how?” Foley wanted to know.
“We need a large supply of Ophiocordyceps unilateris,” Margaret answered matter-of-factly. “And since we don’t have the time or means to grow the fungus in a lab, we’ll have to get spores from donors like Marvin here.”
Foley frowned. “Okay… But how the heck would we do that?”
Margaret smiled sweetly. “That, Commander Foley, is your problem.”
Two days had passed since Margaret had entered Foley’s office and placed the Ramanthian head on his desk. Since that time, Foley had requested all of the information that his Intel people could provide on Ramanthian health problems, the status of their medical-support system, and an estimate of how many troopers were dying of natural causes versus combat-related trauma.
Hard data was difficult to come by. But some operatives believed that the Ramanthian mortality rate had increased even though they had a firm grip on the planet and combat-related casualties should have been down. So if the anecdotal evidence was true, there was a very real possibility that the bugs were losing a significant number of personnel to the fungus that Margaret and her team referred to as “Ophi.” But what if such reports had been exaggerated by amateur operatives who were eager to believe the worst?
That was a significant danger. Foley was determined to go out and get a firsthand look at what was taking place. So he was following a local named Pete Sawyer along a drainage channel in almost complete darkness. It was dry and would remain that way until spring, when the rains might or might not fall. In the meantime the floodway functioned as a nocturnal highway for rodents, coyotes, and the occasional human. Although, except for a few hardy souls like Sawyer, there weren’t many people who were brave or foolish enough to venture near the enemy-occupied town of California City. Prior to the war, it had been a bedroom community for nearby military bases. Now the bugs lived there.
With no moonlight to go by, Sawyer was forced to use occasional blips from a handheld torch to confirm their position. And when one such check revealed the wreckage of a human shuttle lying crosswise over the channel, he held up his hand. “This is where we go up and over,” Sawyer whispered. “The best vantage point is the old water tower. The bugs left it intact. Probably on purpose. So we put a hole in it about three weeks after the city was overrun. Now they store their water underground. The point is that they don’t care about it. So there aren’t any guards. Bit of a climb, though… Have you got a head for heights?”
Now you ask me, Foley thought to himself. “I’ll be fine,” he lied. “Lead the way.”
So Sawyer led the way up the concrete slope to the point where a ragged hole had been cut in the security fence. After crawling through on hands and knees, Foley followed Sawyer on a zigzag path that took them between abandoned houses, through a much-looted minimall, and up to the base of a duracrete tower. Foley assumed there was a globular tank higher up. But he couldn’t see it. Sawyer said, “Wait here,” and vanished into the night.
Foley’s hand rested on the silenced pistol that rode under his left arm until Sawyer returned carrying an aluminum ladder over his shoulder. “I keep it hidden,” he explained. “No point in letting the bugs know what I’ve been up to.”
Then, with the ease of someone who had plenty of practice, Sawyer put the ladder up against the support tower and checked to make sure that it was solid. “Okay,” he said hoarsely. “Follow me up. The rungs start about ten feet off the ground. After that, it’s a climb of 130 feet or so. Oh, and one more thing. If you fall, try not to scream. That could attract the wrong sort of attention.” And with that, Sawyer disappeared into the gloom.
Foley looked up, swore softly, and followed. It was easy at first, and because Foley couldn’t see much, the height didn’t bother him. But his legs weren’t used to that kind of exercise, and it wasn’t long before he began to feel the burn. Then he saw the scattering of lights that represented the Ramanthian base and realized that he was at least fifty feet off the ground. That triggered fear-and it took all of his willpower to keep climbing.
Don’t look down, Foley told himself. Look up. And it worked. To some extent at least, as the resistance leader forced himself to reach, pull, and push. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a strong hand took hold of his wrist and pulled him up onto a circular walkway. “There you are,” Sawyer said. “What took so long?”
“I had to pause every now and then to shit my pants.”
Sawyer laughed softly. “So you don’t have a head for heights. Well, you have balls, that’s for sure. Come on… Let’s walk around to the other side of the tower. The sun’s about to rise, and it should be quite a sight.”
As the men watched, a horizontal ribbon of pink light appeared in the east, followed by the first rays of sunshine as a new day began. But before the sun could part company with the horizon, Sawyer led Foley around to the south side of the bulbous tank. It was painted green, and as Foley craned his head to look upwards, he could see the jagged hole where a human missile had struck. “The show’s about to start,” Sawyer said. “We’d better sit down, or the bugs might spot us. Did you bring a pair of binoculars?”
Foley was wearing a knapsack. He shrugged it off and lowered himself onto the grating. The glasses were inside, and he took them out. It was hard to ignore the fact that he was more than a hundred feet off the ground, but Foley did the best he could as he brought the device up to his eyes.
Seated as they were, Foley could see under the metal railing. That gave him a nearly unobstructed view of a large crater and the road that spiraled up around a cone-shaped hill to the fire-blackened grating on top. It was loaded with hundreds of plastic-wrapped bodies all stacked like spokes on a wagon wheel. Heads in and feet out. And as he watched, more dead Ramanthians were being unloaded from a truck. There were so many that it was necessary to layer the corpses.
“It’s like this every Thursday morning,” Sawyer put in. He was seated with his back against the tank, peering through a pair of beat-up binoculars. “Except that the bugs are processing more bodies every week. And there’s one more thing. Look at how they’re dressed.”
Foley looked and saw what Sawyer meant. The Ramanthians were wearing the bug equivalent of hazmat suits! A sure sign that they were concerned about a contagious disease of some sort. “So they didn’t wear protective clothing before?”
“Nope. And the bodies were wrapped in something that looked like linen rather than plastic.”
The reports were true. And he was looking at a very generous supply of Ophiocordyceps unilateris. Foley felt a rising sense of excitement as the last body was unloaded from the truck before it pulled away. The vehicle circled the hill, crossed the crater, and passed through a gap in the rim. What might have been an honor guard of roughly a hundred Ramanthian troopers was evenly spaced around the top of the depression.
The truck vanished for a moment, then reappeared as it made for the base beyond. As Foley scanned the fortress, he saw a defensive ditch, weapons blisters, and high walls. The hint of a duracrete dome was visible beyond that.
That was impressive enough. But the knowledge that the base was like an iceberg, with most if its mass located below the surface, was quite sobering. Because any attempt to rush the crematorium and hijack the bodies there would be met with a counterattack from within the walls. Foley’s thoughts were interrupted by Sawyer. “Now watch this,” the civilian said. “They always do it the same way.”
Foley heard the faint squeal of something akin to bagpipes, followed by a sequential round of rifle shots from the troops stationed around the crater, and a loud whump as a tongue of fire shot up from deep inside the cone- shaped hill. Smoke poured up into the sky as the bodies began to burn. And the flames were so hot that all of the corpses were fully cremated in less than five minutes. “The ash falls down through the grate into some sort of bin below,” Sawyer explained. “They empty it every couple of weeks.”
Once the ceremony was over, the honor guard shuffled down off the rim of the crater, where they boarded a waiting truck and soon left for the base. The military funeral was over. “Well,” Foley said, “that was very interesting. Thank you for bringing me. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Sawyer’s face was brown and wrinkled from years spent working outdoors. His eyes were blue, and, judging from the look in them, he thought Foley was crazy. “No can do. They’d spot us for sure. As the sun comes up, we’ll move west to place ourselves in the shadow thrown by the tank. It’ll be cooler that way. Later, once it gets dark, we’ll climb down. That’s why I told you to bring water and something to eat.”
Foley sighed. It was going to be a long, hot day.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
It was Wednesday morning. Six days had passed since Foley had climbed to the top of the water tower and
