Joe Ledger Read online

  “I have a flashlight.” He began fumbling at his belt, but I batted his hand aside.

  “No. Stay here and be still. I’m going to place your weapon on the seat next to you. Do not pick it up until the lights come on.”

  “But—”

  “You’re a danger to me and mine,” I said, bending close. “Point a gun in the dark around me again, and I’ll put a bullet in you. Do you believe me?”

  “Y-yes.”

  I patted his shoulder—at which he flinched—and moved away.

  “What are you seeing, Top?”

  He knelt by the wall, his pistol aimed wherever he looked. “Nothing, seeing nothing, Cap’n.”

  “Bunny?”

  He was guarding our backs. “Dead people and shadows, Boss. Look at the walls. Someone busted out the emergency lights.”

  “Captain Ledger,” began Goldman, “what—”

  “Be quiet and be still,” I said.

  We squatted in the dark and listened.

  A sound.

  Thin and scratchy, like fingernails on cardboard. Then a grunt of effort.

  Top and I looked up at the same time, putting the red dots of our laser sights on the same part of the upper wall. There was a metal grille over an access port. The grille hung by a single screw, and one corner of it was twisted and bent out of shape, the spikes of two screws hanging from the edges. The grille hadn’t been opened with a screwdriver; it had been torn out.

  No. Pushed.

  The scratching sound was coming from there, but as we listened, it faded and was gone.

  “It’s gone,” whispered Goldman.

  I noticed that he said it, not him or them. I could tell from the way he stiffened that Top caught it, too.

  But Bunny asked, “What’s gone? I mean…what the hell was that?”

  The scientist turned toward Bunny’s voice. His green-hued face was a study in inner conflict. His eyes were wide and blind, but they were windows into his soul. I doubt I’ve ever seen anyone as genuinely or deeply terrified.

  “They…they’re soldiers,” he said.

  “Whose soldiers? We were told this was a potential terrorist infiltration.”

  “God,” he said hollowly. “There are a dozen of them.”

  I moved up to him and grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

  “Stop screwing around, Doc, or so help me God—”

  “Please,” he begged. “Please…. We were trying to help. We were doing good work, important work. We were just trying to help the men in the field. But…but….”

  And he began to cry.

  We were screwed. Deeply, comprehensively, and perhaps terminally screwed.

  Something moved in the green gloom down the hall. It was big and it kept to the shadows behind a stack of packing crates. It made a weird chittering sound.

  “Is that a radio?” Bunny whispered.

  I shook my head, but I really didn’t know what it was.

  “It’s them!” Goldman said, and he loaded those two words with so much dread that I felt my flesh crawl.

  “I got nothing down here,” said Bunny, who was still guarding behind us. “What are you seeing, Boss?”

  “Unknown. Top, watch the ceilings. I don’t like this worth a damn.”

  The chittering sound came again, but this time it was behind us.

  “What’ve you got, Bunny?” I called.

  “I don’t know, Boss, but it’s weird and it’s big. Staying out of range, just around the bend.”

  I turned.

  “This is the U.S. Army. Lay down your weapons and step out into the hall with your hands raised.”

  My voice echoed back to me through the darkness, but whoever was around the bend did not step out.

  The chittering sound was constant.

  I repeated the challenge.

  The sound changed, fading as the figure retreated. It was gone in seconds. I turned again, and the one ahead of us was gone as well.

  “Cover me,” I said, and Top shifted to keep his laser sight next to me as I crept over to the wall below the grille. I stood on tiptoes and strained to hear.

  The chittering sound was there, but it was very faint, and as I listened, it faded to silence. Whatever was making that sound was too far away to be heard, but I knew that didn’t mean it was gone.

  I turned to the others. Doctor Goldman sat with his face in his hands, weeping.

  “We’re all going to Hell for this,” he sobbed. “Oh, God…I’m going to Hell.”

  Chap. 3

  The Vault

  Forty-six Minutes Ago

  When I finally got Goldman to stop blubbering and tell me what the hell was happening I was almost sorry he did.

  Halverson was able to lead us to the breakers, and we got the main lights back on. The rest of the research team huddled in the staff lounge, a few of them with improvised weapons—a fire axe, hammers, that sort of thing. The lounge had a single door, and the filtration system vent in that room was the size of a baseball. We locked ourselves in and had a powwow.

  Goldman said: “This facility was originally built as a secure bunker to house the Governor and other officials during a nuclear war. After the Cold War, it was repurposed for genetics and biological research.”

  “What kind of research?” I asked.

  “That’s classified.”

  I put my pistol barrel against his forehead. “Declassify it.”

  “Listen to the man,” murmured Top in a fatherly voice—if your father was Hannibal Lecter.

  Everyone gasped, and Halverson’s hand almost strayed toward his sidearm. Goldman licked his lips. “We…we’ve been tasked with exploring the feasibility of using gene therapy for military asset enhancement.”

  “What kind of gene therapy?”

  “Various.”

  I tapped him with the barrel. “You’re stalling, and I’m disliking you more and more each second, Doc.”

  He winced. “Please…I can’t think with that….” He gestured vaguely toward the gun. I moved it six inches away.

  “Talk.”

  “We…I mean the government, the military, see the way things are going. The biosphere is critically wounded. Global warming is only the beginning. That’s the pop-culture talking point, but it’s a lot worse than that. Seas are dying because pollution has interrupted or eliminated key links in the food chain. Plankton and krill are dying while seaborne bacteria proliferate. Coral reefs are dying, the sea floor is a garbage pit, and even Third World countries are building centrifuges by the score to refine uranium.”

  “Yeah, I watch CNN. Life sucks. Get to the point.”

  “Some key people in government want to ensure that no matter what happens we’ll still be able to maintain an effective military presence capable of response under all conditions.”

  “What kinds of conditions?”

  “Extreme. Deep pollution, blight, even post-conflict radiation environments.”

  “Meaning?”

  Goldman’s face was bleak. “Meaning, that if you can’t fix the world, then alter the inhabitants to adapt to the ambient circumstances.”

  I sat back and laid the pistol on my lap, my finger outside of the trigger guard.

  “How?” asked Bunny. “How do you make people adapt?”

  “Transgenics. Gene therapy. And some other methods. We explored some surgical options, but that’s problematic. There’s recovery time, tissue rejection issues, and other problems. Genetic modification is less traumatic.”

  “Let me see if I get this,” I said. “You and your bunch of mad scientists down here alter the genes of test subjects to see if you can make them more adaptable to polluted and devastated environments.”

  “Yes.”

  “What kinds of genes?”

  “Insect,” he said. “Insects are among the most successful life-forms. Not as durable as viruses, or as hardy as some forms of bacteria, of course, but otherwise, they’re remarkable. Many can live on very little food, they can endure great i
njury, and there are some who are highly resistant to radiation.”

  “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 woodborers 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 explains how they’ve survived in so many situations in which other animals were destroyed. They can also climb walls because the tiny pili 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, what kind of monster do you think I am?”

  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 was the generator room.”

  There was a high whine from distressed engines, and then the lights dimmed again and went out. The staff room emergency lights kicked in after a few seconds, weak and yellow, giving each face a sallow, 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 prerecorded 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 di
dn’t have a key, then you’d need tools. Heavy pry bars and a lot 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.