The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [131]
‘Up here!’ Hazo screamed again. ‘Up—’
The coughing seized his voice again. Spitting up more blood and bile, Hazo watched helplessly as Holt tried to quicken his pace. Then desperation and frustration got the better of Holt and he raised his knees to try to run. It was a costly mistake.
Trampling the spongy rats underfoot caused Holt to lose his footing. He faltered, caught himself, faltered again. The rats piled on to him. He got back up again and shook some of them free, before slipping and going down a final time.
Hazo shined his light on the spot, praying that Holt would get up.
He didn’t.
The rats swarmed over their prey.
Holt’s arms thrashed a few more times, as if he were drowning. Then he disappeared beneath the roiling current.
‘Hazo!’ a voice called out over the maddening squeals.
Hazo turned and saw Shuster pulling himself up over the edge of the neighbouring container. He’d lost his helmet and his pant legs were torn up and bloody. Otherwise, he seemed unharmed. ‘Are you all right?’ Hazo called back.
Breathless, Shuster rolled on to his back. ‘I’m okay,’ he said, panting.
Hazo looked towards the entry tunnel and saw that the glow of Ramirez’s light seemed to be growing stronger again - coming back towards the cave.
77
Years had passed since Bryce Crawford last walked these tunnels, yet he still recognized every oddity and anomaly inside the mountain as if they were the birthmarks of a former lover. Even the familiar loamy smell invoked fond memories of the extensive time he’d been stationed here - like grandma’s turkey roasting in the oven on Thanksgiving Day.
Once Frank Roselli had declared the installation ‘complete’ the previous spring, the single entrance to Operation Genesis’s self-sustaining breeding facility had been sealed. Every mechanical part of the gnotobiotic isolator cells that housed the rats had been designed for remote operation, thanks to technology borrowed heavily from NASA’s unmanned space stations. Similarly, the facility generated its own power from a state-of-the-art compact nuclear reactor capable of continuously churning out electricity for ten years before needing refuelling.
Even replenishment of the feeding tanks was handled by a cleverly concealed pipeline to a dairy farm situated a kilometre to the west. The milky nutrient solution manufactured there was a potent brew infused with plague virions and gonadotropin hormone that stimulated the brood’s pituitary development (to promote aggressive behaviour).
What they’d built inside this mountain was the most sophisticated installation of its kind. Such a pity that not long from now, not a trace of it would remain, Crawford thought.
As he neared the cave, his apprehension intensified with the sounds of squealing.
These are no ordinary rats, he thought.
He remembered Roselli saying that the proper name for a brood of rats of was a ‘mischief’, and how the Chinese revered the rat for its cunning and intellect, so much so that it earned top rank as the first of the twelve years in the Sheng xiao zodiac cycle. But this genetically enhanced batch of vermin would add a whole new meaning to ‘Year of the Rat’, thought Crawford.
In one year, the typical female black rat - sexually mature at three months - gestated every twenty-four days, gave live birth to twelve pups and spawned 16,000 offspring. But thanks to Roselli’s ingenious breeding technique, the birthing rate had been increased to an average of sixteen pups. Therefore, the growth algorithm for Operation Genesis conservatively assumed that each female in the initial set would account for an astounding 24,000 descendants in the first year alone. Naturally,