The Plague Forge [ARC] Read Free Page B

folding her legs up beneath her and resting her head on his shoulder.
    He took her hand in his, and together they watched the infinite blur of forest go by.
    At Camp Exodus, Karl waved them in. He stood in the middle of a widening gap in the colony’s wall, a bullhorn in one hand and a radio in the other. Colonists scurried about, pushing portions of the wall aside. Farther inside camp, more people worked to reposition the temporary structures that surrounded the base of the space elevator. A few forklifts assisted the effort, tracks coated brown with mud.
    Rain pounded the entire area. It had been relentless for the last week, turning the unpaved areas of camp into muddy ponds and the rest into slippery patches if one wasn’t careful.
    Vanessa pulled to a stop next to Karl and they exchanged a few words. She coaxed the vehicle forward and turned hard left, moving them toward the river, well out of the path of the incoming towers.
    Skyler could see almost nothing but a rain-lashed windshield; still, he knew the camp’s layout like the back of his hand and could guess how far they’d driven. “That’s good enough, Vanessa. Park here; we’ll help them prep.”
    She obliged, rolled to a stop, and killed the current to the motors.
    “Damn this rain,” Skyler said once he set food outside. The thick drops of water fell in an almost artificially steady pace. He left his body armor in the back of the APC, and offered Ana a hand down to the ground. She jumped instead, wincing slightly on the landing and probably hoping Skyler hadn’t noticed. He pretended not to and pulled his bushman’s hat from the pocket on his pants where he kept it. The downpour soaked the treated leather before he could get it on his head. “This is miserable.”
    Ana pulled her own hat on, a black baseball-style cap unadorned with any logo. She still wore her shorts and tee, but at least she’d pulled a combat vest on over the thin top. She flashed him a thumbs-up.
    “Pablo, Vanessa, guard the … thing,” he called out, and they set out.
    They met Karl at the edge of camp. He stood on a scaffold that had been bolted to part of the wall there, allowing a kind of lookout. A metal ladder provided access, and Skyler climbed up. Ana, he noted, stayed behind. The lingering pain in her back must be flaring up again, but he knew better than to suggest she find somewhere to lie down.
    Karl held a set of binoculars to his eyes. He lowered them as he made room for Skyler. “Can’t see shit in this rain. Are half coming?”
    “Just like Ireland.”
    “Okay.” He turned and raised his bullhorn. “Control team, into positions!”
    A portion of the camp had been cleared in a pie-slice section expanding out from the Elevator base, in the direction of the crashed ship out in the rainforest, plus a healthy buffer around the entirety of the disk that marked the cord’s actual connection point.
    “Think it’s enough?” Skyler asked.
    “Only one way to find out.” Karl waved as a group of colonists emerged from the shelter of a camper some distance away. They rushed forward and swarmed into the cleared space.
    Skyler noted that the rest of the colonists had also sprung into action at the command Karl had shouted, retreating far to the opposite side of camp by the university complex.
    The “control team” fanned out and spaced themselves evenly in a line, halfway between Aura’s Edge and the base of the Elevator.
    Karl spun around and scanned the forest again. The path originally carved when the towers had left was still detectable if one knew where to look, but a remarkable amount of foliage had already regrown along the route.
    Skyler heard the towers before Karl saw them. The crack of young trees being folded in half, the crunch of rock being pushed aside. Muted under the heavy rain, but there, and growing louder.
    “I see them,” Karl said.
    Visibility in the rain was two hundred meters at best, one hundred at worst. What Skyler expected to see