by Tom Abrahams
Gibson rolled his chair closer, sat board straight, and planted his fingers on the home keys. He began typing his note.
EYES ONLY, CLASSIFIED
PROJECT BESERKR USAMRIID TRIALS
Latest testing yielded negative results.
Molecular structure is unstable even when combined with new renditions of VX-99.
Hypothesize the need for active VX-99 culture for synthesis to occur.
Request live test subject.
Gibson hit the enter button and sent his message. He spun in his chair and looked at the framed photograph of his infant son. Even in the dark he could see the snapshot. The major couldn’t help but smile looking at the boy nestled in his mother’s arms. He had her eyes.
He picked up the frame and ran his thumb across the glass. Gibson’s worldview had changed when the boy came into the world. It amplified his belief that modern science would end war, even if it meant making it bloodier in the meantime.
They’d failed miserably with VX-99 the first time. They’d mistakenly deployed it in Vietnam before it was ready. They’d ordered Marines to inject VX-99 into their bloodstreams before engaging the enemy. The thought was the engineered virus would create superpowered Marines who would quickly, and without remorse, annihilate the Vietcong with minimal American casualties.
Instead, the American Marines tasked with Operation Burn Bright had turned on one another. The experimental drug had made monsters of them in a way command never intended.
Of course, the Marines hadn’t known what they were doing. They’d been told the drug would protect them from the effects of Agent Orange. They’d followed orders. They’d injected VX-99. They’d gone crazy. They’d ripped each other to shreds.
Since that failed experiment, Gibson, his superiors, and his team had worked to refine the process. They knew VX-99 was the building block upon which all of their work must be based.
Blended in the right way, the concoction would work as intended. The hitch was that they’d not been able to mix the concoction. Trial after trial failed. They were getting close to losing their funding. Command was on the verge of shutting them down if they didn’t make a major breakthrough soon. Gibson believed the only way to breach the next level of research was with a live subject.
He wanted to inject a healthy Marine or soldier with VX-99, observe the transformation, and then add a newer, experimental cocktail to the mix. Then, he believed the molecular issues they experienced in test tubes and petri dishes wouldn’t exist. In a live, breathing human, the metabolic changes he hypothesized would happen would be more likely.
Command wasn’t so sure. Repeatedly, they’d rejected the notion of subjecting any more healthy humans to VX-99. It was too risky, they’d said.
The computer beeped and Gibson spun around, the photograph still in his hand. He looked at the screen. He’d already received a response to his most recent request.
EYES ONLY, CLASSIFIED
PROJECT BESERKR USAMRIID TRIALS
Request denied.
Project Berserkr is terminated effective 20 April pending new, actionable information.
Gibson read the words on the screen over and over, hoping he’d find something different with each subsequent pass. He didn’t.
Request denied. Project Berserkr terminated.
Gibson gently placed the picture frame on the desk next to the computer. He took a deep breath and slammed both fists onto the oak.
“Twelve years,” he grumbled through his teeth. “Twelve years of work terminated.”
He pushed himself back from his desk and stood. Major Gibson pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He needed to tell his team they were almost out of time.
If they couldn’t synthesize the right chemical cocktail in two weeks, they were done. He wouldn’t let that happen.
— 5 —
Near Son La, Vietnam
April 17, 1980
Lieutenant Brett was drenched. He’d trudged along the banks of the Da River for more than two miles in search of food. He ran the clawless finger along the edge of his protruding tongue, relishing the friction of the thick callouses on the tip.
The voice in his head was relentless. I’m hungry.
For a dozen years, she’d guided his movements. She’d dictated his actions.
Her first words, in the minutes after Brett had injected the VX-99 with a syringe, had been laced with her venom. Kill them all, she’d croaked. Kill them all.
He’d flinched the first time she’d spoken to him. He’d not realized the voice was coming from inside his head.
You must kill them, she’d repeated. She was growling. Do it before they kill you.
Brett had resisted her command at first, unsure of who she was or why she wanted him to kill. Now, with more than a decade together roaming the jungle, river, and farms for fresh, tasty meat, her voice was indistinguishable from his own.
You must find another one, she said as Brett’s taloned feet sucked and smacked through the mud at the edge of the river. The morning-long rain had given way to a fine mist that rolled along the bright green fields on either side of the snaking waterway.
I’m hungry. I must feed.
Brett didn’t need the voice to remind him of the hollow ache in his gut that lived there every moment of every day, except during those moments he was feeding. That was his lone respite from the pain, from the voice, from the hunger. His joints clicked and popped as he moved.
Do you smell that? said the woman. It must be close. It’s so strong.
Brett stopped in the muck, his feet sinking to his scabbed, swollen ankles. He tilted his head back and flared his nostrils. He inhaled deeply and exhaled before a series of rapid machine-gun-like sniffs confirmed the scent.
You smell it now. It’s close.
Brett pivoted to look over his shoulder. He narrowed his eyes to focus through the mist. His ears pricked, listening for a sound to accompany the odor of his next prey. There was nothing at first, but then he heard it. She heard it.
Straight ahead, she said. On the bank in front of you. Maybe twenty yards. He’s there. He’s thin but muscular. Oh, he smells delicious. Her voice was guttural. Kill him now.
Brett resisted the urge to howl, to scream his excitement into the damp, fetid air. Instead he crouched low onto all fours, wrestled his feet from the mud, and leapt. In a single pounce he was within striking distance.
Hurry, cried the voice. He sees you.
The fisherman did see him. Brett locked eyes with him, freezing him at his perch along the bank. He held a net in his hands, his knuckles white from the grip and his face pallid with fear, his jaw dropped open.
“Ma Trang,” he gasped in his native tongue. “You are real. You are—”
Brett pounced on the fisherman, knocking the man into the shallow coffee-colored water. Together they splashed and thrashed. Claws and teeth and flesh and blood mixed together in the hellacious flurry of a ravenous assault.
The man screamed and gargled the Da River until he couldn’t breathe, until what was left of him didn’t look human anymore. He was in pieces, some floating and bobbing in the water, some sinking to the bottom, some filling the emptiness in Brett’s gut.
Brett was waist deep in the river, his balance shaky against the silt bottom and the current. He held an arm in his hands and tore at the flesh as the voice coaxed him.
Eat it all. Fill yourself. Nourish yourself.
The lieutenant responded with a visceral grunt and obeyed the order. He tore and chewed and swallowed. The watery blood of his victim trailed from the corners of his puckered sucker lips. He’d eaten just an hour earlier. He’d fed four times already that day.
It was never enough.
Every. Last. Bit, she spat. Don’t leave any of it for the fish. They don’t need to feed like you do. They don’t need the charity.
Brett finished his meal, gnawing on the bones until he caught splinters in his cheeks. He was full. For the moment.
He crawled from the water, through the mud, and into the high grass that separated the water from the jungle. In the grass, he knuckled himself upright. He threw his head back and howled with delight.
That was good, the voice confirmed. He was delectable.
Brett dropped down onto all fours and shook his head back and forth before translating the movement to his shoulders, back, and hips. As he shook, the water sprayed from his body in all directions.
He stood again, much drier than he’d been moments earlier. He opened his lips and flicked his tongue across the swollen puckers, lapping up what was left of the fisherman’s blood.
It’s time to feed, came the voice. You need to eat.
Brett sniffed the air and began his march through the grass. His joints clicked as he moved away from the water and toward the jungle. He was tired. He would eat after he slept.
— 6 —
Hòa Bình, Vietnam
April 17, 1980
A chill ran down Chi Dinh’s spine. “Did you hear that?” he asked his sister, Lan. “It was the howl.”
Lan’s eyes were wide; her lower lip quivered. “Yes,” she whispered and ducked behind the high grass next to their home in the riverside village of Hòa Bình.
“It sounds close,” he said. “Closer than it has been in a long time.”
“Several months,” said Lan. “Maybe more.”
Chi Dinh knelt down and crab walked to his sister. The thirteen-year-old put his arms around her and held her. He felt the shallow, jagged rise and fall of her lungs as she whimpered.
The twins were orphans. Both of their parents had disappeared within weeks of each other two years earlier. They lived in their modest one-room house with their paternal grandmother. They took care of her as much as she took care of them.
Many of the other villagers, all of whom had missing family, refused to believe the legend of the White Ghost. At least they wouldn’t give it credence aloud. Privately, Chi Dinh believed, they all whispered about the creature that snatched their loved ones and devoured them whole.
“Do you think it is coming here again?” Lan asked. “Do you think he’ll find us?”
Chi Dinh didn’t lie to his sister. In part, he was truthful because he believed honesty was best. He also knew that if he lied to his twin, she would know.
He exhaled, his mouth close to her ear as he held her, hiding in the grass. “I hope not.”
Chi Dinh couldn’t remember a time when there wasn’t the specter of Ma Trang hanging over their village like the mist that clung to the clusters of mangroves along the river. His entire life he’d lived with the uneasy feeling in the back of his mind that nothing was ever settled.
His parents had warned him, as soon as he was old enough to fish, that he should never leave the village alone. They’d urged him to work only in the middle of the day and only when the sun was shining on his back.
The night, the mist, the distance from others were all the White Ghost needed to find him and take him. Chi Dinh’s friends had received the same lessons from their parents.
It didn’t matter.
Every month, it seemed, somebody disappeared. Somebody left the village to fish or farm or trade an ox, and he or she never returned. Nobody could ever be certain the White Ghost was to blame. His people believed it to be true.
Chi Dinh’s father had worked on one of the collective rice farms not far from the village. The government assigned him the work. Once a month, the collective would take half of its haul to Hanoi. It was a two-day trek each way across difficult terrain. Chi Dinh had always implored his father to stay home. His father, of course, never did.
His father had tried explaining to Chi Dinh the importance of his work. It wasn’t only a government directive, it was a holy mission.
“In ancient days,” he’d told his son, “we did not grow the rice. We prayed for it. We asked the heavens to give us gold. If our people prayed with enough love, the rice would come from heaven to every house. The rice would appear in large balls.”
Chi Dinh had interrupted. “Rice doesn’t come in large balls.”
His father had raised a finger, a smile creeping across his wise face. “Correct. One day a ball appeared in a woman’s house. Her husband ordered her to sweep the house clean to welcome the ball. As she swept, she hit the ball and broke it into countless pieces of rice. Since that day, the heavens have made the people work hard for the rice. I work hard. I cannot abandon my duty.”
He’d kissed his twins and his wife goodbye. It had been the last time they’d seen him. A week later, a search party had found human remains and a rice cart belonging to Chi Dinh’s father.
Village elders had tried to blame a leftover land mine from the war and scavenging animals. Nobody had believed them. They’d known the White Ghost was responsible.
Weeks later, Chi Dinh’s mother had been washing clothes in the river. Chi Dinh and Lan had been playing hide-and-seek in the grass. They’d heard a howl. A scream. Their mother was gone. The elders couldn’t blame a land mine, but they refused to publicly agree the White Ghost had taken her.
Now Chi Dinh and Lan hid in the grass again, but not from each other. They were wary of Ma Trang. Chi Dinh whispered again in his sister’s ear.
“We should go into the house,” he said. “We will stay low until the grass ends. Then we will run as fast as we can to the door.”
He pulled away from his sister and held her face in his hands. He held her frightened gaze. “Do you understand?”
Her eyes searched his for reassurance. “Yes,” she said. “Hold my hand.”
Chi Dinh nodded and took his sister’s hand, the sweat on her palm making it difficult to maintain a tight grip. He laced his fingers between hers and squeezed. He raised his head up above the grass to see their path to the house. It was clear. He turned back to Lan.
“Let’s go,” he said and tugged her arm. He pulled her with him and they darted toward the house. The blades whipped against their legs and arms as they hustled to the dirt clearing behind their home.
They reached the clearing and Chi Dinh accelerated, almost dragging his sister across the dirt to the cloth door in the long side of the rectangular house. Despite the relatively short distance, he was winded when he pulled back the curtain and shoved his sister inside.
Their grandmother was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, praying before the family’s ancestral altar. She opened her eyes and stopped her prayer when the children tumbled inside.
“I was praying for your parents,” she said. “I heard the howl and I thought of them.”
She waved the twins closer to her and they joined her on the floor. Together, the three of them prayed for the heavens to watch over them.
— 7 —
London, England
April 17, 1980
Jimmy Linh’s editor, Gertrude Wombley, peered over the top of her rimless reading glasses. Her deep-set, heavily lidded eyes perpetually cast judgment on whatever it was she set them upon. Gertrude was leaning on her desk. Her lips were pursed like a disapproving librarian.
Gertrude had worked at the London Morning Reflector for the better part of three decades. Starting in the early 1950s as a secretary, she’d worked her way into a reporter’s position, a copy editor’s slot, and then news editor. Under her guidance the Reflector had become the city’s second most circulated daily newspaper. She was the brains and the heart of the operation, wielding more power than the editor in chief. She’d turned down that job several times, telling her bosses she wanted to stay in the trenches.
She’d overseen award-winning coverage of the spate of IRA London bombings between 1974 and 1976. She’d masterminded the Queen’s silver jubilee celebration, which Buckingham Palace had commended as “breathtakingly magnificent”. And she’d insisted on a six-page spread profiling Barbara Hulanicki’s London boutique Biba that put the designer on the map and changed bell-bottom fashion across the globe. She was an ink-stained newspaper ingénue who’d earned u
nparalleled respect in a profession run by men. Even the paper’s publisher, a crusty old duke, would ask, “What does Gertrude think?” before making any critical decisions.
When Linh joined the staff, other reporters had warned him she was always tough and mostly fair. They’d told him she admired hard work and rewarded genius. He sat opposite her, rubbing his sweaty palms on his pants, hoping Gertrude saw him as a combination of both attributes.
She tugged at the collar of her thin, tartan-pattern cardigan. “White Ghost?” They were the first words she’d uttered in the fifteen minutes he’d sat across from her, making his pitch.
Linh loosened the constrictive Windsor knot of his tie and swallowed hard. “Yes. It’s the—”
Gertrude raised her hand, her creased palm inches from Linh’s face. “I know what it is,” she said. “I’m merely considering the cost benefit of a story that affects virtually nobody I know.”
“We have a Vietnamese community that—”
“Your community is small,” Gertrude said before clasping her hands. Her long, thin fingers intertwined as she leaned toward Linh to emphasize her point. “We have a wide audience. I’m trying to picture our readers’ interest in a third-world legend half a world away.”
“They won’t care that it’s half a world away,” argued Linh. “It’s sensational. You ran a weeklong series on the Loch Ness Monster,” said Linh. “I remember you telling the staff the circulation was brilliant.”
Gertrude’s meticulously drawn eyebrows twitched. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
Jimmy Linh sensed an opening. “And if I get a photograph of this White Ghost, could you—”
Gertrude pounced. “A photograph?”
“Of course. What’s a story about a ghost if there’s no photographic evidence?”
Her right brow arched. “If it’s a legend, how would you get a photograph? For all we know, this is nothing more than a Vietnamese version of the Mexican chupacabra.”