Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [115]
“So tell me,” she nudged. “Tell me what I’m looking at.” Knew whatever came out of Smith’s mouth would come out sideways, but that was okay. She could make it honest.
“Covenant get sick too,” Smith said haltingly. “We noticed it in some of them. Any of the prisoners displaying the symptoms we kept in isolation. Just in case.” He wiped his mouth, still resisting Lopez’s grip. We took every precaution against it. Every precaution.”
He stopped. Lopez jabbed him in the side with her rifle. She was pretty sure Smith was going to give her another scar eventually.
“It made them aggressive. Savage.” Smith worked his mouth, clearly thinking about the words before he said them. “We did some tests. Managed to isolate it.” Now he couldn’t look away from the bodies. “An alien virus.”
Percy raised his head, raised his eyebrows, as MacCraw covered his mouth and leapt back.
“We’ve been standing here breathing around this thing!”
Smith smiled, no humor in it. Mostly disdain. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Did it jump from Covenant to human?” Percy asked.
A dull boom reverberated through the floor, the walls shuddering slightly. “Grenade?” Mahmoud mouthed. Not good. Like the explosion had jump-started his urgency again.
Smith relaxed, stopped pulling away from Lopez. Accepting his fate, finally?
“It did.”
>Benti 1507 hours
Get moving again, soldier!
“Get—” The words stuck in her throat, wouldn’t come out, not fast enough.
Orlav—the thing staring out from behind Orlav’s eyes—opened its mouth, lips already purple and cheeks veined with green. In control now, it turned Orlav’s head, drew Gersten into an embrace using Orlav’s arm thrown over Gersten’s shoulder.
What used to be Orlav bit into Gersten’s cheek.
The words still wouldn’t leave her mouth. They were stuck. As Gersten shrieked, she couldn’t look away, the teeth sinking into the cheek and worrying it. Blood washed down Gersten’s throat to soak his collar. Orlav’s other arm was already writhing and changing right in front of Benti, becoming something bulbous that had nothing to do with the Marine she’d known.
That arm, that club, that infernal claw, rose, about to become a weapon crashing down on her skull.
Clarence shoved her aside, fired point-blank into Orlav’s temple, ripping a tunnel through the skull. As the body slumped, Clarence matter-of-factly put another burst through the heart.
It dropped, Gersten screaming and flailing to be free. Staggering back, holding one hand against his torn cheek. “Jesus, Jesus . . .”
Clarence popped the empty clip. It hissed in the water at his feet, Benti watching in the flashlight’s glow, trying to adjust to what had just happened.
He slapped another in, turned, grabbed Benti’s shirt and hauled her to her feet, which brought her out of it. A once-over to confirm she was uninjured, and he tipped his chin at the wires she’d left exposed, then stared at the grenade-created wreckage behind them as it shuddered and shifted, pushed from the other side. The water was rising around their knees.
She got back to it.
“Benti, my face,” Gersten moaned.
“I know,” she said, shaking fingers stripping this wire, then that wire, “just let me get this. Then I’ll take care of you.” She needed a moment so her hands were steady before she did anything medical for Gersten. Clarence had his hand on his pistol. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, but she knew Clarence. Just in case? Was this what it came down to? Knew, too, Gersten, and not sure she could do it. Any of it. But knowing she’d have to, somehow.
A crash and tumble behind them. Something was breaking through the wreckage. A spike of tension in Clarence’s posture. Her hands were wet, the wires were slippery. She twisted the two and the lock clacked open.
She spun the lever, shoulder to the door, and pushed. It stuck.
A dragging sound from behind them. A hiss