Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (21 page)

R
igley's computer
sat open on her lap. She stared at the screen, not bothering to look around the room. Will was in here, sitting on the bed, his own computer open and him also staring at the screen. They were both monitoring the same program, watching as tiny black dots moved across a satellite image of Grayson. The two of them had been sitting here like this, in silence, for a couple of hours.

The black dots were the troops, moving through neighborhoods systematically.

Rigley could tell, quite obviously, that Will wasn't happy. He wasn't happy with her, but she didn't think it was because she had shown up down here. Most anyone could expect their boss to show up from time to time. She thought it was because he didn't trust her anymore—or maybe trust wasn't the right word.

Simply put, he knew she wasn't up to this.

He knew that she couldn't do what was necessary.

Rigley didn't look up at him from the computer screen, wasn't going to even hint that she understood why he was so distant. She could handle this, could do what was necessary. That was why she was here, because it was goddamn necessary, obviously. It was Will that couldn't handle what was going on down here, not her. He was the one that had dropped the ball at every conceivable instance. Not her. So all his bullshit right now was just that. He had no room to judge her.

The image of a man arose in her head. One hand out, his palm open, asking for mercy. His face wet.

Rigley closed her eyes, blacking out both the screen in front of her and the image in her mind. She could handle this. She could do what was necessary.

She opened her eyes after a few seconds, quickly flashing them to Will to see if he noticed her momentary pause. Nothing. He remained looking at his own computer, though Rigley knew that didn't mean much. Will could probably see through walls if necessary.

"This how it always works?" she said, finding the slow movement of the black ants mind numbing. She rarely came to the field; Bolivia wasn't the last, but there hadn't been many more times.

Will didn't look up. "More or less. It's a process, that's for sure."

"You're normally out there?"

"Yeah, I'm normally one of those black dots."

"What are your plans now? It can't be to simply watch this all day." Rigley honestly didn't know what the hell Will did in these places. That wasn't her job. He was execution, she was strategy. But if this was his job, then all the myth around him might have been overblown. If he monitored screens all day, maybe Will wasn't the badass people built him up to be.

"Things are going to happen," he said. "It'll be quick, and when they do, I'll move to wherever they're at."

Rigley didn't reply. She watched as a house on the satellite image turned a shade of highlighter green. Will had explained earlier that meant the place was clear; none of their devices or people had picked up anything. She kept looking across the screen, using her mouse to rotate and move the image so that she saw other parts of the town. Finally she zoomed out, seeing Grayson in its entirety. The black dots looked smaller, less imposing, though there were still plenty of them. She saw the woods where the thing had landed, a large red circle around the spot that had been burned flat, as if they needed reminding about where the thing landed. It was a blighted spot on a map full of either houses or green trees.

Rigley hadn't allowed herself to think much since this thing started. It had been panic after panic, all of it because of what she thought she would need to do in the end. Because of what she had promised herself she would never do again. Now, though, she felt a tiny spark in her mind. It had been a while since she felt that spark, but it felt like a momentary release to someone pinned down by a taser, a tiny release from unending agony. The spark of knowledge, of curiosity. She hadn't been curious about this whole thing from the start; she had only wanted to end it and fast.

But here, looking at that red halo on the screen, a question sprung up in her mind.

"Will, why isn't anyone at the place of impact?" She looked up from the screen.

His eyes narrowed as he maneuvered around the screen. "I guess because nothing's out there." He didn't look up at her, just seemed to study.

"What if
it's
out there? What if
it's
heading back there?"

Will finally looked up. "Let's go."

T
he office
they set Rigley up in wasn't fit for a Bolivian prostitute, but there wasn't much she could do about it. She had a desk, a chair that creaked if she moved in it, and about two feet of space in front of the desk. She had pulled a second chair in from the hallway and just hoped she didn't have more than one visitor at a time, or else they would be standing.

She was being picky and knew it. There wasn't anywhere else to house her, and this was the closest building they could find outside of the growth's grasp. She wasn't down there in the growth, and that was good, better than good really—especially from the reports finding their way up to her.

She saw Will walking down the hallway, wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a simple black t-shirt. His face was red, and Rigley knew that had to be from the sun—both the rays burning him and the heat. She didn't know why he would wear black down here, under any circumstances.

Rigley stood up as he entered the office and extended her hand. "Hi, Will."

He shook it and then sat down in the chair before her. They hadn't spoken much since this thing started; most of their communication came from his reports, with her then asking questions for clarification. However, the operation wasn't running the way it should, and Rigley didn't think clarification through a letter was enough.

The original plan had been simple. Go down there and burn everything up. The stuff (now being called Sherman, from Sherman's March through Atlanta) died almost as soon as the fire touched it. For a few days it had worked just as planned, the overall mass of Sherman shrinking the more troops they put out into the field. And then…it all stopped. The mass wasn't shrinking any longer, but moving to where their troops were not stationed. Which would have been okay, if not for what the last report had said. Rigley could bring in as many foot soldiers as she needed, they could surround the damn stuff and just move in until nothing was left.

The report said:
possible infections
.

She didn't even know what that meant. Infections? This stuff didn't infect, it took hold and then ate, leaving not even the dust of bones behind.

"So," Rigley said, taking her seat. "Your last report, it said possible infections. I wanted to be clear about what that means and I thought a face-to-face conversation might work best. My understanding of what your men are calling Sherman was that it consumed, that it didn't infect like a virus. Is that not the case?"

Will nodded as she spoke. He didn't smile, didn't give any emotion off at all. Just that simple nod as he followed along with her words. "That was the case, or what we thought the case to be. It's apparently changed now."

He didn't say anything else, just looked at her with that unflinching gaze.

Rigley understood almost everything she needed to in that moment.

The man was pissed about the reports. The man was pissed she was down here at all. The man was probably pissed she was twenty-eight years old and his superior. This happened every day in corporate America, but out here in the field, with lives at stake?

"Care to elaborate a bit?" she said, her voice matching his tone—the cheeriness she showed when he first arrived, gone. There wasn't any room to fuck this up, not even a bit. Because when she went home, there was nothing waiting for her but memories of her dead baby and a pending divorce. What she had was down here in this dirty, dictator run country. So if this mercenary thought he was going to be able to roll over on her, he would quickly learn different.

Will didn't say anything for a second, just crossed one leg over the other and looked at her.

"Why did they bring you here?" he asked.

"Someone, somewhere, thought I would be a good resource."

"Is it your first time in the field?"

"No." She would answer these questions, she would run his gamut if that's what he needed, because in the end, they had to work together. In the end, she needed him to get this done. To kill it.

Will was silent again, and they both looked at each other without either one dropping their eyes.

"I'm here, though, and there's nothing that you can do about it. You're stuck with me, and either we can try to work together, or I can have you removed. I don't want to do it, Will, but if I need to, then so be it."

"Alright, then," he said, a tiny smirk perched at the corner of his mouth. "It's reacting to more than just where we're shooting fire at it. There's some intelligence in this thing, and we haven't figured out how much yet."

"Go on."

S
omething wasn't right down here
, though Will couldn't say exactly what. He was putting all the facts into his daily reports that were rolling up to Rigley, but the facts weren't giving him everything he needed. They were the symptoms of something much larger, much deeper, and he couldn't figure out what that was. People became more and more forgetful as Alzheimers progressed, but the inability to remember wasn't the disease—it was only the symptom. The disease consisted of decaying brain matter.

Sherman was no longer shrinking. The first week had given outstanding results, and Will thought that it would only take another week before they finished the job. The fire worked and the infection had no natural defense against it, or at least that's what they thought.

And then by all accounts, the infection's retreat—its death—stalled. Wherever the firefighters went, the growth went somewhere else. Pink tendrils finding new structures to latch onto and begin their slow eating. He asked for more men, so that they could surround the entire city, thinking that would make sure Sherman couldn't continue its expansion in any direction.

Will didn't know how it happened, how it was even possible.

The suits were built to stop any kind of entry. Will had a full diagnostic performed on the discarded suit, checking for holes or leaks or any possible way for something to enter. He found nothing.

Will hadn't been in the quarters, and had he been, he would be dead by now. He saw it all from a recording, which was more than enough.

The man's name was Harold Lackmore. He worked for ten years with this 'department', and was in his mid-thirties. None of that mattered to Will though, just words to include on his report. People that entered this line of work, they died premature deaths more likely than not. Whether at the hands of an infection or a human, this job was deadly.

Will watched the video a full ten times. He watched until he knew everything that happened by memory, so that if he were to stand in court with his hand on a black book, he could solemnly swear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The truth frightened him worse than any amount of lies, though.

Harold sat on his bunk, a paperback book in his hand. Will tried to see what the name of it was, but even though Harold faced the lens, he couldn't quite make out the title. Harold flipped the page as someone approached from behind him, walking down the aisle with beds to his left and right. The man called out to Harold—his name, Will knew for reporting purposes, was Julius Grate—and Harold responded without looking up.

Julius was a foot away from Harold when it happened. Will was sure of that. He looked at the recording over and over again, because he wanted to be sure about his assumptions. One step away from being lined up next to Harold.

Harold's head, simply put, exploded. Blood and guts didn't spray out into the room, creating a slippery, red mess though. Instead, the pink, almost papery growth burst from his skull. It moved like a pack of wolves on a wounded antelope, attacking with a ferocity and speed that only the fight for survival brings about. It moved down Harold's body, draping over him like ice water on a coach after a huge game. Julius couldn't stop his next step, his body already in motion. The growth, Sherman, jumped on him the same as it did Harold, finding the right side of his body, and moving across the rest of him immediately. Julius screamed, a high-pitched noise that echoed in the nearly empty room, but it was cut short as the infection spread into his mouth and down his esophagus.

Julius collapsed to the floor, and Headless Harold fell off the bunk.

Sherman didn't stop its spread though it possessed the two people in the room. The growth was determined to take over everything in the entire bunk, the only thing that Will had on his side was that it somehow picked the wrong person to infect. Had it been a different bunk, with more people, it could have wiped out upwards of a hundred, especially with the rate at which it moved. Not the slow growing that they saw outside in the sunlight. They needed to burn the entire bunk, right to the ground.

This movement, God, looked like a swarm of bees. It moved with the same aggressiveness, spreading across bed, floor, wall, and ceiling alike, covering Harold's paperback without a care. Will would have said 'without a thought', but he was beginning to sense that phrase might not be exactly accurate in this situation.

B
ryan's father
, Glenn Yetzer, was worried. Had been worried for perhaps the past hour, maybe a bit longer. The word unique or different no longer described what was happening. Different would be if Bryan came home with a mohawk instead of his usual shaggy hair. Unique would be Glenn coming home to Rita cooking dinner wearing only an apron.

It was actually growing past worrisome and into the realm of frightening, though Glenn didn't want to say it aloud. Rita was the one to freak out, not him—yet she wasn't here to freak out, thus the fucking problem. Neither she nor Bryan had answered their phones last night nor this morning. Glenn always called Rita before he went to bed whenever he was out of town. She hadn't answered. He always called before he boarded his plane, and always called when he landed. She hadn't answered any of them. He tried her cell and the house line, but both yielded the same result. He finally tried Bryan, but that went straight to voicemail.

The cab pulled up to Glenn's driveway and Glenn simply handed him a hundred dollar bill before climbing out. The fare was pretty high, and he wasn't going to wait around for change, not with the thoughts currently running amok in his head.

Thank God their cars were home, both of them in the driveway, with Glenn's parked in the garage. They were here, maybe just sleeping? Maybe they didn't realize their phones were off? Maybe they both had food poisoning? The maybes marched endlessly through his head, but Glenn knew if he drilled down on any one of them, it would fall away underneath even the slightest examination. There wasn't any fucking reason his wife and son wouldn't answer their phone, no reason that didn't involve something seriously wrong.

The cab driver said something about change, but Glenn was already closing the door. With a bag in hand and a carry-on over his shoulder, he walked as fast as he could across the concrete driveway. He wouldn't run. There wasn't any reason to run. Everything was perfectly fine.

When he got to the door, for the first time since last night, all hope left him. Hope had burned small inside him for hours, telling him that everything was okay, that there had to be an explanation for this. Which there was, just not one Glenn wanted to see.

The door stood slightly open, the inside of the doorframe shattered, with wood fragments spread out across the hardwood floor. Glenn stared at the doorknob for a second, as understanding rolled through him. It didn't take long, and once what happened crystallized in his mind, he slammed the door open and started moving through the house.

"RITA! BRYAN!"

Every room he entered, he repeated that mantra.

"RITA!"

"BRYAN!"

No one called back to him though, nothing but the silence of a destroyed home. Everything inside had been flipped, ripped, or broken. Glenn didn't look around to see if anything had been stolen, the thought never crossed his mind—he was searching for his wife and child, trying to understand if they had been taken. His subconscious mind saw the damage though, saw the wreckage of destroyed dressers and medicine cabinets, contents completely strewn across bathroom floors—his subconscious saw it and fed it to his conscious mind, adding to the dread filling him.

In the last room, Bryan's, with the mattress tossed on the floor and every drawer pulled out from his dresser, Glenn collapsed to the floor. Tears rushed from his eyes as he stared down at the floor between his legs, the white carpet blurry. Air surged in and out of his lungs as his body tried to keep up with his heart's rapid beating. Trying to keep him conscious, trying to keep him from passing out.

Who had been here? Who had come into this goddamn house AND WHERE WAS HIS FAMILY?

They're gone.

My family is missing.

All of the thoughts from earlier, the frantic irrepressible mania, were replaced with just those two certainties. They're gone. My family is missing. The thoughts continued, one after the other, like lava flowing from the Earth, slow but relentless.

Thoughts of police, of getting them back—of any action at all—were completely driven from his mind. He was frozen, perhaps in shock, unable to comprehend what was happening around him. His son and wife, missing, stolen.

He didn't hear the door open at the front of the house. He didn't hear the footsteps falling across the hardwood floor, or the doors opening in each room as whoever had entered looked through the house. Glenn heard nothing outside of his own head, and it wasn't until the person stood in the doorway that Glenn finally looked up.