The Plague Forge [ARC] (38 page)

“Weird,” Vanessa said.

Tania glanced at her.

“No response from Exodus. Everyone’s eating lunch, maybe.”

A comment died on Tania’s lips when she noticed the wisp of smoke rising up through the dense clouds below. Vanessa saw it at the same moment and immediately aborted their landing approach and angled the aircraft for a flyby.

The smoke curled upward along the path of the thin, almost invisible Elevator cord. Tania followed the line upward and spotted a lone climber high above, beacon light winking rhythmically. She watched it for a few seconds until the motion became apparent: down.

As the
Helios
drew closer the wisp proved more like a plume. Something big was burning below, and it was right where the camp should be. She dug her nails into the armrests, craned her neck for any detail that might be glimpsed through the gray and white soup. And then they dipped in, and her view become a rushing, shifting torrent of cloud like static on a dead screen. This ended as quickly as it had started, and the city came into full view.

Flames engulfed a section of slums near Camp Exodus, leaving a row of charred homes closest to the wall. The fire had started there, Tania noted, and spread north in a cone. In the heavy rain the licking tongues of yellow were almost totally obscured by thick smoke. The tendrils rose black and oily in places, paper white in others and mixing into a gray morass that seemed to become one with the heavy storm clouds that clung overhead.

Bright flashes of light caught Tania’s eye, rapid winks from the perimeter of camp. A few years ago she would have not understood, but now she knew muzzle flashes when she saw them. These crackled along the wall of Camp Exodus as if someone had set off a string of fireworks.

Vanessa brought the aircraft in low over the camp, keeping the speed above 150 kilometers per hour and maintaining a safe distance from the invisible thread of the space elevator. She banked steeply as they flew over, giving Tania a clear view of the entire camp from just a few hundred meters up.

Within she saw people running, ferrying supplies back and forth to the defenders on the wall. A crowd huddled around the medical tent, another by the tower yard where Tania knew the munitions closet to be.

On the wall, every few meters, were colonists facing the erratic onslaught of subhumans that poured in from the city and even the rainforest to the east. Bodies of those shot trying to approach the camp were everywhere, and a few even lay within.

Tania craned her neck to take in more details as the
Helios
slipped out over the river and began to turn for another pass. “It’s safe to land, I think,” Tania said. “We’ve got to help them.”

“Copy that,” Vanessa said. “Switching to verts.”

The note of the electric motors changed as thrust was redirected out the tiny vertical ports. Vanessa spun the craft about. As the camp came back into view, Tania glanced down at the swollen river below. People were swimming toward camp amid bodies floating limp, arms outward. Not people, she corrected herself. More subs. Just like in Colorado, they were of a sudden single-minded purpose, only here it seemed to be to get to the Elevator and not the alien object in the
Helios
’s cargo hold. What then? And what had triggered their sudden, all-consuming goals?

She made a sudden, frantic study of the camp, looking for the Magpie. Were they back already? Prize, or prizes, in hand? There were no other aircraft within the walls that she could see, but maybe they’d been forced to complete the journey on foot, or by truck. Tania tried the radio again while Vanessa focused on lining up
Helios
with the colony’s single landing pad. Again no response came.

“If anyone can hear me please respond?” she pled. “We need to know if the landing site is safe.”

Silence. Then, a crackle. A thud. “Tania?”

“Karl,” she said. Relief spilled out into the name, perhaps a little disappointment, too. She’d hoped for Tim. “Karl, thank God.”

“When we saw you fly over we realized we’d left the comm room empty. Really sorry about that.”

Tania gripped the transmitter tightly. “Can we land?”

“It’s safe for now, far as I know anyway. I’ll send a squad over there just to be sure. You saw the subs, I take it?”

“Hard to miss,” Tania said.

“Fucking-A.”

“The same thing happened in Colorado.”

A slight pause. “Then you succeeded, too?”

“We did.” She fought to keep her voice level. “Skyler’s back, then?”

“No,” he replied. “It’s just that the Elevator did that twang-effect twice, so we knew both objects had at least been recovered. There was a weird shock wave after the second time a few minutes later. Came from the east, where Sky went. Scattered birds from every tree. I’m afraid all’s quiet, otherwise.”

She couldn’t imagine what would cause that, but the fact that it hit here from that direction certainly implied Skyler had done something
big
. “Right, okay. We’re almost down. Hold the fort, huh?”

“Count on it.”

“Is Tim with you?”

A pause. “He went up, last night. Zane needed a break.”

“It’s okay, I understand.” She clicked off and shared a glance with Vanessa. The subs were attacking despite the presence of an object. Tania felt a now-familiar ripple of fear at the thought.

“Do you think they’re trying to get up the Elevator?” Vanessa asked cautiously. “To the other ones, I mean?”

“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 Belém.

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.