Mutation

by Michael McBride

  The wheels bounced beneath them. Their momentum slowed so rapidly that she slid right up into Jade’s lap and had to brace the crate beside her to keep it from falling onto her legs.

  She clenched her hands into fists. Drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  “You can do this,” she whispered.

  The plane touched down hard, the ground beneath them rugged and uneven, causing the truck to rock sideways on its creaking suspension. This wasn’t like any runway she’d ever landed on; it must have been a smaller airstrip, if not a road like the one from which they’d taken off.

  The din of the propellers diminished as the plane juddered to a halt.

  Hydraulics whined and light flooded the dim interior as the ramp lowered. She saw the terror on her friends’ faces and nearly lost what little resolve she’d been able to summon.

  A loud beeping sound filled the air. She recognized what it meant even before the truck started backing up.

  “Brace yourselves,” Evans whispered and pressed his arms against the boxes stacked to either side of him.

  Anya tried to do the same, but she wasn’t fast enough. She slid toward the tailgate as the truck descended the ramp. Struck metal with her heels. Caught a glimpse of first the ramp, then a dirt road through the slim gap below the canvas. She smelled dust, tasted it in her mouth. Felt grit in her sinuses. The sudden influx of heat elicited goosebumps, which quickly faded as the temperature climbed by the second.

  The truck leveled off. She saw a withered brown bramble growing from a rippled dune and, past it, a rock formation the color of chalk, and then they were moving once more, trailing a wake of dust that immediately found its way into the hold. She pulled her shirt up over her mouth and nose. Clenched her hand over them to muffle the sound of her coughing.

  The beeping from the other trucks faded behind her as they accelerated. The grille of the vehicle behind them occasionally materialized from the dust. She could tell from the reddish glint on its hood that the sun was somewhere off to the left, suggesting they were traveling north. It was already setting, which meant that if they were headed for Giza like they suspected, it wouldn’t be very long before they arrived.

  “If we get the chance, we need to jump out before we reach our destination,” Evans whispered.

  “With the other trucks right behind us?” Jade said. “We have to be going at least fifty miles an hour.”

  “We can use the dust as cover and climb out the side.”

  “We’ll be plainly visible to every one of the vehicles behind us.”

  “What do you propose then? We can’t just wait for them to open the flaps. We don’t have a single weapon between us, and even if we did, we’re outnumbered at least three to one.”

  “They won’t check back in here,” Anya whispered. “They’ll be too distracted by what’s in front of them, which will open a short window for us to get out of here.”

  “That’s one hell of an assumption,” Evans said.

  He was right, but she felt strangely confident. The crates surrounding them likely contained all of the artifacts they’d pillaged from the caverns beneath Göbekli Tepe. They only brought them because they wouldn’t have another opportunity to return for them, and there was always a chance they could potentially prove useful. While the masked men always seemed to know more than they did, she had to believe that when it came right down to it, they had no better idea what they were walking into than Anya and her friends did.

  “We just have to be ready to make our move when the time comes,” she whispered.

  She closed her eyes to keep the dust out of them, although it somehow found a way in regardless. It clung to her damp shirt, beneath which dribbles of sweat trickled down her flesh. Her tongue felt like it was coated with sandpaper, and her chest was heavy. It was no wonder people wore those scarves that covered everything but their eyes out here.

  The truck bounded down. Bounced back up. Toppled the crates sideways. Onto them. Several broke open, disgorging packing materials and heavy stone artifacts. Something struck her head, careened from it.

  She struggled out from underneath it just in time to see the road falling away behind them. The tires spun in the sand, sending it ricocheting from the wheel wells, before gaining traction and propelling them across the bumpy terrain.

  Anya was momentarily surprised by the sensation of dampness on her forehead. At least until the pain kicked in. She smeared away the blood with the back of her hand. Glanced down to find a whole lot more of it than she’d expected.

  Jade shoved aside a broken crate and rolled a headless stone idol from her lap. Her eyes widened when she saw the younger woman’s face and she gestured for Anya to come closer.

  The blood dripped from the tip of her nose, past her lips. She could taste it, warm and metallic, and did her best not to panic.

  “The fibrous fascia prevents vasoconstriction of the superficial capillaries,” Jade whispered. “Scalp lacerations bleed profusely, but tend to look considerably worse than they actually are.”

  Evans climbed over the fallen cargo and scurried to the back of the truck. Peered outside through the gap.

  “This isn’t a road,” he whispered. “We’re cutting straight through the desert.”

  Jade rummaged through the contents of the crates until she found a foam-lined box containing what appeared to be a handful of teeth. She tore out the lining and pressed it against the wound along Anya’s hairline.

  “Hold this,” she said.

  Anya did as she was instructed and shouldered up to Evans. The trucks behind them were nearly invisible through the dust. There was nothing but seamless sand to either side, marred only by sporadic dunes crowned with tufts of dead grasses.

  “We have to be getting close,” he said. “Look how long the shadow of the truck is getting. They’re running out of time.”

  “Then we should probably hide . . .”

  Her words trailed off as the truck decelerated, allowing the dust to catch up and wash over them. The driver killed the engine, which continued to tick well after he’d opened the door and climbed out into the desert. The other trucks converged upon them.

  “Get ready,” Evans whispered.

  Anya’s heartbeat accelerated. Her mouth became even drier.

  They would only get one shot at this, so they’d better make it count.

  43

  TESS

  The Hangar

  Tess clung for dear life to Maddox’s harness. A part of her wished their combined weight would be more than it could bear and they’d both end up plummeting into the abyss, but the better part of her desperately wanted to live. She had to believe that if he wanted her dead, he would have killed her the moment he saw through her deception, and yet she couldn’t figure out any logical reason for him to have spared her even this long. Maybe there was a small amount of humanity left in him after all, one she could potentially exploit to get herself out of this alive.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she whispered. “It’s not too late to turn back.”

  “You don’t have the slightest idea what’s down there, do you?” Maddox said.

  “Why don’t you tell me, then?”

  His smile when he responded was full of teeth.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  The winch lowered them at a staggeringly slow pace, like spiders descending from their webs. The other two men were maybe five feet below them, the under-barrel beams mounted to their rifles plumbing the depths. What little light reached around the elevator car wedged in the electromagnetic lock was a faint aura above them.

  “Passing fifty feet,” one of the men said from below her.

  Stained concrete materialized at the farthest reaches of his beam. The rails running straight down the walls terminated beside massive coiled springs and a collection of mechanical components, one of which appeared to have a pressure-sensitive plate. She didn’t have any desire to find out what it might be armed with.

  Stainless-st
eel doors appeared in the wall below her feet. The two masked men leveraged them open and held them in place while Maddox floated to the ground between them. He released Tess, who stumbled forward into the dark sublevel and landed on all fours. The floor was made of polished concrete, the walls stainless steel that reflected their lights.

  Maddox strode past her through the short corridor, which terminated at another stainless-steel door without any visible means of opening it. What secrets had Barnett hidden down here, and why the hell hadn’t he told any of them about it?

  It automatically opened when Maddox was within range. The pass-through chamber inside was barely large enough for all four of them. The moment the outer door whooshed shut behind them, the inner door opened with a popping sound and a hiss of pressurized air. Banks of overhead lights bloomed ahead of them as though leading the way. Thoom-thoom-thoom.

  Tess’s jaw dropped as she walked slowly into the vast space. It was like a museum unto itself, with each of the displays sealed within Plexiglas cases adorned with computer screens that monitored temperature, pressure, and humidity. Each one had its own climate-control unit, and no two of the readouts were the same. She assumed each containment unit had been calibrated to precisely match the environment where the artifacts, displayed beneath low-wavelength archival lights that made them appear blue, had been collected.

  She walked by a massive stone upon which a petroglyph had been sculpted in the style of ancient Egypt, only the pharaoh’s face resembled Subject Z’s. Another was in the Mayan style and showed the same face wearing a headdress adorned with a skull. She passed several others to either side, all ancient, and all demonstrating the face of the creature in the various styles of many primitive cultures on stones and murals and sculptures, from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica to the Pacific islands and everywhere in between.

  On the other side of the main aisle were petroglyphs of the bearded man she had seen so many times recently, holding a pinecone and a canister, wearing the cloak of a fish or the heads of various animals. Only it wasn’t a single figure, but many, male and female alike. With human bodies and the heads of animals, in unmistakable styles ranging from the Assyrians to the Egyptians, the Olmec to the Anasazi, and civilizations she couldn’t even identify. And seemingly lost among them were scattered depictions of the same figures, only with reptilian faces, on statues and carvings, idols and murals, beings whose likeness she’d never seen before.

  The central aisle branched to both sides. To the left were more sculptures and petroglyphs featuring figures wearing space suits, only from time frames long before men even dreamed of the wheel, let alone travel beyond the atmosphere. To the right were cases upon cases of metallic mechanisms, green with oxidation and red with rust. Complicated gears and dials whose functions eluded her, ranging in size from the palm of her hand to a polished number that resembled a cross between a rocket and a gigantic oxygen tank.

  The corridor straight ahead was lined with physical remains. One side housed countless elongated skulls of the kind that had initially led Unit 51 to Antarctica, the kind with distorted facial architecture, enlarged orbital sockets and narrow chins, just like Subject Z. All of them the color of the dirt from which they were exhumed, some still bearing grave wax from their liquefied flesh. And on the other side were skulls considerably larger and elongated not in the posterior direction, but rather in the vertical. Nearly all were missing their front teeth. A few retained their rear molars, but only one skull retained a single canine, which was long and hooked, like the fang of a snake.

  She finally made sense of the order. To the left were artifacts related to the creatures colloquially termed Grays, and to the right were beings like the ones they’d found entombed beneath Teotihuacan and Mosul, giants revered as gods by societies ranging from the Fertile Crescent to northern Africa and even as far away as South America, beings to whom countless temples and pyramids had been devoted, gods depicted wearing the heads of animals to conceal their true reptilian visages.

  “We have to be getting close,” Camo Mask said.

  The hall of skeletal remains opened upon a space the size of a four-car garage, which featured displays of an entirely different order. The skulls had offered a degree of both physical and temporal separation, a means of distancing herself from the fact that they’d once been living, breathing organisms, but in the flesh? That was something else entirely.

  “They’re magnificent,” Maddox said.

  He ran his fingers along the Plexiglas as he passed creatures like Subject Z in various stages of mummification. They’d shriveled in upon themselves and were now little more than desiccated skin adhering to the bony framework, skin that retained its grayish cast even beyond the grave. The touchscreen monitors affixed to their cases displayed everything from detail and magnification images to 3-D reconstructions digitized from CT scans.

  “Over here,” Camo Mask said.

  Maddox nudged Tess toward his subordinate, who stood facing a case the size of her bedroom back home at her parents’ house, which had been preserved in much the same way, a snapshot of a time long gone, but one she would have recognized anywhere. It was the tomb from Mosul, from the petroglyphs on the walls to the plinth in the center, on top of which was bound the giant with the tattoo on his chest and the eagle mask on his face.

  She should have known Barnett would never have allowed it to be destroyed, but she couldn’t fathom why he had risked bringing it here.

  “Open it,” Maddox said.

  The two men raised their rifles and riddled the front of the cage with bullets.

  Tess screamed and covered her ears.

  The sound of gunfire was deafening in such close confines. Bullets ricocheted in every direction. The Plexiglas pitted and cracked, then shattered into a cascade of shards that washed across the ground and over their feet.

  Maddox took her by the hand and led her into the display case. The stone walls were now broken and pocked with bullet holes, and beneath the scent of gunpowder were the smells of age and decomposition, the stench of the tomb they’d somehow managed to secretly bring back from Iraq.

  “Look at him,” Maddox whispered. He traced the contours of the body with his fingertips, only he couldn’t seem to bring himself to actually touch it. “Is he not the most amazing specimen you’ve ever seen?”

  This sublevel was easily the size of the ones above it, if not larger. If Tess could break away from her captors, she could potentially elude them through the maze of artifacts and find someplace to hide, but she needed to create a distraction. Since this body was what the men had obviously come for, she needed to be ready to seize her opportunity the moment it presented itself.

  “Look upon him, Dr. Clark. When will you ever have another chance to be in the presence of a god?”

  Maddox walked past where the man’s wrist was bound to his ankle, past where his shoulder girdle was broken along the edge of the plinth, and to the head of the altar. He reached for the massive beak of the mask. Retracted his trembling hands. Clenched them to fists. Tried again. He took hold of the beak and gently removed the mask from the corpse’s face, revealing features that were simultaneously human and not.

  The other men entered the case and made their way around the plinth. Tess looked down the corridor toward the nearest branch. It was maybe twenty-five feet away. Four seconds at a dead sprint. Plenty of time for them to draw their weapons and put a bullet in her back.

  Maddox gripped her by the back of the neck and thrust her face down toward the dead man’s, close enough that she could see his flattened nose and angular nostrils, his shrunken eye sockets, his broad mouth, and the psoriatic texture of his mummified skin.

  “I said look upon the face of God!”

  She glanced up from the face, beyond its outstretched body, and toward the hallway that would lead her to freedom. The moment he relaxed his grip, she was just going to have to take her chances—

  Something sharp passed across her neck. She felt its coldness inside
of her, felt the sting of its passage. Glanced down to see crimson fluid spattering the ancient body.

  She jerked free of Maddox’s grasp and managed to take a single step before the realization of what had just happened stopped her in her tracks.

  This was why he hadn’t killed her when he saw through her lie.

  She clasped both hands around her throat. Felt the pulsating flow of blood, the severed muscles and tendons inside the wound.

  Maddox caught her by the hair and dragged her back over the body.

  Tess got one final look at the hallway before her chin fell to her chest. She watched her blood wash over the face of the creature, its flesh eagerly absorbing it like a sponge. Its eyes snapped open. She saw irises marbled with red and yellow and slit pupils that widened in response to the spluttering sound of blood flooding through the wound in her trachea and into her lungs.

  And then she saw no more.

  44

  KELLY

  The Hangar

  Kelly tried not to think about how far down the bottom of the shaft was. She wrapped both arms and legs around the cable and held on for all she was worth. The metal braids of the cables bit painfully into her palms, but she didn’t dare risk so much as adjusting her grip. She moved in maddeningly small increments, praying that the elevator didn’t start to rise. As it was, the sudden jerking on the cable by some force far below her threatened to shake her off.

  Roche reached the first sublevel, readjusted his grip, and grabbed a bracket on the wall. He used it as leverage to cross the gap from the cable to the narrow ledge beside the closed doors. The release mechanism was inside the emergency panel; a flip of the switch and he was able to use the bar mounted beside it to manually open them.

  He scooted sideways until he was able to step into the hallway and turned around to face her.

  “You can do this,” he whispered.

  He secured a grip beside the elevator door and extended his arm toward her. She slid another three feet down and he gave her ankle a reassuring squeeze. Two more and he was able to touch her hand.