The Exodus Towers (22 page)

“Mm-hmm. You gave me two bags of it for an early simulation result, a few years ago.”

“I remember,” she said, lying.

“Been saving it,” he added, then sipped. Tim winced from the heat and set his cup down. “Oh, blimey but that’s hot. Might want to wait a minute.”

Tania followed his lead. In truth she was content just to let the complex, spicy scent drift up and around her. It smelled like her mother’s kitchen. “Thank you for the tea,” she said earnestly. “And the company.”

“No problem.” He shrugged, settled himself. “So what are we doing in here? Concocting a new plan?”

“I wish,” Tania said. “Unfortunately I don’t think we have many options left. I mean, look at this place. We’re overextended everywhere. No supplies are coming up. Who knows what the hell is going on in camp.…”

She let her voice trail off. Tim knew all this, and the last thing Tania wanted to do was rehash it all again.

Tim, mercifully, said nothing. He tried his tea again, hissed through clenched teeth, and set the cup back down. “You think you have problems—I can’t even boil water right.”

Tania elbowed him, laughed lightly at his mock show of pain. “Anything new to report on that vibration that the cord exhibited?” she asked.

“It was some kind of power surge, we know that much. Beyond that, nothing new. No damage reported, at least.”

“How’s Zane?” she asked, desperate to change the subject.

“He retired early. Between us, I think all this stress is getting to him. He’s always tired, and doesn’t eat enough.”

“Sounds like he’s the one who needs chai,” Tania said.

Tim grunted, and looked over at her. “If you’re saying I should leave …”

Tania turned and met his gaze. Even in the dark room, she could see the sparkle of intelligence and energy in his eyes. “I’m trying to find any excuse not to think about our dire situation.”

“A distraction,” he concluded. “Good. Did you, er, have something in mind?”

Tania searched his eyes. “Yes,” she said sternly. “Let’s make Zane some dinner.”

Tim readily agreed, and for the next hour they took over the mess kitchen. The meal had to be improvised, but Tania thought the result was a reasonable curry, something she knew Zane loved.

They called him down from his cabin and the three of them ate together, even shared a bottle of wine. To Tania’s delight, for that evening at least, no one mentioned the plight they faced. For the first time in a while, they were just three friends sharing the simple, sacred pleasure of a meal well prepared.

Belém, Brazil

5.MAY.2283

S
KYLER AND
D
AVI
lay side by side in the brush at the top of a small rise.

Ana worked in silence behind them, securing their excess gear. She’d become more and more withdrawn during the last stage of their trek. When Skyler asked, Davi had chalked it up to fatigue.

Skyler held a scavenged pair of binoculars to his eyes, scanning the shallow valley below while Davi used the scope on his hunting rifle. Skyler had found the weapon, too, and spent an hour each morning for the last few days teaching Davi how to use and clean it. The young man had none of Jake’s natural skill, but he could hit a target if he focused.

The lodge appeared intact. Beyond it stood a barn, doors closed and latched, the muddy ground in front churned and laced by tire tracks.

A dirt road, obscured by knee-high weeds, served as the primary way in and out of the complex.

“Fresh tire tracks,” Skyler said. He kept his voice low.

“I see them. This is the place.”

Over days of cat-and-mouse with Gabriel’s people through the streets of Belém, Skyler’s radio picked up the needed hint to find the hidden immunes: a call to help free a truck stuck in mud. From that they knew the road being used by Gabriel’s people to move back and forth between their base of operations and the colony at Belém’s Elevator. Tracing their exact path proved easy enough, as the heavy military
vehicles Gabriel’s people used left plenty of evidence in their wake.

Skyler pulled the binoculars away from his face and took in the whole scene below him.

A shallow ravine lay below, carved by a thin stream that snaked down from lush foothills to the west. Morning fog obscured the eastern end of the valley, where the grassy field gave way to rainforest, and the stream met a stronger river.

Nestled in the center of the valley, in a wide clearing, was a lodge. A tourist hotel, Skyler judged, with maybe twenty rooms on two stories. A barn stood a short distance from the main building.

Two black personnel carriers were parked between the two structures. Neither had moved since dawn, nor had any signs of activity within the buildings been seen. The quiet made Skyler wonder if the location had already been abandoned, but the presence of the two vehicles threw doubt on that theory.

“Let’s go,” Davi said. “They’re probably all sleeping.”

Skyler caught movement through his binoculars. “Hold up.”

Three men marched along the ridgeline on the opposite side of the valley. Skyler put them at half a kilometer away. Only their heads were visible above the weeds.

“See ’em?”

“I see ’em,” Davi said. “Keep still.”

They watched the men for a tense few minutes as the trio worked their way toward the lodge.

Davi sucked in his breath as they came into full view. “What the hell?”

Through the binoculars, Skyler saw something that raised goose bumps on his arms.

An old man with a thick gray beard led the group. The other two each carried long metal poles, with loops of rope at the end.

The ropes were lashed around the neck and torso of a woman, or what was once a woman. The subhuman was nude, filthy, and very much alive. She bled openly from a number of lacerations on her belly and legs.

“Jesus,” Skyler said. “Davi.”

“I see it.”

“They captured a sub.”

“I fucking see it,” he hissed. The young man glanced back at Ana.

Skyler looked, too. Twenty meters away, her back to a tree trunk, the girl worked methodically to load the new weapon he’d given her. The compact assault rifle fired small .22-caliber rounds, easy to handle but lacking punch. That shortcoming was made up for by the grenade launcher slung under the barrel.

Skyler broached the question he so desperately wanted to keep inside. “Are you sure you want her to come with us? She could guard our bags.”

“She comes,” Davi said. “Trust me, she gets very upset if you try to shelter her.”

“Okay then.”

“But,” Davi added, “if you could give her the least dangerous part in the plan …”

“I understand,” Skyler said. He meant it, even though he knew it would be impossible to do. There were too many unknowns. But it couldn’t hurt to give Davi a little reassurance.

He made a
took-took
sound through pursed lips. Ana glanced up and waved back. She finished loading the gun and jogged up the hillside to join them on the ridge, crawling the last few meters before lying next to Skyler. The corners of her lips were curled up in the hint of a smile. She was, Skyler realized, enjoying this. Her mirth drained when she saw the men below with their captive subhuman.

Davi fiddled with the scope on his sniper rifle and took a long, measured breath. “What’s the plan—”

The subhuman prisoner, now twenty meters from the lodge, clutched at the bar that held her torso and began to howl, her nose held high in the air.

“She smells something,” Skyler whispered.
Us?

A response came from somewhere inside the lodge. Ten voices, maybe more, took up the same, wild, subhuman cry. Something rang different about it, though. Skyler had heard
such cries all over the world, and they always sounded the same. These, from the building, sounded feeble. Weak.

Skyler swallowed hard and said, “I’ve got a really fucking bad feeling about this.”

The two immunes who held the female captive in the valley below struggled to keep her under control. She began to buck violently, left and right and again. One of the men slipped. The leader, in front, turned and walked back to them. He was shouting something, impossible to make out against the wailing of those within the lodge.

“Here’s the plan,” Skyler said. “We’ll surround the lodge—”

Ana leapt to her feet and rushed down the hill. She ran hard, holding her rifle across her chest. Not even a glance back.

Skyler started to shout after her, but reason won out. The immunes were too busy with their prisoner to notice the woman racing toward them. She would cross the distance in no time at her adrenaline-fueled pace.

If she had some kind of death wish, Skyler hadn’t caught it before. Though in hindsight, her dancing alone in that courtyard had a suicidal aftertaste to it.

“Ana, Jesus!” Davi hissed through clenched teeth.

“Don’t panic,” Skyler said. “Take a shot before they spot her.”

Ana was less than fifty meters from the men now. Davi took a deep breath. He sighted downrange, and on an exhale let off a round.

The big leader’s head jerked wildly. He sank to his knees and toppled over.

The thunderous sound from the rifle brought a brief shocked silence from all around.

Davi wasted no time, unleashing two more bullets in rapid succession. Panic filled the valley. The second of the three men dove to the dirt, letting go of his metal pole in the process. The bullets meant for him did nothing more than generate two puffs of dust from the trail.

Skyler watched as Ana crouched down. She raised her rifle and began firing at the third enemy.

The man shoved the subhuman toward Ana, turned, and hustled away for the safety of a small mound. The subhuman spun in circles, poles still attached to her, moving like a frenzied animal.

Another deafening clap from the hunting rifle dropped the subhuman in a whoosh of dirt and outstretched limbs. She twitched on the ground only for a second, and then nothing.

Skyler heard the sound of breaking glass, coming from the lodge. He saw a shotgun barrel poke out of a window on the side of the building facing the valley. It was far enough away from all of them to be of no concern, but it meant the three immunes were not alone here.

Battle instinct took over.

“I’ll flank,” Skyler blurted. He was up and moving, keeping low behind the edge of the ridge.

As he ran, he heard the battle continue. Another salvo from Ana’s gun. Two shots from a gun he hadn’t heard yet, from somewhere in the valley. Davi answered those with another booming shot.

Skyler angled for a thin copse of trees that bookended one side of the lodge. He kept his machine gun angled low, at the ready. As he rounded the edge of the wooden house, the sounds behind him faded, until he heard nothing but his own labored breath. He paused to gather himself, just for a few seconds, then crouched below the window height and moved along the back wall of the structure.

At the far edge, he took a quick look around the building before bouncing back. Two more of the immunes stood next to an open door. One held a pipe wrench. The other’s hands were not visible, but from the way he stood, Skyler suspected he had a handgun.

Best not to take any chances.

Skyler jumped around the corner and lined up the holographic dot his gun provided on the second man’s back. He squeezed off a controlled burst, adjusted, and followed it with another. The two men were dead.

Surprise no longer on his side, Skyler moved up to the
door the men had come through. He peeked quickly inside, but found it too dark to make much out.

Then the howling started again, from within. The sound was gut-wrenching. More pitiful than frightening.

There were, he realized, other shouts mixed in. Human cries for help.

Skyler flattened himself against the wall by the door. Off to his left, he saw nothing along the trail except dirt. The occasional echo of a gunshot rolled down the valley floor to him.

Then Ana appeared, running toward him, her gun pointed down as he’d shown her.

He motioned for her to stop and luckily she saw him. The girl crouched next to a shrub beside the trail.

Skyler pointed at his gun, then at her, then at the barn.
Secure the barn
, he mouthed.

She looked from her weapon to the large wooden structure and nodded.

Satisfied, Skyler renewed his focus on the door to the lodge. He readied himself to rush in when Ana’s movement caught his eye.

Or rather, her lack of movement. She wasn’t moving toward the barn—she was taking aim on it.

Realization hit him just as she fired the grenade launcher.

Skyler covered his ears as the massive rolling door on the front of the barn exploded into a million shards of thin wood.

Then a second, much bigger explosion hit. Skyler was slammed into the wall of the lodge by the force of it. He dropped to a fetal position and threw his arms over his face as shrapnel peppered the entire area. Even from here he could feel a flash of intense heat.

Every window on the lodge shattered. Bits of flaming debris smacked into the walls and roof.

More blasts followed. Skyler peeked between his elbows and saw nothing but a cloud of smoke where the barn had stood a moment earlier. Gabriel’s people must have been storing explosives inside, or fuel of some sort. Hopefully no one friendly was in there.