LITMIR.BIZ

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Blue’s voice whispered frantically, “Shut up! Be quiet!”

      Kane blinked, trying to clear his vision of the amoeba-shaped floaters swimming over his eyes. His flesh suddenly prickled with a pins-and-needle sensation, almost as if a multitude of ants crawled over his skin. He felt rather than heard a feathery fluttering against his eardrums. His stomach surged with nausea.

      Edwards shuddered and muttered, “Something is going on here.”

      The spotlight dimmed even more, becoming little more than a faint yellow halo.

      “It’s like the power is being drained,” Brigid said wonderingly. “Localized ionization of the atmosphere, too.”

      Higson shifted his feet nervously and said in a guttural whisper, “What the fuck is that?”

      Kane followed the man’s gaze toward the smoke-occluded opening in the base of the mesa. Movement shifted within the roiling vapors, and a green-hued light flickered in the haze. A faint, cold breeze touched his face, ruffling his hair, and he heard a distant hiss. The green light whirled, bathing the entire crater in an emerald glow. Then, slowly, the light contorted into the outline of a human figure.

      Kane gazed, transfixed, his mind a whirl of bewilderment. He felt his throat constrict, and his heart began pounding in a sudden terror. The green figure twisted, stretching outward, growing broader. It split into another shape of identical size and dimension.

      “Too late!” Mr. Blue bleated from the ridgeline. His voice thickened with horror and he screamed,

      “Run!”

      Cerberus Away Team Alpha retreated from the ghostly, nebulous bodies, backing away toward the crater wall. The figures resembled cadavers glistening with a coating of green phosphorous. Their facial features were always in flux, sliding and re-forming, like smoke. Two more appeared, gliding over the ground toward them. Fingers like wisps of emerald smoke reached out at the end of skeletal arms, convulsing with grasping and clutching movements. The wraiths spread out in a horseshoe formation, clouds of fluorescent particles swarming around them.

      Kane raised the appropriated Calico to his shoulder, sighted down its length and shouted, “Fire!”

      He squeezed off a long rattling burst. Bright brass arced out of the smoking ejector port, tinkling down at his feet. Grant, Brigid and the other members of CAT Alpha triggered simultaneous full-auto fusillades.

      The barrage ripped through the wraiths, punching holes, ripping them to shreds. The figures instantly re-formed, resolving into a dozen wavering, green ghostly shapes. Tiny pieces of green light floated over their heads, like a swarm of radioactive fireflies. The keening whines of ricochets reverberated and echoed all over the crater. The hailstorm of bullets struck bell-like chimes from the metal tower. The slugs bounced off with high-pitched whines.

      Kane released his pressure on the Calico’s trigger and shouted, “Cease fire! Fall back!”

      CAT Alpha sprinted up the slope to the ridge surrounding the crater, causing miniature avalanches under their feet. Kane, Higson and Grant remained at the base of the crater wall, eyes and gun barrels fixed on the cluster of green ghosts less than ten yards away.

      Higson snatched a round V-60 minigrenade from his combat webbing, and ran at an oblique angle away from the rest of the team. He shouted, “Keep going!”

      “Get your ass back here!” Grant bellowed.

      Higson paid no attention to the command. Swiftly he unpinned the grenade and hurled it overhead into the center of the glowing green wraiths, then he flung himself flat, covering up, face buried the cradle of his arms. The V-60 exploded in a ballooning ball of flame. The concussion slapped Kane and Grant backward a few paces. Dust sifted down and they impatiently waved it a way.

      Although they didn’t see the ghostly figures, they saw the little swarm of orbs surrounding Higson. Howling, he leaped to his feet and flailed at them with the frame of his rifle, without making solid impact.

      The cloud settled over the man’s head and shoulders, spreading over his face. When he opened his mouth to scream, two of the orbs darted past his lips and his shriek turned into a gargling croak. Dropping his rifle, he ran in a blind panic across the crater, hands clapped over his eyes.

      “Baptiste, get everybody back to the parallax point!” Kane snapped.

      He didn’t wait to find out if she obeyed his order or had even heard it. He and Grant kicked themselves into sprints as they chased after the frantically fleeing Higson.

      The man stumbled over an irregularity in the ground and fell heavily. He writhed, crying out, limbs thrashing in wild spasms.

      By the time Grant and Kane reached him, the swarm of green orbs had lifted from the man’s body and circled high overhead. Higson lay sprawled on his back, saliva bubbling over swollen lips, his respiration shallow. A puff of gray-green vapor rose from his mouth.

      Kane recoiled at the sight of his face—the blotched flesh leaking and suppurated as if suddenly exposed to a horrific blast of heat. Tiny blisters formed on his cheeks and burst with pops. The whites of his eyes showed only bloodshot streaks.

      “He’s still alive?” Grant rasped.

      Stooping over the body, Kane pressed two fingers against the base of Higson’s neck, timing the pulse. It beat fast and erratic. “Not for long.”

      When Kane removed his fingers, a layer of Higson’s flesh peeled off. “It’s like he’s rotting from the inside out,” he said quietly.

      Grant shook his head. “Not so much rotting as disintegrating.”

      Even as he spoke, the left side of Higson’s face went slack, sagging from the bone. With the moist sound like a wet rag dragged over a rock, the flesh completely fell away, revealing red-filmed cheekbone. The man shuddered violently for a moment, then died.

      As Grant and Kane watched in stunned, shocked silence, Higson’s body beneath his clothes collapsed in on itself, the flesh and bones dissolving into a foul-smelling green smoke. The cloud was shot through with tiny crackling flashes, like miniature versions of the pyrotechnics they had seen dancing on the tower’s disks.

      Kane backed away, feeling bile rise up his throat. “Let’s get out of here.”

      “And leave Higson?”

      “There’s not much to take with us,” Kane retorted flatly.

      He eyed the witch-fire glow of the green orbs still hovering overhead. He said quietly, “We need go before we end up like Higson.”

      Grant’s teeth bared in a silent snarl. “We don’t know what was going on here!”

      Kane nodded and backed away, keeping his gaze on the ghostly swarm. “Exactly. That’s why we need to get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”

      Chapter 7

      Grant and Kane scrambled down the rocky crater wall. The moon slowly rose ahead of them, casting a silver luminescence over the sand. The silence all around was ominous. They heard only the scuffling of their running feet as they sprinted in the direction of the village. As Edwards claimed, the bound and gagged millennialists were nowhere to be seen.

      Kane resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder, looking for the swarm of green bees. He glimpsed them only once, whirling in the distance like jade-hued dust motes.

      “I hate to say it,” Grant half gasped, half growled, “but we’ve been skunked by the consortium again. I don’t know what they were trying to pull, but they managed to do it.”

      “You don’t really think they had anything to do with any of this, do you?” Kane panted.

      The two men slowed their pace, noting the mess of footprints over a comber of sand. They stopped in order to catch their breath. Grant stared back toward Phantom Mesa. His face was beaded with sweat.

      A thick plume of smoke coiled into

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