Toxic (48 page)

“
Miguel, ¿está seguro?
”
he heard through bone conduction.

Jave sopped the reenactment.

Neither of the two fighters had that name on the chest pocket of their combat suit. The first was called A. Almedo and the second C. Cortez. Therefore, they were referring to a third person, maybe one of their group. Somebody important? By verifying the sequences, he understood that this person had not taken part in the battle. Was this Miguel required to stay behind in safety? That made him a precious person, if they were worrying about him like that in the heat of the battle.

The emissary imagined two possibilities: a radio manufacturer or operator.

He lifted his visor. The hydroelectric dam seemed out of proportion for local needs. Even the neighboring city would have only consumed a fraction of the amount of energy available. What sort of facilities was this type of generator used for? Discovering them might explain the presence of the troops charged with protecting them. He decided to start by clarifying this point.

At his orders, the tera-servers sent him detailed maps of the region from the human databases. His rootlets shook with excitement when he noticed a site on a peak an octain of kilometers away. While reading the reference, he programmed the coordinates directly into his armor’s navigation system.

“European Southern Observatory – La Silla.”

The T-J would follow him, but he didn’t want to lose time. He flew away without delay and set course to the south, following a former trail that led him to the base of the mountain. On the crest, at more than two thousand meters altitude, facilities stretched out for several kilometers. Buildings topped with domes occupied the space of leveled areas. Jave flew around one of them. Benefiting from a general view, he understood the importance of the complex, which undoubtedly consumed a good part of the dam’s electricity. It had probably been built for that sole purpose. The Lynian set foot in the middle of a group of white domes and lifted his visor.

These people were interested in the vast sky. Albeit with laughable means, their efforts were a sign of an apparent willingness to understand. He noted the cracks and grooves that ran along the walls. Due to a lack of maintenance, the pre-tech observation instruments were out of service. If Miguel was hiding here, the abundance of buildings would make the search complicated. He asked for the assistance of the T-J, which was doing circles in the blue sky. The first scanner photos showed him that his task would be very sensitive. A significant amount of blue dots were located in the administrative and technical areas. Infected humans.

“
Tre’ll kondhi
,” he sighed, putting his hand on the handle of his vibroblade.

Before the invasion, Miguel Figueira de las Palmas, or MFP as his colleagues from Madrid called him, dedicated himself to pure scientific research: the type that demanded so much of him and didn’t reward him except after a long and tumultuous relationship that swung from joy to cruel disillusion. He would have never imagined when planning his career that he would have had to learn to shoot a gun and that he would build a radio with Soviet technology from the past century. As a young boy, he had dreamed of the starry nights, gazing at the crystal sky without the turbulence of the Andean summits. How to resist the call of those celestial sirens, of those billions of stars whose radiance he watched, a pale reflection of their fiery dresses. At no time did he imagine himself in such a site as a refugee, hidden away on the second floor of an abandoned building accompanied by commandos, with a few weeks’ worth of rations, a computer reduced to pieces and a sabotaged radio that would no longer receive any signals.

The abrupt loss of contact with Antarctica has shaken up the almost monastic life of the small troop burdened with surviving, keeping the L-Ds away and relaying encrypted transmissions. In such an event, the plan was clear: the evidence had to disappear. They had followed protocol to the letter.

Miguel had sent out the emergency code to the next links, excluding his group from the chain of communications. Next, the soldiers had left the site for that of the dam whose coordinates were located in the machine compromised in Antarctica. The error in the location would make the aliens’ efforts more complicated, but in the end, Miguel considered it a desperate maneuver. They had also taken the radio. These men would probably never come back. Only one of them would watch over him from then on. He was called Domingo, a former member of the Chilean navy. The scientist had questioned his presence for a long time before understanding the meaning of the expression “Don’t fall into enemy hands, whatever may be the cost.” Since then, he had prepared to flee. A bag was waiting for him under the stairs leading to the garage.

“They’re arriving,” the soldier said to him from the other end of the hallway.

The commando had cut his patrol short. The time had come to leave the area, discretely. Silently, Miguel opened the door to the annex to the conference room where he had chosen to live. He then went out through a second door, taking care to close it behind him. With the passage plunged in darkness, he felt his way along, his hands on the coarse wall. He felt the long metal handle of the emergency exit.

Miguel shot down the stairs in the direction of the garage, which only held one functioning vehicle. An antique Land Rover of British make. The employees on the base liked them for their sturdiness and their simple maintenance.

He sat down in the driver’s seat and lowered the sun visor. The car keys fell into his hand. The motor hummed and without delay, his foot slammed down the gas pedal and he drove in the direction of the wide-open door. The 4x4 shot outside, took a turn and then followed the fence that separated the living-dead from the administrative complex. On the other side of the wire fence, dozens of infected wandered around like lost souls. Hanging on tight to the steering wheel, the Spanish scientist focused on the road once again. He was thinking that the hardest part was over in escaping from the building when explosions froze the air. The rear windshield burst into pieces. He saw Domingo’s shadow moving in the rearview mirror.

He didn’t want to die, no matter in what way, because in this world in ruins, the sky and its beautiful sparkles still existed. Hope remained.

He almost hit a sign post that he just managed to avoid, swerving to the right at the last minute before breaking. The car slid across the gravel. The Chilean was still shooting. He saw the bursts of flames that shot out of the barrel. Miguel put the car into first. Pedal to the metal, the V6 vroomed with its full power. Despite his prayers, the scientist didn’t make it to the turnoff that led to the main road. One of the rear tires exploded. A burst destroyed the passenger seat headrest. As a reflex, Miguel bent over to avoid the rain of bullets.

The vehicle came up onto the sidewalk, crashed through the wire fence and climbed up a mound of earth before coming to a stop on the slope. The motor was still wailing at the moment of the impact, with Miguel’s foot on the accelerator and him unconscious.

When the gunfire burst out, Jave wondered about his chances of unearthing the famous man that the soldiers had spoken of. He flew towards the origin of the shots immediately. A human was shooting at a machine with four wheels and a dark color which, he guessed uncertainly, was trying to flee, to judge by the excessive speed and swerves. The driver was visibly having trouble controlling it. He burst through the wire fence that bordered the area, probably hit by a volley. The soldier brandishing the weapon was wearing the same type of uniform as those the troopers had faced. The human started to run in the direction of the vehicle that was lying on the ground, which was being approached by a group of infected. Other explosions whipped through the dry air. Nearby, several creatures collapsed on the rocky ground. The Lynian decided to gain time, unsure of what to do.

The driver managed to extract himself from the dented vehicle. He was attempting to get away when a burst dissuaded him. He got back on his way after a few steps on one leg. The soldier turned around and changed his line of vision.

The emissary realized that he made a perfect target in the middle of the clear sky. The soldier’s rudimentary gun had no targeting mechanism or automatic tracking abilities. Dodging the projectiles didn’t pose difficulties for his PAS, which adjusted the level of his repulsors as a result. It was still in his interest to put an end to the repeated volleys and the deafening bangs. Jave knocked him down with one shot from the neutralizer. The man collapsed on the ground. The Lynian then pivoted on his axis to deal with the infected attacking the vehicle’s occupant. While he rushed through the air, the suit determined, in a fraction of a second, the exact position of the nine malformed heads surrounding the wreck and then engaged the Kecht disruptor in sequential mode. The targets burst simultaneously, spreading their burning entrails on the car’s body. Jave landed in front of the hood and unsheathed his vibroblade. There was a tenth creature. The female with pasty skin and gaunt cheeks turned towards him. From her jaw there hung a piece of flesh that she had just ripped from the calf of her victim, who was screaming. With a vertical gesture executed without hesitation, the emissary cut her in two and then approached the man.

“
¿Eres Miguel?
” he asked in his synthetic voice with grave tones.

The human, in shock, had stopped screaming, or maybe he was too terrified by his presence, even more so than his fear of the infected. He nodded.

“
I
f the devil ever raised a garden, the Everglades was it
,” Elaine reminisced.

The quote seemed fitting to her. The gardens of the Devil were made rich by the new retirees who were as starving and lethal as the crocodiles and other alligators. The occupants of the camp resembled living dead capable of walking behind the fences where, formerly, the reptiles gave a show for the tourists. All of the enclosures were full to the point of overflowing.

Led by a large escort after her brief encounter with the Reverend, Elaine stored as much information as possible. The welcome from the chief didn’t mean that she would be welcome to act as she pleased. On the contrary, she thought she understood, as the men with whom she crossed paths gave her dirty looks. The light from the east filtered through the canopy.
The dawn already
... she told herself.

Even though the area looked like a hastily converted farm, it reminded her of the refugee camps of past wars. A couple of dozen meters from the horrific enclosure, she saw children running around paths and around trees. They were having fun and laughing in bursts as if, finally, life were continuing despite the unhappiness that so afflicted the adults. Two strollers caught her attention. The nurse stopped for a moment, realizing that these human beings had never known and would never know the former world. What mothers could give birth to babies in such conditions? She looked away.

The spectacle of these innocent games made her smile. She felt her chest seize up when she thought about Alison.

“They look happy.”

“They’re taking advantage of time outside,” Clayton explained to her, rushing her to follow him.

“What do you do with the infected?”

The young man was friendly but rather skimpy on the details, as if he were trying to gain her confidence all the while avoiding attracting the attention of Dan by giving her too much information. Regularly, the corpulent man turned around and his menacing gaze was enough to silence the source of the information. Clayton took refuge in silence. The trio arrived at the entrance to a blockhouse, a roof of warped metal sheets resting on four walls hastily put up. A man in a soft, camouflage helmet moved an AK under their nose before authorizing them to pass. The paramilitary spat on the ground before her.

Elaine understood that this was the entrance to an underground complex by remarking the narrow staircases that they went down, single file. Below, Clayton received directions form Dan, who went back up, leaving them alone in the middle of a room lit by torches. The narrow and barely lit hallway reminded her of the passageways on the navy troop transport. She closed her eyes to relieve her stress. Since that ordeal, she had trouble breathing in tight places. Clayton took her forearm.

“It’s OK; this isn’t a prison.”

Entering a larger space, Elaine understood the nuance. She put a hand to her mouth.

“Oh my God...”

Around twenty women, dressed in cream-colored togas, looked at her. They were also wearing wooden crosses on their chests as pendants, just like the girl with whom she had crossed paths upon arrival. Clayton left her before that assembly, without an explanation other than, “Above all, don’t try to save yourself.”

The stare-off with the women, young for the most part, lasted a few seconds, and then one of them separated from the group. Her emerald eyes reflected the glow of the torches, which underlined the enigmatic feel of her smooth features. Her almond eyes and high cheekbones invoked Asia and her full mouth the Middle East or Africa. Elaine didn’t think she was older than twenty. The woman gave her a friendly smile.