But then he pulls the trigger and proves me wrong. The bullet punches into the dirt beside my head. He’s either a horrible shot, or he meant to miss. When he fires again, without adjusting his aim. I know it’s the latter. But why?
Before I can ask, he pistol whips his own face, twice, drawing blood and shattering the goggles over his head.
What the hell?
Without a word, he turns around and pulls the goggles off his head, tossing them over his shoulder. When the goggles land beside me, he takes off running, like a little lightning bolt. He’s out of sight in seconds.
“Hawkins,” I say, scrabbling to my feet. The static click of an approaching tree-scaling army grows louder. They’re just seconds way. “Run!” I snag the goggles, then grab the man and hoist him up.
With a shake of his head, Hawkins’s wits return, and he shoves me ahead. “Go!”
I start running without any real sense of where I’m going. What I do know is that this whole place, for a mile all around, is going to be scorched earth in less than three minutes, and there is no way we are getting outside the target area in time. “Which way is the river?”
A springing BFS, eight arms outstretched, stinging tail reaching toward my gut, is cut down by a spray from my MP5. It writhes on the ground as I run past, and it nearly strikes me. “What?” I shout back to Hawkins, whose reply was drowned out by the gunfire.
He points past my head and to the right. “That way!”
We turn together, running downhill now, picking up speed. But we’re not alone. BFSs give chase on all sides, including in front of us. Five of them come at us, too many for the MP5 to handle on its own. “Hawkins!” I shout and move to the side. Taking the lead, Hawkins unleashes seven rapid-fire shots from his AA-12 shotgun. The incredibly loud weapon sounds like thunder for a moment, and sets my ears to ringing, but the effects are undeniable. The five BFSs have been reduced to sludge. We run through them, the river now audible, the air growing moist.
Over the sound of the nearby river and the ringing in my ears, I hear something new. A distant, but growing roar.
A jet, unlike anything I’ve seen before.
It streaks overhead just as I’m about to shout my warning. Something small falls from its gullet, dropping toward us. Eyes flicking between the small object and the path ahead, we explode out of the woods and into the clear, stone river bed.
“Find a sinkhole!” I shout, searching the area, but finding only shallow pools and the waterfalls that feed them.
Above, the single projectile coughs and shatters, turning into multiple bombs, spreading out over a large area. Just then, a second bomb falls from the jet. And a third. This whole area is about to get wiped clean.
“Here!” Hawkins shouts, and yanks my arm. Before I can see what he’s found, he throws us both over the side of a waterfall. All I can see below is frothing white. If we hit stone, at least we’ll probably be dead or unconscious when the bombs hit. But we don’t hit stone. Instead, we plunge into a ten-foot-deep pool, barely big enough for two, and we’re held there by the force of the water dropping down above us.
That’s when the very earth around us shakes, and a wave of pressure crushes the air from my lungs. I fight the urge to surface and breathe, not because I don’t need to, but because the surface of the water now glows bright yellow.
The world above us is burning.
8
“You!” Alicio Brice said, snapping his fingers at a man whose name he couldn’t recall and perhaps never knew. “What’s happening?”
The man was a member of the science staff. The white coat and ID badge told Brice that much. The man, a heavyset fellow with a bushy beard and thin spectacles, leaned over the glass dome containing the Tsuchi.
“They look dead,” the man said.
“What’s your name?” Brice asked.
“Wood,” the man says. “D-David.”
“Well, Wood D-David,” Brice said, his temper flaring. “What, in your personal opinion, could be the cause?”
“I...I don’t know. I’m a geneticist.”
“As am I.” Brice crossed his arms. “I’m also your employer. So do yourself a favor and postulate.”
The big man leaned in close, breath fogging the glass. “Ahh. Well...I’m assuming all the environmental systems are functioning?”
Brice nodded.
“Then, ahh...what are they? I’ve never seen these specimens before.”
“They’re new,” Brice said.
“Chimeras of some sort,” Wood said. “Spider. Turtle. A few other traits thrown into the mix. The genetic integration is amazing. Are these from the island?”
“Fewer questions, more ideas.”
“Uh, well, when was the last time you fed them?”