At that moment, Tim Feely lost it. He pushed Rhumkorrf hard in his chest. The smaller man stumbled back and fell, turning as he did to land on his hands and knees. He started scrambling to his feet, but Tim jumped on his back. They struggled, then Tim got his hands on Rhumkorrf’s head, turned it so it faced the big screen.
“Look at it, bro, look at it! It tried to eat its way out of the womb. The only one here with delusions is you! What’s going to happen when they’re born? What are we going to feed them?”
Tim never saw the elbow. He rolled back, jaw radiating pain, split lower lip spilling blood down his chin.
Panting and shaking, Rhumkorrf stood and looked down. “We can feed them the cattle from the other farms. And we’ll have Danté bring out more food. This is science, Feely, and we have to make it work. I wish I had Erika, but I don’t. I have you. Now, you get your ass downstairs and start doubling the nutrient supplement. I will not lose another fetus, not when we’re so close.”
Tim stared for a second before he realized something disturbing. He was afraid of Claus Rhumkorrf. The wee German was right—Tim was a pussy.
Tim stood, face burning with embarrassment, then cautiously slipped past Rhumkorrf and scurried down the aft ladder.
Rhumkorrf had always been obsessed, but this? This was a different level altogether. Anyone could see the danger. Rhumkorrf had to see it as well, had to, but still thought he could put those creatures in the new cages. The goddamn things were going to be bigger than lions.
Tim walked down the center aisle toward his lab. As he did, he passed each and every cow, staring at each and every massively swollen belly.
NOVEMBER 30: THE CALL
Implantation +21 Days
JIAN SHUFFLED DOWN the hall, small steps making for a slow pace, her hands furiously spinning a Dr Pepper bottle top-over-bottom-overtop. She entered her room, shut the door behind her and locked it. She then moved to the dresser. She didn’t slide it, but instead picked the whole thing up. Grunting slightly from the effort, she set the dresser against the door. She looked at the big four-poster bed. She slid behind it and shoved. Wooden feet squealed against the polished stone floor. The bed wedged nicely against the dresser.
Jian sat at her computer desk and called up the program she’d written two days earlier. There was nothing else she could do. Rhumkorrf wouldn’t listen. Not to her, not to Tim. Colding wouldn’t do anything. There was no longer any choice.
She entered some commands. The program flashed up a window with the words READY TO INITIATE CONTACT SEQUENCE.
She hit enter.
IN THE SECURITY control room, Andy Crosthwaite was sitting hunched down behind the security monitor. His big bag o’ porn sat close by, the brown paper worn down to an almost tissue-paper thickness from its many travels. But Andy wasn’t looking at the latest Juggs or Gallery. He was halfway through Hot Midnight. No one was more shocked than he that old Gun could write a hellacious fucking book, and that Andy might actually dig some cheesy vampire romance crap. But it wasn’t just mushy romance; Gun had thrown in more fuck scenes than a Skinimax after-hours flick.
Andy didn’t want anyone to see him reading the book, especially Magnus, who always had his nose in Shakespeare this or Shakespeare that. Andy hadn’t read much Shakespeare, but he knew damn well the old English dude didn’t write about killer vampire stableboys with glittering ruby schlongs. That bit was just genius, Gunther old boy… gen-ee-us.
A long beep brought his attention to the main monitor. A command-line window popped up. The window listed two lines.
JAMMER SHUTDOWN ACTIVATED
JAMMER SHUTDOWN COMPLETE
“What the fuck?”
He shuffled together the pages of Gunther’s novel, set them on top of the big bag o’ porn, then scooted up to the keyboard. He called up the main security menu and clicked the jammer icon, launching the control window. Sure enough, the jammer’s status said disabled. He hit the enable button.
ACCESS DENIED
Andy felt a sinking feeling in his chest.
The log monitor scrolled again, this time with the messages:
TRANSMITTER ACTIVATED
PHONE NETWORK ACTIVATED… DIALING…
Andy turned to the camera monitor and started flashing through the channels. C-5 cockpit: empty. C-5 lab: Rhumkorrf working at a lab table, but not near a computer. C-5’s veterinary bay: Tim in stall four, attending to a cow, also nowhere near a computer. Magnus’s room: empty. Colding’s room: he was asleep in his bed. Jian’s room…
What was with all the furniture pushed up against the door? And she… she was sitting at her wacky computer desk.
“Oh, fuck a duck.”
The log line scrolled again.
VOICE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. CALLER ID: USAMRIID
“Oh, motherfucker!” Andy grabbed the phone and dialed the extension for Magnus’s room. As it rang, he punched a button on the console, activating the secure satellite uplink monitor.
VOICE OVER IP SIGNAL DETECTED. WOULD YOU LIKE TO MONITOR THE AUDIO? YES/NO
He clicked yes to listen in. He called up the transmitter control window and clicked disconnect, knowing what he’d see.
ACCESS DENIED
Magnus still didn’t answer.
“Oh, unholy duck fuckers.” Andy turned up the sound on the monitors.
A CHEERFUL VOICE answered on the seventh ring. “USAMRIID, how can I help you?” The voice sounded tinny coming from the computer’s small speakers.
“I want Paul Fischer.”
“Pardon me, ma’am?”
“I need Paul Fischer. Zhe shi hen jin ji.”
“Ma’am, I—”
“Fischer! I must talk to Fischer about problems with our transgenic experiment. If you take the time to screen this call, I will be dead before someone can answer.”
There was a brief pause. “Hold on one moment, ma’am.”
Jian stared at the computer screen but wasn’t really looking at it. All her eyes could see was a ghostly vision of the needle-toothed fetus snapping at the fiber-optic camera.
MAGNUS BUTTONED HIS pants, zipped his fly, then walked out of his bathroom to the desk phone that had rung nonstop for over a minute.
“This is Magnus.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Andy screamed so loud Magnus flinched and held the receiver away from his ear.
“Stop yelling,” Magnus said. “I was taking a shit.”
“So is Jian, all over us. I think she connected to Manitoba, and from there she’s calling Fischer!”
Magnus reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a Beretta 96. “Can you shut down our transmitter?”
“I can’t! She locked me out somehow, turned off the jammer, too. I can’t bring it back online.”
Magnus pinched the phone between his shoulder and ear, checked the eleven-round magazine—full. “Is she talking to him now?”
“I think she’s on hold.”
“Where is everyone? Where is Colding?”
A brief pause: “He’s sleeping. Rhumkorrf and Tim are in the C-5. Sara and her crew are doing maintenance there. I think Gunther’s out for a snowmobile ride. Don’t know where Clayton is, maybe he’s with Gunther.”
Magnus thought for a second, then reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a second Beretta. “Listen to me, Andy. Take a ninety-six out of the security room rack. Get rid of it, make sure it won’t be found, and make sure there’s a blank space in the rack.”