The Invasive 2: Remnants Read online

  Colbrick grunted. “What makes you think we won’t get on the other side, then get bit by some crazy ass invasive like a couple punks sneakin’ into the junkyard?”

  Dr. Avery smiled like a wild man. “You’ll have to take my word.”

  “Words don’t mean much these days,” Colbrick said.

  “Agreed,” Dr. Avery said. “But I’m one of the good guys.”

  Apex National Forest, Quadrant 4 (18 BPM)

  “Whew,” Angela said. “This must be one hell of a fenced-in area.”

  Bishop agreed. They’d been hiking for two miles, and had not encountered more fencing. At least not yet.

  “It’s quite lengthy,” Dr. Avery said. “But we’ll be coming upon another one, within minutes.”

  Colbrick scratched his chin. “A fence within a fence.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Avery said.

  Bishop wondered if Dr. Werner was funneling them into a bizarre experiment. After all, wasn’t that what the drone was for?

  Up ahead, Yutu froze in his paws, and cocked his head.

  “Get down,” Dr. Avery said.

  The doctor got on his hands and knees and crawled through the ferns. Bishop followed, as spider web strands and other forest tidbits tried to enter his mouth and nostrils.

  “Thanks for clearing a path,” Angela whispered from behind him.

  Yutu pulled up the rear, keeping his head down. “Good boy,” Angela whispered.

  As they squirmed through the ferns like snakes, the canopy thickened, blocking out sunlight. A raptor Bishop couldn’t identify fluttered its wings, and glided out of sight.

  The old familiar feeling of being completely spooked washed over Bishop. With proof that remnant invasives still inhabited the valley, who was to know what creatures, just out of sight in the penumbra were native or not?

  “Okay,” Dr. Avery whispered as he pulled out a pair of binoculars. “Take a look for yourselves.”

  Bishop used the binoculars he’d secured in his pack and glassed to the east. Through tree branches, he glimpsed an aluminum guard tower, and a heavily armed soldier within. A fence cornered the tower perimeter, taller and with more wire than the previous fence. A series of mirrors, screwed onto the tops of the fence by metal handles, angled inwards at 45 degrees.

  Bishop handed Angela the binoculars.

  “Weird,” she said. “All the mirrors.”

  “Ayup,” Colbrick whispered. “Like a super meathead gym.”

  “We need to keep crawling,” Dr. Avery said. “There’s a better vantage point up ahead. But we must keep quiet. And only two of us can go. Bishop?”

  Bishop regarded Angela, and she smiled. “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Ah shit,” Colbrick said.

  Bishop slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll send you a postcard,” he said.

  Dr. Avery crawled forward on his hands and knees through the ferns. Bishop followed him, growing weary of seeing the doctor’s boots as the pungent odor of composting earth thickened. Above them, pine branches swayed in the breeze. Occasionally, Dr. Avery snapped a twig, causing both of them to pause.

  Dr. Avery turned to him. “It’s imperative we remain quiet,” he said. “Everyone in this facility is heavily armed.”

  With that, Dr. Avery turned and continued forward. A few bird calls later, the men found themselves peering between ferns at the fence. Unfortunately, another staggered array of mirrors were propped up along the fence’s lower portion, limiting their view. But what Bishop did see was serious cause for concern. He palmed his .357 as a familiar sound clicked and hissed within the fence’s perimeter.

  Secapods.

  All of them sporting flashing red tags that blinked like fucking crazy.

  Bishop turned to Dr. Avery for answers, and shook his head.

  “I know,” Dr. Avery whispered.

  Through a slat between the odd mirrors, Bishop watched as a worker dressed in a black North Face jacket tossed what was likely roadkill venison into the isolated secapod pen. The invasives tore into the meat, dissecting the poor deer within seconds, their bizarre single eyeballs rotating at the top of their flounder-like heads.

  After devouring their meal, the secapods turned on each other, and the victorious alpha-like specimens mated with the smaller females.

  They were thriving.

  And their tags corresponded accordingly at 175 BPM, the highest Bishop had ever seen. He wondered if destroying the clone ship and the master signal relay had changed how the tags functioned.

  “It’s remarkable,” Dr. Avery whispered. “They’re triggering habitability organically. And they’ve figured out a way to isolate certain groups of invasives from the main tag signal receptor.”

  “We destroyed that,” Bishop said.

  Dr. Avery frowned. “I’m sorry, Bishop, but Natural Corrections ran the probability statistics. We concluded there’d likely be a backup relay system, for remnants. Basically, the master species predicated this exact scenario, so their ecosystem could have another chance. There’s another tag relay buried somewhere. Odds are, it’s been here since before mankind.”

  “Wonderful,” Bishop said. “All that hard work.”

  “You three performed a miracle,” Dr. Avery whispered. “Look at the bright side.”

  It was hard for Bishop to look at the bright side as a dozen secapods thrived in their pen, mating and tearing apart another road killed deer.

  “180 BPM now,” Dr. Avery said. “Remarkable.”

  Bishop cringed.

  “190 BPM.”

  “Jesus,” Bishop said. “They’re out of their minds.”

  Bishop went for his .357, and fought off an overwhelming urge to fire upon the workers as they fed the thriving secapods. But the armed guards in the other three towers would’ve turned him into Bishop chunks.

  “195 BPM,” Dr. Avery said. “These madmen are going to kill us all if this secapod band is not truly isolated.”

  Bishop wanted so badly to stop this, to leap over the fence like a superhero and end this thing, forever. But before he could try, a voice boomed through a megaphone: “NOW!” it shouted.

  The tower guards opened fire on the secapods, slicing and dicing the spasming, hapless invasives until all movement ceased.

  As the roar of gunfire echo-faded into the woods, a figure stepped into Bishop’s view, one he recognized: Dr. Werner.

  “Very good,” Dr. Werner said through his megaphone to the employees and tower guards. “We’ve succeeded in triggering the tags organically. You should all be very proud.”

  Light clapping came from within the fencing, although Bishop could not see the source.

  “Our work is not done,” Dr. Werner said. “We’ll proceed with triggering tag activity through frequency manipulation. As we all know, science finds a way. And we’re not going to let this remarkable opportunity pass us by.”

  A moment later, Dr. Werner left Bishop’s view. A helicopter engine started, and the blades chopped the air, skittering secapods guts in all directions.

  Luckily for Bishop and Dr. Avery, the staggered mirrors kept the ferns from blowing back and revealing their location.

  The helicopter hovered above this pen-within-a-pen, and flew east towards Elmore.

  “Twisted,” Dr. Avery said. “This whole thing.”

  Bishop palmed his .357. “They have no idea what they’re doing.”

  “No,” Dr. Avery said. “They know exactly what they’re doing. And that’s the problem.”

  Bishop turned to crawl back to Angela and Yutu. Before he could crawl a foot, two guards emerged from the woods and blocked his progress. Bishop was dismayed to see them heavily armed and camouflaged, like perimeter snipers.

  “Hold it right there,” one of the guards said.

  Bishop reached for his bear spray, and a guard fired a rifle round into the dirt next to his head. As the shot echoed through the woods, Bishop wondered if his next move guaranteed death. His heart thudded against the forest soil as he though
t of Angela’s safety.

  “Totally uncalled for,” Dr. Avery said as he held his hands out wide for the guards to see. “Do you know who that is?”

  “Don’t care,” the guard said. “We have our orders.”

  Dr. Avery pointed at Bishop. “This man is a national hero. You can’t treat—”

  Terrible growling emerged from a row of parting ferns. Yutu leapt and tore into the furthest guard’s leg.

  “Fuck!” the guard shouted as he collapsed and spun.

  The other guard fired at Yutu, but the pooch disappeared into the ferns.

  In all the commotion, the guards failed to notice Colbrick sneaking up behind them. He aimed his sawed-off at the non-wounded guard’s head.

  “Drop it, or I’ll drop you,” Colbrick said.

  Bishop stood and aimed his .357 at the wounded guard. “Drop it,” he said.

  “You’re aiming a weapon at United States Military personnel,” the bitten guard said as he winced. “You’re in deep shit.”

  “I don’t know what you are,” Bishop said. “But I do know you aren’t my people.”

  Colbrick spit. “And I’m tired of y’all messing with my woods. Got it?”

  A moment later, Angela appeared, her eyes raging with indignation. “Look,” she said to the guards. “You can’t just aim guns at people for no reason. This is our national forest, too. Show some goddamn self-awareness.”

  Bishop understood that for many people, such a request was way, way too much to ask for.

  “Let’s go,” Bishop said to the guards. “Drop all your weapons, even your knives.”

  The guards obeyed, and Angela scooped up the items in her jacket. Dr. Avery picked up the rifles, kept one for himself, and handed the other to Bishop.

  “Oh boy,” Dr. Avery said. “This is…this is something.”

  “Now the radios,” Bishop said, making a come-here gesture with his fingers.

  The guards unclipped their vest radios, and dropped them to the ground.

  Bishop made firm eye contact with both guards, and pointed. “Remember, you pulled your weapons on us first. We’re American citizens, and as such, we have rights. I’m sorry we had to do this.”

  Bishop, Angela, Colbrick, Dr. Avery, and Yutu backed away and then ran through the underbrush, away from Experiment 25.

  Apex National Forest, Quadrant 4 (30 BPM)

  They made past the furthest fence perimeter, back through the hole that Dr. Avery had cut after a pine knocked out power in that section. As they slipped back into their backpacks, a million thoughts swirled in Bishop’s head, but no one said anything. He kept wondering if this was a nightmare. Had they really pulled weapons on U.S. military?

  As they ran through the forest, two grouse flapped up from the understory and whizzed into the canopy. Unseen elk sprinted away at their periphery, cracking branches.

  No one said anything.

  Collective shock was a weird thing, Bishop thought.

  The goal was to make it back to the main trailhead, but Bishop had a hunch Big J was now under surveillance. Had the guards recognized them, and what were their “orders?”

  Dr. Avery’s telemetry gear beeped like crazy. Up ahead, a huge animal burst through the vegetation.

  Bishop’s heart pounded so hard he thought he was going to faint.

  A grizzly bear stood not twenty feet from them in the lingering dusk. At first Bishop couldn’t make out the bear’s face in its entirety.

  A moment later, he realized the bear had a young pigra trapped in its jaws. The lone claws of the pigra scraped the air as the bear turned its head in an avoidance tactic. The pigra’s tag dripped with blood, but Bishop could still make out the BPM: 30.

  Shit, he thought.

  Bishop raised his bear spray, but the bear thundered off to the west, the young pigra squealing and spraying blood.

  “Jesus,” Angela said as she holstered her bear spray.

  “I think that’s the one that bit me,” Bishop said.

  “The grizzly has your back,” Colbrick said with a grin. “We need to head east, up into the alpine lands.”

  “Really?” Dr. Avery said. “You’re suggesting we head further into the wilderness?”

  Bishop stepped forward. “We don’t know if the guards ID’ed us,” he said. “Or what exactly their orders were.”

  “They might not have,” Dr. Avery said. “Orders could’ve been a general term.”

  Angela patted Yutu on the head. “Whatever the case, I think we’ve lost them,” she said.

  Bishop wondered about that. He also wondered why the wind had stopped, and everything had gotten so still. A faint chop-chop-chop came from the clouds to the south.

  A helicopter, Bishop thought.

  “Everyone seek cover,” he said. “Now.”

  “Bet it’s military,” Colbrick said. “Sounds like an Apache.”

  Angela, Bishop, and Yutu crawled under a tangled pile of dead branches, while Dr. Avery and Colbrick tried to crawl under the ferns. Bishop hoped the dual layer of tree canopy and the understory would help them.

  “We’re really in it now,” Angela said. “Pissing off everyone these days.”

  “We really are,” Bishop said.

  Completely out of sight, the helicopter emitted a steady chop-chop-chop as it hovered over the ancient red pines.

  And then, all at once, all noise ceased.

  Bishop unholstered his .357, and gripped it.

  “What the heck? Angela whispered.

  Numerous thoughts raced through Bishop’s mind like a twisted Ferris wheel, each memory chair as dislikable as the next. One thought kept rotating his way, right in front of him, clear and vibrant. He didn’t want to think it, see it, even acknowledge it. But he had to.

  “Flier,” he said to Angela.

  It crashed through the canopy, shooting broken branches and pine needles in all directions. Its beak closed so it could punch through branches, its wings tucked tight.

  “Oh my God,” Angela said.

  The flier hit the ground with its giant keratin talons, and unfolded its wings, casting the forest in darkness. It jabbed its beak into the deadfall, impaling the earth between Bishop and Angela. Yutu tore through the ferns at the flier, growling and snarling. The flier jabbed down again with its beak, just as a series of shotgun blasts rocked the forest.

  The flier pivoted, and swung a wing at Colbrick, ripping off half the branches of a red pine.

  Bishop stood and fired his .357 at the flier’s head, hitting an eye and spraying a fine arc of green mist into the air. The flier shrieked, and leapt up towards the canopy, its wings kicking up dirt and pine needles.

  Before the flier cleared the canopy, the sound of a helicopter’s blade-vortex interaction kicked in again.

  Except this time, it wasn’t the flier.

  A U.S. Apache hovered above the canopy and caught the flier off guard. The Apache’s M230 chain gun roared into action and ripped the flier apart, and what was left of sunlight poked through the bullet holes in the flier’s wings.

  The dead flier crashed down the base of a pine, cracking branches and who knows how many of its bones as it plummeted.

  “Hide,” Bishop said.

  The group returned to their previous positions, as the Apache hovered over the hole in the canopy created by the flier.

  A voice boomed over a megaphone.

  “You, down there. You’re in a restricted zone. Come out immediately.”

  A black bubbled camera rotated on the Apache’s underbelly, as the M230 followed.

  “Don’t move,” Bishop said.

  “Wasn’t planning to,” Angela said.

  Yutu sat tight to the ground, a paw over one eye.

  The megaphone boomed again: “You have five seconds to come out. Or you will be fired upon.”

  Bishop wanted badly to remain where he was, and for the Apache to fly away. But he knew they had thermal-sensing equipment. There was nowhere to hide.

  “Come on,”
Bishop said.

  The group emerged from the vegetation, lowered their weapons, and put their hands up.

  Colbrick spit. “Dumbasses,” he said up to the helicopter. “They have no idea what they’re doing.”

  The amplified voice boomed again: “Stay put, do not move. You’ll be detained by ground security within minutes.”

  “Great,” Bishop said. “I can’t wait.”

  “Looks like we’re about to get scalped,” Colbrick said.

  Angela groaned. “So bad,” she said to Colbrick’s ill-timed joke.

  As Angela elbowed Colbrick, another Apache approached. And then another.

  Except Bishop knew these weren’t new Apaches.

  At all.

  Two new fliers rocketed towards the real Apache, and the man who’d ordered them all to stay put yelled “holy shit” through the amplifier. To Bishop’s horror, the man never had time to disengage the megaphone, and the panic inside the cockpit was amplified across the Apex National Forest.

  “Holy shit, a big F escaped from C-8, on our six! On our six!”

  The pilot was able to rotate the Apache’s position and rip apart the flier. Its entrails slopped across the cockpit window and flung to the canopy. But the gunner and the pilot failed to spot the flier that had streaked in from the west, the way velociraptors attack.

  “Turn, man, turn,” the gunner yelled at the pilot. But it was far too late. The flier swung in under the blades, and hooked onto the tubular landing skid with its talons. Its powerful wings pounded the air as the flier twisted, turning the Apache sideways and towards the canopy.

  “It’s got us,” the pilot shouted through the amplifier. “A big F is latched on.”

  The Apache’s rotors whined and powered hard, but the flier had the element of surprise. By the time the gunner was able to bring the gun around, he was aiming at the sky, and eating pine needles.

  The group leapt for cover as the Apache slammed into a pair of old growth pines. Chunks of helicopter blades tomahawked through the forest and daggered in the soil next to Bishop. For a moment, the Apache rested upon the tree’s crown, and then physics took its toll, sending the Apache to the forest floor in a ball of fire and twisted, broken limbs.