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“Didn’t you see? Back at the loading bay?”
“See what?”
“They died, Billy,” she said wretchedly. “Both of them. We climbed up onto the bus, but they didn’t have time. Those bastards were all over us. God, Billy. I tried to pull Sam up. I tried…”
She sobbed brokenly and beat on his chest. It hurt, but he did not care.
Sam Imura?
Gone?
Trout didn’t know how to process that. Imura was so tough, so capable. Trout was sure that he was the leading man in this drama, the hero that would save everyone.
Gone. Off screen.
Simply edited out of the story.
Shortstop, too, and Trout realized that he didn’t even know the man’s name. But Sam … even though the soldier had only been with them for a few hours, he’d become a friend. They trusted him. They knew him.
Now he was gone, and Sam was gone.
The heroes of the story were gone and Trout had not even seen it. Somehow that was worse than if he’d witnessed it. These men was simply gone from the world. Dragged down. Consumed.
No … worse …
Even now the thing that had been Sam Imura would have risen. What was left of him would have risen and maybe it had been part of that horde of things that had pursued the convoy.
It was too horrible to imagine.
It was all too horrible.
Who would be the heroes now?
He held on to Dez, who was frayed and worn and nearly spent.
Who was going to ride to the rescue now?
While the sun burned through the last of the clouds and painted the landscape with yellow light, Dez and Billy clung to each other and wept.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE
ZABRISKE POINT BIOLOGICAL EVALUATION AND PRODUCTION STATION
DEATH VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
Dick Price and his senior staff sat in a silent line, each of them bent forward, their faces washed to a pale blue by the lights of computer monitors. On each computer pages of data flashed by. Research notes. Developmental procedure records. Laboratory tests on animals. Formulae. Data on the transgenesis of a dozen parasites. Dosage tables. Biological warfare applications. Modifications for use on death row prisoners. A complete medical history of condemned serial murderer Homer Gibbon.
It was all there.
All of it.
One hundred and ninety-two thousand pages of information.
Some of it was in Russian. Some in Lithuanian. Some in Polish. Some in Latin.
Some in English.
Some written in the hieroglyphics of molecular chemistry.
