Revelations (10 page)

A security team, heavily armed and looking as nervous as Emily felt, took the first boat back to shore. They headed to a building near the center of the compound identified by MacAlister’s team as the best suited to become the survivors’ new living quarters.

By the time the second boat full of sailors hit the shore Emily, Rhiannon, and Thor were next in line, their backpacks and a couple of boxes of supplies resting next to them on the gently dipping deck of the sub.

“Where’s Jacob?” Rhiannon asked.

“He’s asleep,” Emily lied. “He’ll be coming over later.” The truth was, Jacob was still in his cabin, still drunk from earlier, but the captain had told Emily it was probably better to just let him sleep it off.

“Good,” said Rhiannon, her dislike for Jacob patently obvious. There was little love lost between the teenager and the scientist, at least from Rhiannon’s side of the equation. Jacob was going to have to work very hard to ever gain her trust again.

The dinghy bounced and dived over the surface of the ocean, wind fluttering Emily’s and Rhiannon’s hair out behind them like streamers, spray dousing all of them with cool seawater in the few minutes it took to cover the half mile between the sub and land. The boat rumbled and rocked as the sailor ran the flat-bottomed boat up onto the beach.

“That’ll be five quid, please,” he joked as he cut the engine.

Emily jumped ashore, her feet sinking into the wet sand. “Put it on my tab,” she said and began transferring their bags onto the beach.

Now that she was actually ashore, Emily could see that the buildings of Point Loma, in typical military fashion, were actually packed far more densely onto the spit of land than they had appeared. She, Rhiannon, and Thor followed the sailor who had brought them ashore along a concrete path surrounded on both sides by eerily alien red bushes and creepers that twisted and tangled with each other like frozen snakes. The concrete path had fractured in places, and more than once they had to carefully maneuver over raised broken slabs of concrete that had been cracked open and pushed up by the thick roots burrowing beneath the path.

A sea mist, thick and gray, obscured the majority of the bay that lay to the east and northeast of Point Loma. Emily could just make out the westernmost tip of Coronado Island and its naval supply center and airport, but the fog was so thick that everything beyond that was hidden beneath its pall. Somewhere northeast of where they walked, across the bay and beyond Coronado Island, lay San Diego.

There was no trace whatsoever of anything green, no plant or tree that she could recognize. If it had not been for the manmade buildings ahead of her and her escort, Emily would have felt as though she truly had just set foot on an alien world.

“The captain has asked that you don’t touch any of the plants,” the sailor said as he helped first Rhiannon and then Emily to step over a particularly thick cord of root twisting up through the broken concrete path.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Emily said as she passed him the bags she carried and then swung one leg then the other over the looping twists of the plant, carefully avoiding any contact.

Where there should have been grass was now a short leafy almost lichen-like plant, its stubby fronds blanketing the ground like a shag-pile carpet. There did not seem to be a square inch of dirt or sidewalk that wasn’t coated by it.

No matter where she looked, the same lurid red landscape filled her vision. And that smell! The wet air was redolent with an inescapable mustiness that spoke of wet rotting vegetation. There was still a definite scent of ammonia mingled in with it, but the aroma seemed to Emily to be fading, residual even, as though it was being washed away by the ocean winds soughing against her body and rustling the leaves of the plants.

Rhiannon did not appear to be as disturbed as Emily by the weird vegetation that had taken root around them. Her age maybe? Or her limited experience of the world that had been here softening the impact, perhaps. Or maybe her youth gave her the advantage, made her more fatalistic, more accepting of the inevitability of this takeover. Whatever the reason, the girl seemed happy to be off the submarine and feeling the warm California sun against her skin.

Emily had to agree: It felt fine with a capital
F
to be in the sunlight again. After so many weeks of subfreezing temperatures, this weather was like a welcome warm caress from a lover.

The office building MacAlister had chosen as their base of operations, uncreatively labeled Building One, lay behind a security fence of chain-link topped with curls of barbed wire that encircled the entire compound. They had to walk through a security post, the only entrance through the perimeter that Emily could see, to get to Building One. It was a squat, gray, three-story box sitting close to the edge of the beach. Two hundred feet of open space lay between their new home and any other building; at least, the space
would
be clear once the tangles of red vegetation that had overtaken the area had been cleared away. Beyond the office block’s seaward-facing rear, Emily could just make out a deep wall of boulders, each easily weighing a ton or more, that followed the edge of the cigar-shaped spit of land Point Loma was built upon and dropped down for a hundred feet or so to meet the ocean. A dark stain, about fifty or so feet from the top of the wall of boulders, marked the high-tide point. There was no sign of any seaweed caught on the rocks, but there was a lot of wreckage that had become trapped in the gaps between the boulders; broken plasterboard, cans, what looked like a window frame, and, halfway up the wall, the rear half of some kind of boat, maybe a fishing trawler, had found their final resting place, at least until the next high tide found them again and washed them elsewhere. Flotsam and jetsam left by the storm, no doubt. Strangely, there was also no sign of any of the invading plants on those rocks. In fact, the growth of lichen seemed to stop a few feet back from the top edge of the boulders with only a few sporadic spots of red scattered over the top layer of rock.

“It gives us a good defensible position with a clear field of fire if the
you-know-what
ever hits the fan,” said MacAlister by way of greeting as he met Emily and Rhiannon at the main entrance of the building. He took their bags from them, dismissed the sailor, and led Emily, Rhiannon, and Thor inside. “There are more than enough rooms on the second floor that we can each get our own living quarters. I’ve got men up there now, clearing out the office equipment and filing cabinets to make room for some cots.” MacAlister led them down a corridor and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. From somewhere on the same floor came the sound of furniture scraping along floor and the voices of men talking amongst themselves.

“It’s probably best if we all stay in the same building for now. At least until we know what we’re dealing with out there. Then we can start looking at spreading out to the other buildings…give each other a little elbow room.” MacAlister stopped in front of a plain gray door. “This one’s yours,” he said as he nudged it open with his butt and carried Emily and Rhiannon’s bags inside, dropping them next to two cots already set up in the otherwise empty room. “It’s not much, but it’s cozy in its own way.”

“I think we’ll manage,” said Emily, smiling.

“Well, I’m in the last room at the opposite end of the hall. If you need anything…” The Scotsman smiled and left.

Thor sniffed around the room a few times, then settled down in a corner, panting as he watched the two women unpack what few belongings they had.

The room was about twelve-by-twelve and Emily could see the marks on the industrial-weight carpet where the four legs of a desk had sat and an area where the rollers of a chair had flattened the weave. With no air-conditioning to cool them, their new room had the same musty dampness to it as outside. Emily doubted opening the single window would do much to alleviate the problem as she wiped sweat from her forehead. She supposed they would get used to it, but after the perfectly maintained environment of the submarine, this stifling heat and smell made for an unpleasant welcome.

“Home sweet home,” Emily said sarcastically.

Rhiannon raised her eyebrows in mock judgment and began emptying the contents of her rucksack onto her bed.

Once unpacked, Emily and Rhiannon joined the rest of the survivors gathered outside the entrance to the building. Captain Constantine was in the middle of giving an update when they arrived. MacAlister and Parsons stood behind him. The Chief Engineer gave Rhiannon a friendly wink when he saw her.

“Mr. Parsons and a couple of crew have located the camp’s emergency generator; it seems to be in working order, so we should have power up and running within the next few hours. For now, we need you all to lend a hand clearing the vegetation from the paths and around the buildings. Starting with our new home. While there doesn’t seem to be any problem with handling this stuff, minimize your exposure, people. Wear the goggles and gloves that we’ve handed out. Keep those long-sleeved shirts buttoned up, am I understood?”

A chorus of “Yes, sir,” echoed up from the group.

“Now grab your weapon of choice, and let’s make this place livable.”

A selection of chain saws, fire axes, and machetes had been brought in from the submarine and scavenged from a tool shed MacAlister had identified during his reconnaissance mission. They were laid out on a nearby table. The tools were being doled out by MacAlister.

“What can we do?” Emily asked him as she and Rhiannon walked up.

“Well, if you feel like lending a hand, you can take one of these and start clearing away the vines on the side of our new home. If you chop them at the base and give ’em a good tug, the rest comes away pretty easy,” MacAlister said, handing Emily and Rhiannon a pair of goggles and gloves each, then a machete to Emily and a large, plastic fifty-gallon trash bag to Rhiannon. “Careful of that blade, it’s sharp,” he warned.

“No shit,” said Emily.

Emily and Rhiannon walked over to the west side of the building and took a moment or two to inspect the outer wall. A tall red creeper extended from a bulbous trunk at the base of the plant, twisting up the plane of the wall. Every few inches thin shoots had sprouted off the main stem, digging into the rough stucco of the wall. The vine spread out in a web across the side of the building, shoots curling and bundling on the sills of windows, looking for purchase on the glass. A thin clear membrane, wet and shiny, surrounded the inner dried-blood-black core of the plant.

“Step back a bit,” Emily told Rhiannon as she raised the machete above her head and angled it down at the base of the plant just above the bulb. She brought the blade down hard into the plant and felt it dig deep with a wet slurp. Two more chops and she was able to separate the main body of the creeper away from the bulb with a swift kick from her sneaker-clad foot.

A viscous red fluid dripped from the detached end of the vine like a severed artery. Emily took the jagged edge of the detached plant in her gloved hand and began pulling the creeper away from the wall. She pretty soon discovered the most effective way to separate the plant from the side of the building was to give short, sharp tugs that pulled the tiny fingers from the stucco with a popping sound.

Emily pulled the final foot of vine free from the wall and watched it fall to the ground next to them. She picked up the severed end and examined it. It hung loosely in her hand like a dead snake. The plant was made from a thick fibrous material, obviously vegetable based, but with three lengths of root wound around each other at its core. Each root was covered by an outer skin that glimmered with a shifting pearlescence.

“It smells
bad
,” said Rhiannon, wrinkling her nose at the pungent smell of rotten eggs the bleeding end gave off. “Everything smells different now.”

Emily began chopping the fifty-foot length of vine into smaller chunks. Rhiannon stuffed the chopped parts into the bag MacAlister had given her. An hour later and they had managed to rid the entire west fascia of the building of all signs of the red creeper. Emily tried to pry out the root bulb, but she could not budge it. Getting that sucker out of the ground was going to take a pickax and a lot of sweat. She drank deeply from a canteen of water she had brought with her and wiped sweat off her forehead. Her eyes stung and her muscles ached but
Good God
, it felt
so
good to be doing something physical again.