“Long-term,” Alec replied. “Sometimes you gotta think long-term. But they’re just words, son. Just words.”
Being in the suburbs was really unsettling Mark—he’d grown used to life in the mountains, in the woods, living in a hut. This abandoned neighborhood just made him feel odd and uncomfortable. He needed to steel up his nerves before they set out to do the real business at hand. “Let’s get this test over with.”
Alec started walking toward a brick mailbox that was half destroyed. It looked like someone had smashed into it with a car or truck during a frantic attempt to escape.
“All right, then,” he said. “I wanted to test it on something alive—it works much better with living, organic material. But you’re right … we need to be quick about it. I’ll try zapping this pile of br—”
A door slammed open in the half-crumbled house closest to them and a man came out of it running straight for them, screaming at the top of his lungs. His words were indecipherable, and his eyes were full of madness, his hair ratty and matted; sores covered his face, as if he’d been trying to claw through his own skin. And he was completely naked.
Mark stumbled a couple of steps backward, stunned by the man’s appearance and scared out of his mind. He was searching for something to do or say.
But Alec had already raised his weapon, pointing the Transvice directly at the quickly approaching man.
“Stop!” the vet yelled. “Stop or you’re …” He gave up because the wild man coming at him was obviously not listening. Screaming nonsensical things, stumbling but not slowing, heading for Alec.
A sharp ping sounded, seemingly from everywhere at once, followed by a rushing, spinning sound, like the whirr of a jet engine. Mark noticed that the orange light emanating from the Transvice had brightened, visible even in the sunshine. Then Alec suddenly jerked backward when a bolt of pure, brilliant white light shot out of the weapon and slammed into the chest of the screaming man.
His cries cut off instantly, like he’d been sealed in a tomb. His body turned gray as ash from top to bottom, all details and dimension disappearing so that he looked like a cutout of gray cloth, shimmering and rippling. Then he exploded into a mist, evaporating into nothingness. Just like that, without leaving a single trace that Mark could see.
He turned to look at Alec, who’d lowered his weapon and was breathing heavily, his eyes still wide and staring at the spot the man had occupied just seconds earlier.
The old soldier finally returned Mark’s stunned stare. “I guess it works.”
Chapter 50
Mark was at a loss for words. The spectacle of the Transvice dissolving a person like a cloud of smoke caught in the wind wasn’t even what weighed on his thoughts the heaviest. A completely insane man had just charged out of a house, straight at them. What had he been thinking? Was he attacking or begging for help? Were others going to be as bad off? As … crazy?
It haunted him through and through, witnessing what the disease did to people. Was doing. It had to be getting worse. That guy had been utterly nuts. And Mark had already felt something like it—the faintest trace—starting within him. There was a beast hidden inside, and soon it might come out and make him look like the man Alec had zapped with the Transvice.
“You okay over there?”
Mark shook his head and came back to his senses. “No, I’m not okay. Did you see that dude?”
“Yeah. I saw him! Why do you think I evaporated him into oblivion?” Alec was resting the weapon against its strap, looking around for signs of more people. So far there were none.
Though it should’ve happened a long time ago, it finally hit Mark—like a hammer to his heart—just how much trouble Trina was in. Held prisoner by lunatics who could now be as bad off as the one he’d just seen. And Mark and Alec had taken the time to sleep? To eat? To pack? He suddenly hated himself.
“We have to go rescue her,” he said.
“What’s that?” Alec was walking toward him.
Mark raised his eyes and glared at his friend. “We have to go. Now.”
The next hour was a mix of maddening rushing around, then equally maddening waiting.
They closed the ramp door, Alec standing by with the Transvice in case anyone tried to board during the agonizing couple of minutes it took the thing to pull all the way shut. Then they made sure their packs were ready to go and Alec gave Mark a quick lesson on how to hold and shoot the Transvice. It seemed straightforward enough. Finally the soldier got the Berg up and running, its thrusters pushing them into the sky.
They flew low, Mark the key observer, searching the ground below them as they passed. As they got closer to the neighborhood ruins in which Alec had seen Trina and the others, Mark definitely saw more signs of life. People running between homes in little groups; a few fires in yards and smoke coming from half-crumbled chimneys; carcasses of dead animals that had been stripped of meat. He even saw a few humans lying lifeless here and there—sometimes piles of them.