The Invasive 2: Remnants Page 8

  “It could be anything at this point,” Dr. Avery said.

  “Might even be Santa Claus,” Colbrick said.

  Yutu barked, and licked Colbrick on the face. “Thanks, I needed a bath,” Colbrick said. “How many yards out on the beepers?”

  “A hundred,” Dr. Avery said. “To the south and east, now.”

  Colbrick puffed on his cigar as Bishop emerged from the battered vehicle with Angela, Yutu, and Dr. Avery.

  “Sorry about your truck,” Bishop said.

  “It’s insured, slick,” Colbrick said. “Happened before.”

  With the rammer done for now, Bishop returned to the SUV, and retrieved a duffel bag containing daypacks and weapons, including the bear spray he really, really wished he’d been able to deploy. But activating bear spray inside the truck was idiotic, as was waving a .357 around in a cabin that felt like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

  Before Bishop could holster his .357, his phone rang.

  After a brief conversation with the mayor, Bishop faced the group. “They evacuated downtown,” he said, “which explains a lot.” Bishop pointed to the south. “The seals headed that way, the mayor and his people following. The evacuees are in the church basement.”

  Angela frowned. “Why? If a few seals or burrowers get in there, it’s a slaughter.”

  “Ayup,” Colbrick said. “Lower and confined is not a wise strategy.”

  Dr. Avery’s telemetry device beeped continuously.

  “Status?” Bishop asked.

  “90 yards, south and east. Slowly getting closer.”

  Bishop eyed the rooftop where the rotten leaf had been, and had an idea.

  “Good,” he said. “We’ll let them come to us.”

  Colbrick stared at Yutu. “We’re gonna need bait,” he said.

  “Oh hell no,” Angela said. “Yutu is our love, not bait.”

  “We’ll need something to draw them in,” Dr. Avery said. “Any other suggestions?”

  Elmore (100 BPM)

  Bishop, Angela, Dr. Avery, and Yutu watched from the top of Wickerson’s Antiques after they’d made sure the rotten leaf had abandoned the rooftops.

  Bishop’s hands rested on the cool, rough bricks as he peered over the edge. Down below, in the middle of Main Street, stood Colbrick. He waited patiently, smoking a cigar, his sawed-off resting over his shoulder.

  Colbrick looked up at them, one hand shading his eyes. “You sons of bitches,” he said.

  Dr. Avery checked his telemetry readout. “50 yards,” he said. “100 BPM. From the south and east. Should be seeing them any moment now.”

  Yutu growled.

  “Wait, wait,” Dr. Avery said as his machine beeped faster. “There are more,” he said. “Coming from the west and north now, too.”

  “Jesus,” Angela said. “Colbrick, hun, you gotta get out of there.”

  Bishop caught movement at the corner of Main and Ravine Street, beyond Jimmy’s Auto repairs, just over the hood of a Toyota Camry sitting in the lot. A rotten leaf, perhaps the one they’d seen earlier, perched on the hood and arched its back, which unfortunately pulsed with a deep, angry red.

  “Alarm colors,” Bishop muttered to Angela.

  A moment later, a dozen secapods emerged onto the intersection of Main and Ravine, their bulbous, single eyes rotating atop their flounder-like bodies. Colbrick tried to move north, but a group of adult pigras crept towards him. The pigras rib cages were emaciated, their fur falling off in clumps, leaving exposed patches of brown skin.

  From the west, a terrible sound arose. Something was digging its way up through Main Street as the pavement cracked like the top of a baking peanut butter cookie. After a few more cracks and pops, a creature from below showed itself.

  “Burrowers,” Angela said. “What the heck is going on?”

  Dr. Avery grimaced. “Dr. Werner is manipulating the tags with subjects in the lab. He thinks he’s isolated those test subjects completely, but he hasn’t.”

  “The vial,” Angela said.

  Yutu barked his approval.

  Down below, Colbrick pivoted to face each new threat, burrowers, secapods, and pigras.

  “Can I get the hell out of here now, slicks?” Colbrick asked.

  “Not yet,” Bishop said. “Dr. Avery is going to drop a vial. We need them to be close.”

  Colbrick gave a thumbs up, and aimed his sawed-off for three seconds at each invasive species, pivoting to the next, and the next yet again.

  “Lemme know whenever you’re ready,” Colbrick said. “No worries down here.”

  Angela grabbed Dr. Avery’s wrist. “What about now?” she asked.

  Dr. Avery stood and fished the vial out of his pocket. Then he reached back and hurled the vial down onto Main Street. The vial shattered, and glistening particles sprayed out in an arc ten feet from Colbrick’s feet.

  The creeping secapods were closest, and breathed in the small cloud of bacteria.

  Bishop waved Colbrick inside the building, and soon he was on the rooftop. Below them on Main Street, the secapods coughed and sputtered. The pigras began scratching their mangy fur, and vomiting blood. The burrowers, watching from the hole they’d created, retreated back into the underground.

  “Glad you made it,” Bishop said as he slapped Colbrick on the back.

  Below, the secapods had lost control of their bodily functions, the way bald eagles act when poisoned by lead bullet fragments. The pigras knocked into each other, and swiped their single claws into the secapods in a final act of rage. The secapods fought back, viciously tearing into whatever pigra had the misfortune of being too weak to stand.

  A minute later, the funeral march was over. The invasives lay dead, or sputtering their last breaths.

  Dr. Avery frowned. “The bacteria worked too quickly,” he said. “We need infected to return to the woods, where the other stasis remnants are.”

  Colbrick spit. “Well, Doc, that’s on your boss now, isn’t it?”

  The faint dim of far away truck engines came from the south, and soon, the police trucks roared into the intersection of Main and Ravine.

  Bishop waved the police vehicles down, and soon, everyone was huddled on Main Street as Dr. Avery took blood and hair samples from the dead Invasive.

  “Hell of a show,” the mayor said. “Took care of a bunch of the seals. They’d come right downtown. There’s been nothing like this since the last time.”

  The mayor made eye contact with Dr. Avery, and tipped his hat as a dozen law enforcement officers stood behind him. “Doctor,” the mayor said. “Mind telling us what’s going on?”

  Dr. Avery collected the last hair sample, and stashed it in his small bio-kit. “Absolutely. The government has set up Quadrants in the Apex National Forest. Initially, the reason they gave you was for security and rehabilitation. That’s partly true. We know for a fact Quadrant 6 is being used as a containment center, but also an experiment and research center.”

  The mayor nodded. “I’ve been up there, showed around the place. Seemed like good people trying to do the right thing. I mean, Doctor, how would you handle cleaning up an alien invasion?”

  “I admit, they’re in a difficult position,” Dr. Avery said. “We all are. But what’s happening is Dr. Werner and his staff are manipulating the tags, and thus the entire communication system between these invasive here on Earth, and perhaps their master species.”

  Bishop stepped in. “In short, and invasives remaining in the woods were dying, but the agitation to their communication system is causing them to awaken, and re-convene.”

  “Yep,” Colbrick said,” And that’s why, Mayor, you had a fun time in Party Town today.”

  The mayor tipped his hat again, and stared back down the highway, as if something was coming for him from far, far away.

  “Suppose you all are right,” the mayor said. “But what can we do about it?”

  “Well,” Colbrick said, “you’re kind of looking at it, mayor man.”

  “I don’t follow,�
�� the mayor said.

  Dr. Avery gestured to the dead secapods and pigras. “These invasives were in a quasi-stasis. The experiments riled them up, effectively sending them down into the valley. We terminated them with a new bacteria designed specifically for their biological composition.”

  The mayor frowned. “Everyone step back,” he said.

  The officers behind the mayor retreated to their cars, as the mayor reached into his pocket and placed a handkerchief over his mouth.

  Bishop, Yutu, Angela, and Colbrick did not budge.

  Dr. Avery shook his head. “I can assure you, everyone is safe,” he said. “Don’t panic.”

  “No one is panicking,” the mayor said. “But I also don’t appreciate you running unproven experiments in the middle of my town.”

  Bishop sighed. The mayor was absolutely correct.

  “We’re truly sorry,” Bishop said, walking over to the mayor to shake his hand. “Won’t happen again.”

  The mayor returned Bishop’s handshake, then scrubbed his own hand with the handkerchief. “I trust what I can see,” the mayor said. “I trust you, and your people. Not some unproven bacteria.”

  “Understood,” Bishop said.

  The mayor looked around, and tipped his hat. “You see any other invasives?”

  “Just a rotten leaf,” Bishop said. “It took off somewhere.”

  The mayor headed back to his police truck. “We’ve got to get folks out of the basement, get these flipped vehicles from the road, and get Main Street back to proper. Can you help us before you leave?”

  “Of course,” Bishop said. “But we’re going to need a ride home.”

  Elmore (102 BPM)

  After getting the streets cleared and the downtown district restored, the residents who’d been holed up came out to meet Bishop and his group. They shook their hands, one by one, thanking them for what they did for the valley.

  Bishop had heard it before.

  Thank you so much, our retirement home was saved.

  Thank you, oh my thank you, for saving the valley. We will always remember what you did, etc., etc.

  He wasn’t going to lie to himself. The pats on the back made him feel good.

  Really good.

  When the residents returned to their everyday tasks, Dr. Avery made a call. After the phone call, he huddled with Bishop in the auto lot at the corner of Main and Ravine.

  “We’ve got a shipment coming from Natural Corrections,” Dr. Avery said.

  “Okay,” Bishop said. “We’ll check the post office in a couple days.”

  Dr. Avery chuckled. “Ah, no. I need the coordinates to your ranch.”

  “What?” Bishop asked.

  Dr. Avery grinned. “The GPS coordinates for Big J.”

  “Wow,” Bishop said, wondering if he’d stepped into some action thriller movie. “You serious?”

  “Serious as a sumo wrestler,” Dr. Avery said. “They’re adjusting the bacterium right now, delaying its effects. They’ll have the new vials prepared by midnight tonight, then leave Chicago immediately, and para-drop the vials, and anything else we need over Big J.”

  “Damn,” Bishop said. “Just who are these people?”

  “Like I said before, they’re the best.”

  Big J Ranch (104 BPM)

  Colbrick slept in the guest room, while Angela slept on the living room couch, with Yutu curled at her feet.

  Bishop and Dr. Avery sat in the yard, next to the curling flames of a wood fire. Bishop warmed his hands near the flames, warding off the cool mountain air. The sweet scent of river blossom drifted to him in the night, a scent he’d come to love upon his earlier visits to Montana.

  Bishop checked his smart phone: 3:30 a.m.

  Dr. Avery’s phone rang, offsetting the crackling flames and quiet mountain night. “Yes,” he said, “we’re outside on the main property.”

  A moment later, jet engines roared overhead, and an object thousands of feet above them blinked in the inky night sky.

  “That’s the parachute marker,” Dr. Avery said. “Remind you of anything?”

  Bishop shuddered. The last time he’d seen blinking lights in the sky above Big J, it had been a squadron of fliers that had blitzkrieged the lodge. They’d barely survived perhaps the biggest battle.

  In this case, a red tag pulsed 10 BPM, and gave off a robotic BEEP each time. Not quite the same thing as an invasive. But still…

  Slowly, the parachute descended, twisting a bit, then correcting course somehow. Bishop wondered how Natural Corrections had managed to do any of this. In his life, he’d seen a lot of strange, from Chicago to Montana and all points in-between. But this was something else—straight out of a spy novel.

  The parachute and its cargo landed near the long-empty paddocks, then fell into itself. Bishop and Dr. Avery hurried over to the package and flicked on their headlamps. The flashing red tag ceased beeping as Dr. Avery used a pocket knife to cut the parachute strings free.

  The package was nothing more than a metal box the size of a medium suitcase. But oddly, the middle of the case contained what appeared to be an inverted thumbprint. Dr. Avery pressed his thumb onto it, and the package hinges clicked open.

  “Wow,” Bishop said.

  Several neatly folded military uniforms were packed inside the metal case. Another smaller, metal box separated the uniforms and shoes. Dr. Avery grabbed it, and placed his thumb on another print receptor. The box clicked open, revealing four vials of fresh bacterium.

  Dr. Avery held them up to Bishop. “Cutting edge,” he said. “And four bullets instead of one.”

  Bishop wondered what he’d gotten himself into, and what he was about to face.

  They folded up the parachute, and carried everything back to the main Big J garage, where it could be hidden from prying eyes.

  Off in the distance, where treeline met Big J Meadow, Bishop caught a glimmer of light. A second later, the light disappeared.

  Bishop reached for his .357.

  And what? he thought. Fire on the military? Because more than anything, that’s who, and what was scoping out Big J Ranch. The flash of light had been equipment, no doubt. Electronic eyes.

  “I saw it too,” Dr. Avery said. “Probably James’s men. There’s not much we can do at this point.”

  Bishop nudged Dr. Avery back to the main lodge. “Let’s get inside,” he said. And at that moment, Bishop had the uncanny sensation at least one sniper rifle was aimed at his head.

  “Come on,” Bishop said. “It’s not safe out here.”

  Big J Ranch (105 BPM)

  Once Dr. Avery was settled, Bishop woke Angela, and in the process, Yutu rose and licked his face. “Stop it, boy,” Bishop said.

  “He loves you so much,” Angela said as she rubbed her eyes and stretched.

  “Look,” Bishop said. “We’re under surveillance by the military, most likely James’s people.”

  “Figured as much,” Angela said. “They weren’t going to let us just walk away. They’ll try and nail us for something else.”

  Bishop nodded. “I considered calling the mayor.”

  “They don’t have the night equipment to compete,” she said. “Even in daylight, they are undermanned and underpowered.”

  “Right,” Bishop said. “But I wonder what happens when we try to leave. Are we going to be followed?”

  Yutu gazed up at Bishop, and he tossed the pooch a crunchy treat from a jar on the side table. “And I had the weird feeling one of them was aiming a weapon at my head,” Bishop said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Angela said as she headed into the kitchen. “Can I get you tea or something?”

  “Yes, thanks,” Bishop said.

  Angela poured him a glass of iced tea, then poured one for herself. “We’re getting into some real shit, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. Dr. Avery’s people dropped off their shipment, smack in the middle of Big J Meadow,” he said. “It was ridiculous.”

  Angela smirked. “Who are
these people?”

  “I Googled them earlier,” Bishop said, “but couldn’t find a thing.”

  “It would be nice to know precisely who our ally is,” Angela said.

  “They sent military uniforms that match Quadrant 6 security,” he said. “Right down to the boots, and our sizes.”

  “Ha,” Angela said. “And the bacterium?”

  “Four new vials.”

  Angela frowned. “The security at Quadrant 6 was nuts. It’s going to be hard.”

  “Right,” Bishop said. “So I figure we have two or three cracks at infecting the invasive in other areas. We’ll save that for morning.”

  “Agreed,” Angela said. She emptied the rest of her tea into the sink, and gave Yutu a pat on the head. “Come on, boy, it’s time to go to bed.”

  Bishop wasn’t sure who she was talking to.

  Big J Ranch (106 BPM)

  Dr. Avery woke Bishop in the morning. Bishop wasn’t used to being woken by a man, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled.

  Dr. Avery shoved his tablet device in front of his face as Bishop dressed. “My employer sent this in the a.m.,” he said. “They’ve been taking photos of the Apex National Forest.”

  Bishop held the tablet and cleared the sleep gunk from his eyes. For a moment, he was going to say he was getting too old for this shit, but the truth was, he wasn’t old at all. He was tougher than that, tougher than this. History was proof.

  On the screen, someone had drawn red circles around photos of military installations in various locations across the forest.

  Dr. Avery had a manic spark in his eye. “These are other containment centers,” he said.

  “Would they be too isolated from the other invasives and centers?” Bishop asked Dr. Avery.

  “Potentially,” Dr. Avery said. “But they might be easier than Quadrant 6.” Dr. Avery took the tablet from Bishop, and reached into his pocket. Yutu came into the room, and pawed at Bishop’s leg.

  “What is it, boy?” Bishop asked.

  Yutu turned and left the room, then looked behind him, tongue lolling. “You’re such a weirdo,” Bishop said.

  They followed Yutu into the yard. At the far end of the meadow, Colbrick and Angela were fussing with something on the ground.