Operation Honshu Wolf (6 page)

It felt very different from the refugee quarantine sector, where Miller had been assisting with spot checks. Refugee numbers were picking up after the storm. The helicopter massacre had terrified people, Infected or not. Hardly anyone had wanted anything to do with the corporation after that. Now, desperation and fear—the dust, famine, the new animals—had forced them into the disorderly queues funnelling through the quarantine sector’s chain-link fencing, waiting their turn to have their eyes examined with ophthalmoscopes for the parasite’s cysts in scenes that made Miller think of a dystopian prison.

He’d looked out of place, in his Louis Vuitton suit. Why
was
he still wearing it?

Miller took another sip of tea. “There’s a laundry on Fourth Street. Next to the hairdressers?” He set the cup down. “I managed to bribe them to do my suits for me, but it’s not as though there’s much to spend money on anymore, so...”

Gray laughed. “Now, you know that’s not what I meant.”

“The hairdressers are talking about opening up again, apparently.” Miller didn’t bother looking up. “Lot of people around who need haircuts.”

Gray kept laughing, shaking his head. “God
damn
, Alex. You going to get those bleached highlights again or something?”

“I’m nothing if not a slave to fashion. Besides, if I’m going to fit in with you, I need to look the part.”

“There aren’t going to be any more functions where my bodyguard’ll need to pass for a Hollywood star nobody’s heard of, Alex.”

“Yet.” He took another sip. “That nobody’s heard of
yet
.”

It was almost word for word something Billy said, once, when Miller had complained that the makeover had made him look like a knock-off movie star nobody ever heard of.

Not yet, Billy had said. Just not
yet
.

Miller wondered where Billy was, in all this. He knew Samantha had taken the water. Probably joined a commune.

His boss, at least, had his kids to gaze lovingly at, while taking another sip of tea.

“I want more oversight on what Bob’s doing,” Gray said.

“I’m guessing Mr. Harris doesn’t have any more helicopters under his control.”

Gray snorted. “More than I’m happy with him having. We pulled everything that we could off the production lines.”

“The Army is going to shit a brick.”

“So is every military we’ve got contracts with. We’re taking it all for ourselves, Alex.” Calmly, Gray picked up one of the muffins from its bone china plate. Turned it over, and selected another. “Schaeffer-Yeager Aerospace, StratDevCo, everything. Unofficially, we’re starting our own army.”

Miller struggled to swallow that down. “This is getting out of hand,” he said, eventually.

“God only knows how many thousands of people died in the dust yesterday, and you only think it’s getting out of hand
now
, Alex?”

Stubbornly, Miller clung to the fact that there was such a thing as a dry cleaner again. “It’s getting better,” he murmured.

“Food’s running out. Most of the refugees who are willing to join us are on the edge of starving to death.” Gray nibbled cautiously on his muffin. “There are rumours of cannibalism. They have to be
desperate
to come to us, after we mowed down the Infected like that, but they are. You’ve seen them.”

“The way
Harris
mowed them down,” Miller snapped. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“But you have killed, haven’t you?” Gray dropped his voice, eyes cold. “You were a soldier.”

“I never deployed,” Miller said, quietly. “There weren’t any wars while I was enlisted. I’ve used a Taser, but never been in a situation I
needed
to kill anyone.”

“You could if you had to, couldn’t you?” Gray leaned forward intently. “This isn’t a theoretical question anymore, Alex. With everything out there.”

“I could,” Miller said, surer than he thought he’d be, but not as confident about it as when he’d been swimming in the army’s propaganda. “If the situation called for it.”

“Good. Because I need you to be my soldier, Alex.
My
soldier. Not Bob’s, not America’s.
Mine
.” Gray settled back down. “I won’t let famine, the Infected, or
anything
take their future away from them,” he said, nodding at his kids.

Miller looked over at them, but remained silent.

Helen was playing something on her phone, while her older brother continued to struggle with the spotty connection.

“Money might not buy much anymore, Alex, but I own more than just
money
. If there’s going to be a better future for them—hell,
any
kind of future—I’m putting everything I have into defending it. You with me?”

Miller didn’t even think before nodding. “Of course I am. You’re like family.”

Gray paused, just for a second. “Heard from your parents?”

Miller hesitated on answering. But Gray had the right to ask, after bankrolling his aunt’s cancer treatments. “Before their internet cut out, they were doing okay. Well-stocked on all the essentials, and the storm cellar’s pretty substantial. Steel door and all.” Miller pushed the tea away, and rubbed at an eye. “I’m sure they’re holding out fine.”

“Me too. We’ll see about sending someone out to check on them, when things settle a little around here.”

Miller nodded his thanks.

“For now, I need you to take charge of one of Bob’s projects, but you’ll need to lose the suit, Alex. Switch over to something a little more practical and outdoorsy.”

“What’s the project?”

“Same as what you’ve been doing, really, picking them up from the airport.” Gray nodded towards his kids. “Just a little more urgent. After that storm, we’re worried about our own. Bob Harris has put together a list of critical personnel we want brought to the compound who are stuck in the city. Some are trapped in place, don’t have transport, or just aren’t answering their phones. You’re going to go out and get them.”

“Just bringing people in? I can wear my suit for that, Gray.”

“Alex. Stop kidding yourself. It’s going to hit a hundred and ten degrees at noon, and the streets are full of Infected, and those things with all the teeth.” Calmly, Gray sipped his tea. “Ditch the designer suit. Dress like a soldier.”

5

A
TACTICAL VEST
and urban camos weren’t Miller’s first choice for comfort—his clearest memory of pulling on BDUs and load-bearing equipment for the first time involved a lot of chafing—but despite the weight and heat, it was like stepping into an old set of well-loved shoes. Maybe his first few weeks in boot camp wearing this kind of thing had been uncomfortable, but he must have settled into it over the rest of his enlistment.

Sweat continued to pour down his face, and his hand rose in an old reflex before he knew what he was doing. Miller stopped, spooked, then simply let it happen, like scratching an itch. He tugged up the drinking tube on his water pouch, just like he had thousands of times before in his former life as a soldier. The water was tepid, but as it hit his mouth he discovered how thirsty he was, waiting in the shade of a dying tree for the next target of Robert Harris’s Operation Honshū Wolf to answer their door.

So far everything had gone textbook, like the airport pickup. Miller had split his team in two, and across the morning they’d recovered around sixty civilians—all employees and their families—and whisked them past the queues of starving refugees seeking entry into the Astoria Compound.

Now it was getting toward noon, and the shade under the fungally-blighted tree was shrinking away as the heat rose. Pinkish globs of fuzz covered the tree’s leaves, dragging them down. A midsummer’s autumn in the affluent part of the Bronx.

Miller pushed the doorbell for a fifth time and stepped back, glancing at the neighbouring houses. The mailbox in the brownstone to the left was choked, discoloured envelopes sticking out every which way.

It had been... three months, maybe, since the postal service shut down? Five? It was difficult to keep track of precisely when any given piece of civil life had dried out and crumbled away.

It was all deserted. Miller swore under his breath.

Du Trieux held the Gilboa low against her side. “What now? We go after the next target?”

“No. We find out what happened. I’ll go get the pry-bar for the door.”

But before Miller reached the Bravo, du Trieux tried the door handle and she called out, “Miller? It’s unlocked.”

Impossible. Maybe the rural neighbours at his parents’ ranch would do it, but
nobody
left their doors unlocked in the city, no matter how affluent the neighbourhood.

Miller skipped the pry-bar, and unslung his M27 instead. The weapon was only slightly unfamiliar—a ruggedized, upgraded assault rifle that the Marines used to use with drum magazines as a lighter alternative to machine guns. Miller had grabbed it out of the armoury as the first thing he saw that he trusted to actually kill a terror-jaw, though he suspected he’d have to go through most of his ammunition if he wanted to be sure.

He edged up beside du Trieux, and shared a nod with her. She was familiar with entry procedures, and although it had been a long time since he’d practised this with anything bigger than a handgun, snugging the long M27 against his shoulder and preparing to palm the door open had a familiar feel.

“Mr. Baxter?” Miller called out. “Mrs. Baxter? We’re coming inside...”

No one answered them as they cleared the house, room by room. Du Trieux took point with the shorter Gilboa—easier to swing around door frames—and Miller trailed after, the M27 short-stocked with its butt tucked over his shoulder at an angle. Not very accurate, but at this range and with a hundred and fifty rounds in the drum magazine, he didn’t need to be.

Alphonse Baxter and his wife, Linda, both employees of Schaeffer-Yeager subsidiary DDLN Software, had left touches of their life throughout their home. Family pictures were everywhere. A mixed race couple, their children looked a little like they might have been du Trieux’s kids to Miller’s eye. The kid’s toys littered their bedrooms, shockingly clean behind the closed doors after the dust-caked misery of the hall and living room. Two windows had been broken, either during the dust storm or before, and something that smelled of acid and decaying meat had been nesting in the shredded remnants of the living room sofa.

No sign of the Baxters. Their clothes were still in their dressers, luggage on top of wardrobes. The kids’ things all seemed to be in place. Toothbrushes in the bathrooms. A pile of school things had been hastily dumped out in one of the children’s bedrooms, though, and there were gaps in the ranks of stuffed animals arranged on a bed.

Maybe one of the kids had dumped out their school bag and left their access cards, binders and school tablet on the floor to save a few treasured toys before the family fled? But if they’d run, they’d run
quickly
. Mrs. Baxter either didn’t seem to own jewellery, or she’d taken it with her. The car was missing from the garage, and a gun safe in the master bedroom was empty.

Empty, and unlocked. The gun safe
wouldn’t
lock when Miller tried shutting it.

It didn’t make sense. The house definitely had solar panels on the roof—useless under dust right now, sure, but they’d also have hydrogen fuel cells in the attic. And those were clearly still charged; the lights worked when Miller tried them.

But the gun safe was open. And so was the front door. The locks hadn’t disengaged because of a fire, or a power outage—that was precisely why the building
had
fuel cells and solar power, one of the standard recommendations the company gave its staff. With always-on power, the security systems were always on. But the remote alarm link had failed, and the system logs were scrambled. Maybe some kind of error after internet connectivity had started cutting out?

“Looks like the Baxters were forced to evacuate their home about a week and a half ago,” Miller said, fingertips pressed to his earpiece’s transmit button.

“
How do you figure?
” the Northwind operator asked, on the other end of a satellite link.

“Mostly guessing. The security system’s log is scrambled, but that’s about how stinky the milk in the fridge is—and that’s when the Infected started rioting after the massacre.”

A moment’s silence. “
Okay. You want the next pick-up target?
”

“Not yet. Can you tell me what the Baxters’ emergency plan was?”

“
Uh. Give me a minute. Need to see if DDLN’s servers are still online...
”

“If it’s filed, there’ll be a copy with S-Y internal security,” Miller explained. “Somewhere under the employee protection plan files. You can use Cobalt’s account to access it.”

“
A moment while I try and pull that up...
”

Du Trieux was shuffling around the nesting site in the living room. It looked like some kind of colossal dog had shredded the couch upholstery and taken a shit in it.

“Anything?” Miller asked her.

She shook her head, poking at the mess with one booted toe. “Just... eggshells, I think.”

“Eggshells?” Miller frowned, and came over for a closer look.

They weren’t... shells, exactly. Not the hard fragments he’d expect from a chicken egg, at any rate; more like dry scar tissue. Thick, crusted, slightly flexible. A cluster of empty pods, flopping over each other and clustered like oversized fly eggs. The carpet underneath them was soaked, and stank.

“I think they’re eggs, anyway,” du Trieux said, a little hesitantly.

Near the broken windows there were tracks in the fallen dust, what Miller had taken to be rats or birds or something. But since the heatwave had killed off most of the city’s birds, and the ancient creatures were eating the rats... that left
something
as the only viable answer.

Outside in the back yard what Miller might have assumed were mice or squirrels were nervously watching the house from the shrubbery. At a second look, even at a distance, even that
small
, the knobbled head and white glints of snake-like teeth were obvious. Terror-jaws, a couple of inches long.