Cannibal

by Jeremy Robinson

  Sara would have been inclined to dismiss the cannibalism theory entirely if not for the change in Jason Harris’s status. Just a taste of her blood had evidently stimulated the continuation of his metamorphosis. But while the craving for human flesh was evidently a symptom, Sara was hard-pressed to identify it as a cause. There was no reason to believe that any of the three patients had been practicing cannibals.

  The one thing that all three did have in common was the archaeological site, and if Ellen was right about the curse on the Lost Colony, then perhaps the same contagion that had wiped them out was still extant in the environment.

  But why had it not affected Ellen and the others who had been at the site? Or any of the thousands of other people who had tramped across Roanoke Island in the more than four hundred years since the colonists had vanished?

  There was another piece to this puzzle, some other variable that she was missing.

  “How goes the search?” a voice from the door inquired. It was Dr. Foster.

  “I’m not sure,” Sara turned to meet his gaze, and as she did, she saw something that almost made her burst out laughing. Foster’s beard was littered with crumbs and the tips of his mustache were dotted with a dark red substance.

  “If you’re ready for a break, there’s some food in the doctor’s lounge.”

  “I see that. I didn’t know the cafeteria was open.”

  “It’s not. We ordered out. There’s a new barbecue place that’s open twenty-four-seven. Mr. Pig. They deliver. We all voted and decided to give it a try. Paid with a credit card and had the delivery guy leave the food outside the front door, because of the quarantine. There’s a couple of sandwiches left.”

  Sara rarely ate out but she was familiar with the new chain. Their stores were popping up everywhere, and they seemed poised to give the industry’s giants a run for their money. “Is it any good?”

  “Depends on how hungry you are. Wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’ve had worse.”

  Sara glanced back at her computer and its open Internet browser. She had spent the last ninety minutes combing through a variety of web pages and historical databases, learning everything she could about the Lost Colony and wendigos. It had been a fruitless task, filled with empty speculation, sensationalism, half-baked theories and outright fantasy.

  “Maybe some brain-fuel is just what I need. Or at least another cup of coffee.”

  As she stood and started toward the door, she felt the strange electric sensation at the back of her throat again. It has to be a smell, she decided, something in the air that my nose isn’t picking up.

  That happened to her a lot. As a child, she had been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder, an unusual affliction that caused her brain to misinterpret common stimuli, sometimes turning visual inputs into strange smells or turning sounds into physical sensations. It was why she hated traveling by air and generally preferred to avoid exposure to unusual environments whenever possible, two traits that made her job as an infectious disease investigator interesting, to say the least. The biggest challenge was her inability to immediately reconcile a new sensation with its cause. The strange twinge at the back of her throat was probably triggered by something in the air, but it could just as easily be the imperceptible flicker of the fluorescent light bulbs overhead or the ambient hum of the ventilation system.

  She followed Foster to the doctor’s lounge, where the remains of the meal were spread on the table. Two nurses were seated there, browsing their smartphones and evidently already done eating. One of the Sheriff’s deputies was napping on a cot. Sara bypassed the table and headed instead to the coffee urn.

  “No guarantees with what’s in that pot,” Foster declared.

  “As long as it’s got caffeine,” she replied, decanting a stream of the brown liquid into a Styrofoam cup. It didn’t look or smell too horrible, but she added a couple of packets of sugar, just in case.

  Before she could sit down, the other deputy stepped into the room. “Ah... Dr. Fogg, you’ve got a visitor.”

  “A visitor?” Sara raised her eyebrows in surprise. Who knows I’m here?

  “Asked for you by name,” the deputy said with a shrug. “Pretty thing. She’s at the ER door. I wouldn’t let her in, what with the quarantine and all.”

  “That’s fine, thank you.” She turned to Foster. “Guess I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  His sudden curiosity about her visitor was faintly annoying, but there was no reason to dissuade him. Instead, she took advantage of the short walk to review the situation. “I don’t think we’re looking at a contagious illness,” she said. “But until we can positively rule it out, let’s keep the quarantine in effect. No one in or out of the hospital. That includes me.”

  “We still have about a dozen patients on the floor, and taking care of them is going to stretch our resources a bit. Can you give me a timetable for how long this lockdown will last?”

  “No, I can’t.” The answer was sharper than she intended, but she had long ago learned the foolishness of making assurances that couldn’t be backed up. “It will take as long as it takes. We can’t risk letting this get out, so until I’m one hundred percent certain, you’re closed for business.”

  She was spared further discussion on the matter by their arrival at the double glass doors at the Emergency Room entrance. A slim but athletic looking young woman with long brown hair, was pacing anxiously on the sidewalk outside.

  It took Sara a moment to recognize the woman, whom she had only ever known in the context of the Endgame headquarters in New Hampshire. Knight’s girlfriend. “Anna?”

  What is someone from Endgame doing here? She felt her heart skip a beat as she contemplated the possible answers to that question.

  The woman whirled at the sound of her name and then peered through the glass. “Dr. Fogg. Is everything all right?”

  Anna Beck’s voice was muffled by the thick pane, and Sara knew hers probably was as well. She stepped closer. “Why are you here? Is something wrong? Is Jack okay?”

  “He’s fine, ma’am,” Beck replied. “He’s the one that asked me to come here. He thought you might need some back-up.”

  Sara’s relief instantly turned to irritation. “Oh, is that what he thought?”

  Why, that patronizing son of a—

  She stopped herself. While it was true that her fiancé had, of late, become almost suffocating in his desire to protect, not just her but everyone in his life, this was one instance where his interference would actually come in handy. “As a matter of fact, there is a way you can help out.”

  Beck was not listening. Her gaze was fixed on Sara’s hand, on the bandage that now covered the place where Harris had bitten her. “Are you injured, ma’am?”

  “It’s nothing. And stop calling me ‘ma’am.’” She put on her most officious face. “Do you have a phone?”

  Beck reached into a pocket and took hers out.

  “I’m going to text you a location. I need you to drive out there and have a look around. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

  “With all due respect, Dr. Fogg, I was sent here to make sure you stay safe, not run errands.”

  “Don’t call me that either. My name is Sara. We’re practically family. And you know as well as I do that Jack is just being overprotective. You know how men are.”

  “That may be true, but I have my orders. I’d be happy to drive you out there.”

  “That won’t work,” she said, trying to sound casual. “The hospital is under quarantine.”

  “Quarantine? You mean you can’t leave?” Beck’s tone now sounded both concerned and accusatory, and eerily like Jack’s. Her eyes dropped to the bandage again. “Have you been exposed to something?”

  “Occupational hazard. But don’t worry. Exposure doesn’t mean infection, and so far I’m not symptomatic.

  “You’ve only been here a few hours,” Beck pointed out.

  Sara realized that sh
e was going to have to try a different tack with the woman, but before she could figure out exactly what that would mean, a shrill noise pierced the air behind her. She whirled around just in time to see a misshapen figure emerge from the corridor.

  There was no question that it was a person who had undergone the wendigo transformation—hairless, transparent skin stretched over unnaturally lengthened bones, eyes sunken into the malformed skull, a jagged row of teeth. Sara had only seen the infected patients laying down, strapped to a hospital bed, so she was unprepared for just how much height the transformation had added. Even hunched over, the thing’s back was almost scraping against the ceiling tiles. Then she noticed something else, as well.

  Tangled around the stretched torso was a twisted piece of blue fabric. Sara recognized it as part of a set of the scrubs the nursing staff wore, and she immediately understood that this was not one of the three patients that had been brought in earlier, but rather one of the hospital staff.

  One of the nurses had changed into a wendigo. The infection was spreading.

  She barely had time to process the thought before the creature’s head turned in her direction, and with a maniacal howl, it charged.

  26

  Mexico

  Parrish felt nothing for the crew of the stealth plane. He felt no sense of success at having accomplished the mission he had been given, no elation at the death of an enemy—no surprise there, since the crew of the plane were not his enemy—but neither did he feel any regret. The men were soldiers, just as he had once been, and soldiers sometimes got killed for no good reason, sacrificed like pawns on a chessboard.

  But maybe the real reason he felt nothing as he watched the expanding cloud of smoke and fire, and a moment later, heard the boom of the TOW missile—the weapon he had supplied for this very purpose—detonating and tearing the plane in half, was that he was still in shock from Beltran’s revelation.

  I took care of them.

  Parrish knew exactly what that meant. Beltran had killed the hostages. No, not just killed…he had sacrificed them, ripped out their hearts on an altar to a god that had been forgotten more than four hundred years earlier. Forty-six people who had woken up with plans to see the sites of Mexico City, murdered, mutilated. All because of Parrish’s plan.

  We need to goad them, he had told the cartel leader, just twelve hours earlier. Take Americans hostage, threaten to kill them in twenty-four hours if your demands aren’t met. The President will have to take action, but he can’t admit his involvement in what happened last night, so he will have to send the same team back in.

  Beltran was not supposed to kill them, though. Once the president’s secret soldiers were dead, then America’s champion, the redoubtable Senator Marrs, would take credit for orchestrating the release of the hostages, simultaneously saving the day and destroying his political enemies. Everyone would get what they wanted: Beltran would have his revenge, Marrs would have the glory and Parrish would have a chit from the next President of the United States.

  Deal with it, he told himself. You like a challenge. Well here’s the mother of all challenges: Try to get out of this alive.

  Beltran had shown no hostility toward him since he had insulted the cartel leader’s heritage. Maybe it was some kind of sick cat-and-mouse game, or maybe Beltran just liked having an audience.

  Scratch that. No maybe about it.

  Beltran pounded him on the shoulder and pointed at the fireball, as it settled to the ground. He then pumped his fist triumphantly. “See? That’s what I do to pendejos who mess with me.”

  There was a veiled threat in his words, but Parrish just nodded. Beltran returned his attention to his binoculars and scanned the flaming debris. “Where are they? I don’t see them.”

  Parrish was not surprised. Although he and Beltran had a good vantage point—concealed under camouflage netting atop the pyramid—it was simply too dark to see anything, especially with ordinary binoculars. What little light there was, from the trucks’ headlights and from the burning wreckage of the plane, created a tapestry of impenetrable shadows. Nevertheless, Parrish had a feeling that, even in broad daylight, the American commando unit would be hard to spot. They were using some kind of very sophisticated camouflage that made them almost impossible to target. The plane had been using a similar system, but Parrish had found a way to defeat it.

  “Tell your men to look for them with the TOW system.”

  “You only brought one missile,” Beltran complained.

  “It’s a thermal aiming scope,” Parrish explained patiently. “You’ll be able to spot their body heat, even if they’re concealed.”

  Beltran gave another whoop of triumph and then relayed the message using a walkie-talkie. Now that the engagement had begun, there was no reason to maintain radio silence. On the field below, the vehicles bearing Beltran’s men were lining up in preparation to make a slow sweep through the crash site, pushing the American force into the ruins, where Beltran would be able to spring his trap and exact his bloody revenge.

  Parrish felt nothing about that; it was just the job. But there was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thought about what would come after.

  27

  Knight showed them the way out.

  Not literally of course. He could barely see anything through the dust and smoke, which not only obscured the camera built into his glasses, but also got into his good eye, stinging and abrading it. Even when he squinted through narrowly slitted eyelids, he couldn’t see anything. His implant however was impervious to the environmental conditions, and its thermal capabilities could look right through the cloud. While neither he nor the others could actually see that image, Lewis Aleman, was able to use it to talk them out of the miasma.

  They had only just avoided being caught in the firestorm of Crescent II’s destruction. Because the aircraft had been attempting evasive maneuvers in the moments before the missile detonation, it had veered off a short distance—less than a hundred yards—before being blown apart. While they had not been smashed under the falling wreckage, they nevertheless felt the pummeling force of the blast wave and had been engulfed in a storm of debris, smoke and burning jet fuel.

  As they moved out of the blast zone, Knight tentatively opened his eye. The residue of burning chemicals stung, but it was nothing compared to the all-too-familiar spike of pain that shot through his skull as the projected images began streaming into his retinas.

  Getting killed might be preferable to this, he thought, not for the first time. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just his life on the line.

  “There,” Aleman shouted in his ears. “There’s something on the pyramid.”

  Knight had spied the bright spot a moment before Aleman spoke; probably a person concealed under a space blanket to minimize their heat signature. “I see it,” he growled, dropping to a knee and aiming his rifle at the indistinct target.

  “Hold your fire,” King advised. “If we start shooting, they’ll be able to figure out where we are. We need to get to a better defensive position.”

  Knight lowered the weapon and continued forward with the team. As they moved into the open, he glanced back and saw that the four vehicles had lined up on the far side of the crash site. They were no longer moving randomly, but appeared to be advancing in a methodical sweep.

  “They’re pushing us into the ruins,” Queen said. “They already know where we are, and they want us in there.”

  “Lew,” King said, “is our camouflage still working?”

  “It checks, but remember, you’re not totally invisible.”

  “We can’t let them catch us in the open, but Queen is right. We need a third option.”

  “Split up,” Rook said. “If they follow us, we’ll know they can see us.”

  Knight was inclined to agree with the suggestion, but after a few seconds of consideration, King vetoed it. “Negative. The ruins may be a trap, but they’re also our best option for a defensive position. Lew, show us the top-down vie
w.”

  Ghostly lines appeared in the virtual display, marking not only the position of the advancing picket line but also the maze-like path through of the ancient city. A blue dot appeared above a square shape at the edge of the ruins off to their right. “Go there,” King said. “Double time.”

  As they started to run, the noise of multiple rifle reports and the distinctive zip of bullets creasing the air around them seemed to indicate that the enemy was zeroing in on their position. The trucks were still a hundred yards away but picking up speed as they veered to the right, following the course King had chosen for them.

  “I think they can see us,” Rook said, matter-of-factly. “So much for technology.”

  “I will give them something else to think about,” Bishop said, slightly out of breath. “Frag out.”

  Knight glanced over just as Bishop hurled a small spherical object in the direction of the nearest truck. The grenade followed a low arc, traveling nearly forty yards before disappearing into the grass.

  Knight looked forward and kept running, confident that they were outside the kill radius, but something in his last glimpse of the pursuers nagged at the back of his mind. There was something about one of the trucks that had begged a second look.

  There was a flash, followed a millisecond later by a resonant boom and an overpressure wave that socked him in the gut and did nothing good for the pounding in his skull. Still, his spirits lifted a little as he saw in the top-down view that the truck nearest to the grenade blast had stopped its relentless advance. A quick glance back confirmed that the vehicle was indeed out of the fight. The blast had peeled back its hood and a geyser of steam was pouring from the engine.

  A moment later, they reached the spot King had designated as their defensive position. Although the ruin looked like a building on the map, up close it was little more than the outline of the structure it had once been. The broken walls reached no higher than Knight’s knees, and there were huge gaps between the sections that still stood. Still, the old stone would stop a bullet and give them something to duck behind as they made their stand.