O’Neill had just stepped out of the cafeteria when he noticed a utility cart hurtling toward him. It was traveling far too fast, easily double the base speed limit. He squinted and stepped forward, ready to stop the vehicle and give the driver hell, at least until he recognized the inhabitants. Wolf was behind the wheel and hisJavaaneerode the passenger seat.
Wolf was a Boy Scout. A follow-the-rules kind of warrior. He wouldn’t be driving like a bat out of hell unless something was wrong. When the vehicle swerved into one of the parking slotsin front of the clinic, he knew he was right. Something had happened.
There were plenty of reasons Wolf, as the base commander, could have been summoned to the emergency room. An accident with one of the warriors or base staff was at the top of the list. So was Samuel, Wolf’s comatose second in command. Had he awoken? Had he died?
Both men vaulted out of the cart, but rather than the ER, they raced for the isolation building which was next door. They converged on a tech with red hair and green scrubs. The dude looked jittery as fuck. More proof that something had gone wrong. But this summons wasn’t about Samuel. Wolf’scaetaneewas not housed in the isolation wing. Only the infected were kept there.
O’Neill’s heart stuttered, while his muscles tensed. Someone new must be infected.
He started running. His heart launched into jackhammer mode. His legs flushed with adrenaline and pushed him forward faster and faster. He reached the entrance to the isolation center well after Wolf and his entourage disappeared behind the glass doors, but he knew where the individual units were. He headed there at a dead run, the white walls and gray floor flashing past him in a blur. His boots pounded the tile beneath his feet, each dull thud echoing in his ears. Just before the final curve in the hallway, the red-haired tech bolted around the corner. O’Neill dodged to the left, smacking his elbow against the cold wall, barely avoiding a collision. The tech didn’t slow down. His face white, his hands and legs shaking, he fled down the corridor like the demons of hell were after him.
That couldn’t be good.
After a deep, steadying breath, he slowed to a walk. He rounded the final corner and entered the room to find Wolf and Aiden at the very end of the viewing chamber. Frozen in place,they were staring into the last isolation unit. Dread mixed with confusion as O’Neill converged on them. There was no dedicated morgue in the isolation building, so Wolf had placed the dead squids on gurneys and loaded them into the last unit. He’d flooded the room with freezing temperatures to keep the corpses on ice. Unless the newly infected were dead, they wouldn’t be housed in that last chamber. Plus, there were plenty of empty isolation units in the building. If someone new was infected, why would Wolf lock them in with the dead squids? He wouldn’t. Obviously.
Something else must be going on.
With each step forward, his muscles became tighter. His legs cramped, resisting his brain’s insistence on moving forward. Every instinct he possessed screamed at him to turn back. To run...like the red-headed tech had earlier. The fear was raw, instinctive, even though he had no clue what was causing it.
Maybe his reaction had something to do with the immobile, rigid lines of Aiden and Wolf’s spines, the frozen stillness of their bodies, the way their shoulders were pulling back from the window, like they were terrified of getting too close to the glass. He forced himself to glance past them into the isolation chamber. And stopped dead.
No that couldn’t be right...
A wave of disbelief sucked the breath from his lungs and burned through his chest like an electrical shock. Inside the isolation chamber, someone was standing in front of the glass—staring at Aiden with empty eye sockets. Someone with dull, waxy skin and a stitched incision running the length of its abdomen and chest. O’Neill’s legs went weak.
No, not someone...more like something. Something naked...human-shaped, but with missing eyes and half its skull gone. Something O’Neill knew was dead. For fuck’s sake he’dwatched the corpse being loaded into the Thunderbird three weeks ago.
Yet there the dead squid stood, front and center, behind the glass, like some fucked up museum display.
Day 24
Shadow Mountain Base, Alaska
As Aiden stood frozen, watching the Squirrel-thing open its mouth, the rest of his dead teammates shambled up to the window, forming a grotesque line of dead flesh and missing skull fragments. Like Squirrel, to their left, their mouths stretched wide, at least those that still had jaws.
Were they trying to speak?
Multiple rounds from M4A1 Carbines had taken out their throats, faces and brains. They no longer had tongues. Probably no larynxes either. Both of which were required for speech. So was a healthy amount of gray matter between the ears. All of which they were missing.
They should not be capable of speech…could not be capable of speech.
Yet, the same could be said of walking and standing. And damn if he hadn’t watched these five zombified husks stumble their way across the isolation chamber. And now they werestanding in front of him, staring through the glass with dead, cloudy eyes. Or some, like Squirrel, with no eyes at all.
Aiden shivered, the cold from the isolation unit penetrating down to his marrow.
Christ…this couldn’t be happening.
Am I dreaming?
He’d just escaped the clinic the day before, was this a hallucination? An after effect of his earlier sickness? But the doctors had given him a clean bill of health. Hell, they’d kicked him out of the ER.
This was really happening. Even if it felt unbelievable.
The shredded mouths, with their shattered jaws, opened even further, stretching impossibly wide, like they’d watched too many reruns of The Mummy. And then, just like in that damn movie, a dense hoard of insects burst from their gaping mouths. He stumbled back, his heart pounding like a motherfucker.
The thick cloud of black bugs was inches from the window.
Aiden’s breath caught in his aching lungs. Could the damn things penetrate glass? Could they reach him? He flinched, bracing for impact as they hit the window, only to watch them vanish.
