Burning Angels

79

There was a crackle in Jaeger’s earpiece. Message incoming.

‘We lost you in the cloud.’ It was Narov. ‘We’re three, but we took a while to find each other. We put down on the airstrip.’

‘Understood,’ Jaeger responded. ‘Stay out of sight. We’ll move across to your location.’

‘One thing. There’s no one here.’

‘Say again?’

‘The airstrip. It’s utterly deserted.’

‘Okay, lie low. Leave your fireflies on strobe.’

‘Believe me, there’s not a soul here,’ Narov repeated. ‘It’s like the whole place… It’s deserted.’

‘We’re on our way.’

Jaeger and Raff prepared to move out, leaving Kamishi to guard the wet decon line.

Jaeger laid out the components for his Plague Island space walk on the sands. The thick, chemically resistant material of the Trellchem suit gleamed sinisterly in the moonlight. Beside it he placed the rubber overboots, plus thick rubber gloves. On a nearby rock he laid his roll of all-important gaffer tape.

He glanced at Raff. ‘Me first.’

Raff stepped around to assist. Jaeger clambered into the suit feet-first. He pulled it up to his armpits, then shrugged it over his arms and shoulders. With Raff’s assistance, he zipped himself inside, then pulled the bulbous hood over so that it encased his head completely.

He gestured at the gaffer tape, then held out his hands. Raff taped the wrists of his suit to the rubber of the gloves, doing the same with the boots around Jaeger’s ankles.

The tape would be their first line of defence.

Jaeger twisted a switch, changing his respirator kit on to active powered-air mode. There was a faint whir as the electric motors began to blow in clean, filtered air, billowing out his suit until the toughened rubber skin went rigid. Already it felt hot, unwieldy and constricting, plus it proved noisy whenever he tried to move.

Kamishi helped Raff suit up, and it wasn’t long before they were ready to step into the jungle.

For a moment Raff hesitated. He glanced at Jaeger from behind his visor. Inside, his face was enclosed within his FM54 mask, as was Jaeger’s. That way, they had a double line of defence.

Jaeger saw Raff’s lips move. The words reverberated in his earpiece, sounding muffled and distant.

‘She’s right. Narov. There’s no one here. I can sense it. This island – it’s deserted.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Jaeger countered. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the throb of the air flow.

‘There’s no one here,’ Raff repeated. ‘When we came in to land, did you see a single light? A glimmer? Movement? Anything?’

‘We still have to clear the place. First the airstrip. Then Kammler’s labs. Every step of the way.’

‘Yeah, I know. But trust me – there’s no one here.’

Jaeger eyed him through the barrier of their visors. ‘If you’re right, what does that signify? What does it mean?’

Raff shook his head. ‘Dunno, but it can’t be good news.’

Jaeger sensed the same, but there was something else eating at his mind – something that made him feel physically sick.

If this island was deserted, where had Kammler taken Ruth and Luke?

They moved out, lumbering towards the dark wall of forest like astronauts, but without the benefit of comparative weightlessness to ease their way. As they stepped awkwardly into the waiting jungle, each had his stubby MP7 sub-machine gun slung across his front.

As soon as they were beneath the canopy, the darkness was upon them. The tree cover cut out all ambient light. Jaeger flicked the switch on the torch attached to his MP7, a beam of illumination piercing the gloom as he swept the way ahead.

Before him was an almost impenetrable wall of brooding vegetation, the jungle thick with creepers, plus giant fan-like palm leaves and vines as thick as a man’s thigh. Thank God they only had a few hundred yards of this to fight their way through to make the airstrip.

Jaeger had taken a few ungainly paces under the dark canopy when he sensed movement above him. A bunched, alien form darted at him from out of the shadowed tree limbs, springing with an impossibly acrobatic and lithe sure-footedness. Jaeger raised his bulky gloved right hand to block the movement, and punched with his left, going for the creature’s throat in a typical Krav Maga thrust.

In hand-to-hand combat you had to hit instantly and hard, landing repeated blows on your adversary’s areas of greatest vulnerability – the foremost of which was the neck. But whatever this beast might be, it proved too agile; or maybe Jaeger’s movements were just too constricted by the suit. He felt as if he were mired in a thick sludge.

His assailant dodged the first blows, and an instant later he felt something powerful snake its way around his suited neck. Whatever had gripped him began to squeeze.

The strength of the thing – for its size – was unbelievable. Jaeger felt adrenalin surge around his system as his suit puckered and buckled, four powerful limbs closing around his head. He fought with his hands to tear them free, but then – suddenly and shockingly – a face appeared before him, red-eyed, rabid and snarling, and the creature struck with its canines, the long yellow fangs slashing at his visor.

For whatever reason, primates find humans encased in space suits even more terrifying and provocative than they do in the flesh. And as Jaeger had been warned in the Falkenhagen briefings, a primate – even one as small as this – could make for a fearsome adversary.

Doubly so when its brain was fried with a mind-altering viral infection.

Jaeger groped for its eyes, one of the most vulnerable points of the body. His gloved fingers made contact, and he drove his thumbs in, gouging deep – a classic Krav Maga move, and one that didn’t require particular agility or speed.

His fingers slid and slewed on a slick, greasy wetness: he could feel it even through the gloves. The animal was leaking liquid – blood – from its eye sockets.

He forced his thumbs deeper, hooking out one living eyeball. Finally the monkey relented, dropping off him in screaming, agonised rage. It let go last with its tail, the limb that had snaked around Jaeger’s neck in a stranglehold.

It made a desperate leap for cover, wounded and hopelessly sick though it was. Jaeger raised his MP7 and fired: one shot that took it down.

The monkey fell dead on the forest floor.

He bent to inspect it, sweeping his torch beam across its motionless form. Beneath its sparse hair, the primate’s skin was covered in swollen red blotches. And where the bullet had torn apart its torso, Jaeger could see a river of blood pooling.

But this wasn’t anything like normal blood.

It was black, putrid and stringy.

A deadly viral soup.

The air roared in Jaeger’s ears like an express train steaming down a long, dark tunnel. What must it be like to live with that virus? he wondered.

Dying, but with no idea what was killing you.

Your brain a fried mush of fever and rage.

Your organs dissolving inside your skin.

Jaeger shuddered. This place was evil.

‘You okay, kid?’ Raff queried, via the radio.

Jaeger nodded darkly, then signalled the way ahead.They pressed onwards.

The monkeys and the humans on this cursed island were close cousins, their shared lineage stretching back countless millennia. Now they would have to fight to the death. Yet a much older life force – a primeval one – was stalking both of them.

It was tiny and invisible, but far more powerful than them all.