Joe Ledger 1.20 - Story to the Dragon Factory - Deep, Dark (a joe ledger novel) Read online

  “You mean cockroaches?” Bunny asked.

  Goldman shot him a quick look. “Yes and no. The idea that cockroaches would survive a nuclear war…that’s a distortion based on urban myths. Cockroaches are only a little more resistant to radiation than humans. Four hundred to one thousand rads will usually kill a human. A thousand rads will cause infertility in cockroaches. Sixty-four hundred rads will kill over ninety percent of the Blattella germanica cockroaches. No…for increased resistance to radiation we explored genes from wood-boring insects and the fruit fly. Some species of wood-borers can withstand forty-eight to sixty-eight thousand rads without measurable harm. It takes sixty-four thousand rads to kill a fruit fly; and if you’re talking real endurance, the Habrobracon, a parasitoid wasp, can withstand one hundred and eighty thousand rads.”

  “Hooray for garden pests,” Top muttered.

  “We experimented with various gene combinations and got mixed results. Many of those lines of research were terminated. We did come back to the cockroach, though,” he said, and again he licked his lips with a nervous tongue. “Not for radiation resistance, but for other qualities.”

  “Like what?”

  “They can run at incredible speeds. Even ordinary cockroaches can run at a speed of one meter per second. That's like an ordinary man running at one hundred and forty miles an hour. And they can change direction twenty-five times per second! Nothing else in nature can do that. Their elusiveness is one of the things that explain how they've survived in so many situations in which other animals were destroyed. They can also climb walls because the tiny pillus on their feet allow them to adhere to surfaces as if they’re covered in suction cups. It’s like Velcro. They have light receptors in the ultraviolet range. And the list goes on and on.” He took a breath, clearly caught up in the excitement of his life’s work. “As we mapped the genome from the desired source animals we began to see the potential emerge. A true super soldier. I—”

  “Soldier?” Bunny interrupted.

  Goldman turned to him, momentarily flummoxed. “Yes, of course….didn’t I make that clear? All of our test subjects are soldiers.”

  “Whose soldiers?” asked Top.

  “Why…ours, of course.”

  I leaned toward him. “Did they know?”

  Goldman recoiled, but his voice was firm. “Of course! They all knew that they were volunteering for genetic experiments designed to make them better fighters. We had to tell them. There were letters of agreement, and every man signed.” He looked at me accusingly “You think we’d do this without telling them? God, who do you think I am? Josef Mengele?”

  I wanted to hit him. I wanted to drag him and his whole team into a quiet room and work them over.

  “What went wrong?” I said, keeping my voice even.

  He was a long time answering. He and the other scientists exchanged looks, and Halverson studied the floor between his shoes.

  “They were all screened,” Goldman said softly. “They knew the risks. But…gene therapy isn’t yet an exact science. Mapping the genome isn’t the same as truly indexing and annotating it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What happened to them? Did they get sick?”

  “Sick? No. No…they’re very healthy. It’s just that they…changed.”

  “Use the word, dammit,” said Halverson in a fierce whisper. Apparently he wasn’t as fully on board with all this as the science staff.

  “Some of the insect genes coded differently than we expected. Most of the changes were mild and mostly irrelevant. Some skin changes. Thickening of the dermis, some color changes, follicular alterations. We tried to correct the problems with more gene therapy, but…we couldn’t control the mutations.” Goldman sighed, and said: “They mutated.”

  “Oh man,” said Bunny. “My daddy wanted me to stay in Force Recon. Worst that could happen there is I get shot.”

  Top gave Goldman a hard look. “Why are they attacking your people? If they’re volunteers…”

  Goldman shook his head, and nothing that I said could make him say it out loud. The rest of the science team looked ashamed and frightened. A few were openly weeping. None of them could look at us except Halverson. I saw the muscles at the corners of his jaw bunch and flex.

  “Tell me,” I said. We were past the point of threats now.

  Halverson wiped sweat from his eyes. “These…scientists…had a protocol for incidents involving extreme aberrations. The entire project was to be terminated, along with any potentially dangerous aberrant forms.”

  “‘Aberrant forms’?” I echoed. “God. You idiots were going to terminate a dozen U.S. soldiers? Citizens?”

  “No,” said Goldman. “They signed the papers! That officially made them property of the United States Army. And, besides…they were no longer soldiers.”

  “You mean that they were no longer people?”

  He didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

  “You’re a real piece of work, Doc.”

  “Look,” he snapped, “we’re at war! I did what I had to do to protect the best interests of the American people.”

  Suddenly there was a low rumble that shuddered its way heavily through the walls. The cement floor beneath our feet buckled and cracked. Dust puffed down from the ceiling, pictures fell from the walls. The scientists screamed and started from their chairs, but there was nowhere to run. Top and Bunny yelled at them to shut up and they cowered back from the two big men with guns.

  Halverson and I hurried to the door and peered out. There was a faint flickering red glow from down the hall. I could smell smoke. “Christ!” Halverson said. “I think that’s the generator room.”

  There was a high whine from distressed engines and then the lights dimmed again and then went out. The staff room emergency lights kicked in after a few seconds, weak and yellow, giving each face a sallow and guilty cast.

  “The generator can’t be out,” Goldman protested.

  Halverson said nothing, but he looked stricken.

  “What—?” Bunny asked.

  The alarm took on a new tone as a pre-recorded voice shouted from all the speakers. It told us why everyone in the room was looking even more terrified than they had been only a minute ago.

  “This facility has been compromised. Level One containment is in effect.”

  The message looped and repeated. I turned to Goldman. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the generator is no longer feeding power to the airlocks or security systems. If the backup doesn’t come on, then the system will move to Level Two.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The whole place goes into lockdown,” said Halverson. “This is a biological research facility, Captain. If containment is in danger of total failure, then the whole system shuts down. The doors will seal permanently.”

  “Did your test subjects know this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Goldman. “Probably. I know the first subject, James Collins, knew it. He made a joke about it once. But…really, everyone knows, and it’s posted on signs all over the facility.”

  I went to the door and opened it. Halverson joined me. “Looks like the backup generators are still on line. See—they are pulling the smoke out of the hall. The flames from the burning generator are dying down, too.”

  “I take it the backup generators aren’t in the same room as the mains?”

  “No, of course not. They’re at the other end of the complex.”

  I pointed to the damaged access panel high on the wall. “That’s the air duct system?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it go all the way into the chamber with the backup generators?”

  He thought about it. “No. It terminates outside. The backups are on a totally separate system. Different venting, too. Smaller. No way they could use them to get into the chamber.”

  “How secure is it?”

  “If you didn’t have a key, then you’d need tools. Heavy pry bars and a lo
t of time. They were intended to protect against all forms of intrusion. The generator room is even hardened against an EMP.”

  “That’s something.”

  I pulled Halverson out into the hall for a moment. “Tell me about James Collins.”

  Halverson paled. “He…he’s a good kid. Young, in his twenties. No family, no one at home. No sweetheart or anything like that. It was one of the conditions. The men couldn’t have families waiting at home. Better that way.”

  “Better for whom?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.

  “Collins was smart. He did a couple of tours with Force Recon. One in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Took some shrapnel last time out. Lost a couple of fingers. It was while he was recovering at the evac hospital that he was approached about this project. He’s been here almost seventeen months.”

  I stared at him. It was horrible. Some kid joins the Marines. Maybe he thinks he’s helping to save the world from terrorists, or maybe he thinks he’s saving his country. Or, maybe he’s just lonely. Someone with no one at home and nowhere to be, so he makes the Marine Corps into his family, and it’s a war so they’re happy as hell to have him. They throw him into one meat grinder and when he survives that they feed him into another. Then, when he’s battle-shocked and mutilated, they make him an offer. Maybe money, maybe promotion. Or maybe they play off his sense of duty. God and country. That kind of pitch. They bring him to this place, hide him down in the dark, and when he’s totally off the radar, they play God with him. If he lives, he’s the prize hog at the fair. Someone to trot out to appropriations committees. If he dies, who’s going to miss him?

  But they never planned around a third option. What if they made him into a monster?

  Hell, they wouldn’t think that way. They’re too limited, too conventional. They can make a monster, but to them it’s just science. Pure science, divorced from conscience, separated from ethical concerns because no one is watching. People like Goldman and his masters in the military always think they have everything under control.

  I know firsthand that, too often, they don’t. I know because I’m the guy they send in to clean up their messes.

  I don’t know who I hated more in that moment: Goldman, because he made a monster; or me, because I knew that I had to kill it.

  In the air vents I could hear a faint scuttling sound. Like fingernails on paper. I stepped closer to the vent, straining to hear it in the gaps between the bleats of the warning bells. It was there. Faint, and growing fainter.

  They were moving away from us. Toward the other end of the complex.

  Damn.

  (4)

  The Vault

  Twenty-two Minutes Ago

  We left the others behind in a locked room. The emergency lights were smashed out along most of the hallway, so we flipped down our night vision. We had M4s from our equipment bags, and each of us wore light body armor. The stuff would stop most bullets, but I didn’t think that was the kind of fight we were likely to have. Would it stop Collins?

  Only one way to find out and I didn’t want to. Not one damn bit.

  As he ran, Top whispered, “That door back at the staff room.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You saw the way those things tore at that vent grille. No way that chicken-ass door would keep them out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t seem too broken up about the thought of those things getting in there.”

  “Are you?”

  We ran for a dozen yards. Bunny said, “They’re still civilians, Boss.”

  “Farm Boy’s right,” agreed Top.

  “Yep. So, if you want to go back and babysit them, you have my permission, First Sergeant.”

  Bunny cursed under his breath. We kept running down the hall.

  We ran low and fast along the wall, guns out, moving heads and gun barrels in unison, the red eyes of the laser sights peering into every shadow. The Vault was enormous. It was all on one level, built into a series of interlocking limestone caves, but it spread out like an anemone, with side corridors and disused rooms and staff quarters and labs. There were three of us when thirty wouldn’t have been enough. Not without lights. Not with an enemy that could move as fast as these things could.

  We looked for an ambush everywhere we went, and even then the monsters caught us off guard.

  We were looking forward, we were looking side to side, we were covering our asses. Anything came at us in any normal direction we’d have sent it home to Jesus in a heartbeat.

  They tore open the damn ceiling and dropped on us.

  There was a puff of dust and then a screeching tear as the whole belly of the air duct tore open and they dropped out.

  Like bugs.

  The first one slammed down on Bunny. Two hundred pounds of it struck him between the shoulder blades and the big man went down hard, knees cracking against the concrete, the air leaving his body in a surprised and terrified whuf!

  Top screamed and spun, sweeping his gun up, firing as the second one fell and the third. The rounds tore into them, punching through the dark, mottled skin, splattering the walls and ceiling with black blood. The creatures twisted in midair, trying to dodge the spray of lead but instead soaking up the bullets and shielding the others above them.

  The air was filled with the high-pitched keening and screeching as the things climbed through the torn duct and dropped into the hall.

  Bunny was screaming as the creature on his back tore at him with fingers that had grown strangely thick and dark, the fingernails and the flesh beneath fused into chitinous hooks. Its back was to me and I fired as I backpedaled, angling to shoot it and not Bunny. The creature threw back its head and screamed. Not like an insect, but like a man.

  Bunny twisted under it and slammed an elbow into the monster’s side, and squirmed out from under. He was drenched with blood. I didn’t know how much of it was his own.

  “Cap!”

  I turned at the yell and saw Top being driven backward against the wall. He had his M4 jammed sideways and pressed against the chest of a creature whose face was something out of nightmare. The eyes were human, but that was all. Its face was covered with thick scablike plates, some of them overlaid like dragon scales, others standing alone on otherwise human skin. The nose was nearly gone, flattened against the armored face, and the mouth was a lipless slash surrounded by wriggling antennae. It was naked to the waist, the rags of fatigue pants hanging from its spindly legs.

  Before I could close on him and offer help, Top pivoted and chopped out with a low, short side-thrust kick that shattered the creature’s knee. As it reeled back, he came off the wall and swung the M4 in a tight upward arc, crushing its chin with the stock of the rifle. The blow was so powerful that the telescoping stock cracked and bent, but the thing that had once been a soldier flipped over backward and crashed down on the ground. Top stamped a foot onto its chest and put two rounds into the misshapen skull.

  I had my own troubles. Three of them swarmed at me in a three-point close. They tried to run me back against the wall, and if they had I’d have been trapped and torn apart. They were so close that I only had enough room to bring my M4 up and hit the closest one with a burst to the chest. The impact flung him back, but the creature to his right lashed out and swatted the rifle out of my hands. It was a hugely powerful blow, way too strong for a man of his size. Whatever the doctors had done had amped up his strength. Or maybe he was mad with horror and rage and was pumping adrenaline. The rifle sling kept the weapon from flying away, but I lost my hold on it and the creature reached for my throat with gnarled black fingers.

  I parried and ducked and came up on the far side of his arms, then shoved him hard into the other attacker. They crashed into the wall, which gave me a short second of breathing space, so I grabbed at the rapid-release folding knife clipped to the edge of my pocket. It was positioned to release right into my hand and I gave it a flick and felt the blade lock into place even while my hand was moving. There was a flash of green
fire and then the second of the monsters was spinning away, trying to staunch the flow of black blood from his throat.

  The third one growled at me, his voice filled with clicks and hisses, and he slashed at my face. I ducked and felt his iron-hard nails tear through the fabric cover over my helmet. I didn’t wait. I drove in low and hard and put my shoulder into his chest, driving him back against the wall. He hit with a crunch that tore a howl from his throat. I used a flat palm to knock his head against the wall and then moved in to let the knife do its work.

  He fell and I pivoted, switching the knife to my left hand, drawing my pistol with my right.

  And froze.

  There was James Collins right in front of me. I knew immediately that it was him. Three of the fingers were missing from his left hand. He crouched ten feet away, legs wide to straddle the body on the ground.

  Bunny.

  Collins bent low so that he could touch Bunny’s throat with the fingers of his right hand. The fingers were long, the nails thickened into talons, and from where each tip dented Bunny’s throat thin lines of blood leaked down the side of the big Marine’s neck. Around us the alarms rang and the lights flashed, but nothing and no one moved. Collins raised his horror-show face and I could tell, even with those dark and alien eyes, that he knew as well as I did that we were all sliding down a steep slope into hell.

  I raised my pistol and put the laser sight on Collins, right over the heart. He looked down at it for a moment, and his fingers pressed more deeply into Bunny’s flesh.

  “Cap’n,” murmured Top from a few yards away, but I ignored him.

  Even though Goldman and Halverson had told us what to expect, I could feel a scream bubbling in my gut. This was wrong, and it was ugly, and it was scaring the living shit out of me. Sweat ran down inside my clothes and my mouth was as dry as mummy dust. If I could have run, I would have.