The Demon Crown: A Sigma Force Novel Read online

  A wasp—one of the large soldiers—crawled out the tear and buzzed away, its work done.

  Tears welled as agony racked through her.

  She stared up as best she could.

  So far . . .

  Her only hope of escaping was to drop the boy and climb as swiftly as she could.

  Still, she could feel the boy’s heartbeat pounding against her neck, as if begging her not to abandon him.

  I’m sorry . . .

  2:11 P.M.

  From under the bower of the banyan tree, Gray stared up at the forested flank of Haleakala. He didn’t need to check his watch. With each passing second, his heart hammered harder in his throat.

  Off to the side, Ken knelt next to a dazed Emmet, who sat with his back to a tree trunk. The professor pressed two fingers to the tour operator’s neck, monitoring his pulse.

  A crashing sound rose from the forest ahead.

  Gray stood straighter as two large shapes burst into view, running headlong, ignoring the trail.

  Kowalski and Palu.

  They each had someone tossed over a shoulder.

  “Found ’em,” Kowalski gasped as he skidded to a stop, breathing as heavily as a bull.

  The professor waved them over. “Bring them here!”

  Kowalski either ignored him or his strength gave out. He lowered a woman—the missing wife—to the leafy ground, then dropped to his backside. “How ’bout you come here.”

  Palu unshouldered his burden beside the woman.

  Gray moved toward them, but his gaze remained on the forest. “Where’s Seichan?”

  Kowalski sat up straighter. “Whaddya mean?”

  Gray realized the men had left before Seichan had gone to look for the boy.

  Palu’s brow furrowed deeply, following Gray’s gaze. “We saw no one when we came down. But we were going wikiwiki . . . very fast.”

  Gray stepped toward the forest.

  Then where the hell are—?

  A resounding explosion cut off his silent question.

  2:12 P.M.

  Seichan rolled across a bed of damp ferns, purposefully soaking herself against a blast of searing heat. Two yards behind her, a spiral of blue-orange fire shot into the sky.

  She remained low, gaping at the maelstrom around her. Swirling columns of flames exploded everywhere. She pictured the subterranean conflagration sweeping through the tangle of tunnels below and bursting forth through its many skylights and fissures.

  She crawled away, nearly deaf, her retinas seared. The ground trembled under her with aftershocks. The volcanic rock of the slope was honeycombed with tunnels and caves. The concussive force of the trapped explosions must have further weakened the substructure.

  As she fled, new chasms cracked open, expelling smoke, flickering with residual flames. Trees toppled and bamboo poles waved through the air.

  She fought her way back to the trail. At some point, she must have lost her beekeeping hood, but the smoke and heat seemed to have driven off the swarm. She finally reached the path, doing her best to shield the boy with her own body.

  Abandoning the child was never an option for her.

  Especially not now.

  Earlier, not knowing if she would survive, she had silently expressed her regret. (I’m sorry . . .) But her apology was meant for Gray, for making this choice to risk everything, including their lives together, for the sake of this boy.

  Though, down deep, she knew she had risked much more and felt a twinge of guilt. She had no right to—

  The ground jolted again, reminding her she was far from safe.

  She firmed her arm around the boy and dragged him along with her. Ahead, she spotted a glint of metal and a black rubber tire.

  The motorbike.

  She left the boy on the trail, dragged the cycle up, and leaned it against a tree—then collected the kid again. Moments later she was seated with the boy cradled in her lap, his head rolled back on her shoulder. She hugged her arms around him to reach the handlebars.

  Hang in there, Benjie . . . just a little longer.

  It took her three tries to get the engine to turn over. She felt like crying with relief when the cylinders finally ignited and the motor growled under her. Before she could take off, the mountain shook violently, almost unbalancing her. She glanced to the right and watched the slope collapse in on itself, creating a massive smoking sinkhole.

  The chasm grew rapidly as she watched, spreading toward her.

  She leaned over the boy, throttled the engine up, and sped away.

  As she outran the sinkhole, the world around her grew both hazy and too bright. She shook her head, which only set her vision to whirling. Colors bled around her. The path and forest shattered into a kaleidoscope of fractured images, spinning into and out of focus.

  She could no longer tell if she was riding up or down.

  Or even moving at all.

  As the world lost all meaning, she held on to the boy.

  I’m sorry . . .

  This time, her apology was for the child.

  She had failed him.

  2:24 P.M.

  Even before the explosion had echoed away, Gray had started up the mountainside with Kowalski and Palu. As they climbed, thick smoke rolled down from above, filling the lower forests and making it harder to see. The ground continued to tremble underfoot, and volcanic rock cracked with thunderous claps, as if the mountain were tearing itself apart.

  Panic set his heart to pounding in his ears.

  Then a familiar rumbling whine rose from up ahead.

  Gray stopped on the trail.

  Out of the pall, a motorcycle shot into view. It raced toward them. At first, Gray thought Seichan was hunched over the handlebars with her usual fierce determination. Then he saw her body roll crookedly in her seat. One arm hugged a boy in her lap; the other weakly grasped the handlebar’s grip.

  She looked barely conscious, likely keeping upright only by instinct and the gyroscopic balance of the bike’s momentum.

  As the distance narrowed, she failed to acknowledge them, even when Kowalski called out and waved. Her cycle continued to fly toward them, gaining even more speed downhill.

  Her luck—and consciousness—were not going to last much longer. Even worse, Gray and the others had just scrambled up a steep cliff face, climbing a series of precarious switchbacks to reach the top.

  The bike aimed straight toward the cliff’s edge.

  “Off the trail!” Gray yelled.

  Kowalski and Palu shoved to the side.

  Gray stepped with them, but stayed close to the path. He bunched his legs, tensing his muscles. He’d have only the one chance.

  As the bike sped up to his position, he lunged out and dove across the cycle. He shouldered into Seichan, hooking an arm around her and the boy. He knocked them both out of the seat. They crashed headlong in a rolling tangle across a bed of ferns on the far side. Unmanned, the motorcycle continued down the trail, still impossibly upright—then flew over the cliff. It sailed far before finally dipping and dropping into the woods below.

  Gray quickly checked Seichan and the boy.

  Both seemed unharmed but unconscious.

  Kowalski and Palu joined him, wearing matching expressions of concern.

  Gray waved down the mountain. “Help me get them back to the Jeep.”

  Palu took the boy, while Kowalski and Gray slung Seichan between them. In minutes, they were back at the banyan tree.

  Ken rushed to them. “Thank God, they’re okay.”

  But were they?

  Gray lowered Seichan. “Professor, what’s wrong with them?” He waved to include the entire dazed group.

  Ken glanced to the others, then back to Seichan. “Definitely the neurotoxin from the sting of a female breeder. They should recover with time.”

  Gray sensed the man was holding back. “What else?”

  “While you were gone, I . . . I examined Mr. Lloyd’s body with a magnifying glass. His skin is peppered with
stings. But the sites don’t show the typical red welts that surround a soldier’s painful stings.”

  Gray understood, remembering the professor’s description of the breeding female’s pattern of needling a host multiple times to implant her full load of eggs. “You’re thinking he’s been parasitized.”

  “Maybe the others, too.”

  Gray glanced to Seichan.

  Ken must have read his thoughts. “The others were up there awhile, unconscious and immobilized. The female wasp would wait until her host was subdued before parasitizing them.”

  So there’s hope.

  Gray began to kneel next to Seichan—when a monstrously large wasp crawled out of a rip in her suit. It perched at the edge, its wings humming in a frenzied blur.

  Gray recognized the creature from the professor’s photo collection.

  A breeding female.

  Kowalski kicked it to the side, then stamped it into an oily black puddle.

  Gray looked at Ken. The professor’s despairing expression answered his unspoken question.

  There was no hope now.

  16

  May 7, 3:38 P.M. HST

  Hana, Island of Maui

  Safely back at the cottage, Ken stood on the porch, his arms crossed with worry. An ocean breeze carried the promise of a late-afternoon rain, along with the perfume of the gardens. The bucolic setting stood in stark contrast to the dark pall clinging to the flank of Haleakala.

  While the quaking had stopped and the flames were subdued by the wet forests, Ken knew the true threat to the island remained. He anxiously waited to learn the extent of the danger, but other matters needed to be attended to first.

  An ambulance turned on the gravel drive and headed for the highway. It carried the Simmons family and the tour operator. Palu had radioed for the paramedics to meet them here as the group frantically rode down the mountainside. By the time the Jeep reached the cottage, the neurotoxin’s effect had begun to wear off. Still, the afflicted needed further medical attention.

  Palu had coordinated with his battalion chief to make sure the group was put into a quarantined ward at the local medical center. The extent of their parasitation still needed to be evaluated and monitored.

  He tightened his arms, picturing the boy’s scared face, his tears. The family had clung dazedly together. He hadn’t explained to them the true nature of their medical state.

  That could wait for now.

  Still, he knew his reticence was born more out of cowardice than true compassion—and not a small measure of guilt.

  If I had raised the alarm about this threat earlier . . .

  The screen door opened behind him.

  Gray poked his head out. “Seichan is awake enough to answer some questions, if you’re ready.”

  “I . . . I am.”

  Ken crossed to the door. As he entered, Gray gave Ken’s upper arm a reassuring squeeze, as if to say we’re all in this together. He appreciated the gesture, but he knew only one of their group was uniquely threatened.

  Seichan sat at the dining table. Her skin looked ashen, her eyes glazed. Her palms clutched a mug of coffee. Earlier, Ken had been honest with her. She had demanded it, already suspecting the worst as she fought through the toxin’s haze.

  Ken had urged her to go with the others in the ambulance, out of concern for her health, along with the danger she could potentially pose.

  In three days.

  She had refused.

  Gray settled into the chair next to her, staying close. “Tell Ken what you told me.”

  She stared into the steaming depths of her mug. “When I went looking for the boy, I saw animals lying prone all around. Deer, wild pigs, hundreds of birds.”

  “Dead or alive?” he asked.

  “Not sure about most of them. But some were still moving.”

  “That’s not good, but also not surprising.” Ken slowly sat down, absorbing this information. “Like I said before, the Odokuro are generalists. They’re not selective in their choice of hosts. From what you described, we’ll have to assume a fair amount of the fauna up there is already contaminated.”

  “What do we do?” Gray asked.

  Ken frowned. “Teams will need to go up there immediately. Any bodies should be burned, but I don’t know how much good it will do. By now, most of the afflicted animals will have shaken off the neurotoxin’s effect and scattered. Worse, the surviving members of the swarm will eventually seek a new shelter and start the process all over again.”

  “So what are you saying?” Gray asked.

  The answer came from Aiko Higashi. The Japanese intelligence officer stood straight-backed on the table’s far side, her expression unreadable. “He’s saying it’s too late. With the wasps already breeding, the countdown must begin. In three days, we will have no choice but to turn these islands into a firebreak. The organism cannot be allowed to spread beyond these shores.”

  Ken pictured the Brazilian island swirling with flames.

  Gray’s face hardened, clearly not willing to give up. “Professor, is there any way of eradicating the larvae from the environment? Any weaknesses we can exploit to buy us more time.”

  Ken noticed Gray’s hand resting on the thigh of the woman next to him. The question was clearly one of personal concern, too.

  “Again, I only had a short time to investigate this species. I tried the usual drugs. Like Ivermectin, a medication effective against a wide range of internal parasites.” He shook his head. “It had no effect. Nothing I tried worked.”

  Seichan fixed her gaze on Ken. “What’s going to happen?”

  Ken looked away. He was tempted to sugarcoat the situation, but he knew the woman wanted brutal honesty.

  “I examined your skin while you were unconscious.” He tried to keep his voice clinical, but his words cracked. “I . . . I found over a hundred stings. I estimate the number of implanted eggs to be well over several thousand.”

  He glanced at her apologetically.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “The eggs likely hatched within minutes of implantation. Each producing a score of first instars. They’ll be microscopic as they burrow deeper. So you’ll likely not experience any clinical signs for most of the day.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “They’ll molt into their second stage. The larvae by then will be about the size of a grain of rice. That’s when they’ll begin to inflict real damage. Luckily, they seem to avoid anything vital, shying away from the central nervous system and heart. Though I’m not sure how they do this.” He locked his gaze with hers. “Still, it will be painful—but not as excruciating as the third day.”

  “When they start moving into my bones,” she said stoically.

  Ken pictured the test rats he had used as hosts at the Kyoto lab. When they reached this stage, they had contorted in agony, biting at themselves. Some even ripped their bellies open, as if trying to reach the source of the pain. Opioids did little to relieve the torture. In the end, he had anesthetized his subjects and kept them asleep throughout the remaining gruesome stages.

  “It will get worse and worse,” he told her.

  “And at the end?” she asked.

  Ken shook his head. He couldn’t be that honest. He shut his eyes but failed to block the image of the rats’ bodies as they finally succumbed. The fourth and fifth instars had laid waste to their hosts, hollowing them out before finally killing them. Afterward, the husk housed and protected the incubating pupae. Within days, the fledgling adults broke from their cocoons and ate their way out of their dead hosts.

  He had unfortunately witnessed examples of that awful birth. It was something he could never unsee. The rats’ bodies had churned from the inside, as if still alive. What came next made him shudder where he sat.

  Gray must have noted his distress. “We need to stop this from ever getting that far.”

  Ken swallowed. “Like I said, nothing I tried worked. Even if I had more time, I’m not sure I would’ve been any more
successful. Once parasitic larvae are entrenched, drugs are often useless.” To make this clear, he asked a question. “Are any of you familiar with screwworms?”

  Palu scrunched his brow. “Screwworms?”

  “They’re the larvae of blow flies. Cochliomyia hominivorax. The flies lay their eggs in wounds, and the maggots take root and start consuming tissue. Without prompt treatment, they can kill you.”

  “What’s the treatment?” Gray asked.

  “Only surgery. Digging them out. No drugs can touch them.”

  Gray stared toward Seichan. “Then maybe with surgery . . .”

  Ken squashed the man’s hope. “Screwworms only burrow shallowly. Not like these larvae, which dig deep and spread wide, beyond the reach of any scalpel.”

  He watched despair set in.

  Aiko stepped forward, as if she had been waiting for this moment. She leaned on the back of a chair. “As Professor Matsui has admitted, he’s only worked with the Odokuro for two months. But if the story out of Washington is true—about an artifact stolen during World War Two—then someone has possessed this scourge for decades. Which begs the question. Why wait to release the wasps until now?”

  No one answered.

  “Because something’s changed,” she said. “They must have learned a way to control this monster’s biology. Maybe even developed a cure.”

  She looked at Seichan.

  Ken frowned. “But if you’re right, where do we even begin to look?”

  Aiko offered a small smile. “I have an idea.”

  “What?” Gray asked.

  “Let me begin by stressing that what I’m about to tell you is based on assumptions that could easily be wrong.”

  Kowalski scoffed. “So, in other words, real solid ground.”

  Aiko ignored him. “I discussed this all with Captain Bryant while you were gone.”

  “You spoke with Kat?” Gray asked.

  Aiko nodded. “We put our heads together. We know the range of the Cessnas used to distribute the swarms. Likewise, we suspect a Japanese connection behind all of this. So I compiled a database of Japanese companies who hold leaseholds or who have financial ties to any of the islands within the Cessna fleet’s range.”