Incubation (The Incubation Trilogy Book 1) (13 page)

“I am so done with this swamp.” I dribble a little water into my hands and rub them, trying to get rid of the crone’s dried blood. At least the snakes are gone. Hopefully, the Psyche is well and truly out of my system. I’ve heard it can cause hallucinations months or even years after inhalation.

“What was it like?” Wyck asks.

“Horrible. I can’t believe people give ration credits to experience that.”

Halla fumbles awkwardly with her water bladder and the rising moon shows me that she’s still clutching the gory knife. Horrified, I gently pry it from her hand. Without saying anything, she sucks greedily from the water bladder.

“We should keep going,” Wyck says. “We don’t know how badly hurt that guy is.”

“Halla, are you able to keep on?” I ask.

In answer, she steps forward and strides into the open. Wyck and I follow.

The moon is full and the walking is easy, at least compared to the swamp. The moonlight gilds the occasional tree or rock and makes deep hollows of slight depressions in the landscape. The quality of sound is different in the open. In the Okefenokee, the insect chirrings and flappings and whinings were practically deafening, held in, perhaps, by the moisture and the denser vegetation. Out here, it’s so quiet it’s echo-y. I feel like a whisper would carry for miles, all the way to the stars blinking so high above. We walk until almost midnight and then, weary and hungry, stop for food and water.

“How’d they catch you, Halla?” Wyck asks, scooping up the nutrient-dense mush from one of the IPF food pods.

I’ve been carefully not intruding on Halla’s silence, giving her some space, and I frown at Wyck. He doesn’t notice because he’s looking at Halla.

She starts to say something, but her voice doesn’t work. She clears her throat. Her drawl is more noticeable than usual when she speaks. “When I first took off on the scooter, I was panicked. I think I skimmed around in circles before I finally thought to check my compass. Once I figured out which way to go, I didn’t have any trouble at all, other than worrying about you. I got almost to the rendezvous point and stopped to rest. I was so worried about you, wondering if you’d manage to get away from the soldiers, hoping you weren’t hurt, that I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. That man snuck up behind me and picked me up, like I was a doll. I never even heard him coming. He carried me to their camp and handed me over to his mother like . . . like I was a special kind of mushroom, or tasty snake he’d found in the swamp.

“She knew right away that I was pregnant, and she was excited about it. She kept telling him how much money they could make selling me to Bulrush.”

“Who’s he?” I ask.

Halla shrugs. “No idea.”

“Did they hurt you?” Wyck again, with the blunt questions.

“No. She even knew how to stop my bleeding. She said it happens that way sometimes, that pregnant women ‘spot’ a little, and that it was nothing to worry about. She told Armyn that because he didn’t think it was worth feeding me. And then you guys came.” She offers a trembling smile.

I suspect there was more that happened between her arrival at the camp and our appearance, but I don’t call her on it. I lean over and hug her hard.

She pulls away after only a moment. “What happened with the soldiers?” she asks, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her chin on them.

Wyck and I are quiet for a moment. I think we’re trying to figure out how much of the truth to tell her.

“The scooters had transponders. That’s how they found us,” Wyck says. He pauses. “I shot one. He fell in the quicksand and disappeared. He was going to shoot Everly.”

“She was going to take my baby.”

I feel something happening between Wyck and Halla, a bond forging. They understand something about each other that I’m not privy to; at least, that’s the way it seems to me. I’m the odd man out. The realization hurts me and knocks me a little off-kilter. Before, I was kind of our trio’s common denominator; Halla and I were best friends, and Wyck was more my friend than Halla’s. Now, the dynamic has changed. No one has said anything, but I know it. I itch at a mosquito bite and break into the silence to tell about ambushing the second IPFer.

I finish by enumerating the supplies we got from the six-seater ACV. “We’re good for several days, even without your pack,” I tell Halla. “Then, well . . .” The barren terrain doesn’t hold out much hope for foraging success

“We should travel at night,” Wyck says, “and hole up during the day. We’re too easy to spot in all this”—he gestures widely—“emptiness.”

Halla and I murmur agreement. Halla stands. “We should go.”

Wyck scrambles up and joins her. I seal my backpack and follow, trailing them by two steps.

Chapter Fifteen

For almost a week, we travel by night and sleep by day, two of us in the camouflaged IPF shelter that alters color to blend with the environment, and one standing watch. We’re all starting to smell a bit ripe, and it’s most noticeable in the close space of the shelter. Wyck and I kiss again one night while Halla’s standing watch, and his unshaven whiskers scruff my face. The feel of his tongue against mine makes my body pulse with warmth but Halla’s there and we’re tired, so Wyck draws away after fifteen heated minutes and we fall asleep holding hands. We see a small band of travelers once, on the horizon, what looks like parents with two small children, but they scurry away when they spot us. It’s weird to think of anyone being afraid of us. We have to use the beamers to scare away a man who approaches our campsite near dusk one day; Halla wants to offer him food, but Wyck and I don’t like the look of him. The charge is getting low; we won’t be able to count on the weapons much longer. We come across a creek on the second night and are able to top up our water bladders, adding hydropure pills to be safe. We bathe in the running water, relishing the opportunity to wash off the blood that lingers under our fingernails, in skin creases, and in Halla’s case, stiffens the front of her tunic. In the dark, we scrub ourselves mere feet apart in the creek, afraid to separate. We continue on clean, not even minding the way our wet clothes chafe our thighs and underarms.

When we come across towns, we give them a wide berth even though, for the most part, they seem deserted. We catch a whiff of smoke one night and I think I hear voices. We hear an ACV not too far away another day. The countryside may seem lifeless, but there are people and animals out here, all of them as wary as we are, I think. I wonder about the people. Are they outlaws who committed some crime? Unlicensed parents who refused to let a Kube raise their children? Are they living apart because they’re scared of the flu returning? Before I left the Kube, I lumped all the non-city dwellers into the “outlaw” category; now I see that people have lots of reasons for striking out on their own. Every now and then I get the feeling that we’re being watched, but if so, it’s probably only because everyone is wary.

On the sixth night, the terrain changes. It’s hillier now, and there are more trees, most of them covered with a canopy of kudzu. We haven’t crossed even a small road in hours, and I get the feeling that we’re in a spot that would have been the middle of nowhere, even before the flu. Despite that, I feel uneasy and keep looking over my shoulder. With dawn approaching, we’re looking for a place to sleep when Wyck stumbles.

“Ow.” He bends to loosen the teeth of the concertina wire wrapping his ankle. He looks up. “Wow, what is this place?”

Wyck wears the NVGs most of the time, but I motion for them now. Spools of concertina wire trail from listing metal poles. There’s an inner and an outer fence, both sagging, with two watchtowers on the north and south sides. What looks like a short runway stretches away from us on the far side of the compound, whatever it is. There are no structures except the towers. I suspect that before the locusts this facility would have been almost invisible, surrounded by forest and far from any form of civilization.

“Not a clue,” I say, handing the NVGs to Halla.

“There’s a sign,” she says, pointing to a metal rectangle secured to the fence’s metal links.

I put my face close to it, able to make it out as the first hint of light streaks the horizon. There are no words, just a stick figure getting zapped by electricity which tells me the fence used to be electrified. “Not much of a welcome mat.” I look around. “I can’t imagine what they wanted to protect—there’s nothing here.”

“Nothing we can see,” Wyck says. His curiosity clearly aroused, he squeezes between a gap in the fence and begins to look around.

“We should keep going,” Halla says uneasily. “It’s getting light. We need somewhere to camp.”

“This is as good a place as any,” Wyck argues. “We can sleep up there.” He gestures to one of the towers. “There’s got to be something here. I’m gonna check it out.” He moves further into the compound. After a moment’s hesitation, I follow him. Halla lingers on the other side, but then wiggles through the fence to join us.

Wyck goes straight for the runway and walks its length, inspecting the cracked and frost-heaved pavement. “There used to be a hangar here,” he said, sweeping his arm over an area where I can make out the marks of a rectangular foundation.

“Why? And why ‘used to be?’”

“To build and supply something. And then to hide what they were doing,” Wyck says enthusiastically, walking a grid pattern to the west of the runway.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Halla asks.

Wyck shrugs. “Depends on how old it is. Drug lords—this would have been a good place to grow marijuana in the old days. Well, it would have been before the locusts. Man, can you imagine a bunch of high locusts, buzzing around, bumping into each other?” He laughs. The sound ring outs, happy and almost carefree, and it makes Halla and me smile. “More likely, it was Psyche manufacturers and distributors, like that pair back there, but on a more commercial scale.”

He is a ways away from us now and has to raise his voice. The ground slopes uphill slightly as I follow him.

Halla hangs back, “I don’t want to find whatever it was,” she says. “Let’s keep going.”

“In a minute,” Wyck says absently. His foot knocks against something and he bends. He scrapes away a layer of dirt with one hand. “Look at this, Ev.”

I hurry over. There’s a grate inset into the ground, covering a two foot wide pipe. Wyck kneels and puts his eye to it. “That’s why there’s no foundation marks, except for the hangar,” he says, tugging at the grate. It doesn’t budge. “It’s underground. This is probably an air ventilation shaft. There’s got to be a door.” He jumps up and renews his search.

I look up and scan the area. Other than the three of us, there’s no sign of life, and yet I get the twingey feeling between my shoulder blades that we’re being watched.
You’re paranoid
, I tell myself.
We are in the middle of freaking nowhere—there’s no one here
. I wiggle my shoulders to make the feeling go away.

“Aha!” Wyck’s shout comes from a hundred yards away. With a glance at the disapproving Halla, I hurry over. His fingers curl into a barely visible crevice and he pulls. Nothing happens. “This has got to be the door,” he says. He examines the surface again.

I look at the surface he’s uncovered—what looks like a smooth steel plane—and notice something. “Wyck.” I draw his attention to the bio hazard sign.

He doesn’t respond. After a moment, he tugs on the apparent handle again, from the opposite direction, and a deep creaking sound issues as if from the bowels of the earth. I spring back. Wyck grins. “We’re in.”

“Not me,” Halla says. She crosses her arms over her chest and puts on her mulish look. “I am not risking my baby’s health by going down in some bio-hazard pit.”

“Well, I’m going to see what’s down here,” Wyck says. “There might be supplies, weapons, something useful. We need food.”

It’s true. We’re down to the last couple of vegeprote bars we took from the IPF vehicle. I look from Halla to Wyck. I sense that he needs to find food for us, that he’s still feeling guilty about losing our supplies in the swamp. This place is so well hidden it’s possible looters never found it, that there are provisions stored underground.

“Why don’t you climb into one of the towers and wait for us?” I suggest to Halla. “You should be safe there.”

“Good idea,” Wyck seconds. “You can be our lookout and holler if you see anyone coming.” He continues to pull on the door which is easily eighteen inches thick and opens via a pneumatic system that hisses as the door yawns wider. A staircase slopes into the ground. I can’t see the bottom of it through the dark. Wyck is already three steps down.

“I don’t like this,” Halla says, moving toward the closest watch tower.

“We’ll be back in ten minutes,” I say. With only a brief hesitation, I put my foot on the first step.

The air is chilly and smells of—I take a deep sniff, trying to identify the faint but familiar odor—disinfectant. My unease ticks up a notch. The metal treads clang under our boots. It crosses my mind that they are a built in alarm system like the bootleggers’ utensil-decked wire. The open door lights our way to the bottom, barely, where I find Wyck waiting for me in a small tile-floored vestibule. Halls lead from it in three directions.

"Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.” Wyck points to a hall and starts down it, clicking on a flashlight. “Here.”

He tosses me one. Its beam is broad and bright and I feel a bit better. The hall we’re moving down is nothing special: pale green walls with white tile floors. What look like old LED fixtures are attached to the ceiling. On impulse, Wyck reaches out and taps a light pad when we pass and the fixtures spring to life, bathing us in glare.

“Batteries not dead yet,” Wyck says with satisfaction.

“How long could they last?”

He wags his head, considering. “With virtually no use—fifteen or twenty years.”

I’m silent. How long has this place been here? How long ago—and why—was it abandoned? There’s a door, half-open, on our left. We exchange a look and Wyck pushes it wider. It swings back silently. There’s a narrow ante-room with an intercom grid, a red palm-sized button on the wall, and then another door. Like the airlocks at the Kube. We pass through the inner door and Wyck finds another light switch. It illuminates more white tile and little else; the room has been stripped of all fixtures.

Outlines suggest counters, and multiple outlets suggest equipment that required electricity. Plumbing rough-ins hint there were several sinks and even a shower. One small white basin remains. Two other doors, closed, are set into adjacent walls.

“It was a lab,” I breathe, almost unconsciously recognizing the arrangement of counters and outlets. My mind fills in stainless steel, coolers, centrifuges. “That’s an emergency eyewash station.” I point to a dangling hose. “Well, it was.” Thinking of the airlock and noting the openings in the ceiling that might have enabled air hoses, I add uneasily, “I think this might have been a Level 4 bio-containment facility.”

“Twink,” Wyck says, not one bit nervous. “Probably making drugs, don’t you think?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of Ebola or anthrax,” I admit, “but I suppose one might need similar facilities for manufacturing synthetic stimulants.” I drift to the wall where half a piece of paper is still affixed. “‘istry of Science and,’” I read aloud. “Not drugs,” I say, considerably more nervous now. “The government. Look, there’s nothing here. Nothing useful for us. Let’s go. Halla will be getting worried.”

A small scraping sound catches our attention.

“What was that?” Wyck whispers. He’s moving toward the closest door and the sound.

I’m half-way to the hall door and escape. “Wyck!” I try to draw him toward me, but he keeps going. I quit breathing as he puts his palm against the door, hesitates a breath, and slams it back. So much for his promise that he’s changed. Anger stirs beneath my nerves. I cross the room, intending to collar him and drag him back to the surface.

“Big furnace,” he says. I look in on a huge blue incinerator with a control panel studded with red and green buttons and gauges, one of them with a temperature indicator that tops at 1100-degrees Celsius. Toasty. Wyck’s moving to the next door before I reach him. I’m on his heels as he opens it. There’s a built-in cupboard with labels I can’t read from here. There’s a cot covered with a rumpled intelli-textile blanket, with a rolling metal tray as a night stand of sorts. A mug sits on the tray, a wisp of steam rising from it. I’m fixated by the steam as it drifts up and dissipates. Someone is living here.

Before I can stop him, Wyck detaches the beamer from his pack, aims it at the cupboard door, and says, “We know you’re in there.” When there’s no response, he says it louder, adding, “Come out now or I’ll blast you.”

The door eases open an inch. Wyck backs up until he’s standing beside me. His knuckles gleam white as he grips the beamer. The door opens wider and a booted foot appears. The boot is slightly scuffed, not that old; whoever’s in there has not been trapped here for decades. A hand curls around the door and I gasp. The hand is covered with boils and streaked with blood, flayed almost to the bone in spots. I’m suddenly sure this was a bad idea. A very bad, potentially fatal idea. If this person has something infectious . . . My brain runs through the options. The boils are small, like smallpox, some of them mounded atop others: boils on boils. The blood streaks . . . I don’t know what infection would cause them.

“Don’t shoot.” The voice is soft, papery, male. A man emerges, hunched over as if trying to hide himself. One hand scratches at his arm through a thin jumpsuit. I imagine more boils beneath the fabric. He brings his hands to his shoulders so we can see he’s unarmed. “I’m no danger to you.” He raises his head.

I swallow hard at the sight of the boils crusting his face, neck and bald scalp. Bloody weals score them. From scratching. He has no eyebrows. His eyes are golden; he’s geneborn. How did he end up here, in this condition? Boils bubble on his lips and inside his ears. From the way his tongue works at the roof of his mouth, I suspect they’re also in there. His expression says he knows how horrible he looks.

“Who—who are you?” Wyck asks.