The Flood Read Free Page B

potatoes. All the starch overfed the bacteria in the gut, tending to make them rampage out of control.
    “It’s a shame,” Walker had said with a twinkle. “Good bugs gone bad.”
    “What does that mean?” Predator rumbled.
    “Your microbiome. The trillions of bacteria in and on you, many of which do critical jobs – like helping you digest your food.”
    “Are you saying I’m infected?”
    “You and me both, big man. Look, just try to lay off the rice and potatoes.”
    “That’s all there is!” And for many meals that was true. They were two of the few foods that could be grown in the hangar deck farm that had enough calories to keep body and soul together. But they also resulted in too many people not being able to do their jobs unless they were thirty seconds from the head.
    “We’ve had increasing cases of IBS and IBD,” Walker said. “It’s a problem.”
    “Oh, good. Another one.”
    Doc Walker had squinted up at him. “You are a very big smartass, aren’t you? Like a bratty eight-year-old blown up to the size of Sasquatch.”
    “Sorry,” Pred said, lightening up. “It just gets me down when I can’t do my job.”
    Walker nodded. She got that. “Okay, look – I’m going to give you some cortical steroids. These should tighten up your gut enough to let you operate. They’re not good for you, and definitely not a long-term fix. But it’ll keep you on your feet – and off the shitter.”
    Now, as Predator recalled all of this, he started to get himself out of sight of the others, partially behind a tree. There were plenty of combat situations where crapping in sight of your teammates was necessary. But this probably wasn’t one of them. Then again, Pred was a lot wider than all the trees around here. He hoped no one saw anything traumatizing.
    As he took care of business, he heard something rustling in the underbrush nearby.
    The hand he wasn’t wiping with went to the knife on his chest rig.
    * * *
    Reyes was posted to the south side of the bridge, the far one from the parked MRAP. He tried to ignore the noise of cars and trucks being rolled off the bridge, accelerating down into the gully, and crashing into trees – not to mention the steady suppressed firing back toward the town. He simply faced away and covered his sector, his mind on his job. This was important not least since coverage was thin – him to the south, Brady to the north, and Ali up in overwatch.
    Everyone else had to get out and push.
    He stole a quick look over his shoulder as he heard the MRAP’s winch spinning up – and saw the overturned truck being slowly but powerfully dragged off the bridge. They were close to getting it clear – and thus close to getting out of there.
    Scanning to the south, he could see there were a few vehicles on the road – and a fair number of what looked like they used to be bodies, strewn on the blacktop and the shoulders. There wasn’t much left of them now. Mainly clothing, bones, hair, and the tang of regret. Options foreclosed. Things over forever.
    Reyes’s vision snapped to the foreground again and he brought his rifle to his shoulder, as he heard rustling in the underbrush nearby – just past the shoulder of the road. He advanced a few paces to investigate. The brush was low, and the trees were small and sparse, so he didn’t think there could be anything human-sized hiding back there. Wildlife, maybe.
    Sure enough, a dark nose on a tan snout stuck itself out from a low bush. As it emerged further, it looked like some kind of mole or beaver – tan fur on its belly, shades of brown on top. Whiskers and cute little ears. Then again, its fur was pretty patchy, showing mottled gray skin underneath – and the eyes, which were black underneath, had an unhealthy-looking milky coating. But things were probably tough all over the whole ecosystem. Reyes could relate.
    Instinctively, he stopped moving, to avoid spooking it and to get a better look. But, pretty quickly, the creature