Burning Angels

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.

80

Donal Brice peered through the bars into the nearest cage. He scratched his beard nervously. A big, lumbering lump of a guy, he’d only recently got the job at Washington Dulles airport’s quarantine house, and he still wasn’t entirely certain how the whole darned system worked.

As the new guy, he’d landed more than his share of night shifts. He figured that was fair enough, and in truth he was glad of the work. It hadn’t been easy finding this job. Painfully unsure of himself, Brice tended to cover up his insecurities with bursts of booming, deafening laughter.

It didn’t tend to go down too well at job interviews — especially as he tended to laugh at all the wrong things. In short, he was glad to have a job at the monkey house, and he was determined to do well.

But Brice figured that what he saw before him now was not good news. One of the monkeys looked real sick. Crook.

It was nearing the end of his shift, and he’d entered the monkey house to administer their early-morning feed. His last duty before clocking off and heading home.

The recently arrived animals were making a horrendous racket, banging on the wire mesh, leaping around their cages and screaming: we’re hungry.

But not this little guy.

Brice sank to his haunches and studied the vervet monkey closely. It was crouched at the rear of the cage, its arms wrapped around itself, an odd, glazed expression on its otherwise cute features. The poor little critter’s nose was running. No doubt about it, this guy wasn’t well.

Brice racked his brains to remember the procedure for when they had a sick animal. That individual was to be removed from the main facility and placed in isolation, to prevent the illness from spreading.