The Gemini Effect Read online

  As the first blazing arc of the sun broke the horizon, all grew quiet. In a nearly thirty-mile radius from the salvage yard in Kansas City, life had virtually been extinguished. But there was other life, new life, cowering silently in the shadows.

  At the beginning of this night, thousands of people had crawled into their warm, snug beds, having no inkling whatsoever that by morning, they’d have fallen from being the ruling species of the planet to a step lower on the food chain. Some of them never woke up. Some did and realized, painfully, new kings of the jungle were on the prowl.

  And the new kings were hungry.

  DAY ONE

  CHAPTER 4

  Piercing screams, unnaturally loud, echoed through abandoned streets.

  She was hurt. Badly.

  In the course of his duties as a police officer, Officer Bob Knowlton had dealt with severely injured people before; he’d pulled mangled bodies—some dead, some not—from twisted and torn cages of steel on the highway more times than he could count, but he’d never seen anything quite like the screaming, bloody woman he now struggled to hold in his arms.

  “Calm down, lady!” the officer pleaded. “Stay still! Stay still!” He fought to hold the woman steady as she thrashed against his grasp, trying with all her might to break free and get farther away from the building from which she’d stumbled seconds before, away from whatever had ravaged her body so savagely. From the look of her injuries, Knowlton thought the woman had been attacked by an animal, a big one at that, and it’d nearly torn her to pieces.

  But, that’s impossible . . . right?

  Sheer horror was flowing from the woman’s body like a pungent, acidic mist, seeping from every single pore. Knowlton could smell it, almost taste it, as if he’d popped a triple-A battery into his mouth and bitten through the casing.

  The woman’s eyes were wild, crazed, shining like two bright lamps of absolute terror. Blood gushed from a deep gash on her forehead and flowed freely down her face, soaking the neckline of her dress and cementing strands of her long blonde hair to her shoulders in pinkish, sticky swirls. Her dress was torn from shoulder to midsection, long parallel tears running down the fabric, crimson edged. A shredded stocking hung from her left leg, revealing hideous slashes running from thigh to calf, torn skin, and muscle dripping blood on the asphalt.

  Stinging, bitter bile filled Knowlton’s throat as he watched ropes of pinkish bowel begin to erupt from a yawning gash glimpsed beneath the torn remnants of the woman’s dress, pushed from her belly with each terrified scream, with each struggle. Oh Jesus and Mary I don’t want to be seeing that . . . Quit moving! Oh God please quit moving.

  Her piercing screams suddenly became throaty, a low and mournful moaning, as she instinctively reached down to retrieve what was spooling from her body. As she did, Knowlton noticed part of her hand was missing. The thumb and index finger were all that remained above a thin gold watch circling her delicate wrist. The rest of her hand was gone . . . No, not just gone, it had been bitten off. Bitten clean off!

  Swallowing a sudden mouthful of vomit, Knowlton took the woman’s face in his hands and forced her to look up at him. “Tell me what did this to you!” he shouted, hoping to get some sort of information from her before she succumbed. Her eyes were sightless, rolling back in their sockets like two small ships starting to capsize. Her skin, slippery with blood, felt icy cold, shock and blood loss having taken their final toll. Knowlton looked up at his partner and exchanged a knowing glance. They both knew she was a goner.

  As the woman mercifully went limp in his arms, he gently lowered her body to the pavement, trying to provide some sort of comfort to her as she died. There would be no EMTs arriving at the scene in time to save her. Not this morning, anyway. And even if there were, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Knowlton was amazed she’d lived as long as she had.

  After the woman’s last breath escaped her lungs in a long, wheezing sigh, the street grew quiet again. Unnaturally so. All the normal noises of the city were absent. The air seemed flat, dead. All Knowlton heard was his own breathing, and the sound of his heart pounding away furiously in his chest. Knowlton suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable in the abandoned center of the city, with only his partner—and gun—for company.

  The two officers looked into each other’s eyes; both saw apprehension, both saw fear. The radio calls they’d heard all morning had been choppy, undisciplined. Frantic calls for help, for backup, had raced across the net. They’d heard reports of abandoned vehicles, empty streets, and shattered buildings . . . along with other things, similar to what they’d just experienced. Whatever was happening, it seemed to encompass the entire downtown area.

  Knowlton stared at the smashed doors of the building from which the woman had emerged. Something was in there, he knew. Something terrible.

  As he wiped the sticky blood from his hands onto his uniform trousers, Knowlton wanted nothing more than to run away, to get back into his cruiser and drive as far away from this place as he could, as fast as he could. His instincts were screaming at him to do just that, but he couldn’t. He was a cop. No matter how scared he and his partner were, no matter how unbelievable this all seemed, one fact remained: they still had a job to do. To serve and protect.

  Drawing his weapon with a trembling hand, Knowlton motioned toward the building and whispered to his partner, “Let’s go take a look.”

  Both officers sprinted to the lobby entrance, taking positions on either side of the smashed doors. Broken glass crunched underfoot as they pressed themselves against the burnished brass door frame.

  Peeking inside, Knowlton saw most of the lobby was illuminated by sunlight pouring in through huge plate glass windows, which formed the building’s facade, but the rest of the interior was cloaked in shadows. The interior looked like a hurricane had swept through. Overturned furniture was scattered about and papers littered the marble floor, but what shocked him most was the stench. It was an animal smell, a dirty stink of something unclean, wafting through the shattered entrance. He’d grown up on a farm and had spent countless hours cleaning horse stalls, replacing dirty straw with fresh. Mice loved to nest in the hay, leaving intricate tunnels through the soiled straw, which he uncovered with his pitchfork. The stench coming from the building reminded him of the smell of mouse droppings in dirty hay, but this was stronger, much stronger. Glancing toward the rear of the lobby, he saw that the main hallway, extending toward the back of the building, was dark. The power was still on, as evidenced by the low hum of the ventilation system, but all the light fixtures had been smashed. Every single one of them. Knowlton tried to ignore what his gut was telling him. The lights had been smashed on purpose, by something—or some things—aware of what they were doing.

  The main hallway looked like a darkened throat leading far back into the belly of the building, swallowing the light. For a few seconds, both officers stood still and listened. Nothing. No motion inside that they could hear. No motion they could see. They could hear themselves breathing.

  From the south, a string of gunshots echoed. From a fellow officer? A citizen? Then, silence again.

  With a nod of his head, Knowlton signaled his partner to enter the building, he himself following just a few steps behind. Both officers walked slowly across the lobby, sweeping their eyes, and weapons, from side to side.

  They walked farther into the building, following the trail of blood on the marble floor left by the woman now lying dead in the street. Something was wrong—the air was wrong, the sounds were wrong. Something evil was here, hiding in the shadows, lurking menacingly at the back of the building’s throat. The hair on the nape of Knowlton’s neck stiffened, and tiny pinpricks of trepidation rippled up and down his spine. Knowlton couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that he was being watched.

  He stopped, crouched, and stared down the darkened hallway, trying to discern any detail. The focus of his right eye al
ternated between the three white dots on his 9mm’s sights and the broken light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Broken glass covered the hallway floor.

  On the left side of the hallway, at the boundary of sunlight and shadow, he could see a bloody smear on the wall—a handprint leaving a long red trail to the floor below, like a painting of an outstretched arm, a hand reaching for help as its body is dragged back into the blackness.

  Someone had died there. And it hadn’t been pretty.

  His mind was racing: An animal did it, big animal no that’s impossible but her wounds looked like a tiger had torn her apart but that can’t happen . . .

  In unison, both officers flicked on their flashlights, pointing them in line with their weapons, illuminating where they’d shoot. The dual beams of light flashed down the hallway, the small glass shards on the floor sparkling like diamonds.

  The light revealed carnage.

  Shoes. A couple of purses. A briefcase. What looked like a janitor’s mop bucket? Items were strewn along the hallway, each lying near—or in—a pool of dark, thick redness. Many people had died here. Right where they stood. But there were no bodies.

  “Jesus Christ!” Knowlton whispered, just loud enough for his partner to hear. A drop of ice-cold sweat trickled down his neck.

  A whisper back. “I don’t think Jesus had anything to do with this.”

  Suddenly, his instincts screamed at him—it was an odd feeling, coming out of nowhere, but incredibly strong. A feeling of impending danger. Turning toward his partner, Knowlton said simply, “I think we need to get out of here.”

  Before his partner could answer, the air was filled with an odd chattering sound, a clicking noise coming from the darkened hallway. Both officers immediately pointed their flashlights toward the far end of the hall, where it branched off into two perpendicular hallways, both out of view. There was nothing at the end of the hall. Nothing but the strange sounds.

  “Do you hear that?” Knowlton asked. “What the hell?”

  For a moment, as they faced each other, both officers lowered their flashlights, returning the hallway to darkness.

  And then, they came.

  The hallway erupted in an earsplitting roar, a bizarre chattering, a clicking, so sudden and intense that it slammed into the stunned police officers like a thunderclap, nearly knocking them off their feet. Knowlton grimaced with pain as needles of sound stabbed at his ears, the noise so indescribably loud that he could feel it reverberating deep within his chest.

  As he stared down the hall through squinting, terrified eyes, all the inexplicable events he’d seen and heard that morning—the deserted city streets, the panicky radio calls, and the dead woman’s horrific wounds—suddenly made perfect sense.

  For a second, he didn’t move. He didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Recoiling from the vision before him, Knowlton took a step backward as hundreds of yellow eyes, shining brightly like pinpoint flames, bounded toward them down the length of the darkened hallway, covering every inch of the floor, the walls, and the ceiling as they came, moving at an astonishing rate of speed. At that moment, he knew he was a dead man, just as dead as the woman outside on the street. These things had killed her. And they would kill him, too.

  Adrenaline pumped wildly into his bloodstream. Everything began to move in slow motion.

  As he reached for his pistol, Knowlton heard a sharp popping sound to his left as his partner began to fire, spent 9mm brass spinning through the air as he quickly emptied his clip.

  Closer.

  Fifteen yards.

  The second hand on Knowlton’s watch clicked forward another second, an eternity passing in a single mechanical action of delicately machined steel springs and interlocking gears.

  Ten yards.

  He wanted to shut his eyes, to avoid looking into the hurtling death that would slam into him in a matter of moments, but at the last instant he regained his senses. He aimed his own pistol and began to squeeze the trigger. Again. Again. And again. Aiming at the glowing eyes. There were so many of them!

  His partner suddenly turned and ran toward the shattered entrance, a full clip of ammunition—never inserted into his weapon—bouncing on the floor, dropped when he’d made the snap decision to abandon his partner and run for his life.

  As the things began to emerge from the shadows, Knowlton noticed the wave began to slow. He could see his targets more clearly and was shocked at what he saw—they were rats! Hundreds of them! But they weren’t rats, were they? They couldn’t be! They were huge! Clawed and fanged, muscles rippling under coarse hides covered with wire-like hair—no, these definitely weren’t normal rats. They were an abomination.

  Three of the things slid into the sunlight, their claws squeaking as they skidded across the marble floor, desperately trying to halt their momentum. Their mouths opened wide, revealing rows of knife-edged teeth framed by stiletto fangs.

  Bathed by the sunlight now, they began to shriek.

  They contorted their muscular bodies, squirming on the floor like animals crushed under the wheels of a truck, enduring a few seconds of absolute misery on the asphalt before life mercifully slipped away.

  The rest of the things piled upon one another, just at the boundary of light and shadow. They formed a living, screeching wall, each vicious yellow-eyed beast tossing long strings of saliva from a snarling mouth, each bright eye fixed on the prey that stood just feet away. So close. But they would come no farther.

  Two of the creatures slowly clawed their way back toward the pack. They were pulled into the undulating wall in a flurry of claws and fangs, and torn to shreds. The weak providing sustenance for the strong.

  The third one was stronger. The incredible hunger was too great for this one. In spite of the pain, it continued. It had to. It knew nothing else.

  With a last burst of strength, it pounced.

  Knowlton screamed and fell to his knees as the creature’s fangs entered his left thigh, cutting through nearly to the bone. He instinctively reached down with his free hand to grab at his attacker, but it was attached to his leg like a vise. Panicky, he swatted at the thing, trying desperately to break its grip on his thigh, but it was too strong.

  Knowlton remembered his gun. He aimed carefully, but found it hard to focus. His eyes—there was something wrong with his eyes! He tried to pull the trigger, but stared in disbelief as his weapon dropped from his right hand, which to his horror was contorted into a clawed club of swollen joints and crooked bones, perched at the end of what was now an oddly curved forearm. He grabbed the gun from the floor with his left hand and squeezed the trigger. A single shot tore into the thing’s head, splattering gore across the floor. It dropped from his thigh and thudded to the floor, a foamy ring of blood covering its snout. His blood. He tried to kick his legs to scoot away, but suddenly realized they weren’t working. His arms weren’t working, either! His limbs felt like they were on fire!

  He watched helplessly as his arms and legs kicked and flailed about wildly, as if he were a marionette being danced about the stage by a crazed puppeteer. He heard the loud snap of bones breaking as his legs zigzagged in the air like a child’s crude drawing of a lightning bolt.

  The changeling fury moved up his body toward his head, turning his lower torso into a quivering mass of vibrating muscle and greasy, twisting viscera. His entire body was racked by unimaginable pain, a sledgehammer of flame searing every fiber of his being. He tried to scream, but his lungs were no longer functioning.

  In his last few moments of sentient thought, he felt as if he were being torn apart from the inside out, exploding in a million different directions at once. A big, bloody Fourth of July firework at the end of the show. Burning out. Ceasing to exist. And then, there was blackness.

  An end of things.

  Transformation.

  Then, a beginning of things.

  When the eyes opene
d again, they burned like two small supernovae in the vile brightness, the hellish face contorted into a grimace of extreme pain. What had been a police officer a few minutes earlier quickly hobbled on newly restructured legs into the shadows of the hallway, long clawed hands shielding its yellow eyes from the light. The ratlike killing machines parted as it walked among them, like an army breaking ranks for a passing general. With the others, it waited in the darkness. Soon, night would fall . . . the time to hunt. To run. To feed.

  CHAPTER 5

  A little over a thousand miles to the east of Kansas City, the day had begun as countless others before it, the events unfolding in the Show-Me State not yet realized by those scurrying through the halls of government in Washington, DC, as the nation’s bureaucracy began to churn through another day of obliquely serving the citizenry.

  For one man, it was the start of another seemingly interminable day in the Big Chair.

  He tossed his morning briefing papers to the corner of the Resolute Desk and turned his chair to face the thick windows that framed the back of his office, taking a brief moment to turn his mind away from the heavy load he was already feeling. Outside, a shifting patchwork of moisture-laden clouds hung low in the sky, the heavy slabs of mist quickly gathering together to conceal what little blue sky had been visible earlier, teasing him with the chance of a bright, sunny day. Sighing, he peered through the trees as a lone ray of sunlight faded away from behind the top of the distant Washington Monument, the slate-gray sky now completely matching his mood.

  All the great men who’d sat in this office—made decisions that changed the course of history, sent thousands of people to their deaths, or provided a helping hand to those in need during times of strife—always seemed larger than life to him. And yet, here he was, sitting in their office.

  His office, now.

  Andrew Smith had never viewed politics as a worthwhile profession, but after his retirement from the United States Navy, he found he wanted—no, needed—to serve his country in another capacity. After all, old habits die hard. His name was familiar enough; the pictures in Time magazine of a bloodstained admiral dragging the dead and injured from a burning building after a massive terrorist attack, himself badly injured from burns and shrapnel, had made him an instant hero in the eyes of most Americans.