1
N IGHT FELL IN the remains of New York City, plunging the Astoria Peninsula into gloom and sending the refugees inside the Schaeffer-Yeager compound scurrying to their shanties like skittish rabbits.
A robust wind from the south scattered fungal spores into the sky, making the air thick, red, and difficult to breathe. For better or worse, the winds had delayed the launch of Operation Elephant Bird by two days.
That was time enough, Miller thought, for Gray to prevent Harris’s dicey plan—but the order to cancel, much to Miller’s disgust, never came.
Preparations for the mission proceeded with or without the weather’s cooperation, or Miller’s approval. The payload was packed and loaded, the choppers were fuelled and prepped, and when the wind calmed on the third day, it was time for lift off.
The spore count was wreaking havoc on the machinery, however, causing unplanned additional maintenance and slowing the process. With the red wind, fungal blooms erupted around the chopper quicker than maintenance crews could remove them.
This was not in any way how Miller wanted to spend his time.
He watched the chopper pilot and the technicians on the helipad as they reached into the air intake valves and fuel lines, pulling out strips of pinkish-red fungal gloop, and realized that he would rather be doing anything else on Earth.
What the hell was he doing here? He was so utterly sick and tired of this compound, of this city, this planet—of the constant feeling of rolling a boulder up a slippery slope, sliding downhill as fast as he climbed.
His thoughts searched for comfort and turned to Samantha, to Billy, and then to his parents—who probably had long run out of supplies on the ranch—and he felt worse, wondering how they were all faring, or if any of them fared at all.
His gut twisted. He should be there, with his folks. He should be packing them into Dad’s truck and getting them to safety—not here, acting as Harris’s stooge.
But where would he take his parents, if he were with them? There was no such thing as a ‘safe place’ anymore. Even inside the compound, the concept of safety was wishful thinking. Safety didn’t exist.
Standing on the helipad, Miller yanked the gas mask off his face and coughed into the thick, hot wind.
How did he end up here—doing Harris’s bidding? Of all the idiotic things to do. If someone had told him—after Harris had announced to the board that he planned to release a super-wasp laced with NAPA-33 to the Infected communes around the compound—that Miller would be implementing said plan, he’d have laughed in their face.
Why would he do anything that psychopath wanted?
Robert Harris, the supposed head of security for the last uninfected stronghold in New York City, operated under the delusion that he ran the whole world—and Miller, who knew the full scope of Harris’s delusion included nuking the shit out of the Infected population only two miles from the compound’s flimsy walls—hated that he had to babysit this operation.
It was a joke. Miller was a pawn in a fucked-up power play between Harris and Gray, the CEO of Schaefer-Yeager, and somehow, Miller was supposed to make sure everything happened as it should. One man.
“I’m counting on you,” Gray had said when he’d asked Miller to spearhead the wasp drops, minutes after storming out of the conference room in a rage.
Miller had only agreed to do it because deep down, under the resentment, exhaustion, and suspicion, he agreed the operation needed heavy oversight—and not by one of Harris’s gun-blazing cowboy brigades, but by him.
Still, when he asked, it felt as if Gray had ordered Miller to eat a shit sandwich—and to smile while doing it.
“P ILOT SAYS FIVE minutes,” du Trieux said, coming up beside Miller on the helipad and resting her hand on the strap of her Gilboa.
Miller swiped the sweat from his forehand with the back of his hand and let the perspiration
Similar Books
