Phantoms Page #3

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What the hell is that?

Move your ass out of there now!

Get out of there!

Move it! Now!

Reach, man!

Jesus Christ!

Sergeant Harker, meet me

outside CWB, right now.

I'm registering

no toxic fumes of any kind.

Here fella.

Here, boy!

He lived through it.

Come on!

But how did he live through it?

That's a good dog.

It's okay. That's a good dog.

That's a good boy. It's okay, yeah.

Better...

Better get away from him.

You like that, don't you?

Jesus, what the hell?

What is it?

Lockland, get out!

- Get away!

- Soldier, get up here!

Now!

Flyte.

You were brought here, Dr. Flyte.

Do your research.

Write the gospel.

Go.

It's here.

It's everywhere! All around us!

Holy Jesus!

Dr. Flyte, what is this?

My flesh.

Study it.

Write the gospel.

But do not try to leave.

Witnesses to the miracle.

I have to run an analysis.

And that's what I was born to do.

The lab is a tank. We are

getting out of here.

Against this thing,

the lab's vulnerable.

There are a hundred ways...

it could stop us.

Why aren't we dead,

like the rest of them?

It needed us...

to get to Flyte.

It's like he's some kind of...

disciple or something.

"Write the gospel".

And now Flyte's here.

If it can think, really think,

then we're finished.

Maybe it's like...

flatworm learning.

Like what?

Flatworms can learn

to negotiate a maze.

If you grind them up...

and feed them to another

batch of flatworms, batch two

can run the same maze

on the first try.

They absorb the knowledge

with the flesh.

They gave me a tour.

The oldest living thing

on the planet.

We would have heard of

it by now. It wasn't shy.

It lives out of sight, in the earth...

in deep geological structures.

- But if it comes up to feed...

- Rarely.

Mostly it sifts life

forms from the soil...

like a whale sifts

tiny krill and plankton...

from the ocean. No doubt

it feeds on marine life too.

It may lie dormant between

feeding for years or decades.

Over centuries, only

a tiny percentage

of its prey has been human beings.

It has absorbed knowledge...

acquired intelligence.

This thing can assume the form

of anything it's absorbed?

Maybe even imaginary creatures.

Anything the victim may have seen

or even dreamed about.

It knows everything people knew

about you, Dr. Flyte...

and about me.

What's happening?

Vocal mode initiated.

Tell the world the end begins here.

Who are you.

I am Baal.

I am Belial.

Demons. Devils.

Some victims must have thought

it was the devil.

It absorbed that

concept from them...

and believes that's what it is.

Why kill those people?

They are cattle.

Nut you let us live.

One of you has

theorized my existence.

It's like a pet monkey

learning a difficult trick.

He is my Matthew...

Mark, Luke and John.

Only in me can you

achieve immortality.

Not in God...

not in Christ...

only in me.

If we do what you say...

will we live?

- Hold on!

- What's happening?

It's playing with us.

Warning. Lab stability threatened.

All right, enough!

It's not a god, it's not a devil.

It's just a f***ing animal!

Any living thing can be killed!

It is what wiped out the dinosaurs...

which were pretty tough customers!

I'm just saying I know

it's got a weakness!

- What weakness!

- Ego!

It thinks its Satan.

Satan had the biggest ego of all.

And he took a fall.

Right!

And turned the town into a fun house.

It manipulates us into

bringing you here, Dr. Flyte.

It wanted you to see it.

It wanted you to!

Show me how to kill

this f***ing thing.

If there were a way, we wouldn't

have been given the tissue sample!

You're not listening.

It thinks it's all-powerful!

It's lived too long without fear.

For years nothing could kill it!

That makes it vulnerable.

What are these other

things we've seen?

Drones, phantoms...

detached, sent on a task.

They return to the mother mass...

underground.

Warning. Lab stability threatened.

Guess so.

How big is this thing?

Big.

How do you know for sure?

Logical deduction.

Logical deduction, yeah.

From a guy who writes

about Bigfoot for a living.

What about chemicals or acid?

You'd need a truckload.

And how would you

deliver it to the target?

Maybe nukes?

Same problem.

How do you find the target,

deliver a bomb to it...

and be sure you got it all?

Warning. Microbe

sample vault is open.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You okay?

I was just wondering...

What?

Do you think all those

people it's taken...

they're still trapped and aware?

No.

No. They're gone.

Dead and gone.

Being trapped inside of it

would be like being in hell.

It's not that way.

I don't want to go to hell.

What?

Got something?

Petrolatum.

It's a lot more complex

than the composition...

of petroleum jelly, of course.

But there are similarities in the

ratio of hydrocarbons.

And a longer list of minerals

and chemicals than in the human body.

Hydrocarbons.

I wonder...

- What is it?

- Samples of bacteria, virus...

Plus a selection of

man-made microbes.

Oh, glorious day!

CBW 123, this is command post.

Do you copy?

What do you got?

CBW hasn't reported in.

I can't raise them.

Major, you'd better check this out.

It could hear us through

the electronics, not now.

What's in the vial?

Biosan-14. A genetically

engineered bacteria.

- A man-made disease?

- No.

Harmless to us,

it's a working bacterium.

Eats crude oil and excretes

harmless byproducts.

They use it to break

up oil spills.

Biosan-14 is new,

the most aggressive strain yet.

It can survive only in an

oil-rich environment. But then...

each microorganism reproduces

itself every 11 seconds.

That would swarm through oil.

Since the Gulf War,

they've carried a sample in case...

terrorists contaminate

an oil field with it.

You're saying that we

can use this stuff...

to attack The Ancient Enemy...

like it was an oil spill,

and infect it?

If its hydrocarbon structures

are similar to petroleum...

It's a big stretch, but...

It'll wonder why the power's off.

- It'll know we're up to something.

- It doesn't fear us.

It believes it's immortal.

Maybe it is.

Is one vial enough?

If it reproduces every 11 seconds,

we can have a lot in 1 hour.

True.

We need to find a way

to get at the mother mass...

and we need some kind of a...

delivery system for this stuff.

But if we do that...

will it kill it at all?

Unless there's a small inner core...

that can tear loose from the

mass and survive on its own.

I really just wanted you to say yes.

Jesus Christ.

I only want to tell the world.

So how do you propose to draw...

the whole mass to us?

What?

No.

Oh, no.

I'm here.

Your witness.

If I'm to tell the world,

I need to see...

all of you...

not just a drone.

You wonder what's going on in there?

They're preparing a weapon...

possibly a means to destroy you.

I don't believe him.

He's selling us out.

He's trying to save his own ass.

Wait for him to play his hand.

Specifically, it's a genetically

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