The Plague Forge (Dire Earth Cycle #3)

“I suppose it’s possible.” She considered it as the landing pad began to slip below them and the aircraft started to drop the last twenty meters. “Or maybe they’re wired to converge on the nearest Builder technology once all of the objects are found.”

A vision exploded into Tania’s mind. Packs … no, herds of subhumans from all over the world, making the same desperate migratory trek to the auras that humanity had. The final hint, the final push the beings needed to finish what the disease had started.

She had her harness off before Vanessa could even reach for the throttle to kill the engines. The canopy opened to the sound of roaring wind from the dwindling fans, the crackle of distant gunfire, shouts of alarm and surprise, and even, here and there, encouragement. Tania skipped the tiny steps engraved into the Helios’s fuselage and simply leapt to the soaked concrete below. Rain fell in a heavy vertical barrage.

A group of colonists stood nearby, armed with various weapons and varying amounts of confidence in the way they held them. She took in each person’s stance and rushed up to the one with the most presence in the way he stood, the most familiar grip on the gun in hand. “They’re swimming across!” Tania shouted to him. “You need to get some people covering the river entrance!”

Camp Exodus’s wall left the shore open for fishing and swimming. Subs weren’t known for their ability to cross water, and indeed in the two-plus years since the camp had been established Tania had never heard of a sub reaching the camp from that direction. A few snakes, sure. Even a black caiman. But no subhumans.

The man glanced that way, disbelief in his eyes.

“We saw them from above. Trust me. Many are drowning but some will make it. Take this group, find others, form a line. There’s no time to debate. We’ll be okay.”

“Right,” he said. With a jerk of his head the ragged group filed in behind him and walked toward the turbulent waters.

“Tania!” a familiar voice called out. She turned and saw Karl limping toward the aircraft. He swept her into an embrace that favored his good arm. “Are you okay?”

“We survived.”

He squinted, confused. “I saw you get out of the cockpit. No suit? I don’t understand. Are you … you’re …”

Tania shrugged. “I don’t know what happened. Started to get the headache, just like you, then that shock wave rolled past and I felt fine. Well, I felt okay.”

Karl blinked at that. “Immune …”

“Let’s figure it out later,” she said, casting a glance toward the combatants on the wall.

Ninety minutes of hell served as Tania’s welcome back to Belem.

She left Vanessa with instructions to guard their cargo, and dust off if necessary to protect the object. Then she went to the wall, picked up a gun from someone too tired to continue, and began to kill.

Pounding rain dropped visibility to fifteen meters, even less at times. The waters ran in milky brown rivulets along the battered roads beyond the camp’s wall. Tania felt soaked to the bone, and like most of the others she’d shed much of her clothing for the simple reduction in weight.

The subs came alone, in families, and in packs. One group thundered in as if in careful coordination—fifty from the west, another thirty from the north. Many went for their general plan of scaling the walls, but a number rushed the gate and tried to shoulder it open. They were cut down in seconds from those on the wall, Tania included. She saw her own gunfire pop the blood and brains out of a child-subhuman that couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. She’d turned and retched after that, and she wasn’t the first nor the last to do so. After her fourth or fifth kill the revulsion ebbed as the task became less a violent art and more a chore.

A lull followed. Stragglers, here and there. Conserving ammunition began to become the principal concern along the wall, and so colonists began to call their shots before firing. “I’ve got one-arm,” and “Blondie on all-fours is mine.” Tania took a sip of offered water from the woman who stood next to her. They shared an embarrassed laugh at the line of partially clad warriors lining the top of the wall. Flames from the fire that had blackened most of the slum north of the camp were now too far off to provide sufficient light, and the day grew darker by the minute. Torches were improvised and tossed out into the mud, but most went out upon landing, forcing a call for volunteers to go out and set them up. Tania found herself raising her hand without a second thought.

Three minutes later she stood behind the massive colony gate, half a broom handle in one hand and a borrowed pistol on the other. The meter-long stick had an old shirt wrapped around the end. It had been doused in some kind of grease or oil.

A stout, dour woman lit it for her seconds before the gates were thrown open, and Tania rushed madly over the bodies that had piled up just outside. Her feet pounded in the mud and soaked asphalt beyond. Sixteen other colonists ran with her, some carrying torches like hers, others carrying cap-powered LED lanterns that would last for weeks. The group dispersed, each running toward a spot they’d chosen ahead of time, ten or fifteen meters in front of the place they’d previously occupied on the wall. Those nearest to the gate were done quickly and, as per the hastily agreed-to plan, turned and went back to the gate. The fewer colonists abroad that might be confused for subs, the better.

A few gunshots rang out from the wall. Tania heard animal grunts from nearby, and cries from farther. She ignored it all, focused on the stump of a telephone pole she’d picked as her landmark. Murky water splashed with every footfall, and as she lifted her feet from the ground it sprayed up her back and into her hair. Filthy, soaking wet, overwhelmed with adrenaline, Tania reached the stump of wood and leaned her torch against it. Each drop of rain that hit the fire ended with a little hiss. There was no soft ground nearby to thrust the torch into, so this seemed the next-best option to her. She’d brought no rope, though, and the torch seemed likely to fall with the slightest breeze where it stood.

A guttural roar emerged from the smoke and rain nearby. She heard fingernails scrape on concrete as a dark shape began to emerge. Tania held the torch in place with one hand, kept low, and raised her pistol. Before she could fire someone on the wall did, dropping the diseased human with one rifle round to the thigh, and a second in the center of the back when the creature had fallen.

Tania returned her focus to the torch. Other flame-bearers who’d ventured farther than her were already running back toward the gate. With no better idea, Tania set her pistol on a relatively dry bit of ground beside her and unlaced her boots. As more shots rang out from the wall, she set about knotting the two laces together and then wrapping the now-joined string around the stump and the broom handle.

More cries from the darkness. Tania swept her pistol up and managed to find the proper grip just in time. A sub had crept up slowly on the opposite side of her torch, using the flame itself to cover its approach. She registered it as two glowing eyes just beyond the flame, raised her weapon, and fired twice as the creature leapt to strike her. Her shots missed and the subhuman crashed through the flame and into her abdomen. She had the presence of mind to turn, using its momentum to send it rolling away from her toward the colony.

No shots from the wall. They couldn’t see well enough to know who was friend or foe. Tania froze, caught between fighting, moving to the torch so the shooters could see her as one of their own, or running for the gate.

She had no choice. The creature came up from its fall and ran in the opposite direction from her, toward camp, toward the space elevator. Tania lifted her weapon, squeezed the fine trigger. The gun barked, slapped against her palm, and thrust a dull pain up her arm. A single, perfect red hole appeared in the center of the subhuman’s back and it stumbled. One arm shot out to brace the fall, but by the time it had dropped that far the life had gone out of it. Tania lowered the gun. The flames behind her hissed and sputtered under the heavy rain. She dropped her chin to her chest and let the water cascade off the clumps of black hair that were matted to her cheeks.

She stared down between her feet, captivated by her own silhouette reflected in the dark puddle below. The wildly dancing flame behind her seemed to burn in a halo over her shadowed form. Heavy drops of rain rippled the demonic image, made it look as if she herself wavered like an apparition.

A shape rushed past her on the left. A subhuman, loping awkwardly on two feet and one hand. The other arm was tucked up against its body, an infected stump where the hand had been.

Another on the right, racing toward the wall. They were ignoring her, she realized, as the whip-crack serenade of gunfire rang out from the wall. They see me as one of them, she thought.

Or they don’t see me at all.

The two were quickly dispatched and then she heard the shouts from the wall, urging her to move. Move now. The pall that had settled on her lifted and Tania ran for the gate.

Ten meters away another subhuman came toward her. This one’s single-minded drive toward the Elevator faltered when it noticed her. It slid to a stop, lost its balance, and then righted itself. It screamed at Tania and leapt, filthy hands outstretched.

Tania slid under the attack, rolled in the mud, and came up at a sprint. A chorus of gunshots rang out from the wall and Tania heard something splash into the mud behind her, heavy and final. She didn’t look back.

They were ready for her at the gate, holding it open just enough for her to slip through, and as soon as she did the massive metal door slammed shut behind her.

“What’s wrong?” someone asked, a person she did not know. “Why’d you stay out there?”

Tania shook the cobwebs from her mind. “They weren’t after me,” she said.

A dozen confused stares from the people around her.

“They’re after what we stole.”

The climber slid the last few meters in near-total silence, its motor column producing only a soft whir over the unrelenting storm.

Tania sat in the cargo bay of the Helios, the door open so she could watch the climber arrive. Vanessa or Karl, she couldn’t recall which, had thrown a scratchy blanket over her shoulders and handed her a cup of hot tea. Only seconds after the vehicle arrived, Karl returned, the question she knew he would ask apparent in his concerned gaze.

Gunshots still rang out from the perimeter of Camp Exodus. Less frequent than before, the miniature thunderclaps had faded into the landscape.

“I’ll take it up,” Tania said.

“You sure?”

She nodded. “Vanessa can assist me. Besides, we need an immune to open the hatch.”

He stood in the rain, waiting.

Tania let her gaze drift up. Belem’s skyline still hid under the blanket of rainfall. Dark shapes at the edge of vision, like gigantic versions of the aura towers. The fires had finally burned themselves out.

“Load the other cars with the injured, or anyone too weak to fight.” She took a sip of the scalding hot tea and winced as it singed her tongue. “Once we’re above, we’ll send every available climber back down and the evacuation can begin.”

Even in the dim light, under the ashen clouds, she could see his face pale.

“Tania …”

“If they give up before then, fine,” she said, “but we’re going to burn through all our ammunition like this and it might not be enough. We won’t even get a chance to clear the bodies, and without that task accomplished our problems here will only get worse.”

His mouth tightened into a thin line.

“Don’t take this personally, Karl. You’ve done a remarkable job holding out this long. Tell me, how well are the stations provisioned?”

He considered the question, his shame momentarily forgotten. “Melville and Platz have enough for three or four weeks. The farms a bit less. Black Level is running low.”

“It’s a skeleton crew there anyway. I’ll call Greg and Marcus and have them move the staff down to Platz. I could use their help anyway.”

“What about down here?” he asked.

“You tell me.”

He frowned, but he turned and studied the place he held responsibility for. “We’ll lock everything down. I suspect they’ll leave it all alone except the food, most of which will spoil anyway. We’ll need to secure the aura towers well. I don’t think they know how to use them, but they might set them in motion by accident.”

She wanted to say that might not be necessary. That what had happened to her in Colorado signaled an end to the need for the auras. She had no real proof, though, and while she had little in the way of superstition in her personality, a real fear dwelt within her that to voice the idea might doom it somehow. So she said only, “Good. Proceed.”

With that he turned and held a hand out. Tania picked up the bag that held the alien object, took Karl’s offered assistance, and walked to the climber. He helped usher her into the waiting compartment, already packed with the first evacuees and their belongings. The goodbye was short, too short, and she hoped it wouldn’t be their last.

Vanessa came in a few minutes later. Tania offered her the adjacent seat and set the brown bag containing the relic between them on the floor.

As the vehicle rose up through the raging storm clouds that seemed almost a permanent fixture over the city, she wondered if she would ever set foot on Earth again, and what kind of place she would find if she did.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Southern Chad

1.APR.2285

Russell Blackfield stood on the rim of a pit and basked in the incredible sight below him.

I’m inside an aura.

No other explanation made sense, despite the fact that there were no towers around. He should be dead by now, or at least completely insane. Instead he felt stable, and he was finally able to stop his feet. None of the other subs had managed to do that. They rushed forward on either side of him, tumbling over the precipice like lemmings to the sea. They rolled in the grit and sand of the steep-sloped walls, throwing up a cloud that filled Russell’s nostrils and coated his throat. Some of the creatures cried out as they tumbled into the depths. Most seemed oblivious, as if caught in the grip of some ecstatic drug. He’d felt it, too, at first, during his trek through this wasteland. But it had faded.