Project 731 (5 page)

The stoic BlackGuard leader knew this as well as Brice did, so he simply turned around and headed for the door at the end of the lab. “We’ll find it.”

“Be sure that you do. And if you encounter anyone who has seen or come into contact with the Tsuchi...”

“Scorched earth,” Silhouette said. “We’ll leave nothing behind, living or dead.”

5

“Are you serious?” I ask Hawkins.

He’s bent over a dirt trail leading into the Tillamook State Forest, which is 364,000 acres of temperate rainforest sitting atop the Pacific Coast mountain range, defined by the Jon Hudson dictionary as: a crap-ton of trees on top of really tall peaks that are separated by lots of streams and rivers. But that’s the good news. If Collins were here, that would sound like a good time. Instead, I’m with Hawkins, in search of a single creature the size of a basset hound...with eight legs, a shell back and an egg-laying stinger.

Hawkins shuffles back without standing, pointing to the sand around the trail head. “Look closely. Two lines of staggered impressions.”

We left the FC-P preserve in Maine just twelve hours ago. Woodstock, our surly helicopter pilot had picked us up so we could get a head start, while Collins and Joliet got Maigo and Lilly settled. All four women had protested for different reasons: Joliet because she had more experience than me, Collins because she was more badass than me, Lilly, because she was more badass than me
and
had more experience, and Maigo...because she was secretly more badass than me and she doesn’t like to be geographically distant from me. At least one of them isn’t as badass, though Joliet can certainly handle herself.

But this was Hawkins’s show. The BFSs were his personal nemeses. He knew what they could do and how to kill them. And he wanted me, and only me, on the advance search. He claimed it was because a smaller team would move faster and quieter, but I’m not sure anyone believed him. At first I thought I detected a little bit of sexism. He is kind of a macho, rugged wilderness guy. But then, during the six-hour flight from Boston to Portland, I realized the truth. Mine is the only life he felt comfortable risking. It’s a horrible kind of compliment.

I bend down, my legs protesting after being crammed in an airplane seat for six hours and then a compact rental for another hour and a half. The only time not spent sitting in the past eight hours was the walk from the plane to the rental agency, who had mistakenly given away our much roomier rental. Despite my tired legs and bleary eyes, I see what he’s pointing at. Two sets of tracks, which look too small to be anything large, head up the path toward the forest. I look back. The coastline is a sliver of blue, just two miles away. Hawkins says we’re lucky it hadn’t attacked anyone on its way to the woods, which was most likely because it wasn’t comfortable, being so far out of its habitat without its brood. Apparently, the BFSs are social creatures. But now it’s in the woods, where lots of living things will make for convenient, rapid fire incubators.

“I see them,” I say, following the tracks to the edge of the woods, where they disappear. “But they stop here. Did it turn around?”

Hawkins stands up, hands on his hips. He’s dressed in black fatigues, like me, to better hide in the shadows of the dense forest. While I’ve got my balding head concealed by a black beanie cap—I prefer red—he has his full head of hair held down by a black bandana, tied back. I’d like to think we look super cool and dangerous, but I’m pretty sure we look more like weekend warriors trying to relive our childhoods. Of course, the weapons we carry shatter that image.

We’ve both got .45 SIG Sauer P220 handguns, which pack a serious punch. I’m also carrying an MP5 submachine gun, and Hawkins has an insane looking AA-12 automatic shotgun that can shoot twelve rapid-fire shells with minimal kick. All this for one BFS, which if Hawkins is right, could become many BFSs if we don’t kill it before it finds victims. I’d brought up the possibility of bringing in extra fire power. The FC-P has the option now. But he’s seen these things use military forces as breeding grounds. We could throw a hundred men at them and end up having three hundred more BFSs as a result. At least with Hawkins and me, there would just be six more.

Until they reach Portland, population: 600,000, which isn’t including all the suburbs.

“Look again,” Hawkins says, and he waits until I find the trail, fifteen feet up, etched into the bark of a Douglas-fir.

“Got it.” The fresh scratches and punctures lead around the fourteen-foot-diameter tree, rising steadily before disappearing again. I point to the next tree, where the trail continues, rounding a second, three-hundred-foot-tall Douglas-fir. If the BFS climbs too high, we’ll never find it. But this one appears to prefer being near the ground. The trail continues deeper, and I notice it’s following the human-made walking trail. It’s just 6:30 in the morning, so we’re the first ones here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone camping.

Hawkins stops me with a hand on my shoulder. Points to my MP5. “Safety off.”

“Not exactly protocol,” I say.

“There’s a good chance you won’t have time to switch the safety off later,” he says.

“If we find it.”

“When it finds us.”

I thumb the safety off. “You know, when Collins and I do these things, I usually get laid.”

He cracks a smile. Hawkins has a sense of humor, but he doesn’t crack many jokes. He’s a serious guy most of the time, which isn’t surprising given the number of scars he has—the worst of them from that grizzly bear he killed. Claw marks right over his chest. “I’m afraid that the only eggs getting fertilized will be the ones injected into your gut. Good news is, you’ll get to see the live birth before you die.”

His smile widens. An uncommon joke. He must be nervous, which makes me nervous.

I pat the puncture-resistant armor we’re both wearing. It covers most of my soft spots, and it’s strong enough to stop a razor-sharp KA-BAR knife thrust by Chuck Norris. “I’m wearing protection.”

“We’ll see,” he says, the smile fading as he steps into the shaded rainforest.

“I’d rather not.”

“Then keep your gun up, and stay quiet. Try not to speak unless you’re being attacked.”

“Copy that,” I say, getting serious. The time for jokes is over. The time for screaming and shooting and potential worst-death-ever-at-the-hands-of-a-genetic-freak has now begun.

We walk for an hour in complete silence, listening to the sounds of the forest. Birds, insects and water—lots of water. Aside from a foot-long banana slug, which looks like a cross between a banana and a living turd with tentacles, we haven’t spotted any large game. This could be a good or bad thing depending on what kind of glass-half-full, glass-half-empty kind of person you are. I’d like to think I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, but then I see the BFS’s trail returns to the ground, where it disappears again.

The path has turned to brown stone. The roar of a waterfall drowns out the forest. It’s just ahead, hidden by fifty feet of looming trees.

Hawkins waits for me to catch up. He leans back to whisper in my ear. “Stay sharp. This is an ideal hunting ground.”

I nod, having spent enough time in the woods in search of Wendigos, Jersey Devils and hairy drunk men pretending to be them, to know that the water draws prey animals to drink, and the noise helps drown out the approach of the predators that hunt them.

MP5 braced against my shoulder, I follow Hawkins around the massive tree trunks separating us from the river. Sounds easy, but I’m walking backwards. Any predator worth its claws will attack from behind, so I don’t give it a chance. Part of me says that I need to show my back, so the BFS will attack, but if Hawkins is right, it won’t matter. The B in BFS could also stand for
brazen
.

We exit the rainforest onto a slab of stone overlooking the river, which descends down the gently sloping mountainside over a series of five-to-ten-foot-tall waterfalls. The rush of water is deafening. If Hawkins and I were talking, we’d have to shout.

After scanning the area, I give Hawkins a ‘what now?’ shrug. He points two fingers at his eyes and at the surrounding rainforest. The trail. Right. If the BFS simply passed through, the trail would pick back up on the other side, assuming it didn’t travel up or down the river first. He must be thinking the same thing, because he points at himself and then points upriver, and then he points at me and downriver.

I nod and head downriver, hopping over layers of stone, polished by years of rising and subsiding waters. I pause at the edge of a ten-foot drop. White water falls beside me, plunging into a black pool carved into the stone below. I can’t jump down, so I sling the MP5 over my back and slide over the side. The rock’s edge is craggy. Plenty of hand and footholds. Just a few feet down and a short jump.

But I don’t make it all the way.

I stop, clinging to the stone like a gecko trying to blend in. Something has set off my oh-fuck-o-meter.

It’s behind me
, I think, but I can’t see it. So I jump, spinning around in the air and reaching for the MP5. While wrestling with the weapon, I realize I should have drawn the handgun. Would have been much faster.

But it doesn’t matter, because when I take aim at the river behind me, nothing is there. Just rocks, water and a killer view. But nothing deadly. So why the hell did my instincts go haywire? I’ve stood before a high rise-sized Kaiju without pissing myself. I don’t scare that easily. Not without a reason. So I look for one.

The woods are dark. A perfect hiding place. But the trees show no signs of passage. The stone riverbanks are obviously empty. The rushing waters are no place to hide. That leaves the pool of water. Hawkins said the BFSs avoided water. That they couldn’t swim. But the best predators sometimes make exceptions. I turn toward the pool of water, depth and rotting leaf litter turning it black, like a BFS.

I aim the MP5 at the turbulent, dark water, but hold my fire. The rounds will lose their lethal force shortly after striking the water. I’m going to have to wait for it to—

I almost miss the burst of black emerging from inside the waterfall. The sneaky bastard must have been hiding in a pocket, clinging to the wall, waiting for some idiot—me—to focus his attention on the murky pool. The MP5 comes up and spews a string of rounds into the air, but all miss the mark. The BFS, which really does look like a big fucking spider’s turtle love-child, is too fast.

It strikes my chest. Its ugly face, with its five buggy eyes and twitching mandibles just inches from my nose, elicits a scream. The impact knocks me back onto unforgiving stone, my head splashing into the river, where it is dowsed by the waterfall.

As water crushes out my scream and tries to force itself down my esophagus, something constricts around my waist. And then, as the corset from hell is fully tightened, I feel Hawkins’s worst nightmare become reality, as something impacts my gut three times in rapid succession.

The spawn are implanted.

Already gnawing at my organs.

At least the river will drown me before they tear me apart from the inside out.

6

Aww, c’mon
, I think as I’m dragged out of the water. The asshole mutant spider won’t even give me a merciful death. Some part of my brain wonders if the host has to be alive for the young to grow, but the rest of me vacillates between coughing up water and shouting.

When my head clears the water, I see Hawkins standing above me, holding the BFS by its thrashing legs, its prehensile tail still wrapped around me, still punching holes in my gut. But why? I thought these things implanted three young, and then it’s wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, you’re dead. I feel the impacts, over and over, but not the sharp sting of a puncture wound.
The armor is doing its job.

The knowledge frees my mind and body from the terror of being eaten from the inside out. I draw the knife sheathed on my belt and swipe the blade over my stomach. I feel a moment’s resistance and then the blade—and me—are free.

The BFS shrieks as red gore and some kind of viscous white nastiness oozes from its severed tail. Its thrashing is so violent that Hawkins loses his grip and resorts to tossing the thing away. Neither of us has our heavy hitting weapons ready, so we both draw our hand guns and make like we’re skeet shooting. The problem is, the eight-legged skeet is fast and not moving in a straight line. We each fire four shots, only one of mine striking it and taking off a leg. But the missing limb doesn’t even slow it down as it lunges into the forest—on the far side of the river.

Hawkins offers his hand and pulls me up to my feet.

“You okay?” he asks, holstering his sidearm and readying the shotgun.

I look down at the puncture-resistant armor. It’s full of holes—and wriggling things.
What the hell...
I lean down for a better look. They look like larva, white and plump, their tails spinning frantic circles. When one of them slips further into the armor, I realize they’re working their way through it.

Spinning in a circle, muttering a string of curses, I remove the armor and throw it to the stone riverbank. After lifting my black neoprene shirt and confirming none made it through, I calm down and focus on the situation. We still have one BFS on the loose, but with its tail severed, it won’t be multiplying. It’s also left us a nice bloody trail to follow. We’ll find it and kill it. There’s no doubt about that now. It might even bleed out by the time we find it. But these little squirmy bastards present a problem. Collect and study, or exterminate?

Hawkins makes the call before I can, stomping on the armor until each and every larva is a white smear. When he’s done, he looks up at me, back at the mess he’s made and then back to me. “You okay with this?”

“I’m just upset you beat me to it,” I say. “Now let’s go take care of mom.”

After finding a wide, shallow stretch of river, we cross into the woods on the far side and quickly pick up the trail. We don’t even see it at first. The trail of gore smells ungodly, like Satan himself left a skid mark through the forest. The bloody smears move from tree to tree, but slowly shift lower until reaching the ground.

“Why did it move to the forest floor?” I ask.

“Blood loss,” Hawkins says. “Doesn’t have the energy for leaping between trees. It won’t be much further.”

Open space and bright light ahead reveals a break in the forest. While the BFS is missing its tail, it could still be deadly. If there is any kind of civilization ahead, people could be in trouble. I double-time my pace and reach the clearing ten seconds before, and more out of breath than, Hawkins. “Dammit,” I mutter between heaves.

Hawkins steps up beside me and repeats my curse when he sees what I’m looking at. A large swath of the forest has been cleared. All that remains are severed trunks and layers of old, dry, branches, many of them blackened by rot. It’s the perfect place for a BFS to hide.

I’m about to say this could take a while when I spot the blood trail. “There.” I follow the trail with my finger until I’m pointing into the distance, where an aberration mars the bleak landscape.

“What is that?” I ask myself, pulling out a pair of binoculars. I put the lenses to my eyes, find the object and focus. An RV. The FC-P is generally quiet work. Nearly all the reports of strange animals we get turn out to be real and friendly or just plain bogus. But when things go wrong, they go colossally wrong. If anyone is inside that trailer, they’re in trouble.

I lower my binoculars just as Hawkins lowers his own pair. “Let’s go in quiet,” I say. “Weapons hot. But we can’t go John Rambo now. Not until we know that RV is empty.”

He gives a silent nod and we strike out, side by side. Moving through the debris of a hacked-down forest turns out to be a slow and noisy affair. Although we’re back in silent communication mode, there’s not a single place to step where there isn’t a branch to break or a pinecone to crunch. If the injured BFS is still alive, it knows we’re coming.

When we’re within twenty feet of the RV, which looks one part rock star tour bus and one part retiree home, I motion to Hawkins and point to the far side. He nods, and we separate, each rounding the large vehicle. I scan the sides of the thirty foot long RV, but spot nothing unusual. The door is closed. The window shades are drawn, and the front windshield is covered by a reflective visor.

When we reconnect on the far side, Hawkins breaks his silence. “Abandoned?”

I shake my head. “No way. These things cost a fortune, and this one doesn’t look that old. Maybe they’re still inside.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m guessing college age. Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. In the woods.”

“Sounds familiar,” Hawkins says. A slight grin.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, and I head for the door. I’m about to knock, when a
tap, tap, tap
stops me in my tracks. I find the source of the sound just above and to the side of the door. A mix of white and red, like milk and strawberry syrup, drips from the RV’s roof, onto a branch. I motion for Hawkins to watch the roof, and he aims the shotgun up over my head.

I raise my fist next to the door. “Ready?”

“Just duck if you hear me shoot.”

“Right,” I say, and I give the door three hard pounds. “DHS! Anyone inside?”

Silence is the only reply.

I knock again. “DHS! If anyone is inside, respond now or we will enter.”

I wait for a moment, fist raised and ready to give a final warning before flinging the door open. Before I can knock, Hawkins gives my shoulder a quick tap. When I look back, he points to his ear.
Listen.

I hold my breath and turn my full attention to what may or may not be beyond this door. Then I hear it. The
thunk
of something moving. A shuffle. A bottle falls over, rolls, stops. Someone is inside.

I step back from the door, waiting for it to open. But it doesn’t. Whoever is inside must be in a stupor. “Told you. Drugs and alcohol.” But as the sound grows louder and more distinct, I’m less sure of my assessment. My instincts decide I’m wrong long before my intellect. I step back away from the RV as the sound—like a hundred nails being whacked into the RV’s interior walls—grows thunderous.

“I think I woke something up,” I say.

“Some
things
,” Hawkins says. Our eyes meet. “It’s already bred. The one we found might not have even been the one in the photo. We can’t win this fight.”

“How many could be in there?” I ask.

He shakes his head as we continue backing away. “One or two, we could handle. Four...maybe. More than that...”

He’s painted a clear enough picture. I get it. The noise coming from inside the now-shaking RV indicates a much larger number. “We need help.”

“We don’t have that long.”

Our conversation is cut short when the RV door flings open and slaps against the vehicle’s exterior wall. A cloud of black flies buzz out, concealing the view. When the insects dissipate into the air like smoke, a single, tailless BFS fills the doorway, very much alive, and if I’m not mistaken, pissed off. Its shaking limbs reveal barely contained rage. The inside of the RV behind the creature is slathered in blood and body parts, painted with the insides of people and various woodland creatures.

“Just keep walking,” Hawkins whispers. “Running now will just trigger their pursuit. Let’s get as far away as we can first. Wait for them to make the first move.”

Walking backwards, through the uneven stretch of crisscrossing branches and stumps without making any sudden moves is tough to do. But we keep moving, slow and steady...for all of five seconds. Then we’re frozen by what happens next. Living black flows from the top of the RV. Like sludgy water from a broken water main, the BFSs rise from below, congregating on the roof in a writhing pile of twitchy hairy limbs and wriggling tails.

My armor is gone
, I think, and I fight to maintain my slow and steady pace. How many of them are there? Twenty? Thirty? More flow out of the doorway, their sharp talons piercing the RV’s metal hull. The massive vehicle is transformed into a living ball of BFSs, the way daddy longlegs pile together against the cold. But these things aren’t cold. They’re hunting.

Us.

But what are they waiting for?

I step back. The branch beneath my feet rolls and sends me toppling backwards. Hawkins is quick to catch me, but the damage is done. By the time I’m upright again, the BFSs have launched themselves toward us.

We don’t bother firing into the mass of shell-protected monsters. From this range we wouldn’t do much good, and neither of us want to get any closer. The only thing keeping us alive right now is distance, so we do our best to maintain it, bunny hopping through the field of fallen trees.

Our pace quickens when we enter the forest, which is mostly clear, thanks to the thick pine canopy blocking out the sun. But that also means the BFSs will move faster, too, and that’s a problem, because like most creatures with more than two legs, they can outpace a human being with little effort.

The sound of a hundred little daggers puncturing tree bark fills the forest. They’re gaining on us, taking the high ground, probably flanking us. They might not be intelligent, but most predators are born with instinctual strategies for hunting, and who knows what was programmed into the DNA of these things.

Through the chaos of the monsters pursuing us, the sound of my feet pounding the ground, my equipment rattling and my heavy breathing, I hear something new. Voices. Commanding and authoritative.
Military
, I think, but my half full glass is now totally empty.
How did they get here so fast? We didn’t tell anyone. And—

I tackle Hawkins, and we fall into a field of tall ferns. Before he can complain, I put my hand over his lips and mouth the word, “Listen.”

The voices grow louder as the unknown group of men rounds a large Douglas-fir.

“I’ve got movement on the Flir,” a man says, referring to a thermal imaging device. “Up ahead. Half a click and closing fast. Looks like a lot of them.”

“Get ready,” a second man says. “We’re not here for Dark Matter. This is a straight forward slash-and-burn op. When we’re done with the Tsuchi—”

Sushi? They named the BFSs Sushi? Because they eat people raw? That’d make us the sushi...
In the fraction of a second it takes me to wonder all this, I replay the word in my head, hearing the subtleties of its pronunciation. I’ve been immersed in Japanese culture, trying to keep that part of Maigo’s heritage intact. Granted, it mostly involves us watching anime—
Ghost in the Shell
,
Akira
and her favorite,
Gaiking
, which are beautiful and horrifyingly violent at the same time, but I’ve heard enough of the Japanese language to speak a few phrases and recognize the nearly silent T at the word’s start.

Tsuchi...