Operation Sea Mink (3 page)

Miller slung the strap of his M27 over his shoulder and gripped Dr. Davenport’s hand to help her out of the building, Dr. Winters following. “Lester Allen is with you?”

Davenport shook her head as Dr. Winters nodded. “He
was
,” he explained. “He took off—that way.” He pointed east. “Then our guard called for backup and went after him. That was almost an hour ago.”

“What do you mean, he took off?” Morland asked.

Dr. Winters cleared his throat. “I don’t know, he just...”

“He ran,” Dr. Davenport interrupted. “He started ranting and raving about how the ‘corporation’ shouldn’t be experimenting on the Infected. How we didn’t understand their
gifts
, and then he bolted. Ditched his cooler and then—gone.”

“He said
what?
” Miller exclaimed.

“It drew a lot of attention from the animals.” Dr. Davenport said. “We had to barricade ourselves inside that building to keep them from getting at us, but I guess after a while they gave up. Thankfully.”

“What about your guard?” Hsiung asked.

Dr. Winters shook his head, but Davenport answered. “He hasn’t come back—yet.”

Miller turned to du Trieux. “Trix?”

“
Oui
?”

“Get them back to the Bravo. I’m going to sweep the area and look for Lester.”

“Negative,” she said. “We both go. Too wild out here to solo.”

Miller considered disagreeing with her, but saw no point in it. She was right.

“Fine. Hsiung?”

“You got it,” she answered without hesitation. “Come on, docs.”

As Hsiung lead the two doctors back down 18th, du Trieux and Miller went in the opposite direction. After a solid ten minutes of silent searching, they turned up a terror-jaw, a school of rat-things, and one thug behemoth giving birth—but Lester Allen was nowhere to be seen.

“
If
we find him, this could go poorly,” Miller told du Trieux.

She gave no immediate reply, only pushed through a destroyed back alley, and stepped over the remains of a half-eaten terror-jaw. “He was
hesitant
,” she said carefully, “the last time we took him into custody. I’m not sure why we’re going after him now.”

“Lewis told me he didn’t want any well-fed, well-informed people from the compound giving information to the Infected.”

“So, we’re not here to find him. We’re here to silence him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t have to,” she replied, tapping the sheath of her hunting knife on her thigh.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. They’d taken Lester Allen into custody by force once before, they could do it again—even if he had to pistol whip him and drag him by his hair.

This time however, they didn’t have the comfort of pulling him into the back of a transport vehicle or a dose of anti-parasitics laced with sedative to keep him complacent. They were exposed, even worse now than they’d been at the time of the helicopter massacre—and they both knew it.

Up ahead, a thug behemoth pack had taken residence in the middle of the road. Turning a corner to avoid them, they walked down the center of what had once been Astoria Boulevard. Miller eyed the remains of a Cuban restaurant opposite a beauty shop. Straight ahead, a hardware store lay open and desolate; through the shards of the storefront window, Miller saw movement—the profile of a man slunk out of sight.

“One o’clock,” Miller said.

Crouching low and coming in fast, Miller bounded toward the storefront, his M27 feeling heavy in his hands. With du Trieux just behind, they entered the store and swung around, eyeing the corners and checking the shadows. The sound of something dropping caught their attention. Rushing toward the source of the noise, they saw him.

Wide-eyed and wild-haired, Lester took one glance at du Trieux and panicked. In a blur of flannel and corduroy the scientist bolted like a shot—zipping from the store’s back door and disappearing down an alleyway, squealing like a frightened pig. He was gone before Miller could get out more than two words.

“Stop! Wait!”

Out the back door and down the alley was a chain-link fence and another store, an abandoned apartment building from the looks of it. Miller and du Trieux searched the apartments, but came up empty. It was too late. Lester had disappeared—again. It was as if he’d evaporated.

“Dammit,” Miller fumed. He stalked his way back through the apartments and the hardware store to Astoria Boulevard.

“Should have put a bullet in him the moment we saw his face,” du Trieux said.

“Could you have done that? Just shot him for no reason?”

“We had a reason. You said so yourself. Lester Allen was an asshole, but he also knows every inch of the compound, including the research Davenport and Winters are doing with NAPA-33 and the super wasps. If he joins a commune, we’re fucked.”

Miller sighed. “Let’s hope not.”

“I don’t know whether to pity your optimism or admire it.”

“Six of one, half a dozen...” He didn’t finish his sentence.

Ahead of them on 18th Street, just around the bend from Astoria Boulevard, huddled a pack of Infected.

Dirt and cement crumbled underfoot as du Trieux and Miller skidded to a halt. Miller’s first instinct was to open fire. Shouldering the M27, his finger brushed the trigger. It was only when he saw a familiar face that he stopped.

Samantha?

She stood to the left of the group—her long brown hair braided to the side, her face gaunt but relatively unchanged. She wore the remains of a long, wide sheath dress with thinning yoga pants underneath. Her head tilted to the side.

His chest tightened and the M27 dipped in his hands.

Du Trieux didn’t lower her Gilboa, but she didn’t fire either. Her face shot back and forth between Miller and the Infected. Rocking on her heels, she took a step backward, then reset her feet firmly in the crumbled cement.

The mob, unlike every other Infected horde they’d ever encountered, stood perfectly still. They weren’t running at them, trying to tear their limbs off their torsos. Nor was there a Charismatic in the center of the group, or odd fungal growths budding across their faces and skin. They had rifles slung over their shoulders or loosely clutched in their palms. Their clothes were ragged, but not completely filthy. They were just a gathering, a group of people, as if out for a stroll. They looked almost human.

“Sam?” Miller breathed. He wanted to go to her. The relief at seeing her was immediately replaced by a dull dread. She was Infected, obviously, yet—

“Hello, Alex,” she said.

The sound of her voice hit him hard. He swallowed the lump in his throat and shifted his fingers on his rifle.

Samantha’s dark eyes trailed down to his hands, then back up to meet his gaze. “Aren’t you going to shoot us?” she asked.

“I’d rather not.”

Du Trieux altered her stance. He could hear her breathing. To her credit, her rifle never budged an inch.

“Were you, by chance, chasing that man?” Samantha asked.

“What man?”

Samantha’s eyebrows raised. “Do we look stupid to you?”

“He’s one of ours,” Miller answered her.

“Then why was he running away from you?”

He didn’t bother to answer that.

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of him for you. Just like we take care of all our own kind.”

The group around her nodded their agreement and Miller’s stomach roiled.

“I think you and I have very different opinions on what it means to take care of each other,” he said.

“That was obvious from the beginning,” she answered. “Wasn’t it? Now, is she going to put down her gun, or is this going to get nasty? You’re outnumbered, two to one.”

Miller raised his rifle again. “Thanks, but I’d rather die than become Infected.”

Samantha laughed.

The sound struck a chord in the hollow of his belly. He’d heard that laugh before, early in their relationship, before things had turned south and she’d come to resent him. He hadn’t realized he missed it until he heard it again.

“Why would we bestow our gifts upon you?” Samantha asked him. “You’re doing more for our benefit from your little compound than you could do in our ranks.”

Miller blinked.

“Oh, come on now,” she continued. “Haven’t you noticed? There are different variations to how a host reacts to the parasite. That’s why some of us are immune to your pathetic attempts at distributing anti-parasitics.” She shook her head at him like a disgruntled schoolmarm. “And here we thought you were smart. You haven’t put the pieces together yet?”

“Enough to know I don’t want any part of it,” he admitted.

“Have your compatriot point her weapon down, and we’ll go into more detail.”

“I like it just where it is, thank you very much,” du Trieux said.

“That’s not very hospitable of you,” Samantha scolded her. With the slightest flick of her wrist, the Infected surrounding her snatched up their weapons and pointed them at du Trieux.

Miller’s trigger finger flinched but stopped short of pulling.

“Put your weapon down, Alex,” Samantha said. “And we won’t shoot her. In fact, we’ll even promise to let you both go.”

“I don’t believe promises from the Infected,” Miller said. “No offense.”

“Smart man,” she said. “But unlike you, we follow through on
our
promises—so when we say we’ll let you go, we will. Isn’t that right, everybody?”

The group surrounding Samantha all agreed.

Miller glanced around, searching for an escape. If they ran back to the hardware store they could jump the chain link fence in the alley behind it and disappear in the labyrinth of backstreets, just like Lester had. But they couldn’t outrun a bullet.

“Put it down, Trix,” Miller said, lowering his M27.

“Are you mad?” du Trieux snapped.

“If she wanted us dead, we’d already be dead.”

Du Trieux reluctantly lowered her Gilboa.

Two of the Infected ran forward and collected Miller and du Trieux’s rifles, as well as their sidearms and knives. It was like being strip-searched at a prison—humiliating and dehumanizing. Not to mention the smell. Even if they were a different kind of Infected, as Samantha claimed, they still stank the same.

After they were disarmed, the group of Infected surrounded Miller and du Trieux on all sides, turned them around, and walked them back toward the hardware store.

Samantha came up alongside Miller. Given the look on du Trieux’s face as she glowered at her, he wasn’t too glad to be standing between the two women.

“Did you know that it’s impossible for the gifted to kill another gifted?” Samantha asked him.

He shook his head. Actually, he suspected as much, but playing stupid might get her to divulge information he
didn’t
know.

“It’s true,” she said. “If we get within just a few meters of each other, our subconscious becomes one.”

“Sounds like hell.”

“It’s a beautiful experience, actually,” she said, smiling slightly. She ran her palm down the length of her braided ponytail and he fought back the urge reach out and touch her hand. She was Samantha—that was true. But she wasn’t.

She’d changed, even from the time she’d become Infected and left him. Her sharp wit, the way she would wink at him when she caught him watching her, the intelligent gleam in her gaze: those were all gone, vaporized by the parasite. What remained of her now—the almost placid facial expression; the slow, deliberate steps; the dull gleam in her eye—they mirrored the other Infected surrounding her in an unnerving way.

He wanted to ask her questions, to find out what her life had been like since she’d left—but he feared the answers would only agitate her, and hurt him, so he chose to remain quiet. Whatever her plans were, disturbing her and the other Infected wouldn’t benefit anyone.

“We’re so glad we found you before the others did,” Samantha said. “We’re not like Swift’s bumbling gaggle of drones.”

“You all smell the same to me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she explained. She walked past the hardware store and the group continued down Astoria Boulevard—in the opposite direction from the Bravo and the rest of Cobalt.

Du Trieux glanced behind her and then turned her attention to the Infected. She was probably devising an escape route just as he was. The farther Samantha walked them in that direction, the harder it would be to get back.

He hoped Hsiung and Morland weren’t waiting for them. If packs of Infected were patrolling the area, they had best get the doctors back to the compound as soon as possible.

“We’re the Archaeans,” Samantha said. “We’re a separate group of the gifted from Swift’s. We had nothing to do with the assault on the compound, if that’s what you’re wondering. In fact, we’ve been working to devise ways of eliminating his Bishops, but haven’t been able to get close enough to them without bonding.”

“Bishops?”

“The leaders of Swift’s groups. The ones you’ve been killing?”

Miller shook his head, not following. He’d killed too many to keep track.

“Bishops surround themselves with Pawns,” she explained. “They’ve been most troublesome to our group, but as I explained, we’ve been unable to eliminate them because of the pheromones. But, as you always somehow do, you became helpful without even trying. Did you know that? That we’ve been your back-up out in the field?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Bishops,” she said, her tone becoming more impatient. The group around her shifted with agitation. “We’ve been herding them in your direction. After you’d eradicate one Bishop, freeing his Pawns, we’d set up the next group to send your way, and pick off any stragglers you’d missed. You didn’t honestly think you’d survived all those attacks on your own, did you?”

“Bullshit,” he said. “I would have noticed if there was a pattern.”

“Of course you’d think that,” she said.

They continued down Astoria Boulevard and stopped at the front of an old food market. The group of Infected stood closer to one another, side to side, closing in around du Trieux, Miller and Samantha, looking blank.

“Why have you stopped the attacks, Alex?” Samantha asked. “It was
working
. Swift’s ranks were disbanding. Without the Bishops, he was losing power. All this violence could end. You want that, right? You want the killing to stop?”