All of which came down to the same thing: Salk was looking to blame somebody for everything that had gone wrong, and mostly he was looking at Marcos to take the fall for him.
“Look, Tom, I was on vacation. I just got back yesterday. I don't know what went wrong because I was not here.” Javier Marcos had no intention of being anyone's patsy. Ever.
Salk looked at him and shook his head. “This wasn't me, Javier. I had nothing to do with this.”
“Who the hell is in charge of security?”
“Lipmann, but he's dead. Killed when the first one broke out.”
“So point at him. In the meantime, are any of them left here?”
“Of course. Seven got out. The rest are in containment.”
“Oh. Only seven,” his voice dripped with sarcasm. “And have we contained any of them?”
“No. I had to report it, Javier.”
“What?” One sentence and his pulse jackhammered. “God, Tom. They'll crucify us and that's if we're lucky. Do you know how they deal with breaches like this?”
“No. I'm just a research guy.”
Tom was looking a bit pasty around the gills. Ha ha, get it? Around the gills? Javier cracked himself up, but he suppressed the laughter.
“With extreme prejudice, you asshole! We need to get the hell out of here and burn the rest of the specimens.”
“Burn them?” Salk's voice cracked. “Do you have any idea how hard I've worked to even begin understanding them? I haven't even finished mapping their DNA yet!”
“Good! All the better. Get your personal belongings and get out of here. I'm going to start erasing files. All of them.”
“We can't do that, Javier! There's so much I've already started to uncover. These things, they don't even get cancer. They're like sharks. We could find the key to nearly immortal life in the data we collect.”
“Not going to matter if we get our fool heads blown off! Get your things, Tom.”
Salk looked at him and pouted, but nodded. Javier liked the man well enough. Which was a pity. He was obviously going to have to kill him. Salk would never be able to keep his mouth shut about what he'd discovered.
The alarms started up as he was heading for the mainframe and computer room.
There was only one reason the klaxon scream of the alarm would start. More of the damned things were trying to escape.
Captain Kevin Younger was running scared. Something had come out of the mist and torn Sergeant Patton to pieces and had almost gotten Younger too. Younger had only escaped by shrugging out of his equipment vest as the creature had sunken its claws into the garment.
Younger had lost his rifle. He had his .45 sidearm gripped in one fist and his folding knife in the other. He stumbled through the fog, jumping at every sound and striking out with the knife at every moving shadow. He had lost all sense of direction. The wind had died down and the fog had become thicker, so that even the lights of the research facility were obscured. And he knew it had to be close by.
The sharp, discordant clanging of an alarm started somewhere off to Younger's right. That had to be the facility. If any of his men were still alive, that was where they would go. They would head toward the alarm just like he was.
Younger started in the direction of the alarm and within a few moments he could again make out the facility's lights. It wasn't that Younger was trying to complete the mission, that had been over when Patton's head had gone rolling across the sand. No, Younger had lost his flares with his vest and he needed to find some way of signaling the transport ship to pick him up. His superiors wouldn't like that he had scrubbed the clean-up operation, but that came under the heading of too fucking bad.
Now Younger could see the blocky, white shape of the facility. All the lights were on, which meant the place probably had its own generators. He became aware of the sound of the surf off to his left. The facility had been built on a rocky slope near the water, far above the tide line.
Younger sensed movement before he saw it. He turned to look at the ocean. The light from the facility allowed him to see there were several people standing in the shallows.
No. They weren't people. Not regular people. Their shapes were too hunched and somehow… wrong. Younger couldn't see their eyes but he could feel all of their gazes upon him. Even as he raised the .45 he felt something reaching into his mind. Fiery tendrils of alien thought.
Younger clamped his hands against his temples and fell to his knees in the sand, knife and gun forgotten. They were in his head. He couldn't keep them out. They were in his…
Master Sergeant Brent reached the facility and took cover behind what looked like a tool shed. He could see a door in the side of the main building. Not the primary entrance. But maybe a way in.
Brent had hoped some other members of the A-Team might have made it to the facility, but he couldn't see anyone. Brent had recovered his rifle and his .45 and he had managed not to look at what was left of Gentry long enough to scavenge the dead man's ammo and ruck sack. Brent figured he would need all the equipment he could get if he was going to get off this island alive.
And that was his intention. The mission was obviously Fubar-ed. It was time to call in the transport ship and get the hell out of Dodge. An alarm klaxon began to sound just then and Brent stood, bringing his rifle into targeting position. The door in the facility slammed open and a man staggered out. There was blood on his face and on his shirt.
Brent was about to call to the man when a huge, misshapen figure lunged out of the door. There was plenty of light now and Brent figured he was looking at the thing that had killed Gentry or one of its brothers. As a kid, one of Brent's favorite movies had been The Creature From the Black Lagoon. This thing looked like the titular creature's bigger, meaner sibling.
What had Captain Younger said they were looking for? Genetic mutations? Yeah, this thing was mutated all to hell, whatever it was. Brent raised the A1, but not before the fish-man grabbed the running man and broke his neck with a quick twist.
“Son of a bitch!” Brent shouted as he triggered a controlled, three-round burst from the rifle. The bullets tore into the hide of the fish-man, but it didn’t fall. The thing turned bulbous eyes toward the source of its pain. With a snarl of rage, the creature moved with surprising speed toward Brent.
Brent fired again, and continued firing until he had emptied the magazine. The fish-man lurched, stumbled, and finally fell. It had taken close to thirty rounds to put the thing down. Brent ejected the empty magazine and pushed another one into place, noticing that his hands were shaking as he did so.
He was trying not to think about what he had just seen. He reminded himself the fish-man was some sort of genetic experiment. It wasn’t some supernatural monster. It was an animal, created by scientists.
Okay. What to do? Brent had hoped to find other team members here, but if there were more of the fish-men in and around the facility then he needed to get the hell away from there. He decided to head for the beach, send up a flare, and take his chances.
Brent turned toward the shore just in time to see three more of the fish-men heading his way. They must have been attracted by the gunfire. How many of these damn things were there?