Before the copter had even hit the ground, though, three men jumped from its interior. Dressed in black and silver body armor and flight gear, they immediately began walking toward the group of students as the pilot finalized his landing.
It was hard to hear over the rotor noise, but the first man yelled over it anyway. “Gareth Winslow!” he paused and looked at each student and the professor, waiting for a response.
“R— right here,” Gareth yelled.
The three men turned to him and met him halfway between the trucks and the campfire.
“Gareth Winslow?” the man said again. Gareth nodded. “Good. Take me to the location of the discovery.”
“What is this?” Dr. Fischer yelled. “What’s going on here?”
“It does not concern you,” one of the men said. “Gareth, take us to the location.”
Gareth snapped to attention, remembering his duty. “Right. Okay, come on. We’re about a quarter mile away, through these trees.”
He led the way, the three men and the rest of the group following behind. As they neared the cave, one of the men held up a hand and grabbed Gareth’s shoulder. “Wait,” he said.
Gareth watched him enter the small cave and return a minute later. He nodded to the two other men from the helicopter and began walking back toward them. He addressed the entire group of confused students and professor. “Who is leading this expedition?”
Dr. Fischer raised a hand. “I am. And do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
The man eyed Dr. Fischer. “I see. And you have an idea of what might be inside that cave?”
“I–I guess. We found it earlier today, on accident. I believe whatever was in there killed the Russian expedition we came here to find.”
“I understand that much, Dr. Fischer. But I’m asking if you have any idea what, exactly, killed them?”
Dr. Fischer though a moment, then replied. “I have some ideas, but none that I’m entirely confident about just yet.”
“I see.” The man marched back through the group, the two other men following behind. He delivered orders without turning back. “Mark the location. Get me the coordinates saved and ready to go.” The two men nodded and peeled off from the group, heading back toward the cave.
Gareth was now at the back of the line, watching as the lead man entered the helicopter once again. He heard him address the professor from the inside of the vehicle. “Dr. Fischer, would you care to join us? I would like to discuss your knowledge and experience with the items found within the cave.”
“I’m not sure I feel comfortable —”
The man cut him off as he drew a pistol from a hip holster and pointed it directly into Dr. Fischer’s face. “Let me rephrase the question, professor, so that it doesn’t seem so… optional.”
Dr. Fischer swallowed, then starting climbing into the helicopter. “What about the others? The students?” he asked.
The two men reappeared, apparently having finished marking the coordinates, and jumped onto the helicopter. Gareth looked around at the frightened students, and a growing wave of nausea filled him.
What have I done? he thought. The helicopter, filled with the pilot, the three men, and their professor, lifted a few feet off the ground. The students, wide-eyed and confused, began yelling.
“You can’t do this!”
One of the men appeared in the open door of the helicopter and made eye contact with Gareth, just as he lifted something off the floor. It swiveled, held by some support mechanism, and swung out and stopped just outside the helicopter.
Gareth felt his blood run cold.
It was a gun. A huge gun. Gareth recognized the gigantic bullets, strapped together in a shiny gold chain of death. He took a staggering step back, trying to form words. We need to leave, he tried to say.
The words didn’t escape his mouth. Instead, he felt himself being lifted off the ground and thrown backwards, hard, just as he heard a new noise. It was a chug, chug, chug sort of sound, but fast. He saw the gun’s fiery tip burning as each round left the barrel and flew into one of the students. He wanted to close his eyes, but he didn’t need to.
Everything went black.
Chapter Fifteen
As he walked past the newsstand just inside the door of the gas station, Ben noticed the tiny black and white television sitting on the shelf above it. It was programmed to a news channel, most likely only syndicated throughout the small region of southern Montana they were in.
They’d stopped just past Red Lodge, on a stretch of highway that looked like it had been abandoned for a century. When they came to the service station, Julie had opted to stay in the truck while Ben ran in for some snacks and to go to the restroom.
He turned up the television’s volume knob and watched the station’s reporter on location outside the Yellowstone gates. The information wasn’t anything new; Julie’s second-in-command and assistant had been keeping her in the loop, and she passed on relevant information to Ben as he drove.
The explosion was, in fact, a bomb, based on air sample analysis done on site and in a radius around the park. It was a type of thermobaric bomb, combining heat and pressure into a 5-kiloton explosion. Initial estimates postulated that the Yellowstone detonation was contained mostly underground, due to the vast amount of crust that had turned up around the site, as well as the relatively mild explosion. But it wasn’t just the immediate effects of the bomb’s blast that had the CDC and this news station worried: the thin layer of crust beneath Yellowstone had been rattled, causing the cracks and earthquake-like effects Ben had experienced.
Ben turned away from the television and placed a candy bar and a bag of chips on the counter. Julie had told him she didn’t want anything, but he’d grabbed the chips just in case. He paid and headed back to the truck.
“Got you some chips,” he said through Julie’s open window. “Want to drive?”
“No,” she said. “I’m actually enjoying being a passenger.” She smiled.
“You should be,” Ben said. “Getting all that work done, catching up on your reading…”
“Just get in. We need to get to my office before tonight. Did you hear anything from your boss, Randolph, yet?” she asked.
“I got a text from him before I walked in the store. I’ll call him back now.” Ben swung into the lifted truck and started the engine. He slid his phone out of the cup holder in the center console and dialed the number for his headquarters at Yellowstone.
The phone rang three times before Randolph picked up. The man sounded exhausted; breathing heavily, his voice raspy. “Ben — that you?”
Ben acknowledged and asked if everything was okay.
“No. No, it’s not, Ben. There’s — well, there’s been…”
“Slow down, George, just tell me what happened.”
“The disease. The thing that got Fuller. He’s — he’s dead.”
Ben frowned, then whispered the news to Julie. Her eyes widened.
“I’m sorry to hear that, boss,” Ben said. “He was a good man.”
“That’s not it, Ben. Whatever got to him, it’s spreading.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s spreading. Jumping, almost. We can’t figure it out. It’s fast. Much faster that we would have thought. Those of us who helped Fuller are covered in the rash, and our skin is starting to burn.”
“Wait a minute, Randolph,” Ben said. “You mean you’re infected?”
“Me, Matheson, Frank, Clemens, everyone who was in that room. We’ve got it, and we’re quarantined inside the main building. Matheson passed out not too long ago, but I don’t know if it was related to the rash at all.”