Operation Honshu Wolf (10 page)
For a heartbeat, Miller registered Robert Harris’s shocked recognition that Miller
meant
it, and then Gray stood in the line of fire. Miller looked at the gun, looked at where it was pointing, and took a step to the side, aiming at Harris’s face.
“Don’t. We need him.” Calmly, Gray sidestepped with Miller. “It’s a complicated situation,” he repeated, firmly.
“How?” All the strength left his arm, and the Gallican dropped to his side. “How?” Miller begged. “He fucked us, Gray. He turned us into the enemy. Don’t you understand that? We’re the ones locking people into cages, poisoning people.
We’re
the monsters. Because of him.”
“We’re not the bad guys, Alex. We’re fighting to survive.” Gray cocked his head ever so slightly. “That parasite’s going to kill us all if we let it.”
“The Infected aren’t
evil!
They’re sick, they need treatment—they’re
people
.”
“And that’s why we have to stop the parasite, Alex. Pass me that tablet you were showing me, Bob.”
“Here,” Harris said, passing it up.
“This,” Gray said, coming in to stand beside Miller, “is a scan of one of those people’s skulls. You see this row of little blobs?”
They started inside the eye. Small white marks, tiny pinpricks of light, were clumped around the retina—but they weren’t the parasite-cysts the quarantine teams checked for with ophthalmoscopes. From the retina, a thin line of them seemed to be marching in single file through the little gap in the bone around the tear duct and into the sinuses, then the nose. From there they squeezed into holes pockmarking a plate of bone behind it, and then... they were right up against the brain, dozens of them.
“Yeah,” Miller replied. “I see them.”
“Those are wasp larvae.”
“
Wasps?
In the guy’s
brain?
”
“You probably met some yourself. Most are tiny little fuckers, not much more than an eighth of an inch long.”
The Gnats!
“Fuck!” Miller whipped a knuckle to his eyes, scrubbing furiously. “I got one in my eye—”
“Hold on, there,
you’re
probably fine,” Gray said, taking Miller’s shoulder. He leaned in, checking Miller’s eye. “You blink? Eye watered?”
“Y-yeah,” Miller stammered, glancing again at the pad, the larvae in the guy’s eyes and
brain
, laying on the desk.
“Damn little bastard probably didn’t lay anything in you,” Gray said. “But if you were infected with the Archaean Parasite? It’d be a whole other story.”
Harris steepled his fingers. “The Infected don’t blink the wasps away. According to the research, the parasite weakens the blink reflex and forces you to let the wasps lay as many eggs in you as they want. It’s part of the life cycle.”
Miller couldn’t shake off the nagging
need
to find a doctor.
“The parasite is like toxoplasma, that thing in cat-shit. It can’t reproduce properly in humans—it just splits up and divides, cloning itself. For it to
breed
, for the little single-celled fuckers to have
sex
, our best guess is that they have to get eaten by this wasp. Now, there’s a lot we still don’t understand about this thing,” Harris went on, warming to his topic, “but the parasite
loves
living in your nerves. In your skin, in your gut, in your
brain
. And it wants to goddamn
feed
your skin, your gut, your
brain
to these wasps.”
“Fuck,” Miller whispered.
“I don’t need to see eye-to-eye with you, Miller. And I ain’t proud of what I’ve done.” Harris drummed his fingers on the table. “But I don’t think either of us wants this fucker eating our brains. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen, to
everybody
, if we don’t deal with the Infected.”
“You can’t just, just...”
“Alex, it’s okay.” Gray took his shoulder. “This mess is a big old rock that’s been flipped over, and we found a snake underneath. It’s ugly, but we need the snake to kill the rats eating our food, you understand? We need Bob. We need to
survive
.”
“Like hell we do!” Miller snapped. “
We
didn’t survive, Gray!
We
weren’t people who used biological weapons and rounded up refugees in wire cages, kicking half of them out for being too infected to make it worth bringing them in!”
Gray’s face clouded, his eyes narrowing coldly. “They
burned
us, Alex. We gave people the drugs they needed in their aid packages, and they killed our truck drivers with Molotovs.”
“That doesn’t change what
he
did,” Miller growled, clutching the handgun tighter, glaring at Harris.
“No,” Gray agreed, “but—”
Whatever Gray was about to say was lost as Holly Moulin knocked once, sharply, and stuck her head through the door. “Mr. Matheson? Mr. Swift is on the phone for you? A conference call, with a Major General Stockman on the line...”
T
HE RECORDINGS PLAYED
continuously over the decaying public television signal. James Swift in clean clothes, a lurid orange and pink crust of scabrous skin running from the side of his throat to beneath his collar. His hair had been brushed; he was smiling, calm. So was Major General Stockman, seated twelve feet away, man normal but for his greasy skin and hair. Somehow his uniform was keeping its creases.
“
Hello? Jimmy?
”
“
Gray. Been a long time since we’ve spoken.
” Swift smiled slowly, his mouth a narrow slash. “
I don’t believe you know Major General Stockman.
”
“
I do not.
”
“
Mr. Matheson.
” Stockman smiled back at Swift, that same narrow smile. “
I regret to inform you that a warrant has been issued for you and your company board’s arrest. I must ask you to surrender yourself and your corporation’s assets
immediately.”
The sweep of the camera, between Swift and Stockman seated so far apart, made it obvious they were being shot with an extreme zoom. The cameraman had to have been clear on the other side of the studio—everyone given their personal space, with enough separation to remain individuals.
Gray didn’t answer immediately. On the other end of the line he’d been gesturing wildly at Holly to get back on the line and start recording the call, but the stony silence seemed to stretch out for a calm and measured eternity.
“
Could you clarify under whose authority that is?
”
“
My own,
” Stockman said, his jaw squaring. “
I am declaring martial law in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and I warn you that my 11th Infantry Division is entering the city as we speak. Mr. Matheson, Schaeffer-Yeager International cannot outrun the laws of our fifty united states.
”
At this point the recording froze frame on Stockman’s steely gaze, and cut out.
In his office, at about that point, Gray gritted his teeth and asked, “And which branch of the government ordered you to do so, Major General?”
Miller didn’t hear the response, but Gray laughed out loud. “I’m sorry, but Jimmy’s not an elected leader. Tell me, have you been following the National Emergency Presidential Directives? Specifically directive thirty-two?” A pause. “You haven’t, have you? That’s the one making it a felony for military personnel if they don’t take their issued anti-parasitic drugs... No, Major-General, I believe what you’re doing is staging a coup d’état against whatever shreds of governmental authority still exist.”
Made sense that they wouldn’t show that on TV.
That was roughly how it went down. Miller finished telling the other members of Cobalt about it in their new break room, while Lewis picked through old coffee filters in the hopes of finding one that almost qualified as fresh.
Du Trieux was painted over the back of one of the couches, while Doyle cleaned a rifle he’d had 3D-printed in metal and polymer, going over its blocky frame with sandpaper. Nobody asked the obvious question, while shaky footage on the television showed squads of ragged, scruffy-looking soldiers lurching in lockstep along a freeway while Bravos rolled back and forth behind them.
The Gallican was holstered, and loaded, and he still hadn’t put the safety back on.
Miller would have to figure out what to do about Harris later, but right now, there were bigger problems. What the hell were they going to do with an Infected army coming for them?
Miller didn’t know, but by the end of whatever the hell had just started, he didn’t think he’d ever find an open dry cleaner again.
ABOUT THE
AUTHORS
Extinction Biome
is the creation of jungle warrior, revolutionary, counter-revolutionary and outdoorsperson
Addison Gunn
. But who is Addison Gunn? Addison’s too damn busy to answer that. Instead Gunn’s wrangled some of the best new talents in the genre to pen this exciting new series...
Malcolm Cross
lives in London and enjoys the personal space and privacy that the city is known for. When not misdirecting tourists to nonexistent landmarks, Malcolm is likely to be writing. A member of the furry fandom, he won the 2012 Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction.
After writing for children’s television,
Anne Tibbets
found her way to writing novels by following what she loves: books, strong female characters, twisted family dynamics, magic, sword fights, quick moving plots, and ferocious and cuddly animals. Anne divides her time between writing, her family, and two furry creatures that she secretly believes are plotting her assassination.
Major General Stockman and the U.S. Army 11th Infantry Division – infected, to a man and woman, with the Archaean Parasite – are marching on Schaeffer-Yeager’s Astoria Compound, intent on removing CEO L. Gray Matherson and destroying the corporation’s facilities. Gray’s plans need time; an evacuation is planned, but S-Y are far from ready. Alex Miller and his Cobalt team are assigned to OPERATION WILD TARPAN, a desperate bid to delay the coming attack...
Extinction Biome
is a new military-SF series about a world overrun by an ancient ecology, awakened from a millennia-long dormancy to destroy the human race; and about the decisions we must make to try and survive.
With Stockman dead and his forces routed, the Astoria Compound’s greatest threats are diminishing food supplies and fractious refugees. The problems are mounting and there are no easy solutions. Then a bomb attack inside the Compound brings an unwelcome discovery: drug-resistant Infected, infiltrating the refugee camp. Miller and his team are co-opted for OPERATION CASPIAN TIGER, an attempt to root out the infiltrators, but is a more extreme solution needed?
Extinction Biome
is a new military-SF series about a world overrun by an ancient ecology, awakened from a millennia-long dormancy to destroy the human race; and about the decisions we must make to try and survive.