Toxic (59 page)

“I promise that I won’t do you any harm if you deliver me a certain Annie Heiss. Everyone will have the chance to eat and have a hot shower.”

Looking at the delighted expressions on the dirty faces, Jave congratulated himself on his regular incursions into the tera-servers. They spat up excellent behavioral information on the human race.

T
he pickup turned off the dirt road.

All the better, Masters told himself. With all the dust it was stirring up, the vehicle risked betraying them, as it was visible from kilometers away. US1, he read on the sign half-hidden in the ditch. Without asking for the group’s opinion, Bruce headed north towards the city. His arm in the scarf, the colonel reflected on their options, his shoulder against the door, trying to tune out the pain.

The city, which was currently five or six kilometers away, multiplied their chances of finding a hideout where they would have the time to heal their wounds and regain their strength. On the other hand, the chances of running into trouble were substantially higher. They definitely needed safety, solid walls, preferably high, and supplies. And potable water.

The marine straightened up. “There’s an Air Force base in the area. Take a right after Florida City.”

“Homestead?” the scientist inquired.

“Yeah. It held a reserve unit.”

“Hmm. An army base. That means large facilities and lots of former soldiers transformed into L-Ds. Maybe the alien drones are even monitoring sensitive areas like that because of their weapons. I’m not sure that’s a good solution.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong, the colonel thought, wondering if there was a right answer. Alva, who was in the passenger seat, got angry.

“So what do you propose, Mr. smart guy? I say that we go in the direction of the coast and try to find Hector. We were always safe on the sea.”

At just the mention of his rival’s name, Bruce clutched the wheel and accelerated. Masters understood that that was the last thing he wanted.

“No,” the biologist declared in a firm tone. “I have a better idea.”

When the singer asked him to explain, he responded with a brief, “You’ll see, but I think that you’ll like it.”

Exhausted, the colonel let the young man have his way, as he seemed to know exactly where he was taking them. He caressed Alison’s hand. The girl was sleeping against the shoulder of the Asian who, true to his ways, remained stoical, or as Elaine would have said, in his bubble. Each time that he laid his eyes on them, he thought about the nurse.

“The monsters took her. They took her.”

The words were engraved in his memory. The aliens didn’t kill healthy humans. She was alive. However, the chances were slim that she would remain so for long. He didn’t know what happened to prisoners after being captured. He hadn’t stayed long enough under the dome in Dubai to find out. Of all the group members, the Colombian was doing the best, he guessed. That bastard was probably sailing towards his homeland. Probably rightly so.

Hector watched the vehicle come out of the property at full speed, heading east. The binoculars glued to his eyes, he followed the pickup until it disappeared after a tight turn. The four occupants had loaded the materials as fast as possible, in a hurry to get back to the fight or to run far away from the combat. The trafficker turned his attention to the other animated sector of the region. He could no longer make out the orange glow, a sign that the fires had been put out. A thick smoke remained above the area like a sinister cloud bearing bad news. From what he could see at a distance, the battle seemed to have finished and the victor’s ships, which looked like insects, shot at full speed above the treetops, maybe searching for fugitives like those he had just seen.

The Colombian put down the binoculars on the spent wood of the cockpit.

“
¿Y ahora?
”

He needed to make a decision right away. Remaining in the vicinity meant exposing himself to the airships. He couldn’t risk his semi-sub, his most precious possession. On the sea, he felt safe. That had always been the case, even before the invasion, when he was working against the Coast Guard. What difference did it make whether they were alien or American drones?

Hector smiled. The path south had never been so clear to him. His home was within the reach of the sailboat, on the other side of the Caribbean Sea. The pain in his shoulder reminded him of what he owed the nurse and the group. He touched the rough texture of the bandage.

“
¡Vaya con Dios, chica!
”

The trafficker set course towards his homeland. He promised himself that he would throw his stash into the water as soon as he hit open sea. Hector Ramirez was starting the last chapter of his life, and he wanted a blank page as pure as possible to write down one first name: Marisol Velasquez. Maybe she was still alive. Somewhere, she was waiting for him, he started to dream.

The speedboat was moving along slowly in the middle of the harbor. Elaine kept one hand tight on the throttle and the other on the helm. She was scanning the surroundings, ready to jump into the water at the slightest sign of the presence of an alien drone. The boat passed by a line of sailboats, most of which were underwater. The tangled and bent masts stuck out above the peaceful surface, like sinister underwater burial crosses. She spotted the tight path between two stone jetties and directed the stern in the direction of the exit. Without hesitating, she pushed the throttle to max. The rough acceleration pushed her back against the back of the driver’s seat. The motor vroomed with virility in the middle of the cemetery of hulls. The speedboat reared up and bounced like a bullet. The model dated back to the previous century and didn’t possess a sophisticated system or electronic lighting, but it did have one hell of a motor. A friend of her father had bought one of the same type. Sometimes he would take them for joy rides, during which the power of the monster was able to show itself without reservations.

Elaine felt herself be taken away, intoxicated by the adrenaline rush. The speed brought along a sort of excitement, she remembered. That was why she had loved those sporting excursions on the open sea. She passed by the buoy signaling the entrance to the port, leaving a silver-colored wake behind her. After a few miles, she took the relay out of her chest pocket. She put it in the palm of her hand. Jave had explained to her that the device also worked as a compass. Like magic, the pulsating arrow appeared above the halo, showing her the right direction.

According to the alien’s information, which was quite sparse to tell the truth, the Pony Oil Field was marked by a virtual square two hours to the west. Before the invasion, the rigs extracted a large amount of the oil produced in the United States. While there no longer existed job prospects in the fossil fuel industry, she did admit one thing: these metal islands far from the coast were choice shelters, out of the reach of the hordes of infected and of no interest to the aliens. If she managed to rejoin the group, she thought it would be possible to convince them to stay on one, at least for a while. There, Alison could walk around without the risk of coming face to face with a creature that wanted to devour her.

After the crazy night that she had just lived through, having come within an inch of death, Elaine smiled.

Her mom was right, she told herself. There was always hope. And right now, she had an ally, albeit strange and from elsewhere, and maybe not completely trustworthy, but this was their best chance. It was a bet on the future; the future of everyone.

F
From what he had gathered from the information on the tera-servers, the indigenous civilization had approached the end of a development cycle with the progressive and inevitable exhaustion of fossil fuels. However, humans hadn’t crossed what Collective experts called the T-E limit, the painful liberation from the shackles of dirty energy extracted from the biosphere, a change of paradigm which shattered entrenched habits.

The captive belonged to a line of oil industrialists, a pillar of the local economic system. Initially scared and silent, Annie was opening up bit by bit, realizing that the Lynian was not threatening her. He had separated her from the group and led her to an improvised interrogation room in the cargo hold of the T-J. The drug dissolved in her drink, fresh water, helped calm her and lower her guard. The hesitant discourse remained incoherent, but exploitable.

“Before dying, my dad entrusted me to the Reverend and his community. They were in the army together, from what I understand. He never spoke of those years before the founding of the company. I think that they did things. It was in East Africa...”

The emissary produced a video, that of the individual with white hair and a hallucinating gaze, walking in the middle of the explosions, pushing on the buttons of a remote control.

“That’s him, the Reverend,” Annie confirmed. “Dad’s friend. He created the camp and started up and developed our community.”

With a gesture, Jave interrupted the feed.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Dead... most likely. We all end up dead, one after another. There were more of us in the beginning.”

The drug was slowing down the flow of the words bit by bit.

“He wasn’t among the victims. In fact, he has escaped. Do you have any idea where he might go?”

“They had hideouts, more or less everywhere in the region. Warehouses, garages, I’m not sure, but they stocked weapons, materials and even the voracious there.”

“The voracious?” the emissary said with surprise. “That’s what you call the infected?”

“Yes. We used them for the games, but I think that came later. In the beginning, they locked them up for experiments. I don’t know any more. I... I know that it was bad.”

The feeling of guilt was among the array of secondary effects that it was wise to monitor. Jave focused his interrogation once again on factual events, without this sensitivity which was so important in the psyche of these beings.

“Do you remember any place in particular?”

He wanted to stimulate her memories while not stirring up remorse.

“I want to see my brother again. Who’s going to protect me? Who will watch over us now?”

Her eyes shone. They produced salt water, which dribbled along their grooves. Jave was aware of the primary function, cleaning, but also the second, which was caused by emotions. With her clothing, stained with red marks and dried flesh, and her tangled and mud-encrusted hair, she looked so much like Elaine at the moment he had taken her out of the pit.

“I can’t promise you anything, except offer you food, clean clothes and the chance to bathe yourself, but I need information.”

The tears stopped. Annie raised her head. “And the others?” she asked, pointing to her companions.

“They don’t have any information for me.”

Jave stared at her so that she understood that there would be no more negotiations. Not under the monitoring of Kjet, in any case, who was following the meeting on a flexible screen outside of the T-J. The loyal lieutenant was watching his every move, looking for a misstep.

“There’s a warehouse near Flamingo. All you have to do is follow the road that leaves the camp heading towards the coast.”

Jave bowed his head as a sign of thanks.

The short jump to the destination lasted an octain of seconds. The tracker-jumper stopped above an area of decrepit houses, which had soon been swallowed by the vegetation. Jave and Kjet jumped from the ramp, landing just in front of a warehouse with red walls. The reptilian had insisted on accompanying them, arguing for the necessity for tough protection. A few steps to their right, Jave spotted the quay, which was partially covered by proliferating plants, a local variety called mangroves. They weren’t carnivorous, which was good news, he thought.

A barge was tied up there. Kjet sent in recon bots which deployed very quickly and then sent back the initial information: no anomalies.

The open doors revealed a chaos of boxes and detached parts. Rusty motors were piled up on a shelf and tools were scattered across the floor. The workshop had clearly been abandoned. Raising his head towards the ceiling, the emissary noticed the holes in the roof, from which bright rays of light were falling down.