Extinction, page 31
The lock sprang open. She slipped it off the hasp and yanked open the door.
“Out!”
Karman crowded out the door first, with Romanski and Reno following.
The mob was practically on top of them, in a chorus of crazy yelps and whistles. Cash exited and held the door open for Colcord, then followed. She slammed the door, seized the padlock, and slipped it through the hasp, snapping it shut as the surging mob hit the bars. A moment later a spear came flashing out, just missing her neck, while arms and hands reached wildly through the bars, slashing at her with knives as she skipped back out of reach. She pivoted and ran as more spears came flying out.
“Go, go, go!” she cried to the others ahead of her, and they went scrambling down the scree slope below the mine entrance, loose rocks sliding and tumbling in the dark. Behind, she could hear their pursuers, now bottled up behind the locked door, yelling and banging.
“You can run,” a voice whistled out, “but you can’t hide!”
“We’ll hunt you down like dogs!”
The voices and noise became fainter as the group descended. They finally reached the meadow that also doubled as a landing zone. But now their flashlights illuminated a grim sight: the burnt hulk of the CBI’s A-Star helicopter, lying on its side, flames and smoke still licking up from it. And lying around it, half-hidden in the long grass, lay the dead bodies of three people. She recognized the two guards, Hadid and Watkins, the other body evidently being the pilot.
“Look down the valley,” said Colcord, pointing.
Cash lifted her eyes from the bloody scene. Way down in the valley, she could see the bright glow of a fire—actually two fires. Huge fires. The lodge and the movie town.
“They’re burning the place down,” Colcord said.
“Yeah,” Cash said. The sight had really taken away her breath. They had no radios, cell phones, or weapons—they were in trouble. “We’d better keep going. Those bars aren’t going to hold them forever. I saw one guy back in there with a rifle.”
Colcord jerked his chin toward Karman, the scientist, who was standing to one side, bent over, his white hair dangling, gasping for breath. “What’re we going to do with him?”
She said, “He might … be helpful.”
“So what now?” Reno asked. “We can’t go down. I’m sure they blew the Mammoth Gates along with everything else. We’re trapped like rats.”
There was a silence.
“Up,” said Cash. “We go up and over the pass.”
69
The van careened toward the sprinting figures, Doyle fanatically gripping the steering wheel, determined to run down at least one of the bastards. He expected them to split and dive off to either side—in which case he was ready to swerve and hit one at least—but they didn’t: they came straight on.
“Die, motherfuckers!” he screamed as the van closed in, the two men running side by side at him down the center of the road. He braced himself for the impact—and then nothing. He was past them. No blow or crash—they seemed to have dodged away at the last minute. But where?
He looked in the rearview mirror and was horrified to see one of the masks leering back at him from only a few feet away—the brute was clinging to the side of the van. And from the opposite mirror he could see the other bastard. They’d somehow clutched onto the van as it passed. How had they done it? It was the kind of thing only a highly trained stuntperson could do.
“They’re on the van!” Ballou screamed. “Do something!”
Doyle swerved the van, weaved it back and forth, trying to shake them off, but the two figures clung like limpets. The van had a railing on top for property stowage, and they were holding onto that while making their way along the running boards, hand over hand toward the front. The one on his side reached down and grabbed the door handle—locked. He turned and with his arm cocked slammed his forearm into the driver’s-side window, the muffled thump turning it into a spiderweb of cracks.
Doyle would scrape them off. His headlights illuminated the road ahead, lined with bushes and little trees. He swerved to the left side of the road and ran into the vegetation, the shrubbery slapping and scraping the sides as he floored the accelerator, the wheels spinning and the van lurching and fishtailing. Then he jerked the wheel to the right and brought the van back to the road.
The son of a bitch was still there. The brush had ripped off his mask and some of his camouflage covering, and what Doyle saw frightened him more than anything—a pale, bloody face of freakish ugliness, with massive brow ridges and a giant grimacing mouth full of huge flat teeth, the man’s long, blond hair in braids whipping about in the wind like some crazy Viking’s.
“What the fuck?” he screamed as the figure slammed his forearm again into the window, knocking it partway in, the glass held together only by the layer of sealant. Then the crazy pulled and scratched away the gummy glass fragments and reached in and down to unlock the door.
“Fucker!” Doyle, keeping his right hand on the steering wheel, grabbed the door handle with his left and jerked the door open, slamming it into the man and partly knocking him off, the son of a bitch hanging onto the railing at the top of the van with his legs swinging free.
He shut and opened the door, again and again, battering the man’s body as he clung to the roof, but he just wouldn’t let go.
“No! No!” Ballou screamed on the other side, where something was happening, but Doyle was too busy trying to knock the man off on his side and pay attention to the road to see. The van swerved and fishtailed, almost going off the road as Doyle jerked the wheel back and forth.
“Fucker!” Doyle screamed again, shutting the door and pounding down the lock. He would do another off-road detour, scrape the man off. But now the bastard, still gripping the railing, reached inside again and managed to grasp the door handle, and yanked the door open, trying to climb in.
One hand still gripping the wheel, Doyle tried to grapple with the man, swatting at him several times and trying to shove him back out with his shoulder, the van careening along, but he was like a damn octopus, his hands everywhere grasping and pulling himself in, and Doyle couldn’t reach the handle of the open door to shut it.
While he was struggling, he heard a scream come from Ballou and felt a spray of hot blood on the side of his face. Ballou’s scream abruptly cut off.
He swerved again and stomped on the accelerator, driving off the road and straight into a brush thicket. The van plowed into the vegetation, crashing and bucking through it before striking a tree stout enough that it threw the van sideways, and it rolled up and over. Simultaneously, there was an explosion, and Doyle felt himself punched back, momentarily stunned as the van came to a rest. For a moment, he was in a panic, clawing at the thing in his face, when he realized it was the airbag having gone off. He gasped for breath, trying to recover his sanity. Everything hurt, but as he moved, nothing felt like it was broken—and the airbag had finally knocked off the bastard who had been trying to climb into his side of the vehicle. He felt something dripping on him and looked up, and nestled amid a deflated airbag in the passenger seat now above him—the vehicle lying on its side—he saw a horrible sight: Ballou, his throat cut. Behind, he could hear scrabbling in the brush and a grunting sound.
Get up and out and run.
He reached up and, grasping first the seat rest, the deflated airbag, and then the door handle, he managed to climb up past Ballou’s body and crawl out the broken passenger-side window, hoisting himself up onto the side of the overturned van. Kneeling, he saw that one of the brutes was twenty feet behind the van, impaled on a broken tree trunk. The other—where was the other? Doyle looked around wildly. Was he gone? Was he the one grunting earlier? The forest was quiet.
Just get the hell out.
He jumped down from the side of the van and thrashed his way through the vegetation, heading away from the road and into the densest part of the forest. It was dark, he couldn’t see, he had no idea where he was going, everything hurt like hell, and he was being scratched to pieces—but he was so focused, so pumped up with adrenaline, that he felt nothing, only the drive to run, to escape, to get away from those murdering freaks.
70
McFaul hid in the grove of aspen trees, his heart pounding so hard he felt sure they could hear it. After Gunnerson’s threatening demand for the gun, he tightened his fist around the handle and moved it away from Gunnerson’s reach. “Stay away from me.”
He wanted to get away from this man, but he didn’t dare move or make a sound. His hand gripping the weapon, McFaul looked up into the crowns of the trees, painted in orange and red light from the burning lodge. The smell of earth and leaves was stifling, and every time a breeze sifted through the treetops, more leaves came fluttering down, settling around him with little rustling sounds. He could hear Gunnerson breathing heavily near him.
The man did not renew his absurd request. Maybe he’d given up on the idea.
McFaul tried to slow his pounding heart. He thought of his office back at the CBI, and he thought of his home in Lakeview, where the lawn needed cutting and the hedge trimming. He thought of his wife and children back there. What were they thinking? Did they know about what was going on up at Erebus? They must have heard something; the news would be all over. It would be huge, especially since the national press was already in here and broadcasting at the time of the explosion. They had satellite uplinks despite the power failure—they often carried their own generators with them.
Oh yes, the world certainly knew what was happening. So where were the rescuers? Where were the SWAT teams, the National Guard rapid response teams, the helicopters flying in with soldiers? Why hadn’t they come yet? It had been at least twenty minutes since the explosion—but it seemed like an eternity. But McFaul knew why they weren’t here; he knew, from his many years in law enforcement, that the bigger the crisis, the longer it took to mobilize. Certainly, the crazies had blown up or blocked the Mammoth Gates, so the only way in would be by chopper. Right now, there would be SWAT teams gearing up, National Guard troops being called up and assembling, helicopters warming up, and a lot more happening besides. Something this big required a massive response, and a massive response always meant more coordination among branches of law enforcement and a longer prep time. Which meant it could be ten, twenty, or thirty more minutes before the helicopters arrived.
A lot could happen in that time.
Please, God, don’t let them come in here.
From his position lying on the ground, he couldn’t see what was going on in the field—the killing field—except what he could glean from the commotion coming from that direction—screams, desperate pleading, horrible sounds. The killers were at work, hunting people down. They were methodical. And no one seemed to be around to fight back. Where were the Erebus security guards? They had been there before, but then they suddenly seemed to vanish. Had they run? What about Cash and Romanski?
His mind was churning like a whirlpool. He had to stop thinking and calm himself down. The blood was pounding in his ears. Was he having a stroke? McFaul felt the steel of his 9 mm under his sweating hand. He would take one or more of the bastards with him if they came in there. But this thought scared him. He didn’t want them to come in there. He didn’t want to die a hero with a memorial wall of blue and a band and a flag-draped coffin. He just wanted to live to see his wife and kids. Tomorrow. That’s all.
Please, God, keep them out of here.
He heard more horrible sounds from the killing field and wished he could stopper his ears, but he didn’t dare move even to do that. So far, the killers hadn’t entered the grove, at least from what he could hear. There had been a lot of people in the field—that’s where most of those fleeing the fire had gone, collapsing on the grass, waiting to be rescued. No one had come into the grove, as far as he was aware, except Gunnerson. They were the only two.
All he had to do was survive the next ten, twenty minutes, and then the helicopters would arrive. They’d come down in that very field. That was the obvious landing zone.
Please, God, don’t let them come.
He heard Gunnerson’s gravelly breathing next to him. What a coward, McFaul thought, trying to get this gun. The rich bastard thought whatever he wanted should just be his. Staring upward, beyond the painted treetops, the sky glowed a dirty red against the huge column of fire and smoke—but beyond that, he could see a single star. He prayed to the star, he talked to the star in his mind, he beseeched the star: Please don’t let them come in here. They wouldn’t come into the grove. There was no reason to think anyone was in here. It was crisscrossed with fallen timber. Nobody else had taken refuge. The killers would stay in the field. They wouldn’t search the surrounding woods and trees.
He heard a sudden grunt next to him, and all of a sudden, Gunnerson was on top of him, wheezing. Before McFaul could react, the man had seized the arm that held the weapon and was trying to wrench the gun away. The two struggled for it, thrashing around in the leaves. McFaul tried to heave the man off him, who was as heavy as a boulder. The man shook his arm, grunting like a pig, trying to pry the gun loose, making a lot of noise. He twisted hard back and forth and, with a great heave, managed to throw Gunnerson partly off. With his other arm, suddenly freed, he punched the man in the side of the head and punched again, hard, and finally got Gunnerson fully off him; McFaul yanked his gun arm free and rammed the muzzle into the man’s gut and pulled the trigger.
A loud explosion took place, spraying his face with blood, blinding him. Gunnerson grunted once and lay still as McFaul frantically wiped the blood out of his eyes. Crouching, trying to control his breathing sounds, he waited and watched, trying to locate the two figures out in the meadow. There they were, on the far side—maybe they hadn’t heard the gunshot. But no, now they were turning and coming toward the aspen grove, cautiously, one careful step at a time, walking as softly and deliberately as cats.
71
Standing in the meadow, Cash looked up at the thirteen-thousand-foot ridgeline.
“There’s a way up,” said Colcord. “Diagonally, through the second scree slope and between those outcrops. If we can get to the ridgeline, we can follow it northward to Espada Pass—and then over into the Flat Tops Wilderness.”
In the dim moonlight, Cash could make out the line. It was steep but not technical. “I see it. Let’s go. You lead.”
They started up the slope, moving fast and silently, flashlights off. In twenty minutes, they had cleared the last patch of stunted trees and come out above the tree line. Above them rose barren scree slopes and couloirs to the ridge, the last part in snow. That would be a bitch to climb, Cash thought, but the snow probably wouldn’t be very deep, being the first of the season. It would be cold—it was already cold—and they’d have to keep moving. Thankfully, they had all worn good hiking boots into the mine—all except Karman, and she didn’t really give a damn about him. Once they were on the ridge, they would need to get over and down into the Flat Tops as quickly as possible. From there, Colcord said—who had backpacked in the Flat Tops in his younger days—it would be a long hike out to the nearest road—twenty miles.
She glanced down to see if they were being followed, but there was no sign of it.
The slope they were ascending consisted mostly of rocks and gravel—nothing lived up there, not even plants. She could feel the altitude acutely, breathing hard in the thin air, her breath condensing with every exhale. The air was cold and getting colder. As they climbed, Cash could see, far down the valley, the orange glow of the fires. Unbelievable. It was like a war. It was a war.
Cash turned to Karman. “Why bring back Neanderthals? What was the reason?”
Karman, breathing hard as they climbed, did not respond, his long shock of gray hair hanging down over a smooth forehead. He was wearing an elegant Italian suit, silk tie pulled down, collar unbuttoned, a jacket zipped tightly over that. He was going to be cold.
“Maybe we should have left you behind,” said Colcord, “to be torn apart by those monsters you created.”
“They’re not monsters,” said Karman.
“Oh yeah?” said Romanski. “They are monsters, and you’re their Frankenstein.”
Karman said, “You are an ignorant fool.” His blue eyes glittered like sapphires in the moonlight.
“But … why?” Cash asked again.
“We’re transforming the human race. No longer does chance control our evolution; we control it.”
“But how,” asked Cash, “is de-extincting Neanderthals going to do that?”
Silence from Karman.
“You piece of shit,” said Romanski. “We saved your life. Answer her question.”
Cash gave a sign to Romanski to cool it and looked back at Karman, toiling up the slope. This man was remarkably fit for his age, having little trouble hiking up a steep ridge at eleven thousand feet. He knew what they were up against far better than they did, and she needed him to provide that knowledge to them. She needed to get him talking.
“I was taught Neanderthals were dumb, ugly brutes,” said Cash.
“They are not,” Karman said. “Neanderthals are grossly misunderstood. They were not the primitive hominin of popular culture, communicating by grunts and living in caves.”
“Those first killings—they were escaped Neanderthals, weren’t they? They’re murderous goons, it seems to me.”
“They are …” He hesitated. “Confused. Some are early mistakes, aberrations. They fell under the sway of a charismatic leader.”
“I don’t get it,” Colcord said. “What does resurrecting Neanderthals have to do with improving the human race?”
“Neanders are stronger, faster, and more robust than Homo sapiens,” said Karman, his voice rising. “They have human vocal cords—they had the gift of speech. Just like Sapiens, they had language, religion, art, and music. What’s more, their brains were bigger than ours. This has been known for over a hundred years—the average cranial capacity of a Neander is seventy cubic centimeters larger than Sapiens’.”
