“He’s not breathing,” Reaper observed. “Fuck.”
Sarge was looking around, frowning. “Where’s the hell’s Carmack?”
“He disappeared,” Sam said, stanching the wound on Goat’s neck with a compress.
“He what?”
“I said he’s gone! He disappeared!”
Duke was looking at the heart monitor. “Lost the pulse!”
Reaper grabbed a couple of defibrillators off a console, slapped them on Goat’s chest. “Clear!”
The others stepped back, and he thumbed a switch. Goat’s body jerked, and fell back. No response. He tried it again.
“Shit…”
Tried it again…nothing.
Goat flopped again and the air smelled of burnt skin and ozone — and he still registered a flat line. Goat was staring at the ceiling…or past it, Reaper imagined. Through the ceiling, through the roof, through the toxic atmosphere of Mars, into the starry heavens. Like a guy watching for a bus — he was waiting for his ride to show up…
The men looked on, helpless, trying to think of some way to help. Goat wasn’t the most popular guy in the squadron, but he was still their brother in arms.
There was nothing to be done. You could see that the life had gone out of that body.
So Reaper closed Goat’s eyelids. Then he reached under Goat’s Kevlar vest, drew out his old Bible, now splattered with blood. He handed it to Portman. Who looked down at it uneasily.
Sarge let out a long slow breath, then turned to Sam. “All right. We need answers. What the fuck is going on up here?”
Sam was taken aback by his bluntness — and maybe the generality of his question. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Come here!” Sarge commanded.
He nodded to Destroyer, who threw back the poncho, revealing what they’d dragged in here.
Sam took a quick step back, seeing the creature on the floor.
It was dead, already decaying, and a hellish waft rose as they exposed it, overwhelming the fetor of sewage. The thing was much bigger than a man, with a thick black exoskeleton and a cluster of eight eyes. The head was spiky, mostly jaws.
A kind of hideous imp, Sam thought. Something from Hell.
She was afraid to get any closer.
Stop being childish, she told herself. Her brother was here, watching. Was she going to show she was scared in front of him? This was a new species, that was all. She should be excited about the scientific possibilities. She shouldn’t be reacting with this visceral repugnance…
Sam walked up to the creature — which she fervently hoped was as dead as it looked — and looked it over, trying to understand what it might be, where it had come from. And failed.
“Have you people found anything like this on your archaeological dig?” Sarge asked.
“No,” she said.
“Is there any way this thing came from outside, from the surface?”
She shook her head. “The planet is completely dead.”
“It came from somewhere, lady!” Portman put in.
“Portman,” Sarge said, “shut up!”
“The atmosphere on the surface can’t support life,” Sam went on. She was about to explain just how toxic the atmosphere of Mars was when Portman interrupted her.
“You just said you don’t know what the fuck it is.” He waved his hands in the air. Looking a little crazy, to her — possibly stoned. “Maybe it doesn’t need air! It could be from another planet or something!”
“An alien?”
“Look at that thing!”
“Portman,” Sarge roared, “shut the fuck up!”
“That’s not what we saw,” Reaper said, looking at the creature. They all turned toward him, every face showing confusion, and he had to explain: “This isn’t exactly what Goat and I shot at in the genetics lab. This is something different.”
Portman looked at him in shock. “You’re telling me there could be more of these fucking things?”
Sarge turned slowly to Sam. “Where are the surface entry points?”
She shrugged. “There’s a pressure door at the end of the north corridor…”
“Portman, Destroyer, Kid,” Sarge barked, “you’ll get there on the double, gimme a sit-rep.”
“Yes, sir,” Destroyer said, for all of them. Seeing Sarge’s mood, seemed like a good time for a yes sir.
“Whatever this thing is,” Sarge went on, “we can’t let it get back through the Ark. Mac, give Pinky a sidearm and some STs, seal the Ark door, and rendezvous at the atrium — now!”
Mac nodded and stalked off through the nanowall.
“There’s another door,” Sam said, realizing it even as she said it.
“Where?” Sarge asked.
Sam hesitated — and Sarge seemed about to slap her with his impatience.
Reaper knew he’d never allow anybody to raise a hand to his sister, whatever issues he might have with her. But a potential fight with Sarge would probably end badly for Reaper.
John Grimm was good. But Sarge was a killing machine.
Anyway, Reaper had the answer to Sarge’s question.
“…The entrance to the archaeological dig,” Reaper said, after a moment.
In the wormhole chamber, the last few scared evacuees were filing through the huge steel chamber door toward the Ark, shepherded by Hunegs. There were flashes at regular intervals as they went through.
“This is the last of them,” Hunegs called to Mac, as he came in. Just a few more technicians…
Mac nodded, went to Pinky who was sitting at a workstation, puzzling over the digital file of Carmack’s research journal.
As Mac walked over to him, Pinky read the second-to-last entry again:
Twined, twined they are, into the DNA sequence. The fingerprints of the satanic, the darkest of darknesses within us. I dare not call it the supernatural, though it also cannot be called part of the natural world as we understand it. But something inhuman and other-dimensional hid the keys to the gates of Hell in our DNA…what is its agenda? Who has left this cunning lure for us?
Pinky just shook his head. Carmack had to have been out of his mind.
Mac dropped a gun and three ST grenades on Pinky’s console.
Pinky raised his eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“ST grenade. Pop the top, hit the button, throw. Don’t forget the last part,” Mac said.
As if that said it all, he turned and headed for the exit.
“What? Whoa!” Pinky called after him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to work.”
Mac went through the doorway, pressed the release, and the enormous steel door rolled into place.
“Wait!” Pinky yelled, starting after him. “Wait up! You can’t!”
But Mac was locked away on the other side of the door. His voice came cracklingly over the intercom:
“Ark secure.”
Heavy bolts clanged into place. Pinky was sealed in.
“Shit,” he said.
Behind him, Hunegs and the last evacuee went through. The last tech to pass through was pale, sweating, stumbling as he went through the metal doors into the Ark chamber.
Hunegs helped him up; helped him go through. Never looking at him closely — busily thinking about his own chance to escape.
So Hunegs didn’t see the mark on the man’s neck; didn’t see the wound just visible, low, under his bloody collar.
Eight
THEY WERE ALL there but Duke, who’d been assigned to stay with Samantha. Seemed like Duke hadn’t minded that assignment much, Reaper reflected.
The squad stood nervously in the atrium, waiting for orders.
Portman wanted to make up his own orders. “We’re not calling in backup?” Acting shocked, amazed.