Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“Beast? Locusts?”

“The Beast. You know, the Beast. 666.”

“You mean the one from the Bible? The Anti-Christ?” .

“No, no. The one that comes before the Anti-Christ. You’re not a Christian, are you?”

“I was raised Methodist. Does that count?”

“Christian. Gotta be a real Christian.” The girl’s voice is slurring with the action of the Percodan. “Not like me. Not good enough. The locusts came, the ones with faces like men but with lions’ teeth. Breastplates of iron. Stings. Killed them all.”

This is, Kirsten decides, the most bizarre conversation she has had in decades. Not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to the door when her dad was stationed in Corpus Christi, the ones who thought the United Nations was the Devil’s own bureaucracy and the flag was an idol, were quite this weird. Droids running out of control and the girl is worried about grasshoppers. Grasshoppers with human faces and metal bodies and . . . oh bloody hell, of course. “Droids,” she says. “You mean droids?”

“Droids,” Lizzie murmurs. “Good droids. Took my cousin and her kids. There was this. Bright, bright light. And the angels. Took them up. To meet. Jesus. In the. Air.” Her voice is fading. “Ran. Scared. Got left. Behind. Left. . . .”

Lizzie’s eyes slide closed and her breathing deepens. It is still faster than it should be, and shallower, but she is in no immediate danger. That will come later.

For all of them.

Kirsten drapes a blanket over the girl’s unconscious form and climbs back into the front seat. She whistles Asimov up beside her, puts the truck in gear and heads again into the west, into the settling darkness.

3

“Go back to sleep. It’s still the middle of the night.”

The soft, deep voice startles Maggie from her rapt, if a bit sleepy, moonlit contemplation of surely the most perfect body that God, in His infinite Wisdom, had ever created. Feeling warmth steal over her face, she’s glad of the darkness. “How did you—?”

“Know you were awake? I have my ways.”

“Mm,” Maggie all-but-purrs. “I’ll testify to that.”

When the expected chuckle doesn’t follow, the Colonel scoots up in the bed until her back is resting against the headboard and the blanket is comfortably wrapped around her chest. There she returns to her inspection, though this time with a more professional eye. She notices the new lines of tension stretched across the broad shoulders and along the column of Koda’s elegant spine. “Is something wrong?” she hazards, knowing it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not she’ll get an answer.

After a long moment of silence, Dakota releases a small sigh, fogging slightly the polarized window. “What are your plans?”

The question pulls the Colonel up short. There are several shades of meaning behind the all too forthright words. “You mean…with my troops?”

Koda nods, still looking out the window. “Yes.”

It’s Maggie’s turn to sigh. “Much as I don’t like it, I think I’m going to have to split them into smaller squads.”

“Why?”

“Well, while you were busy patching and sewing, I was talking to the acting base Commander, Major General Hart. There’s been a small, but steady line of survivors coming in since the ‘incident’, as he calls it. Mostly men and children. Some older women. One or two younger women, but that’s all.” Maggie pauses for a moment, ordering her thoughts. “Word is that the droids are taking the young women, all of child-bearing age, like we guessed, and housing them in the local jails. Nobody knows why, or what they’re doing to them in there. But it can’t be pretty, whatever it is.”

“So you’re going after them. Try to break them out.”

Maggie nods. “That’s the plan, yes.” She looks down at her hands. “Most of the jails down in this part of the state are, as you know, pretty damn small. And it’s a damn sure bet that the droids are armed to their beady glass eyeballs with whatever weapons they can get their hands on. Which means that if we send out huge squads, they’ll likely shoot the prisoners before we can even break through the front door. With fewer people, we just might be able to do it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Maggie’s mouth drops open in shock. Koda turns from the window, giving a little smirk that tells the Colonel that she’s not entirely joking. Maggie can’t help but grin back, that part of her that’s been a soldier since she was a little girl suddenly warming to the challenge. “Well, I’m not exactly used to being this up close and personal with the enemy, but…yeah, it could be fun at that.” With a sexy little smile, she draws the blanket down so that just the tops of her full breasts show. “Care to join me?”

Another question with a variety of meanings.

Koda, regretfully, declines all of the offers. “I need to go north.”

Maggie hides her disappointment. “Worried about your family?”

Shaking her head, Dakota smiles a little. “My family can take care of themselves.”

“Then why north?”

Dakota looks at her so long and so penetratingly that she’s afraid she’s crossed an invisible line. She finds herself holding her breath as she waits for an answer, all the while praising God that this intent, intense woman is on her side.

“I had a dream.” Koda’s voice is only a whisper, but in the otherwise tomb-silent room, Maggie has no trouble hearing the words. The phrase is so incongruous to her that she finds herself flipping back to the age of seven, sitting in the front row of Mrs. Dobbin’s Country Day class and watching the monitor as an ancient, grainy image of a dark-skinned man mouths those same words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Looks like your dream finally came true, Rev. King, Maggie thinks. Thank God you’re not around to see the result.

Pushing the maudlin thought away, she comes back into herself and realizes that Koda is still pinning her with those too-brilliant gemcut eyes. The aura of tension has returned, strumming around the Vet’s body like an electrical charge.

“And in this dream, you’re headed north?”

Koda nods, the tension still swirling around her body. Maggie swears she can feel the fine hairs on her arms prick up.

“It must be very important to you, then.”

Like the breaking of a vacuum seal, the tension immediately dissipates from the room. Maggie knows she’s answered correctly.

Dakota nods. “It is.”

“How far will you go?”

“Very far.”

Maggie stiffens as the answer seeps into her brain, as if by osmosis. “Not Minot.”

Koda nods again.

“Dakota, that’s….”

“Crazy?” The Vet gives a half smile, but her eyes are twin glaciers.

“You know damn well it is,” Maggie replies, letting her anger show. Taking in a deliberate breath, she reins in her legendary temper. “Koda,” she begins again, softly, “this is in no way meant to demean your dream, but you don’t need to go up there. I’m already planning to take a couple of my fighters and blast that damn factory into a mega-mall parking lot. And you know I’ve got the payload to do it.”

“And the humans inside that factory?”

“You actually think they’ve left any alive in there?” Maggie is incredulous. “What would be the point? That whole factory is completely self run. The droids do everything!”

“I can’t take that chance, Colonel,” Koda replies, turning back to the window. “Every human life is precious. Especially now.”

“And what about yours?!” Maggie demands, hands fisted in the blanket.

The Colonel’s answer is a sad smile reflected in the window’s glass.

4

It is a repeating nightmare. Stretched across the road a hundred meters ahead is a line of pickups strung nose to bumper, a steel wall she can neither drive through nor veer around. To the left of the barricade is a six-foot deep concrete-lined drainage ditch. Something metallic and vaguely human-shaped at its bottom glints in the late sunlight, light that also runs along the barrels of the half dozen long guns swinging up to aim at Kirsten and her vehicle. As she begins to brake, she runs through a quick assessment of her options.