Test Site Horror

by Gustavo Bondoni

  The four dinosaurs that had been tranked—grey, mottled creatures without feathers and with wide, ugly heads—were falling to their knees. The final beast seemed oblivious that anything was happening.

  Max decided to help it out. He emerged from behind the tree cover and ran towards it, waving his arms. Either it would bolt or it would charge him—either way, he’d get what he wanted: a moving dinosaur to test their drone-mounted system with. He hoped it worked, because getting close enough to fire the grenade launchers at some of the carnivores out there didn’t appeal to him.

  The dinosaur looked at the approaching creature and ran in the opposite direction. Max glared after it. “Yeah, you better run, you prehistoric bastard.” He chuckled at himself in the knowledge that a clash with a thing that size would mean death by trampling. Then he remembered where he was. “Igor,” he called. “See if you can bring it down.”

  The drone whizzed out from behind the trees and swooped across the creature’s line of sight. It didn’t stop, but the operator corrected, hovered above the dinosaur and fired his dart straight down. A minute later, the fifth dinosaur was snoozing.

  “Bring in the choppers,” Max said.

  The operation to get the slings and netting in place took much longer than the actual hunt. The animals were heavy and, while every detail of the actual transport had been minutely calculated, no one had thought of how to manipulate large creatures on the ground.

  “Could you please bring a forklift next time?” Vasily groused once the first of the monsters was safely secured. He was sweating profusely; even with ten men lifting, it hadn’t been easy to slide the harness into position.

  Max just relaxed and watched them work. None of the choppers could leave because they had to wait for the men who were still working, and Max couldn’t help because, though he might be ignoring doctor’s orders just by being there, he wasn’t dumb enough to try to lift heavy weights with a weak wrist. That was just begging for trouble.

  He reflected that this was a very pretty place. No wonder the refugees and political undesirables who’d been put here hadn’t complained. He imagined that they must have had quite an idyllic existence before they were all killed by ravenous monsters. But that was life.

  “I’m going to clear that pack of little raptors,” he shouted to Vasily.

  Pulling his gun out of its holster, he strode towards the little guys. They seemed more curious than aggressive and scattered at his approach, so he was about to turn back towards his men when something vibrated near his heart.

  Damn the new phone, he thought as he fought to pull it away from a pocket too small for it. It was bigger than the one he’d had the last time he was there but, at least it was a satellite phone, which meant that he could talk even though there was still no service out in the valley. He recognized the number immediately.

  “Hi sweetie,” he said because he knew she hated to be called sweetie, and she got angry in the cutest way.

  “Hi Neanderthal,” Marianne replied. “Are you off in the mountains of Central Asia killing innocent goatherders?”

  “Hey. Those goatherders are plotting to destroy humanity. I thought a connected journalist like you would know that already.”

  They laughed together. It felt good. He could almost visualize her huge, beautiful brown eyes.

  “If you really have to know,” he continued, “they have me playing park ranger at the moment. We’re rounding up the dinosaurs to take them to a zoo.”

  “You went back there?” He heard the shudder in her voice.

  “It’s just a job. This is just a place.”

  “It’s a dark place.”

  He laughed alone this time. “I was just thinking what an idyllic place it is. A place where we could retire together.”

  “Anywhere but there.”

  “Whatever you say. How about you?”

  “They asked me to give a speech. I’m nervous as hell.”

  “Better you than me,” he replied. “I told you this wasn’t as easy as you pretended.”

  “I know. But it’s important to me.” She spoke to someone not on the line, and then returned. “I’m on in a couple of minutes, but that’s not why I was calling you. I wanted to tell you that I’m getting on the next plane to Russia. I can’t stand being so far away anymore.”

  “What about your work?”

  “The news will have to take care of itself for a few weeks, that’s all. I’m too tired to keep at it. And I just signed a very large deal to write a book… so money is not going to be a problem.”

  “That’s awesome. I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to spend with you, but I promise you every night unless they deploy me to kill goatherders.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Good luck with your speech. Let me know when you have the flights figured out so I can go get you at the airport.”

  “I will. See you.” She hung up.

  Max walked back to his men, thinking that he liked this one. No games of ‘you hang up first, no, you hang up first,’ no wildly premature declarations of love. Just a woman who did what she wanted when she wanted to do it.

  Damn. This could get very, very complicated.

  He grinned. Bring it on.

  ***

  Marianne took a deep breath. What the hell was she doing? The man was clearly emotionally stunted. How could he return to a place where so many people, including a friend of his, had died?

  She suspected she would never be able to understand, but she found that she didn’t care. Her heart, which had been racing, had stopped fluttering. His calm outlook must have rubbed off on her. She still had to give a speech, but now she could face it with a smile.

  Joao looked more nervous than she felt, which was ridiculous. She was bringing them money, funding a socially relevant program. Even if she completely fumbled the speech, everyone would go away happy. Unlike most of the news she was involved with, this one was a feel-good story all the way.

  A man and woman approached her. He was sixty-ish and tanned, with hair that was nearly completely white and bright blue eyes. She was a little younger, with skin the color of coffee with a lot of milk in it. Just looking at her parents, you could tell where Tatiana had gotten her incomparable exotic beauty.

  The man spoke in heavily accented English. “I wanted to thank you again for this.”

  Marianne smiled. “You’ve already been very generous in your thanks, Mr. Close.”

  “It is better in person. I’m glad to finally meet you.”

  The woman, who only spoke Portuguese was even more eloquent. She embraced Marianne and hugged her tight for ten seconds before releasing her, breathless but somehow uplifted.

  “It’s time,” Joao said. Someone must have called him on the earpiece.

  Marianne took a second to smooth down her suit, took a deep breath and began her walk. Long steps, confidence and a folder in one hand to keep that hand busy and not fidget. Every piece in its place as she strode through the glass-sided corridor that showed the modernist architecture in the government center of Brasilia outside the auditorium: green grass, white concrete and blue glass.

  Joao held the curtain aside and she walked onto the stage. Thunderous applause greeted her. The crowd held everyone from Brazilian senators and cabinet members to media industry leaders, social project managers and journalists. A camera in back filmed the event.

  “Thank you for having me,” she began. “I’m used to talking about the news, not being the news and I would normally have done pretty much anything to avoid giving a speech. But today isn’t about me.”

  A picture of Tatiana’s face, blown up to twenty times its normal size, appeared on the wall behind her.

  “Tatiana Andrade Close da Silva was a marvelous journalist. Eloquent, connected and knowledgeable, she was able to put facts together from data and communicate effectively with her readers.

  “But more than that, Tatiana was a wonderful, generous human being. When I first came to
Brazil to report on the world’s most important Fashion Week in Rio,” this, as it was meant to, elicited a round of applause, as everyone knew that Rio was in fierce competition with places like Milan and Paris for that title-but the parties were better in Rio, which made a huge difference in Marianne’s mind, “she took me under her wing and showed me around. Some journalists worry about others stealing their stories and taking their readers. Despite the fact that her magazine, Caipi, is directly in competition with the one I worked for at the time, she never let that get in the way, and always helped me when she could. Not many would have.

  “But there’s more to her. She was also brave. I was present in the place where she sent out her final story. I know what she went through to get the truth out to her readers and that, to me, is the measure of a real journalist. A lot of things were going on around her when she filed her last words… but she ignored them. This was important to her.

  “As journalists, we respect that. It’s the mark of someone who truly loves this strange profession. And she did.

  “That’s why I’m so happy to have the opportunity to come here to announce the Tatiana Close Memorial Scholarship. This project has been created by The New York Times for two reasons. The first is to recognize Tatiana’s contributions to truth, which is the highest objective a reporter can possibly have.

  “The second, and equally important, is, each year, to give two Brazilian students in the final year of journalism school the chance to learn their trade in the editorial office of one of the world’s greatest media companies. And, to ensure that we get more Tatianas; at least one of the journalists will be a woman, every single year.”

  This was met by applause, wholehearted by some, politically expedient by others. Marianne was not enamored by the affirmative action aspect of that particular clause—she believed that quality needed to be the only criteria in any field—but the Times had insisted, and they were paying for it. At least she’d managed to talk them around to leaving the second position open to be competed for by everyone equally.

  But her job wasn’t to give her opinion, her job was to talk about the program, and to honor a dead friend. So when the applause died down, she continued.

  “This is something Tatiana would have loved. She always stressed how much she’d learned working at a major paper. Well, there aren’t too many papers in the world more important than The New York Times. This initiative will create a solid foundation for Brazilian journalism that will create the independent thinkers and honest critics of the future.”

  She paused to let them applaud. This time, it wasn’t tinged with politics in the least.

  “But better still, it will introduce the New York media to the warmth and wonder of the Brazilian people. New York will never be the same.”

  She let them applaud. No one was going to stop the feel-goodies to point out that there were already thousands of Brazilians in New York. That wasn’t what you did at this kind of event.

  “Now, I’d like to leave you with some words from people very close to Tatiana: her parents.”

  She stepped into the background as the couple stepped up to the lectern and began to speak in Portuguese. The words rolled over Marianne. Her mind was in Russia.

  She only woke temporarily to do a couple of interviews with the Brazilian press and then, once she’d shaken the last hand and received the last hug, she simply grabbed her wheeled carry-on and climbed into the car the Brazilian government had provided for her.

  It was just after noon. She had begged off the cocktail event for the launch, saying she had to be in a meeting the following day and everyone had nodded, understanding. They all imagined that she would be at some kind of high-powered powwow with movers and shakers. It had been all she could do to keep herself from laughing. There would be moving and shaking, she hoped, but of a very different kind.

  Then she leaned back on the leather seat and smiled.

  This would be fun.

  Epilogue

  It was hot. It was humid. It was wonderful.

  The huts were situated alongside the N2, the road that ran north and south on the Ghanaian side of the border with Togo. This section was the kind of infrastructure you expected to see in the developed world, with paved shoulders and well-maintained central lines.

  Park had been on the road for two hundred kilometers already, and knew that there were better places and worse places along it, but nothing like what he’d expected from Africa. This was a road in a reasonably prosperous country which valued the mobility of its citizens, and it showed. It was quite well-maintained.

  He was surprised and a bit unsettled. The whole point of establishing himself in Africa was to use the official indifference and general anarchy to slip away from the public eye for a while. Evidence of good government did little to make him feel secure.

  Fortunately, the landscape outside the old taxi was more than enough to overcome any uneasiness. Low, equatorial vegetation with taller trees interspersed between the bushes, sprouted from the dense earth. There was no other place on Earth you could confuse this with.

  And the roadside buildings made him smile. The country might be modernizing, the government might be building a developing society out of the ashes of colonialism… but the people still lived in Africa, and they seemed to like it. Everyone he saw was smiling.

  “Stop here,” he told the driver.

  “Here? Are you sure? There’s nothing here.” The man’s English was French-accented, and he had proved to be a charming and entertaining raconteur. Park would miss him, but he had pressing business in the cluster of huts ahead of him, be they ever so humble and low.

  The modernization mentality had even arrived in this tiny and forgotten outpost. The thatched huts were not made of reed or adobe, but of unpainted cinder blocks. A couple of them even sported roofs made of corrugated plastic sheet. The inhabitants might not be rich, but at least their houses could pass for those of the poor almost anywhere.

  He let the air play over his cheek. August was smack in the middle of Ghana’s rainy season, and the warm winter wind blew heavy with the promise of evening rain.

  The bar stood a short walk from the other huts and it was recognizable because there was a large rectangular gap in the wall which could be secured by a wooden panel when the watering hole was closed. When in operation, the panel was horizontal, sitting above the single wooden table and casting shade over the two chairs.

  Only one seat was occupied, by a pale man wearing a white suit. His hat, a thing that looked like it belonged in an old film about Europeans in the tropics, sat on the table in front of him. A black cane leaning against the chair completed the scene.

  The man’s eyes followed his progress and then, with a sigh, he turned to the local on the other side of the dark rectangle. A drink was served from a bottle into a small glass and was waiting for Park when he arrived.

  “So you found me,” Philippe said, his face showing no joy at the North Korean’s presence.

  “I never lost you,” Park replied.

  The Frenchman had aged appreciably since their last meeting in Costa Rica. He thought that life on the run must not agree with him… but then Park remembered that the man had been on the run for the better part of a decade and had already carried an air of unhappiness with him when they’d met two years before. Something else had befallen this man.

  “But I did bring you something.” Park lifted the cover of the wicker basket he was carrying and a tiny head popped out.

  Chiffon sniffed the air, hesitated with its head cocked to one side, and then leaped with a cry of pure joy at the man who’d created him.

  In that instant, years seemed to lift from Philippe’s face as an incredulous smile revealed overly-white teeth.

  “Chiffon!” Philippe studied the creature, looking for anything that might be amiss before turning back to Park. “Apparently, I misjudged you. I was sure you were going to cut him to pieces.”

  “One does not destroy a masterpiece,” Park
responded.

  Philippe nodded. “No. That is a fate reserved for its creator.”

  “I do not want to destroy you.”

  “I have difficulty believing that. The French arrived in Panama mere days after you left. Coincidence?”

  “I did not have anything to do with that. I imagine the French can follow the same clues I did.”

  “Which means they’re probably right behind you now.”

  “That is irrelevant. You will be long gone.”

  Philippe studied him for a long while. He sighed. “I sense your story is going to be a long one. Perhaps you would like to have a seat. That drink was served in the spirit of basic hospitality but, in light of this gift, I believe I can extend a little more. Not friendship, of course, but at least I will let you speak.”

  “Thank you. I assume you know about the dinosaurs.” He drank the liquid. It had the familiar taste of Akpeteshie, which he’d been drinking since arriving in Ghana.

  Philippe smiled. “I have been following that since the news first came out. Not particularly elegant, but effective. That was you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I assume the rumors of the Nothosaurs at the Argentinian Antarctic installation are true and you used that as the genetic base to retro-engineer the rest?”

  “Yes. But it’s not as easy as it looks. Nothosaurs are reptiles, not dinosaurs and…”

  Philippe held up a hand. “There is no need to get defensive. I am not one of your Russian masters. I know exactly how hard something like that would be in the right hands. Or how easy.”

  “The Russians are no longer my masters.”

  “Ah. That is an interesting development. Who are you working for these days?”

  As always, Philippe was extremely tranquil. He gave the impression of someone at peace with the world, someone who had received the worst that life could dish out. Someone who had no fear—and who had very little left to interest him.

  “I work for myself.”

  “Ah. The illusion of independence. One of the world’s lies.”

  “I plan to make it true,” Park replied.