In The Falling Light (10 page)

It was a half hour before she returned to
the command center, her uniform sloppy and unbuttoned, and now the
left side of her face was paralyzed with Bell’s Palsy, a classic
symptom of Lyme. She looked like a stroke victim. There was no one
here, the watch stations unmanned, and she looked towards the glass
wall of the conference room. Major Peck, wearing only his skivvies,
was standing at the table talking on the phone, rubbing briskly at
his upper lip. It was warm in here, and a glance at a monitor
showed Joanna that the complex’s air conditioning had been shut
down and the heaters turned up. A digital readout indicated a
general temperature of seventy-eight degrees. She returned to her
quarters, passing numerous closed doors, the thumping and growling
of rough sex coming from behind them.

Major Peck could barely stand as he listened
to the general on the other end of the phone. His heart was
thudding and his respiration was ragged. A pair of hairy growths
had erupted from his top lip – his knowledge of Project Blackleg’s
primary research subject informed him they were referred to as
palps – and it was difficult to speak. Plus they itched like
hell.

“Yes, general, that’s correct. Completely
unfit for command. Yes sir, a risk to project security.” A twitch
was developing in his right eye, and his body seemed to hurt
everywhere at once. “No sir. No, I won’t. Yes sir, right away.”

He looked up to see Joanna Bishop standing
in the doorway to the conference room, and his eyes widened at the
sight of her. It wasn’t the 9mm service pistol she held that froze
him in place.

“Who are you talking to…Spencer?” Joanna
wasn’t feeling like herself, pain rippling through her body and her
brain feeling like it was misfiring, clear thoughts replaced by
dark flashes that were more irresistible feelings and impulses than
anything else..

The major slurred when he spoke, still
holding the phone. “I’m supposed to…relieve you…of command.”

Joanna made a clicking sound deep in her
throat, then managed the word, “Traitor.” She shot Peck three times
in the face. Stumbling back into the command center, she dropped
the pistol, grunting as she started tearing off her uniform. It was
so damned tight! She tried to sit at one of the terminals but her
ass had grown too large for it, was still growing, and she kicked
the swivel chair aside with one of the thick, black legs which had
sprouted from her left hip. Her left hand was twisting and
expanding, becoming a claw, so she used her still-normal right hand
to call up the lab.

Although the video link connected, no one
appeared to take the call. In the background she could a constant
clicking that sounded like bacon frying. Something big and black
skittered past the lab camera.

Her rear and abdomen swelled, pushing chairs
aside, whitish-gray and glistening, and she raised her eyes to one
of the wall mounted screens. A news helicopter showed a black
blanket of giant ticks swarming up the Empire State Building,
trying to force their way through windows. Another screen displayed
a ground level video shot from a moving military vehicle, the
raucous bark of a machinegun close by, the image of a Manhattan
street choked with overturned vehicles and corpses. The shot panned
to show the marquis over Radio City Music Hall heavy with huge,
clinging black shapes.

None of it made any sense to her.

A male tick the size of a Hyundai scuttled
through the command center and disappeared through a pair of double
doors. Joanna caught the scent of fresh air from that direction.
Someone had opened an exterior door. She began moving in that
direction, her final clear thought telling her the exit stairs were
wide, and if she moved quickly she might get her swollen bulk up
and through it before she was too big.

She had to get outside. She needed to find a
place to lay her eggs.

It was four miles from Lee’s Country Store
to the cabin, two-lane blacktop twisting along the east side of
Whitaker Lake. Patricia’s headlights showed a rock face on the
left, a narrow strip of trees to the right and the moonlit surface
of the lake beyond. On the passenger seat sat three sacks of
groceries. Her trip to the store had taken longer than expected,
just enough supplies to tackle breakfast, and she was making it up
now, her Mountaineer racing along the deserted road.

Patricia’s window was down as she smoked,
which she wasn’t supposed to do with Gabby in the car, but as long
as she kept it out the window she figured it would be okay. In the
back her two-year-old sat buckled into her car seat, babbling and
singing little songs to a plastic elephant.

The deer trotted onto the road from the
trees ahead, stopped and stared at the headlights.

Patricia screamed, her cigarette falling
into her lap, and stomped the brakes, yanking to the right. Tires
smoked and the SUV shot off the road, headlights dancing off the
trunks of pines, bouncing and rocketing down a short embankment,
branches snapping at the sides.

She had quick images of wrapping around a
tree, Gabby’s car seat, Randy and the boys-

The Mountaineer plunged into Whitaker Lake,
a wave washing over the hood and windshield, then cold water
pouring through the open driver’s window.
Oh God
, she
thought, as the nose tipped sharply and started down, the lake
quickly filling the front seat.
Gabby
. She lunged between
the seats, but the belt snapped her back painfully. Patricia
fumbled for the buckle as the water rose to her chest, couldn’t
find it.

Gabby was crying. “Mama!”

“Mommy’s coming,” she moaned, tugging,
probing for the button. Her thumb depressed something and she was
free, hauling herself up into the back seat as the SUV went
vertical. She forced herself to think her way through the five
point harness securing her daughter, got it open, and Gabby dropped
into her arms with a splash. It was up to her chest now, and the
cold water made Gabby shriek. She yanked the door handle.

Nothing.

She tore at it, pulling hard, but it
wouldn’t open.

The child locks were on.

“No!” Patricia pushed Gabby up and into the
cargo area, then kicked and pulled herself up and in as well. A
moment later the lake followed, cascading over the leather seat
back. She tucked her screaming daughter under one arm and began
pushing at the rear hatch, one hand groping along the surface for a
release lever. She had never been back here, always opened the
hatch remotely with her key fob, didn’t even know if there was a
handle.

There wasn’t.

The lake rose to her chest again, and Gabby
was crying in one ear, thrashing and kicking at the water. Patricia
pounded a fist against the glass as the SUV sank. She could see the
shore in the moonlight, saw a campfire and a pair of boys standing
side by side at the water’s edge. They didn’t move.

“Help us,
pleeeease!”
She battered
the glass as the water rose to her chin.

The Mountaineer went under with a gurgle,
the red of its taillights shimmering briefly before being swallowed
by the cold dark.

Dale and Chance stood close together,
staring out at the calm surface. Their scoutmaster had just
finished telling a ghost story, and they’d come out here to look.
Five years ago, he’d said, a woman and her toddler, right here. “On
quiet nights like this one, you can still see her taillights
glowing at the bottom of the lake.”

Chance looked at the dark water and
shuddered. “Let’s go back to the fire.”

Dale nodded, and they headed back to join
their friends. He looked at the water again. He didn’t see any
taillights.

But for a moment he thought he’d heard
thumping.

It was a catastrophe being repeated up and
down the West Coast, and it was quickly growing out of control. The
destruction doubled every twenty-four hours, spreading outward from
numerous zero-points, and the loss of human life was staggering.
Only four weeks in and already Portland and San Diego had been
lost, with Los Angeles wavering on the brink along with other
cities.

Seattle was one of them.

Yet there remained lives to be saved, people
trapped inside the urban centers, desperately needing relief and
rescue. They needed heroes. They needed salvation from above.

“Tacoma, this is Bluetail. Drop was
on-target, preparing for next run.”

“Roger, Bluetail. Be advised, Rodeo King is
inbound to your location.”

Jake Fowler nodded and consulted the small
clipboard strapped to his right thigh, holding a map of
metropolitan and suburban Seattle, covered in pencil markings.
“Tacoma, suggest that Rodeo King make his run up I-5 into downtown,
heavy concentration. Tell him not to clip the Needle.”

A chuckle in his headset. “Will pass it on,
Bluetail.”

The weather report called for scattered
cloud cover and overnight temps dropping into the fifties as this
part of the Pacific Northwest eased deeper into fall. Favorable
flying weather, thought Jake, stretching the big aircraft north,
away from the suburbs. Minutes later he banked left in a wide arc,
cutting his speed and starting his descent. For a brief moment the
two-hundred-foot wingspan of the
Sonoma Mars
, call-sign
“Bluetail,” was silhouetted against a three-quarter moon. The cold,
lunar glow revealed her colors, a royal blue belly under white
fuselage, and a matching tail. It also gave a glimpse of her nose
art, a curvaceous, forties-era pin-up wearing blue, Daisy Duke
short-shorts, the source of her nickname. Miss Bluetail would have
made any WWII bomber vet grin with nostalgic appreciation.

Wearing a weathered leather jacket with U.S.
Dept. of Forestry patches on the shoulders and a Giants cap turned
backwards, Jake’s eyes flicked across the dials; altimeter,
airspeed, oil pressure, wind gauge, compass, back to altimeter… He
was dropping smooth and steady, coming up rapidly on 1,000 feet,
the deep hum of the engines filling the cockpit. Beyond the
windscreen, forested hills in the night could be seen far to his
right and left, and a flat, inky blackness waited ahead and below.
A rosary swung gently from the overhead dials, the crucifix
clattering against dog tags from a previous life hanging beside
it.

“Tacoma Base, this is Rodeo King, I’m on
station, commencing my run in zero-five minutes. Jake, you got me
out there?”

Jake smiled at his friend’s voice in his
headset. “Roger that, Rodeo King. Negative visual, but I’ve got you
on radar. Safe run, buddy. Don’t fly into anything.” Rodeo King was
the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 flown by Martin Hodges, an old friend
he hadn’t seen often, at least before this crisis. Although they
were both currently flying out of Tacoma, Martin was normally based
in Spokane, while Jake’s bird roosted in a slip at the old Alameda
Naval Air Station in San Francisco, the base long closed but
portions leased to the Forest Service.

He focused on his own work now as the
Bluetail slid down through five-hundred feet, level and slowing,
approaching the moonlit water of Puget Sound. He wasn’t crashing,
and he wasn’t landing either.

Aerial firefighting was normally work
carried out over wilderness areas, with the intention of stopping
the threat before it could reach populated areas. Things were
different now, and the targets
were
population centers,
specifically major cities, with over a thousand flying tankers,
water bombers, Catalinas and fire choppers running missions along
the West Coast. If this tactic worked the way its planners believed
(and Jake prayed it would), the heaviest concentrations of the
disaster would be snuffed out, and the remaining, smaller hot spots
quickly dispersed. Then the smoke jumpers – also with a new mission
and new tools – would move in and take the fight to the ground.

“Here we go,” he said aloud, for the benefit
of the man seated to his right, his co-pilot Aidan.
Co-pilot
, he thought, grinning. A sixty-year-old who
couldn’t fly an aircraft and had a powerful fear of flying, Aidan
looked uncomfortable in his green jumpsuit – a departure from his
usual uniform – and sat without touching the controls, hands
tightly clenched in his lap as he stared out the windscreen. This
was their third run of the night, and the older man hadn’t gotten
used to it yet. So long as the fuel lasted, and with Puget Sound so
convenient, they could make a run every fifteen minutes. Maybe by
the end of the night he’d have found his stomach. It didn’t matter
much to the pilot, as long as the man did his job.

They passed through three-hundred, then two,
then one. Jake hit a switch, and hydraulics opened the belly scoops
in the curved hull. The JRM Mars, a sixty-year-old design commonly
known as a flying boat (sometimes confused with the smaller
Catalina until one got a look at the impressive size difference),
roared towards the waters of the Sound at just under 100 knots. The
mission of the Forest Service’s Air Attack Squadron may have
radically changed in the past month, but this part remained the
same.

Martin Hodges’s voice announced in Jake’s
ears that Rodeo King had delivered its payload, twelve-thousand
gallons of water on target, and was RTB. Jake barely noticed, hands
gripping the yoke as he brought the Bluetail down to kiss the
water.

From a distance, the act appeared graceful,
the aircraft skimming the surface gently and leaving a feathering
white wake. The reality was more like riding a freight train over
speed bumps. The Bluetail smacked the water, thudding along in a
sudden, rumbling sawmill of noise as the airframe shook hard enough
to rattle teeth, Jake fighting to keep her level, to keep from
dipping a wing or dropping the nose, maintaining airspeed. The
slightest mistake would mean an instantaneous, explosive tumble of
metal and death, and he held his breath for an endless twenty-two
seconds, the time it took for the scoops to draw
seventy-two-hundred gallons of water into the tanks. A panel light
turned green and Jake’s breath exploded as he hauled back on the
yoke, the scoops closing automatically, his bird now thirty tons
heavier.