The Noise Read online

“I don’t see anything,” the soldier beside him said. He was working a large floodlight, sweeping it back and forth across the trees.

  “Three what?” Harbin asked, peering out through the chain-link under the platform.

  “There!” Morrison shouted before pulling the trigger and releasing another three shots in rapid fire.

  “You’re firing on US soil!” Martha shouted out.

  He ignored her. His weapon swept to the right, and he fired again.

  “Morrison! Stand down!”

  This came from the soldier with the red hair standing next to Martha.

  He glanced down at her, eyes wild and face white, then turned back to the woods and raised the gun again.

  “Morrison!”

  The soldier next to him on the platform placed a tentative hand on his shoulder and said something Martha couldn’t make out.

  Morrison didn’t move at first. His frantic gaze remained fixed on the trees, then his finger slowly lifted from the trigger and he lowered the weapon.

  The redheaded soldier looked up at the man operating the light. “Ebbs, you see anything?”

  “Negative, ma’am.”

  To another soldier about twenty feet down the platform: “Griffin?”

  Without looking away from the woods, he shook his head. “I think it was deer, Sergeant. I saw three of ’em run off.”

  “Sergeant?” Martha repeated the word softly.

  She gave Martha a quick glance, then scowled back at the soldier who fired the shots. “Damnit, Morrison, take thirty. I don’t want you back on the wall until you’ve got your head straight.” Raising her voice. “The rest of you spread out and stay sharp. We’re not here to bag the local wildlife! Nobody touches another trigger, unless there is a confirmed threat!”

  Weapon slung across his back, he climbed down off the wall and approached her sheepishly. “It wasn’t deer, Sarge. We haven’t seen any animals out there.”

  “We’re all running on fumes. I should have pulled you an hour ago. Take a break, get some food in you, and come back in thirty. Relieve Ebbs next. Understood?”

  He nodded and walked in the direction of one of the longer tents. Barracks, Martha presumed.

  When he was gone, the woman’s hands slipped over the various items attached to her belt in some kind of self-inventory: handgun, several clips of ammunition, canteen. Then she made a brisk start toward the only remaining helicopter. A troop carrier, larger than the one that brought Martha in. The rotors were turning slowly but picking up speed. Several soldiers climbed into the back.

  “Wait!” Martha shouted, chasing after her, Harbin a few paces behind.

  When the woman got to the helicopter, she barked out orders, then started to climb inside.

  Martha caught up to her as she was about to close the door. “Wait, damnit!”

  One foot in the door, the other still on the skid, she turned back to Martha. “You should be in your tent, Doctor.” Shooting a disconcerting look at Harbin, she added, “Him, too.”

  “So you know who we are?”

  “It’s my job to know who everyone on my base is.”

  “Is it also your job to know where everyone from your base is?”

  The woman looked her over but didn’t respond. Martha noticed a small scar on her left cheek, a thin white line puckered at the top.

  “Are you heading to the anomaly?”

  Inside the helicopter, three soldiers were strapping into bench seats along the walls. Unlike the helicopter Martha came in on, this one was utilitarian. All harsh lines, exposed metal, and worn, chipped paint. Once buckled in, they tossed an oily rag back and forth, checking their weapons and wiping down various parts in some practiced ritual Martha didn’t follow.

  The redheaded sergeant looked in on them. “I want all of you fully loaded and ready to move the second we’ve got boots on the ground. No less than three spare clips and plenty of water. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

  She then turned back to Martha. She seemed to be weighing several options as her eyes bounced from Martha to Harbin and back again.

  “We’re trying to find Keenen Holt,” Martha said. “He’s been MIA since this afternoon.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “We were brought in to investigate the anomaly, and now it feels like we’ve been left up here to fend for ourselves. Zero resources or useful information.” Martha shot her finger out and pointed back toward Medical. “I’ve got a tent full of dead bodies that seem to be getting hotter with each passing second. That’s not possible, but it’s happening, and it’s happening fast. The only person who seems to have any idea what’s going on is at the anomaly. I need to talk to Holt, and I need to talk to him now.”

  “You’re not authorized to go—”

  Martha cut her off. “I’m scheduled to go back in a few hours. Check if you don’t believe me. You either take us there, or I’m done. I’ll head back to San Francisco and bust this wide open—see how the Army reacts when carloads of reporters show up outside this little prison you built live-streaming video around the world.”

  The sergeant’s gaze didn’t falter. When she glanced over at Harbin, he simply shrugged and said, “I’m with her. I can’t speak for the other scientists brought in, but I imagine they feel the same.”

  She glared at both of them for nearly a minute before blowing out a frustrated breath. “Get in. We should already be in the air.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Fraser

  Lieutenant Colonel Alex Fraser tightened his grip on his M4 carbine rifle as he hovered over the two sets of tracks they’d found in the mud. Clearly children, one older, one young. The younger one might be injured, maybe from the struggle back in the shelter at the old barn.

  If not for the shuffling trail left by the younger girl, the older child would have proven a worthy adversary, maybe even a challenge. As they followed the trail, her tracks vanished repeatedly. She’d had training, was purposely placing her footfalls on leaves, branches, and rocks in an attempt to conceal her path.

  Then they heard the scream. In the mountains of Afghanistan, he’d learned from the best. The Taliban had used sound, perfecting the ability to project off the harsh surfaces, generating noises in one place and bouncing it to others in order to set up elaborate ambushes that had taken the lives of more than one of his friends.

  And when the girl’s scream shot at them from the mountain up above, he followed the sound back up through the trees, off the cliffs, until he was certain he’d pinpointed the source. All of this happened in less than a second, and a moment later, he and his team were hoofing it up the side of the mountain, unwilling to let these two children pull ahead of them.

  Then they found the tracks.

  The tracks led them farther up the mountain.

  They followed the tracks slowly, with caution, until they came upon a small clearing where they abruptly vanished.

  Fraser signaled for his team to stop and dropped to one knee.

  The tracks didn’t stop. They’d been brushed away and covered with leaves, branches, and pine needles. Carefully concealed, reminiscent of the Taliban.

  Fraser lowered his night-vision goggles, flicked them on, and studied the surrounding area.

  No movement.

  He switched to infrared and looked for heat signatures.

  He expected to see rabbits, deer, birds—tiny blips of red from the wildlife no doubt watching him, but there was nothing. Earlier, one of his men had pointed out the eerie quiet of the forest, as if all the wildlife had vanished, and at first he’d written that off. Now he was beginning to wonder if those animals knew something he didn’t.

  At the center of the clearing, surrounded by greens, yellows, and blues in his goggles’ display, was a square outlined in a faint line of red.

  Heat.

  The square was about three feet in diameter, and when he switched back to standard night vision, he found it virtually invisible—nothing but dirt and dry leav
es about six feet to the right of a large ash tree.

  He switched back to IR, the square visible again.

  This was either a trap set in the clearing or a trapdoor with another underground bunker or cellar much like the one they’d found under the barn.

  Number Two.

  There was no sign of the girls anywhere in the clearing.

  Contain them!

  With a series of hand gestures, Fraser instructed his team to position themselves around the outer edge of the clearing, weapons trained on the center. When the others were in position, he slowly edged forward, his M4 also trained on the opening. His boots barely leaving the ground, he rolled his foot from toe to heel with practiced care as he inched forward. If this shelter was as large or larger than the other one, he could very well have been standing over them right then. His Kevlar armor protected his head and torso, but if the girls were armed, a single shot fired from below would rip right through him.

  One little sound to give away his presence.

  One panicked pull of the trigger.

  When he reached the edge of the structure, he found the hinges of a door on one side, then located a rusty handle.

  He signaled his team into position, all weapons trained on the door. Fraser let his own M4 hang down his back, gripped the handle with his right hand, and raised his left fist into the air, using his fingers to silently count down from five.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Fraser

  At zero, Fraser moved fast. He yanked up on the door, threw it back. As he crashed down to the earth and tumbled away, he expected the harsh crack of one or more shots, braced for the pain of one of those shots hitting him. Gravity took over and he was at the edge of the clearing in an instant and back on his feet a moment later.

  “Don’t move!” someone shouted.

  “Drop it!” another yelled out.

  There was a clatter from down below, a muffled gasp.

  Several of his team scrambled closer, the red beams of their laser sights slicing the dark and disappearing down into that hole.

  Nobody fired.

  “Clear!”

  “Clear!”

  “Clear!”

  One by one, the team sounded off.

  Silence.

  Fraser stepped up to the opening and peered down inside.

  A girl of about fourteen or fifteen stared back up at him. A hunting knife was on the ground at her feet. Her face was covered in dirt and crusted blood, black and blue beneath. Looked like her nose might be broken. Her dark braided hair hung matted and filthy. Her once white shirt was torn in several places, caked with dirt and stains. She wore baggy jeans, at least a size or two too large, cinched at the top with a rope in place of a belt.

  She stared up at him with a fire in her eyes, burning with a mix of fear and distrust.

  Contain them!

  “We’re not here to hurt you.”

  Her eyes darted from the red laser dots slipping over her chest to the soldiers up above, then to Fraser before she took several steps backward, attempting to fade into the dark recesses of that pit.

  “Wait…no…don’t move. It’s okay.” Fraser held out his left palm to her. His right hand reached around his back and wrapped around a stun grenade. He looped his index finger through the pull ring and teased it about halfway out.

  “Can you step back out into the light, honey?”

  She was trembling, but he didn’t think it was from fear, more likely adrenaline. As he watched, her left leg moved slowly back. Not much, just enough to provide additional support. As she did this, she flexed the fingers on her right hand. Her eyes glanced off into the gloom at her left for an instant, then were back on Fraser.

  He moved a little closer. “I don’t want to see anyone get hurt. Not my team, not you. From what I’ve heard, you’ve had a very traumatic day. We’re here to help you. We have food, water, shelter, medicine…”

  “We have all those things,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper.

  We.

  “Who’s down there with you? Is she hurt? We found blood.”

  “Leave us alone. We don’t need your help.” She took another step back, half her body now lost to the dark.

  “You need to stay in the light, where we can see you.”

  “Okay,” she said softly. With a swift jump, she vanished into the dark.

  Fraser yanked the stun grenade from his belt, ripped out the pin, and threw it down into the hole. His team had been ready for it—moving fluidly to the side and away from the blast as he rolled to his left a moment before the grenade went off with a loud thud and a flash of bright white light.

  Down into the hole, then. Quick, practiced, three of them disappeared down the steps with their weapons at the ready as the bang echoed out over the mountain.

  Fraser followed behind them.

  They found the girl on the floor in the back corner curled up in a ball, her hands pressed against her ears, her eyes closed. He scooped up the knife she’d held earlier and tucked it into the back of his belt. If she’d been going for a weapon, he didn’t see one. There was nothing on the ground around her but canned goods and busted bags of flour and grain. “Secure her, bring her up.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  He turned, followed the soldier’s flashlight beam to the opposite corner of the shelter, and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand.

  Another girl.

  She was tied to a bench, blood dripping from wounds on her wrists and ankles where she had tried to break free. Her hair and clothing were caked with muck and more blood. It trailed out from her ears, nose, even the corners of her eyes.

  That wasn’t what threw Fraser, though. It was the expression on her face. The stun grenade was on the ground near this girl’s feet. It had gone off right next to her. By all accounts, she should be incapacitated, like the other girl. She wasn’t, though. Instead, a slight grin played at the corners of her lips. There was a shimmer in her bloodshot eyes, and he didn’t like that at all. As she stared at him, her head tilted slightly to the left, her tongue darted out and lapped up a bit of blood on one corner of her mouth, and she spoke in a voice that had no business coming from the body of a young child. Deep, guttural, filled with gravel.

  “Anna Shiiimmmm,” she said, with a slight nod of her head, her grin growing.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Fraser

  “Get them out of here,” Fraser ordered, breaking eye contact with the girl.

  He didn’t see the dog.

  None of them did.

  The yellow lab leaped up from behind a fallen shelf and crashed into Fraser’s chest, sending him tumbling to the ground. In an instant, the animal was standing on his chest, fangs around Fraser’s neck.

  One of the soldiers raised his M4 and leveled the barrel inches from the dog’s head.

  Fraser held out his hand, gestured for him to wait.

  “Easy, boy,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster.

  The dog’s teeth pressed into his flesh but didn’t break the skin. When Fraser tried to sit up, the dog bit down a little harder. Warm breath and saliva dripped from his mouth.

  “He could be rabid, Lieutenant,” the soldier said.

  “He’s only protecting the girls,” Fraser replied, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “You won’t hurt me, will you, boy?”

  The dog let out a soft growl mixed with a whimper.

  “Labs are very protective of children. We’ve invaded his space. He sees us as a threat, that’s all. Give him some food.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  “A ration bar or something. Offer him some food.”

  Reaching into a Velcro pocket on his vest, the soldier took out an energy bar, tore the wrapper open with his teeth, and held it out to the dog.

  The dog glanced at it, growled, and tightened his grip on Fraser’s neck.

  So much for that.

  “Zeke, nieder,” the older girl said from the other side of the room. She
was on her feet, still visibly shaken from the stun grenade, but recovering quickly. Two soldiers held her arms. “Nieder. Komm.”

  The dog’s eyes glanced over at her. He whimpered again, then released his grip. He stepped off Fraser’s chest, went to the girl, and sat at her side, his body pressed against her leg.

  Fraser stood, wiped the dirt from his uniform, and looked at the girl. “German?”

  She didn’t respond, only eyed him warily.

  He didn’t have time for this. “Take her up top. We’ll sort this out back at 45-121.”

  In the corner of the room, one of the soldiers stood in front of the girl tied to the bench. “What about her?”

  Fraser glanced over but when his eyes met hers, he found himself looking away. “Get those ropes off her, treat the wounds, and prep her for the walk back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No!” The older girl yanked free of the two soldiers leading her toward the stairs and jumped in front of the younger girl, blocking the man reaching for the ropes on her hands. “You can’t untie her! She’s sick!”

  Fraser rolled his eyes at her. “If she’s sick, why is she tied up?”

  The soldier leaned in closer. “She’s sweating pretty bad, Lieutenant. Could be a fever.”

  “Last I checked, you treat that with meds, not rope.”

  The older girl said, “She’s hysterical, dangerous. She tried to hurt herself. You gotta keep her tied up.”

  “She the one who broke your nose?”

  The girl nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  She pursed her lips, didn’t answer.

  “She your sister?”

  No response.

  The younger girl sat quietly on the bench, watching all of this, that sinister grin still on her face. To the extent her bindings permitted, her right foot slowly dragged back and forth in the dirt, digging a small trench with the tip of her toe. Her hands, secured to the arms of the bench, gripped the wood tight enough to turn her fingers white. She didn’t look right, though. Those eyes. Those damn eyes. Could be jaundice, that yellow color. That was never good. Sweat trickled down from under her matted hair, through the caked blood and grime. The collar of her shirt was stained pink with it. She couldn’t be more than seven or eight.