And then it charged.
Reaper fired, and the creature let out a long, high-pitched sirening screech as the bullets struck it — black blood fountaining as it clawed at the wounds, dancing in the ripping impact of a whole clip from the light machine gun: a hellstorm of gunfire into the darkness, lighting up the tunnel with flashing chaos, the bullets zipping and ricocheting around the tunnel where the creature had gone, scoring the walls, smashing through pipes, chipping metal. Cloaked in shadow, the thing shrieked as it was hit, the sound otherworldly, quavering, echoing on and on.
Reaper finally ran out of bullets — only the bullets had kept it from falling, the last few rounds: it flopped down with a splash into the muck.
The rest of the team came up from behind. Stopped to stare at the thing floating, slowly turning, faceup, twitching in death.
They gaped at it…and saw its tongue detaching from Goat to swim off down the tunnel like a sea snake seeking its den.
Then Reaper splashed over to Goat — only the top half of his head was sticking out the polluted water. His eyes open, unblinking, staring.
Reaper looked at him for a moment, then picked him up in his arms. Sarge led the way back to the ladder.
Sarge and Reaper carried Goat together, almost double-timing it through the atrium; Duke and Destroyer followed, dragging something behind them; the Kid and Portman brought up the rear…
Mac grinned when he saw them come in, and ran over to join them — but his smile fell away when he saw Goat. He gave Portman a questioning look. Short explanations were mumbled at him, but the explanations only baffled Mac more.
Hunegs came hurrying up, giving them a look of white-faced inquiry.
“We gotta move the quarantine zone,” Sarge told him. “Evacuate the entire facility. Get all personnel to the Ark immediately.”
Hunegs chewed the inside of his cheek as if wondering whether Sarge had the authority to issue that order to the whole facility.
Reaper decided there was no time to play “who’s higher on the chain of command.”
“Get those people out of here now! Move! Move!”
“What’s going on out there?” Hunegs demanded.
Sarge tried keeping it simple. “Everybody through the Ark!”
Hunegs pursed his lips — then nodded, started barking orders to the security men staring at the reeking squadron and their disturbing burdens.
“Move! Everybody out!”
That was it — the milling became running, panic set in, and people, voices high-pitched as they told one another to get out of the way, ran for the Ark.
Though there was pandemonium in the atrium, it was still quiet in the infirmary; the only sounds were the occasional low moan from Dr. Carmack and the humming of the biomonitoring equipment. But Sam was at least as tense as the people running to the Ark, as she dropped samples of Carmack’s blood into a spectrographic analyzer.
“Attention!” Lieutenant Hunegs’s voice, coming tinnily over the public address system. “All personnel, please report to the Ark chamber for immediate evacuation. Attention — all personnel…”
“Dr. Willits,” Sam said, as she frowned over the readout, “listen, his condition is stable. You should go.”
“I want to stay.” She shined a light into Carmack’s eyes. She wasn’t about to get too close to Carmack, though he was now in restraints.
“Steve’ll be okay,” Sam said. “The guys looking for him are the best….”
Dr. Willits looked at Sam — and Sam could tell she didn’t trust the squadron to find her husband, Steve.
Sam herself doubted that Dr. Willits’s husband — one of the genetics researchers in the labs — would be found alive. But you had to reassure people, didn’t you? Why obvious lies were supposed to be reassuring was another mystery.
“Jenny — go…please.”
Dr. Willits looked at Carmack, twitching in the restraints. She wouldn’t be sorry to leave — she didn’t feel safe with Carmack, whatever she’d pretended.
At last she nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She gathered up a few things, waved good-bye to Sam, and left the infirmary, the nanowall melting back into place behind her, once more going flat and gray and permanent-looking, as if someone hadn’t just walked right through it.
Sam turned back to the spectrograph. She squinted at it, trying to comprehend what it was telling her about Carmack’s blood. Five words blinked up at her, in luminous green LCD letters.
BLOOD GROUP CANNOT BE IDENTIFIED
“What the hell?” she muttered aloud. As she puzzled over the spectrographic reading, some part of her mind registered an odd noise from the gurney, behind her — a creaking sound.
“Blood group cannot be identified?” Black the blood might be — perhaps from a dysfunctional liver — but it was some kind of human blood. Wasn’t it?
Duke came back in and looked over her shoulder. Read the same message from the spectrograph. “No blood match? That can’t be good, right?”
Sam shook her head. It simply didn’t make sense.
She went to a glass-doored cabinet, found another blood draw kit. She’d just have to test him again…she turned back to Carmack…
He was gone. Nothing remained on the gurney but broken restraints and a dark, bloody smear across the sheet.
The squadron went down a corridor and through the nanowall, on into the infirmary. Looking up from the spectrograph, Samantha Grimm recoiled a little at the lingering smell of the sewer they brought with them, then stared at the lumpy poncho that Duke and Destroyer dragged after them into the room, the plastic folded over a hump. Something hard to identify was sticking out in back. Legs? Not human, if legs they were.
They laid Goat on a gurney — and Sam held back a moment before approaching him. He looked dead — but things weren’t always the way they looked, anymore.
It had looked like Carmack couldn’t have gotten off that gurney, too…
“What happened?” Sam asked, looking at the wound on Goat’s neck. She’d never seen one like it.
Reaper shook his head. He tried to think of a way to describe what’d happened. Well, this thing shot its ten-foot-long tongue into him, then the tongue scrolled out, then it unlatched, then the tongue…
Right. He ended up saying nothing. The whole team lifted Goat on the table to work on him, their training kicking in. Duke cut open Goat’s uniform. Experienced in battlefield medical dressing, Reaper set up an IV — all the makings were to hand on the infirmary shelves — and the Kid held a bloody bandage pressed against Goat’s neck.
They were all helping except for Portman. He was simply staring at Goat in shock.
“He was talking about devils…” Portman mumbled.
Sam looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Devils?”
Portman flapped a hand at Goat. “…all his Bible shit…angels, good and evil, the devil among us…” Mouth slack, he kept staring at Goat.
Reaper glanced at Portman, decided he needed to be kept busy. “Portman, get a second line in here. I need to hit him with some adrenaline.”
Portman snapped out of his fog and started moving around, looking for another IV line and the adrenaline.
“Attention all personnel!” came Hunegs’s voice, booming over the PA system. “Please report to the Ark for immediate evacuation! All personnel, please report for immediate evacuation…”
“Like to hit that exit myself,” Portman murmured.
Reaper watched his sister work on Goat. She moved intelligently, efficiently, her hands in rubber gloves but otherwise showing no concern for the blood and gore she was getting on herself. As for Goat…