this out just like you two. Niki here thinks I’m linked to the girl somehow. She says the girl sounds like me. The girl has never spoken to me, so I have no idea.”

“She sounds like you, alright… but that’s not the half of it. I don’t think I even made that connection. I knew it was a man’s voice, but that wasn’t why I followed her instructions.”

“Why did you?” Niki asked.

“Because of what happened when I tried to kill her” The statement hung in the air like a poisonous cloud. No one spoke for several minutes.

“What happened?” Niki continued at last.

“I went to wring her scrawny little neck to get that damn voice out of my head. Mind you, I’m a strong fella. I may not look it, but your buddy here can attest to my abilities…” He looked at Anton and Anton nodded, watching the man warily

“Anyways, I grabbed hold of her…” the man made the motion of grabbing a small child by the throat with both hands, “and she didn’t move.”

“What?” This time it was both Niki and Anton in unison.

“She didn’t move. Her throat felt like it was made of cast iron and when I tried to lift her it was like she was bolted to the floor. I about cracked my own forearms with the exertion. And all the while, she kept talkin’, inside my head, calm as can be, tellin’ me that she needed me to come and get you and take you with me.” He stood staring at his hands. “That’s when I saw her shadow.”

“Shadow?” Niki whispered.

“Yeah. We were in the basement of the court building a couple blocks up. There was no lighting except for the emergency lighting. I had my back to it and she was in front of me. I was blocking the light from her, but her shadow grew. Even though she wasn’t in the light. As I was struggling trying to choke her, the shadow grew and I could see the outline of that thing…” His voice trailed off.

“What thing?” This time it was Anton.

The old man turned to face him. “The thing that saved you. The thing that almost killed me. I’m pretty sure my skull is fractured and I most likely have a severe concussion. I was unconscious for more than an hour after you left.”

Both Anton and Niki stood silent staring at the man. It was several moments before he spoke again.

“When I saw the shadow I almost blacked out from fear. I nearly pissed my pants and that’s no lie. But she just kept talking. She told me to come down here and wait. She didn’t say who I was waiting for or why I had to do it, she just said I had to take someone with me.”

“Where are you going?” Niki asked.

The man stared at her for several long seconds. She was about to repeat the question when he spoke. “Utah. Dugway Proving Grounds.” 

Niki was back in investigator mode, “What exactly is ‘Dugway Proving Grounds’?”

The man looked at her and rubbed his chin for several moments. “Fuck it!” he finally exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “It’s a top secret military installation and home to the last remaining Echelon listening station.”

“Echelon?” Anton asked?

This time it was Niki who answered. “According to rumor, Echelon was a system set up in the late seventies or early eighties to eavesdrop on international communications. The countries involved are the member states of the UKUSA Security Agreement… the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Each of the member states has laws governing the interception of their own citizen’s communications, but they allow the partner states to eavesdrop on each other and then share the information amongst the member government intelligence agencies. Legal way to spy on your own people. The system was rumored to have the ability to scan all global telecommunications.”

“The rumor is true,” the old man replied nonchalantly.

“How do you plan on getting there?” Anton asked. 

“I’ve got a jet. Same one I used to bring you here.”

“So why do you want to go there?” Niki asked. 

“To find someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone that may even give your girl-beast a run for her money…” The old man’s voice trailed off again as he stared at Anton. “I need a cigarette… “ he said absently and patted his pockets until he found the pack of Lucky Strikes. He tapped one out of the pack and lit it with a worn zippo lighter. He took a long drag and clicked the lighter shut before pocketing it once more.

“Who is this person?” Niki asked.

“I’m not totally sure yet, but I think he may be the one that is responsible for all of this?”

“What? You mean everything? The pandemic?”

The old man nodded. The three stood in silence for a long time. Anton noticed that the room was getting lighter. The sun was coming up. 

“When do we leave?” Niki asked.

“I’m here waiting on you folks.”

Niki looked at Anton. Anton stared back at her and then looked intently at the old man. He turned back to Niki and nodded.

“Let’s do this,” she said and headed for the door.

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house

[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 37

After he had cleaned himself up, Muskie made his way upstairs towards the lobby of the courthouse. He’d found some fresh clothes in one of the personnel lockers in the restroom after he had showered. They were a little too big for him, but he rolled up the sleeves and used a pair of desk scissors to shorten the jeans. He had found his own boots lying outside his holding cell.

He stepped into the communications room on his way up and plugged his communicator back into the network and logged into a secure line to contact his commander. They’d definitely want to know about this new player in the game. Muskie shivered as memories of what happened in the dark room in the basement popped in and out of his conscious thought. It was a couple of moments before he realized that no one was responding on the other end. He typed in some commands at the terminal and pulled up the connection analyzer. The communication ports were functioning properly but there was no response from the other end. Muskie’s brow furrowed a bit. Not like Los Alamos to leave the communications room unattended. Something must have happened down there. He was about to log out when he saw the asterisk next to the message line in the communications menu. He had an unread message waiting for him on the server. He opened the message. It was a sound file. He double-clicked on the file and a new window with an audio player opened and the message began to play.

“Muskie, hopefully this makes it to you.” Muskie immediately recognized the voice of his commanding officer. “The shit has hit the fan down here. Someone hacked the door security codes and released all the test subjects. The base has been overrun. I’m currently locked in the communications center. I’ve been trying to warn the other bases, but haven’t been able to verify contact with anyone. I’ve left this message on all accounts in our system. I don’t think I will be able to hide here much longer. Muskie, I think it was Miles that released the subjects. I think he has been planning this for some time. I’m not sure but he may be the one that snuck [v1297] out of the facility. I didn’t think he even knew about that project, but he has been around so long that he may have heard things and figured it out. Anyway, I tried contacting Colonel Cooke up at Dugway to warn him about my suspicions, but I think Miles is intercepting all communications that they receive so I don’t know how much Cooke actually knows. If you get this message, don’t bother coming down here. There won’t be anything left. Take the jet and head to Dugway. Secure Colonel Cooke and let him know what happened down here. If any government assets are still available for deployment, Cooke will be able to contact them. Secure Dugway, Muskie. If Miles is really behind this, you know what we’re up against. It will take everything you have to beat him… and hopefully that will be enough.” Muskie could hear the doubt in his CO’s voice and Muskie knew it was justified. If Miles really was behind this, then the odds were in Miles favor. Muskie remembered with shame the way that Miles had easily defeated him whenever they had been paired in combat training. If Miles was the target, he would have to catch him totally unaware in order to have any chance of besting him. Muskie’s mind was formulating a list of supplies he would need for the trip as he made his way upstairs.

As he passed through the control room on his way to the stairs leading up to the lobby, a warning flashed in his head. Someone was here in the room with him. He crouched immediately and listened for signs of movement. He peeked over the top of the desks and scanned the room. Other than the softly blinking lights on several of the computers, there was nothing to see. The room looked empty. Then he saw it. The ponytail. Just the top of it, actually, and the very top of the head it belonged to. It was just barely visible over the surface of the desks across the room. It looked like there was a small girl making her way quietly along the row of desks at the back of the room, opposite from Muskie’s current location. He watched the pony tail as it passed along behind the row of desks and then turned, at the end of the row, to come up the side of the room towards him. As the girl passed along the rows on her way to where he was, Muskie caught glimpses of her face. She was staring intently at him as she made her way towards him. The sheer absurdity of the situation unnerved Muskie. How did she get in here? Why hadn’t he heard anyone come in? What is a small child doing running around unattended? None of it made any sense, and that caused him more than a little uneasiness.

The girl walked right up to him and stared intently into his eyes. Muskie wasn’t sure what to make of her. She looked like a normal little girl. He guessed she was probably six or seven. She looked a little dirty but otherwise pretty well-cared for. He glanced around the room expecting to see some adult caretaker, but the girl was alone with him in the room. And still she just stared up at him.

“What do you want?” he asked her. He fidgeted a little as she seemed completely unconcerned with his presence and her nonchalance irked him. He knew he was not pretty to look at but this little girl was looking at him the way any little girl would look at a puppy, or a flower… with quiet, innocent curiosity. But still she did not speak.

“Are you here with someone?” he asked, glancing around the room once more. Still nothing. “Listen, little girl, I don’t know how you got in here, but you have to leave now. I’m on my way out of here.” He stepped around the girl and jogged to the hallway leading to the stairs for the lobby. The hallway was dark except for the emergency lighting. He had just entered the hallway when he froze once again. There ahead of him was the girl, standing in the middle of the hallway, her face illuminated under the glow of the emergency lighting on the wall above. Muskie turned and looked into the room behind him. It was now empty. He looked at the girl once more and felt the cold breath of fear on his neck. He walked slowly towards her, watching for any sign of danger, but she remained perfectly still. He stopped once he reached her and stood looking down at her and she stared right back. He was about to step around her and continue on when she reached out and grabbed his hand. Muskie felt the room start to spin.

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house

[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 36

Once Anton had cleaned up, he went and joined the others in the floors above. Most were tending to the plants in the south-facing rooms on the various levels. Anton admired the ingenuity that the group had used in optimizing the space. The plants that needed less sunlight were placed on the lower floors and those that needed more were near the top and on the southwest corners. The protection from the elements and the fairly constant temperature actually was quite effective for growing fruits and vegetables. Most of the water was captured rainwater from the roof and runoff from the culverts at street level. 

Jake had designed a gravity-fed watering system that made watering the plants on the various floors very ‘hands-off’. Getting water from the street to the upper levels was where the work came in. The runoff, as well as the water recovered at the bottom of the system was accomplished via a system of weights and pulleys strung up in two of the elevator shafts. 50 gallon drums of water could be moved with surprisingly little effort to the top of the system, or between floors to adjust the amount each floor received. 

They had plumbed the system on each floor so that there was a fill tube at the elevator shaft that filled a small holding tank for the floor below. Water was syphoned from the 50 gallon drum into these fill tubes and the overflow from each floor drained into the holding tank of the floor below. They had replicated the system in all four of the towers. Needless to say, they had a good supply of food, and what they couldn’t eat they preserved for the off-season. 

All the organic waste was composted and reintroduced into the bedding soil. In fact, it was this duty that Anton found himself assigned as he waited for dinner. He and Ben and Mike transported the scraps from the dining area, as well as the trimming buckets from each floor, up to a north-facing apartment on the twenty-fourth floor. There were about twenty large square plastic dumpsters crammed into the gutted apartment. Each of the dumpsters had heavy plastic stretched over the top and then secured around the lip with bungee cords. The smell inside the apartment was still a little ripe as they entered. Ben saw Anton wrinkle his nose as they entered and Ben laughed. “That’s why we moved the composting up here to the top floor. No one wanted an apartment over the top of this wonderful aroma!” The three of them laughed as they dumped the fresh compost material into one of the dumpsters near the front. They filled it almost to the top and then Anton watched as Ben and Mike shoveled some rich dark soil-like material from one of the dumpsters at the back of the room into the top of the one they had just filled. The dark matter was full of worms and grubs. “Helps kick start the process on the new material,” Mike added as Anton watched. Once they were done, they moved the dumpster they had filled to the back of the room and moved one of the empty ones up near the door. Ben and Mike checked all the covers before they left, making sure the plastic was well secured. Anton could see that the underside of the plastic on many of the dumpsters was dripping with condensation. He also noticed that the room was noticeably warmer than most of the other north facing rooms. He put his hand on the side of one of the dumpsters and felt that it was quite warm, in fact.

Mike watched as Anton did this. “Kinda nice to come up here when the weather gets cold. These babies really put out the heat when the organics start to break down. In the colder months we add a heavy wool blanket on top of the plastic to further insulate the compost processes. Jake was the one that showed us how to do all this. He has dabbled in pretty much every kind of engineering you can imagine,” Mike continued as he waved his arm around at the dumpsters, “including BIO engineering!” 

“Let’s go see if the grub’s done yet,” Ben called from the hallway. Anton and Mike followed him back down the stairs to the dining area. As Anton walked into the dining hall, he spied Niki working with Anna and Betsy in the kitchen, and he felt his face flush a bit. He glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, but other than a small smile that tugged at Niki’s lips, no one gave any indication that they had noticed. He followed the two men to one of the tables where the rest of the adults were already chatting about the day’s activities. Without any pause in the conversation, the folks at the table slid this way and that to make room for the three men to sit down with them. Anton sat listening to the various conversations and glanced from face to face as the individuals spoke. He really felt included here and this feeling of community was what he had been searching for when he left Juneau. He felt a pang of guilt mixed with fear as he thought about what Niki had said. If she were right, and he had a creeping feeling that she was, he and Niki would be leaving this all behind tomorrow to go who knows where to find who knows what. And while he knew he would miss the camaraderie of this group of people, he also found the idea of embarking on a new adventure with Niki at his side a little exciting. And it was this little prick of excitement that caused him to once again glance towards the kitchen. Niki was standing in the doorway, leaning laconically against the jam, staring at him. She had a wooden spoon in one hand that had a smear of some sort of tomato sauce on the end that she had just dabbed to lips. As he made eye contact with her, she straightened suddenly and turned back into the kitchen. This time, Anton noticed that both Anna and Betsy had been watching her and they glanced at Anton as she turned and Anton saw a knowing look in their eyes. Anna smiled a little. Betsy seemed more wary. She caught Anton’s eye for just a moment, and Anton thought he saw worry there. Then she turned back to her cooking.

Anton had just turned back to the conversations at hand when the children, who had all been gathered in a far corner of the room playing at something suddenly rose as one and ran to their various parents. Tiny voices raising questions about food and complaining about ‘feeling like they were starving’ filled the air. Almost on cue, the folks in the kitchen began carrying the food out to the tables. Tonight it was vegetable soup in a tomato base with bread and roast root vegetables. They also had some cured meat that Anton couldn’t immediately identify. Gerald, who was sitting across from Anton, saw the quizzical look on his face. “Venison,” he said. “Even here in the city there are quite a lot of them. The packs of wild dogs don’t keep up with the population very well. We have a salt block down in a fenced parking lot near the waterfront. We usually catch a couple of them in there every week, but we only kill what we need. One or two a month usually. There’s a few here who don’t eat meat, so we don’t need much. We just let the others go.”

Anton cut a small chunk of the meat and popped it in his mouth. It was salt-cured and smoked and quite tasty. 

Gerald continued, “We have a store room in the tower directly north of us where we hang the cured meat. It’s up on the top floor so that the smell doesn’t attract much in the way of scavengers.”

Anton was just finishing up on his plate of food when Jake, Tony and Scott walked in. They were dressed in their tactical vests, each still wearing their pistols on their chest. Jake caught Gerald’s eye and made a small circle in the air with his finger. Gerald nodded and stood up and asked Lydia and Anna to take the kids down to the sleeping quarters. A look of fear spread through the faces of the adults as they watched the children file out. Once all the children were gone, the adults gathered at the table and all faces turned to Jake, Tony and Scott. 

“We scouted a little further North today,” Jake started. “We went all the way up to the Space Needle. Didn’t see hide nor hair of any tunnel folk along the way. It looks like they have seriously high-tailed it out of here.” There was a communal sigh from the room, but Anton noticed the look of relief wasn’t mirrored in Jake’s eyes. “I assumed,” Jake continued, “that after the incident last night, it must have been the monster that scared them…” his voice trailed off. The pause caused the sense of fear to return. “There is something else out there as well.” At this point, Jake turned his gaze on Anton. “I think your superman may have awakened.”

“What?” Anton replied.

“You said you left the guy lying on the floor at the old courthouse, right? You said you thought he might have been seriously injured.”

Anton nodded.

“Well, on the way back south we were walking under the freeway. When we got to the courthouse, we saw a very interesting sight.”

The hair on the back of Anton’s neck prickled a little.

“There were several dogs and three men nailed to the wall of the courthouse.” Now it was a gasp that rose from the group. Tony and Scott simply nodded, eyes wide, confirming Jake’s words. “The courthouse is made of stone and concrete. The ‘nails’ used on the bodies were sections of iron rebar. Someone or something was strong enough to puncture concrete and stone with that rebar. That close to us, if they’d used a hammer of some sort, we’d have heard it.”

The sense of foreboding grew thick in the room as folks whispered one to another.

“When we found that, we followed procedure and turned away east so as not to lead anyone to the towers here. We spent the better part of the afternoon on a circuitous path around to the east then south and across to the sound and then following the water back up this way. All along the way we watched our back and took precautions to hide our trail.”

“Did you see anyone following you?” Anton blurted out.

“Not a soul.” Jake replied. “But as soon as we started getting close to the towers, I felt like we were being watched. Like something was waiting outside. We even circled around north once more. Once we got a couple blocks away, the feeling left. But as soon as we started south again it was like there was something waiting for us.” Both Tony and Scott were nodding in agreement.

“But you never actually saw anyone, right?” Gerald asked.

Jake shook his head. “And I know it sounds strange. But after the scene at the courthouse, I don’t want to take any chances. Whatever did that is something we don’t want to mess with.”

“Could it have been the monster? Anton’s monster?” Judith asked, but Anton was shaking his head even as she asked it.

“I’ve been here all day,” Anton replied. Judith and the others simply shrugged and looked at Jake for confirmation.

“I don’t think so. I think whatever did that at the courthouse was making a statement. Tony and Scott may disagree, but I think it was telling any future attackers that building is off limits.” Jake turned to Tony and Scott. “What do you guys think?” 

Tony nodded and added, “It looked more intentional than what the monster did on the street here. I think it was meant to send a message.” Scott nodded in agreement.

“So, do you think that he knows we’re here?” Judith asked Jake. 

Jake looked at her for a moment, then around the room at all the others. “I don’t rightly know.” He paused for a moment. “But even if I’m wrong about what I felt… I think we ought to be extra vigilant tonight.” Everyone nodded in agreement.  

Jake waited behind as everyone was filing out of the room. He caught Niki’s eye and mouthed “Can we talk?” silently. Her eyes clouded a bit, but she nodded her head and waited for the others to leave the room. Anna and Betsy both cast knowing glances at Niki as they were leaving. Niki shrugged it off, but Jake bristled a bit. 

“What’s up with you and Anton?” Jake asked. 

“What’s it to you?” Niki responded, with more than a little irritation in her voice.

“We hardly know this guy. He just showed up out of the blue and you’re already taking him up to your room?”

“What do you think happened up there, Jake?” She responded, now with a note of sarcasm thrown in as well.

“That’s not the point. Up till now you’ve been very private… and we’ve all respected that. You’ve never had ANYONE up to your room, not even the other women. Why Anton?”

“I had a private matter that I had to discuss with him,” Niki said. The sentence hung in the air like a no trespassing sign. 

Jake blinked a couple of times, as if trying to comprehend what she was talking about. “What? Is he a doctor or something that I don’t know about?”

Niki cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest and Jake knew he wasn’t going to get any more answers out of her. His face softened. “Please. Just be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt, is all.”

Niki was quiet for a moment, staring into his eyes. “Jake, it was never going to happen between you and me. You know that, right?” 

The statement caught Jake off guard a bit. Although he’d never actually dared hope that Niki was falling for him, he thought that there was always a possibility. “I wasn’t trying to get you to invite me up, Niki, if that is what you are asking.”

“No, I know you weren’t,” Niki responded. “But I think you hoped somewhere down the line we might get together. I just want to be honest with you. I am forever grateful for what you have done for me. I probably wouldn’t still be alive if it hadn’t been for you. I know I will probably never be able to repay that debt. But I also know that this is not my home. I have to move on. And I want you to be ready to accept that when I do.”

“What? Move on? To where? What are you talking about?” Jake could feel a lump rising in his throat now.

“I don’t know, Jake. And I’m not even sure when. But I think it will be sooner rather than later.”

“There’s nothing out there, Niki.” Jake responded. 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jake. The whole world is still out there. It’s just different in some ways. But in other ways it is still the same. There are bad places and good places. This is one of the good places. But it isn’t my home. I need to find my way home, Jake.” Her eyes were moist now, as if she were going to cry. Jake knew better, however. As fragile as Niki looked, she was as strong as steel inside. A lifetime of depending on herself had taught her that. 

“Where is home, Niki? Back to Hungary?” he said it almost facetiously and regretted the tone almost immediately. 

Niki shot him a look of disappointment. “No, Jake. Hungary has not been my home since I was nine and it never will be again. I mean my personal home. A place where I feel at home. Where my mind is at rest.”

Jake looked at her with a lost look in his eyes and shrugged sadly. Niki smiled weakly, gave him a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek and walked out the door to the stairs. Jake sat alone in the dining area for quite some time before he finally made his way up to his own room for the night. He lay there in his bed staring at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity. The loneliness that was now pressing down on him made him painfully aware of what Niki was talking about. Without her here, this place had no chance of being a home for him either. It was merely a place where you could survive. But what was survival if you had nothing much to live for? That question was still unanswered as he finally drifted into a fitful sleep.

Upstairs, Anton was lying staring up into the blackness in his room when he heard the doorknob turn. He raised up onto one elbow and turned to look as Niki tiptoed into the room. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” she asked.

“No, I was just lying here trying to get my head around the last few days,” Anton replied. “I still feel like I’ve been left out of the narrative on this whole story. And now, if what you were talking about is right, the story is about to get a lot more complicated.”

“Time will tell,” Niki quipped. “I guess we’ll just have to kick back and see what tomorrow actually brings.” She was sitting on her mattress and had unlaced her boots. She laid back and pulled the blanket up over her, then rolled so that her back was to Anton. “Good night,” she said softly over her shoulder.

“Good night,” Anton replied and laid back down and closed his eyes. He too laid there for quite some time before sleep finally took him, but in Anton’s case, it wasn’t loneliness or despair, but fear and a surprising amount of excitement. Eventually, however, the darkness and his exhaustion finally got the better of him and he fell into a sound sleep.

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house

[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 35

Back at the apartments, Niki headed straight up to her room. Anton and Jake made their way to the roof of the building while Tommy and Gunnar both said they were going to catch up on some much needed sleep. As Anton and Jake walked out onto the roof, they found several of the others there sitting in a circle deep in discussion. The talk quieted as the two men arrived. Judith waved the two over and Peggy and Anna scooted aside to make room in the circle for the two men. George and Lydia were there, along with Mike and his wife Betsy, and Gerald’s wife Ginny.

“We were just talking about you,” Judith quipped as the two men sat down in the space the women had made for them.

“All good, I hope,” Jake smiled.

“What did you find out down there?” Judith asked.

Jake recounted their exploration of the tunnels and the eerie silence that had greeted them there. He explained how they had found no one. No bodies. No dogs. Nothing. Just empty tunnels. Everyone in the group sat and listened as Jake was speaking but Anton noticed that none of them seemed to show any sign of surprise about what Jake was saying. When Jake finished speaking the group was silent for a moment, and then Judith spoke again.

“We were pretty sure that was what you were going to say,” she stated, and all the heads around the group began to nod. “We’ve been doing chores all morning and the air has been different today. Clean and fresh, but without much sound. No birds to speak of and no dogs. And, as we all began to notice this, we also noticed that we didn’t hear any of the tunnel rat signals. No wolf calls. Nothing. It has been very quiet up here today.”

“Maybe the rats have moved on,” Jake responded. “Maybe this is a good thing.”

The nods of the group now were tentative. They’d been around long enough to know that change wasn’t always good. As the conversations splintered into news of the day’s chores and issues with the irrigation system, Anton’s mind wandered back to the conversation with Niki in her apartment. He didn’t want to believe what she had said about someone showing up tomorrow, and even less about them leaving with this individual--whomever it may be. But one thing HE had learned during the last several weeks was that fate had a way of throwing him into the middle of things lately and he felt something gnawing at the back of his mind. It was that little itch of a belief that what Niki had said was true. He just felt it somehow. And if it were true, then his life was about to take another turn for the worse. But even though he was starting to believe what Niki said… he also agreed with her that perhaps it was best to let events unfold, rather than telling the others, on the off-chance that both of them were a little delusional. With that in mind, Anton excused himself from the group and made his way back down to his own room. He stood there for a moment, looking at the mattress and the blanket and realized he had very little to pack if he was indeed leaving tomorrow. His kidnapping three days earlier had left him without any supplies. The only clothes he had were the ones on his back, and they were more than a little smelly. He had no food or weapons to take with them. He found himself shrugging his shoulders as he realized he didn’t even know why he had come back down to his room. There was nothing here to pack. He was just turning to leave when Niki appeared in the doorway. She had a backpack over her shoulder and still had her tactical vest on with the pistol in the holster on the front. He noticed that she now had five additional clips tucked in the pockets. She dropped the backpack on the floor next to the door and removed the vest and laid it down next to the backpack.

“What’s all this?” Anton asked as she was piling the gear next to the door.

“My clothes. Some dried food. I got a little bottle of bleach for purifying water as well. I think Jake will let me take one of the vests. The gun is mine from before, so that is going with me. So are the clips.” Anton noted that the gun was indeed different from the one Jake had given him to use. Niki’s gun was a Beretta Px4 Storm in .45 ACP. Packed a little more punch than the .40 S&W.

“But why did you bring it all here?” Anton continued.

Niki looked at him for a moment before responding. “I’ve not felt safe since the travel ban.” She crossed her arms across her chest and rubbed her biceps as if she were cold. She stepped across the room and looked out the window. “Even after Jake and the boys rescued Elsa and me from those assholes… I still never really felt safe. I felt like my safety was out of my control. Like I had to depend on the goodwill of others for my safety.” She turned to look at Anton once again. “Until last night.”

Anton cocked one eyebrow.

Niki was quiet for several moments, staring at him. Anton didn’t bother to rush her this time. She looked like she was about to speak and then bit her lip. Her eyes clouded a bit and then she turned away from him towards the window again. Anton dropped to his mattress and rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. He heard Niki move and turned his head and looked up at her. She was facing him once again with a distant look in her eyes.

“That little girl calmed my mind,” she said and then paused for a moment. “I realized that I could either spend my life worrying about the bad stuff that *might* happen, or I could take charge of my life and make good things happen. It reminded me of why I became an field officer for Interpol to begin with. I have to face my fears head on to once again realize I can depend on myself. I don’t know you, Anton. I don’t know that little girl. But I’ve decided that even if the trip with you doesn’t materialize, I am not going to stay here and hide anymore. I don’t want to live that way. So either way, tonight is the last night here for me. And I’d rather spend it here with you than alone up in my own room.”

Anton’s look of confusion caused Niki to continue. “I don’t mean WITH YOU with you, I just mean here, in the same room. In case you planned to leave without telling me. I am not staying behind.”

Anton smiled at her and walked over and grabbed one of the stacked mattresses and pulled it to the floor. With a flourish he offered it to her. She slid it next to Anton’s and threw her pack on top of it.

“What do you think the others will think of you leaving?” Anton asked.

Niki sat down on the mattress and absently picked at one of the seams. “I think Jake will be disappointed the most. I think all of them assumed that Jake and I would end up together, just because we’re kind of similar in age and disposition… and we’re both single, of course.” She paused and looked up at Anton. “But this isn’t my home.” The words hung in the air for a moment. “And neither is Hungary,” she continued.

“Where is your home?” Anton asked.

Niki stood and walked over to the window once more. Her eyes scanned the horizon. “Somewhere out there. It’s waiting for me to come and find it.” She turned back to Anton and smiled briefly.

The look in her eyes caused Anton to catch his breath a bit. He wasn’t sure if it was simply how beautiful Niki was that affected him this way or if it was something else, something more. He’d known her for such a short time he felt embarrassed that he even felt this way about her… and yet he did. There was something there. And the more he watched her the more he felt like she felt it too… and that she was equally embarrassed. The two of them were carefully avoiding the little sparks that seemed to be flying between them.

Anton was searching for a neutral way to break the silence when he blurted out, “So, is there anywhere to bathe in this place?” Niki’s eyebrows jumped a bit. “I mean, I’ve not had a good cleaning since I left Alaska. I’m sure I smell a little ripe!” That caused both of them to laugh.

“They have a shower rigged up on the 24th floor, right under a catchment tank on the roof that they painted black. Passive heating system. Still a little chilly, but better than straight cold water.” She turned and looked at the shelves and grabbed a folded towel and threw it at him. “There is soap up there, and a few different kinds of shampoos. What with all the hotels in the vicinity, we’ve accumulated a lot of wrapped soap and travel-size shampoo bottles.”

Anton took the towel and was about to head out the door when Niki spoke again. “Jake can probably set you up with some clothes as well. We raided the upper floors of the Columbia Outlet up on Pine Street early on. We’ve got quite a collection. Some Old Navy stuff too.” Anton gave her a thumbs up and headed for the stairs.

Nikki stared at the door after Anton left, her mind racing. The events of the previous night swirled in her head and her pulse quickened. She had not told Anton everything. She had seen and heard much more when that little girl had touched her. The two had held hands most of the night and the silent conversation between them had been long and bewildering, but one thing was certain. Nikki knew that it had been Anton talking to her. A part of him that he did not yet recognize as himself. The conversation had both terrified and thrilled her. The memory of it now caused gooseflesh to rise on her arms and the nape of her neck and she felt her face flush. The future loomed dark and brooding in front of her, but she had promised that little girl… she had promised Anton… that she would help him see it through.

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house

[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 34

Colonel Cooke’s brow furrowed as he sat alone in his room. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he’d learned the hard way to trust his gut when it told him to watch out and right now it was screaming at him. He’d worked with Miles for several years but now he felt like he hardly knew the man. The thing with the gun and the ashtray had totally thrown him off. How had this project existed for so long without the intelligence services rooting it out? Cooke wasn’t sure now if he could trust Miles. His story seemed plausible, but the best cover stories always do. He had to find a way to verify what Miles had told him… without Miles knowing. He got up, pulled on a nightwatch sweater from his wardrobe and stepped out into the hall. All was quiet. He made his way back up to the control room. There were a couple of analysts sitting at their desks, but most of the place was empty. Cooke noticed that one of the analysts was Tocarro. As soon as Tocarro saw the Colonel, he adjusted his seat, looked the other way and stretched. Cooke almost thought Tocarro was trying to avoid him when he realized that Tocarro had used the opportunity to stretch to look casually around the room. Seeing that no one else was there, he stood, walked directly past the Colonel, saluting as he did, and then continued on into the hallway towards his room.

Cooke watched him go and then turned back to the control room and headed for his office. Something about Tocarro’s actions seemed off. Perhaps I’m just getting jumpy, Cooke thought, and sat down at his desk. There were a couple of intercept reports in the tray on the corner of his desk. He picked them up and flipped through them. There was one from Tocarro in there. Cooke paused again as doubt began to creep back into his brain. Why hadn’t Tocarro said anything about this before he left? Cooke scanned the report. Looked like regular amatuer radio chatter. Nothing special. Why had Tocarro bothered to forward this? There was a handwritten note at the bottom of the page. “Think this may be important, see me for details. T”

Cooke stared at the note. Why did Tocarro leave as soon as I got here if he wanted to talk to me about this, Cooke wondered. He got up and walked out of the control room and headed for the dorm rooms. Tocarro wasn’t in his room and the other rooms appeared to be empty as well. Cooke noticed that there was no sign of Miles either. In the rec room, he found several of the other analysts playing billiards. “Any of you seen Tocarro or Miles?” They all shook their heads, then one spoke up.

“Sir, I think I saw Tocarro headed up towards the gate as I was coming down just a bit ago.”

“The front gate?” Cooke asked.

“Well, he was headed up the stairs anyway. I was on level two headed down here and I saw someone go up and around the corner on the staircase, just as I turned to come down here. I think it may have been Tocarro.”

Cooke nodded and turned and left the room. He walked quickly to the staircase and jogged up the three flights to the top floor. There was nothing on this floor but the front gate, which he kept manned 24/7 just in case any survivors showed up, and the armory. The armory had a coded door, but everyone left in the facility was authorized with the code. Cooke went to the gate first and talked with the guard. The guard said he’d not seen anyone come up since the special forces team had returned from their early morning run. The soldiers had begun that routine about a month ago. They would take sidearms with them and reconnoiter the area while they maintained their fitness. Cooke thought it would be good for their moral and had been proved correct. The men seemed more relaxed and calm. Not so jittery.

Cooke turned and walked back past the stairs to the hallway that led to the armory. The door of the armory was locked. He keyed in the code and stepped into the room. The armory had a motion sensor light that was supposed to come on when someone entered the room. It was apparently no longer functioning as the windowless room remained dark. Cooke was about to turn to leave when he heard it.

“Stay, sir. Close the door.”

Cooke recognized Tocarro’s voice and turned back into the room but he couldn’t identify where Tocarro was in the darkness.

“Close the door please, sir.”

A chill ran up Cooke’s spin. His mind raced. He had his .45 on him. He knew he could draw pretty quick, but he was getting on in years. Meanwhile, he was pretty sure that Tocarro was armed and may very well have a weapon pointed at him. Cooke decided to play along for now. He knew the room would be completely dark once he closed the door which would allow him to dodge a shot, hopefully. He closed the door.

It was just a split second after the door closed that the light inside the room came on. Cooke blinked a couple times and then saw Tocarro with his back to the wall, shielded behind a rack of AR rifles. He had one in his hands and Cooke noted that it was one of their night patrol models equipped with a night vision scope. So much for dodging the shot, Cooke thought.

The gun, however, was not pointed at Cooke. Tocarro held it in his right hand with the butt against his right hip and the barrel pointed at the ceiling. He stared quietly at the colonel.

“So what’s the deal, Tocarro? I got your note on the intercept. Why are we in the armory?”

“Because it’s not wired to the rest of the network,” Tocarro replied.

Cooke knew this, of course. The top floor of the facility was the only floor above ground and was therefore more vulnerable to attack. The facility was built so that the top floor could be isolated from the rest of the compound, which included the electrical systems. The only exception was the gate security cameras which were patched through to the network below.

“Why is that important?” Cooke responded.

“Because I don’t know how much of the rest of the facility Lieutenant Miles has bugged,” Tocarro replied. “I thought this would be our best shot for a private conversation.”

“What are you talking about?” Cooke asked.

“I found the bug in my room first. I’ve always been a bit paranoid. Got busted for hacking when I was a teenager. That was how the government first got their hooks into me. Anyways, I always scan my personal space for bugs. I found three in my bunk room. I wasn’t sure who put them there so I left them.”

“How do you know it was Miles?”

“Wasn’t sure until I found the bugs in your office. I figured if someone was trying to listen in on you, it probably wasn’t the regular chain of command. So I started sniffing around the network. I found an unregistered connection to the fibre trunk. It terminates in Miles dorm.”

“Yeah, he told me about that.”

Tocarro’s eyebrows raised a bit. “So you know about all the communications?”

Now it was Cooke’s turn to be surprised. “ALL? He has occasional communication with Los Alamos. The last one was yesterday.”

“No sir, that’s not true. That connection has been active--and heavily encrypted--almost non-stop since I located it. He has two network connections to Los Alamos and one to a system I’ve not yet identified…” Tocarro’s voice trailed off.

“What?” Cooke asked.

“Well sir, I think he may have a connection to the radio wave frequency network I’ve been monitoring.”

“What makes you think that?”

Tocarro scratched his head a bit. “Just the protocols. He is using a non-standard broadcast protocol on that connection. One that converts digital back to analog. It could conceivably be converting his communications into that radio wave static encryption we’ve been intercepting.”

Cooke’s heart was beginning to pound in his chest. There was just too much about this whole situation that he did not know. He felt like he was running blind here. “When did you find out about this?”

“It’s been a few weeks now, sir. Little over a month.”

“Why did you wait till now to notify me?”

“I didn’t know what was authorized. I knew he was receiving unauthorized communications, but I didn’t know if he was doing so at your behest. I thought maybe you wanted to keep the rest of the staff out of the loop on some military secret.”

Cooke stared at Tocarro. He could see panic in the specialist’s eyes. “What changed your mind about telling me, Tocarro?”

“I cracked his encryption. I have always been too curious. When I found his private connection I wanted to know what it was being used for. I hate not knowing what is going on. So I cracked his encryption. It is a 1024 bit encrypted, military grade connection but I have been working on a little project of my own building a software hack that analyzes light patterning in a fiber network. It is similar to the work I was doing with audio frequencies that allowed me to hack the radio static. Light and sound have similar properties when both are analyzed as waves. It’s fairly complex, but basically it is just a program that maps light patterns and looks for specific similarities. Those similarities can then be used to ‘help’ your encryption cracking algorithms...”

Cooke waved his hand to interrupt Tocarro. “That’s all fine and good. What did you find out?”

“Lieutenant Miles is not our friend.”

The words hung in the air for a moment.

“Explain.”

“Well, like I said, Lieutenant Miles has been corresponding with Los Alamos on two separate connections. One was very active with daily, and in some cases hourly, use. The other was sporadic. I noticed that the sporadic one coincided with private meetings between the two of you. I think he was telling you about the stuff he received through that line. That was why I originally thought you were involved.”

“Continue.”

“Well, I hacked that one first, because I figured it was most important since you were involved. The connection was to some doctor down there.”

“Dr. Garvey?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy. He was writing to Lieutenant Miles about some secret program they have down there. Apparently they have some human subjects that were part of an experiment. They had them locked up because they were dangerous, but they were somehow released.”

“Wait, what? Released? Miles didn’t tell me that?”

“He told you about the project, though?” Tocarro asked.

“Yeah. He said that most of the project subjects went crazy and had to be locked up. He didn’t tell me that any had been released.”

“I think I know why he didn’t.” Tocarro replied. Cooke’s stern look was all he needed to continue. “The last communication I intercepted on that connection was directed at Lieutenant Miles. That doctor, Dr. Garvey, said that he had found out that Miles had been hacking their network and was the one who released the subjects. He said he also found traces of an earlier hack in their bioweapons research lab. Said he had long suspected that Pathogen Zeta was one of theirs and that he now had the proof to corroborate it. He said he had sent the evidence to all the other military facilities and that he hoped they nuke this facility into oblivion.”

Cooke stared at Tocarro for several long moments. He then turned his gaze to the floor and rubbed his temples.

“Sir?” Tocarro whispered.

“Yeah?”

“What is Pathogen Zeta?”

Cooke looked up again. He stared hard into Tocarro’s eyes. “That’s the codename given to the virus that caused this pandemic.”

“You mean… we started it? That sickness is something we created?”

Cooke was about to respond when the sound of several gunshots echoed up through the facility.

“What the hell?” Cooke hissed and turned and stepped back out the door and looked down the hall towards the stairs. He could hear footsteps on the stairs, it sounded like at least two or three people were running up the steps. Cooke stepped back into the armory with Tocarro and drew his .45. He turned off the light and kept the door open just a crack so he could see down the hallway towards the stairs. He and Tocarro exchanged glances as the sounds from downstairs changed. Now there were people screaming as well as the sounds of running. Whomever was on the stairs had run out the front gate. The gate alarm was now sounding and there was the sound of more people on the stairs.

Cooke stepped out of the armory once more and crept to the corner of the hallway so he could see the top of the stairs. No one was there now and he could see the gate standing open. The warning light above the entrance was flashing and the alarm was still blaring. The sounds of people running up the stairs increased and a second later several of the analysts and the medical officer came into sight, running at top speed.

Cooke stepped around the corner, “Hey, hey, what the hell is going on down there?!?”

“There is some sort of monster down there!” the medical officer panted in a ragged whisper. “It has killed three of the special ops guys and the last three are holed up in the rec room shooting at whatever moves.

“What the hell are you talking about? A monster?” Cooke exclaimed. He had the medical officer by the collar now.

“I don’t know what it is. Moves too fast to see. The soldiers it killed are cut up something fierce, sir. They look like they were in a fight with turbo prop!”

The medical officer pulled free and ran after the others who had already passed the security gate. Cooke returned to the armory and grabbed one of the assault rifles and then turned to Tocarro. “I’m gonna go down and see if I can get to those soldiers. I am not going to order you to follow me but I’d be much obliged for the backup if you are willing.”

Tocarro brought the rifle to his shoulder and nodded curtly.

“Okay, grab some extra clips and we’ll see what we can do down there,” Cooke whispered.

“Already got them,” Tocarro replied and patted the tactical vest he had put on before Cooke had arrived.

“Let’s go then,” Cooke said as he turned towards the stairs.

Cooke and Tocarro made their way back down the stairs. They stopped at each landing, listening for movement, but now the facility was eerily quiet. The rec room was on sub level 4. Cooke opened the door on level 4 and drew in a sharp breath. Tocarro stole a quick glance over Cooke’s shoulder and gasped. There was blood splattered on the walls and floor outside the rec room door. A lot of blood. The floor was dark with it. The only lighting was the emergency lighting above the door of the rec room. There were two spotlights on it pointing down at forty-five degrees on either side of the rec room door. The minimal lighting caused confusing shadows and shapes. After a second, Cooke realized that some of the confusing shapes were bodies lying along the edges of the hallways. He couldn’t make out much detail in the light, but from what he could see he thought the medic’s description was pretty accurate. Whatever had chopped up these guys was quite powerful… and Cooke was pretty sure he knew exactly what, or more precisely, who had done this. His mind raced back to Miles’ mind-bending demonstration of his strength and speed. Someone that fast and that strong wouldn’t need any more than a common survival knife to do this kind of damage.

Cooke motioned for Tocarro to follow him to the rec room. Tocarro nodded and kept pace a couple steps back. Tocarro kept his eye on the stairs behind them as they made their way to the rec room door. They both stepped gingerly through the bloody mess and approached the door. Cooke put his ear to the door while Tocarro kept watch in the hallway. Cooke could hear soft movements inside the room, but no voices. He tried the knob, but the door was locked. He turned and scanned the hallway. There was no movement. He stepped back over to the stairs and looked down the stairwell towards the dorms and the control room. It was pitch black down there and no sounds came up.

Cooke fingered the switch on the flashlight attached to the side of his assault rifle and a blue-white beam of bright light pierced the darkness on the stairs. He drew another sharp breath. There were bloody footprints leading down the steps towards the control room. Cooke switched the light back off and stepped back to the rec room door. He turned to Tocarro. “Watch the stairs from the control room. You see anything move--and I mean anything--you shoot immediately. You understand?”

Tocarro nodded and trained his gun on the top of the stairs and switched on his night-vision scope.

Cooke stepped up to the rec room door and knocked softly. He waited a few moments and when there was no answer, he knocked again.

“Stay the fuck out!” came a gruff reply from inside. “We’ve got the door wired with anti-personnel mines! I don’t care how fast you are, mutherfucker, you ain’t that quick!”

Cooke recognized the voice. It was Sergeant Vicci, the special ops team leader. Cooke had never had much liking for the man, found him too domineering to be an effective leader, but had no doubts about the man’s abilities as a combat specialist.

“Vicci, it’s me, Cooke, I’ve got Tocarro out here with me. Open up. Miles is downstairs.”

There was some soft whispering from inside the room and then Cooke heard movement.

“Colonel Cooke?”, the voice came from just beyond the door now.

“Yeah, it’s me. Tocarro’s with me. I think Miles is downstairs for now. We need to get out of here pronto.”

“You saying Lieutenant Miles is behind this assault?” Vicci asked.

“I believe so. Didn’t you see him?”

“We didn’t see anything but flying body parts. Mutherfucker is faster than a goddamned bolt of lightning!” the voice hissed from the other side of the door.

“It’s Miles… I’m sure of it. He’s an experimental soldier of some sort out of Los Alamos. As you have seen, he has some enhanced abilities. We need to get out of here. No one is safe around him.”

There was some more muffled whispering, some of which sounded like argument, and then Vicci spoke again. “I’ve got to remove the ordinance from the door frame. Stand clear.”

Cooke and Tocarro retreated to the end of the hall nearest the stairs leading to the upper levels. Tocarro kept his gun pointed at the stairs at the other end of the hall that led down to the control room. The two men listened quietly as sounds of movement continued in the rec room. After several moments, they heard the click of the door bolt unlocking and the door opened a crack. Cooke stood and walked back to the door so that he was standing in the beam of the emergency light. The door opened a second later and Vicci and the two remaining spec/op soldiers stepped out. All three had their tactical vests on and were carrying assault rifles. One had a backpack as well containing what Cooke could only assume were the anti-personnel mines they had removed from the door.

Vicci motioned to his soldiers and pointed at the stairs. The two men kept watch on the stairs down to the control room while Vicci, Cooke and Tocarro made their way towards the stairs to the upper levels. Cooke noticed that Vicci was limping a bit.

“Are you hit?” Cooke asked, pointing at Vicci’s bum leg.

“No. I got tossed trying to pull one of my men away from the fight. Knee got a little hyper-extended is all. I’ll be fine.”

The five men made their way up the four levels of stairs and out the front gate into the bright afternoon sunshine of the western Utah desert. For Cooke, this was the first time he had set foot outside since the facility had been locked down after the pandemic. The feeling of the wind and the sun on his face was exhilarating in a way he couldn’t rightly describe. It was like he had been transported back into a childhood dream. The fear of the sickness, and even the more immediate fear of Lieutenant Miles, faded away for a moment as the warmth of the sun and the movement of the wind spilled over him.

“We’d best find the others and set up a perimeter,” Vicci said as the five men scanned the road that led towards the deserted houses of the base. “Only a couple of hours of daylight left and I want to be buttoned down before dark.”

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house

[a-wandering-imagination]

Chapter 33

After breakfast, Jake notified the group that he, Tommy, Gunnar and Anton would be going out to investigate what had happened in the street during the night. Niki spoke up immediately and said she was going along as well. Jake tried to dissuade her, but she was determined. The other women in the group all smiled as one as their gaze shifted between Niki and Anton. Anton blushed a bit. The men, however, did not look quite so approving. Jake in particular appeared upset that Niki wanted to accompany them, especially since it was fairly obvious that her reason for volunteering was to be with Anton. First she had called Anton up to her room and then, upon their return to the dining area, she had offered no explanation as to why she had asked Anton there. Not that any explanation was required, but Jake just found it irritating that she said nothing about it and just left the incident kind of hanging in the air. Jake had a soft spot for Niki and had kind of hoped that she felt the same and now, with Anton’s arrival, she seemed to just be throwing herself at Anton with no regards to anyone else. So it was with a little jealousy that Jake led the group down the stairs to the fourth floor and the access to the elevator shafts. They had stopped on the tenth floor and grabbed firearms for each of the group. Anton inspected the assault rifle and pistol he was given. The guns looked brand new. The rifle was a standard military-issue M4A1 used by American ground troops, chambered in .223. The pistol was a Glock 22, chambered in .40 Smith and Wesson. Jake handed him a couple of full clips for the rifle and four clips for the pistol. He also handed him a tactical vest that had straps to hold the extra clips. The vest had large velcro straps that secured separate front and back body armor panels. There were straps over each shoulder and then two straps under each arm. Anton fitted the vest and then, after snapping a clip into the rifle and one into the pistol, he attached the remaining clips to the vest. There was also a holster for the pistol velcroed to the front of the vest for easy access.

“So where did you find all this gear?” Anton asked as the rest of the group was suiting up.

“One of the local police precincts,” Gunnar replied. “They were locked in a room-sized vault in the basement. That’s why no one had taken them earlier. Tommy and I were able to tunnel in from below. Took us a couple weeks of hard work to get in. But the hardware was worth it. These are great little guns, and there was enough ammo in there to stock a small army. We’ve slowly transferred it all up here.”

Anton watched as Niki suited up. She handled the rifle and pistol with exceptional grace, her hands automatically checking the slides of each weapon for proper function. She holstered the pistol and slung the rifle over her right shoulder. Once everyone was ready, Jake led them down to the elevator shaft and descended the rope ladder to street level. Tommy kept watch over the street from the windows on the fourth floor till everyone was down, then he followed.

Out on the street in the midmorning sun, the scene looked almost theatrical, as if someone had been filming a horror movie and had simply forgotten to clean up before leaving. The blood was already darkened to a deep reddish brown and the body parts had started attracting flies. They didn’t smell too bad yet, but Anton could tell that by the following day, the smell on the street would be ripe. While most of the bodies were destroyed beyond identification of any sort short of DNA analysis, there was one body lying face down on the north side of the street almost directly across from the breezeway entrance. The body looked like it had been thrown there from somewhere near the entrance of the breezeway as there was a large swath of blood on the wall above where the body lay and an obvious stripe where the body had slid down the wall. Jake approached the body and gently stuck the toe of his boot under the shoulder of the corpse and tipped it back against the wall so they could see the face. The pile of entrails exposed when he rolled the corpse over, however, drew more attention than the dead man’s face. His gut had been split from crotch to chin and everything slid out of him as Jake rolled him over. The man looked like he had been attacked with a samurai sword. Besides the long gash that had eviscerated him, there were several other gashes in his arms and legs. His face, however, was relatively intact. Jake stared at him for a moment.

“I think he’s the guy that was leading the group we saved you from Niki,” he said, flatly. Niki approached, held her nose as she crouched to take a closer look. She nodded and then turned away.

“Well, I think we can confirm that these are a tunnel rat raiding party, then.” Jake stated as he turned to survey the rest of the street. “The clothing all looks like that bedouin shit they like to wear. Layers on layers.” Tommy and Gunnar nodded agreement.

“What now?” Gunnar asked.

Jake was still for a moment. Then he turned and looked north up 1rst Avenue. “Let’s take a stroll up to University Station. I want to see if there is any action at the entrance to the tunnel.”

Gunnar and Tommy shared a worried look. Jake turned and started walking north. Niki followed and Anton fell in behind her. Tommy and Gunnar brought up the rear. They headed up 1rst Avenue to University Street, then followed University east to Benaroya Hall. The entrance to the underground metro tunnels were located there. As they approached, Jake and the others fell into combat mode. They crouched as they walked and everyone scanned the buildings and sidewalks for signs of movement. Usually during midday there were plenty of birds about--pigeons, crows, seagulls and all sorts of smaller songbirds. Today, however, the streets were eerily quiet. All five had their rifles shouldered at the ready as they made their way across the street and up the steps to the tunnel entrance. At the entrance, Jake signalled for them to wait while he snuck into the large hallway that led below the performance center to the transit station below. He was gone only a minute or two and then returned. He waved them all forward. As they proceeded down the steps to the station below, Tommy and Gunnar looked more and more nervous. Niki also seemed to be jittery. Only Jake appeared completely calm. The four followed Jake down the disused escalators into the dark tunnels below. Anton noticed that the tunnels themselves were illuminated by emergency lighting along the top edge of the tunnels. The lighting allowed them to survey the station from the platform above. From where they sat, Anton saw no one in the tunnel. The large platforms on either side of the tracks were deserted and the tunnel leading away north was dark. Jake sat still for a long time looking and listening, then he turned to them.

“Something’s definitely up. Notice anything unusual, Tommy?”

Tommy nodded. “No dogs. The place is usually crawling with them.”

Jake looked at Anton and smiled. “I knew it would be a good idea to bring you along.” Anton merely shrugged. Jake turned once again and trotted down the silent escalators to the platform below. The others followed. Once at the tracks, Jake turned to look south down the tracks, then back to the north. He appeared to be listening. He shook his head softly. “I don’t hear a thing. No dogs. No music. Nothing. It’s like everyone down here has taken off… or died.” The words hung in the air for a moment and everyone turned to look at Anton once more. Anton stepped back instinctually.

“What are you all looking at me for?” he asked. “I didn’t do any of this. I was asleep right where you left me last night. I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t do anything.”

Niki spoke next. “Anton, you’ve got to understand something. These tunnels used to be crawling with people. Lots of people and lots of dogs. Most of the people were homeless from before the sickness. After the sickness, they started preying on the folks up top that had persecuted them before. They banded together with other criminal types and created a gang society down here. There were chiefs for each section of the city, at least those accessible by the tunnels. They would kill folks for supplies and feed the corpses to their dogs. They would kidnap women and rape them. If the women resisted they were killed. If they didn’t, they were adopted into the tribe where they were passed around like party favors. The gangs had literally hundreds of dogs down here and a lot of guns as well. At night they would terrorize the city above. That’s why we locked ourselves into the towers. Even during the day they often raided the streets. All the normal survivors avoid the tunnels and especially the large entrances. Any time of day or night there are usually tunnel folk in these large entrances. They are usually armed and there are always dogs.” She paused and looked around and Anton once again noticed the death-like silence. “This,” Niki continued, pointing around her at the emptiness, “is weird. Totally unusual.”

“What do you think happened to them?” Anton asked.

Jake looked around. “Well, considering the lack of blood, I am assuming they high-tailed it out of here.”

“Lack of blood?” Anton asked.

“You saw what the street looked like in front of our place,” Jake continued. “Doesn’t look like anything like that happened here, and yet there is no one here. No people. No dogs.” He paused for a moment, turned to look at Anton once again and then continued. “I think the dogs alerted them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean like when you showed up. Those raiders that were after you. Their dogs spooked real quick and wouldn’t go near you. When the men tried to force them, the dogs violently rebelled. The dogs were literally scared to death of you. They would have rather died than entered our building with you in there.”

“I’m not sure that’s the case…” Anton began, but Jake waved him off.

“Whatever you believe, Anton, the dogs wouldn’t go in. I think after what happened on the street back there last night, the dogs came running home. Remember, we didn’t see any dog bodies in the street, and those guys never go anywhere without them. I think the dogs hightailed it back here and then bolted when the monster started getting closer. I’ll bet the people followed the dogs.”

“What makes you think the monster came this way?” Anton continued.

Jake didn’t reply. Instead he simply turned in a slow circle, gesturing absently at the empty tunnels all around them.

“Something chased them off,” Gunnar whispered. “That much is obvious.”

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