Would they spend the rest of their lives like this, crawling on their bellies figuratively if not also literally? Would they be forced to hide from the authorities, forced to reinvent themselves and perhaps worst of all, would they be unable to do the very thing that had brought them together in the first place?
Focus, he told himself. None of that matters now. But if the last few months had taught him anything, staying focused was a lot harder with just one eye.
They reached the designated rally point, and after a little searching, they located Rook, who was concealed behind a clump of grass with his machine gun trained on the nearby structure. His face was flushed from the exertion, and instead of cracking wise, he simply gave them a nod and resumed his vigil.
As King had instructed, Knight moved off with Bishop in tow, crawling through the grass around the dilapidated two-story structure, which up close, did not appear quite as abandoned as it had from the air. The exterior was streaked with dirt and rust, but the walls were mostly intact, with gaps covered by painted plywood that appeared relatively new. While there was no sign of activity, the dirt around the building, particularly in the area leading up to a large sliding door, was crisscrossed with tire tracks—some of which disappeared into the field on a direct line to the ruins, suggesting that the cartel had used the structure as the staging area for the ambush.
They rendezvoused with the others a few minutes later. Once again, King wasted no time with idle chitchat. This time there was an added urgency to his tone. “We’ve got movement out in the field. Counted at least fifteen, maybe as many as twenty. I don’t think they saw us, but it won’t be hard to figure out where to look for us. We need to take that building, now.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the team picked up and darted across the open ground, lining up alongside a weathered door. Rook planted a solid kick right below the latch, and the door flew open. The space beyond was dark, lit only by what scant illumination penetrated the exterior walls, but the team moved in quickly, peeling off in different directions to cover every possible enemy position. The building was as unoccupied as it had appeared from outside, but a whiff of the air inside was enough to verify that the building was by no means abandoned.
Knight gagged at the stench of animal excrement, rot and blood. The air was alive with the hum of buzzing flies.
“I know that smell,” Rook said, without a trace of his customary wit. “This is a slaughterhouse. They must be butchering those pigs here.”
Although the observation seemed irrefutable, it made no sense. Why would a drug cartel be interested in raising wild pigs for slaughter? Like everything else they had discovered about El Sol, the situation defied a logical explanation.
King did not address the subject but immediately began barking orders. “Rook, secure that door. Knight, see if you can find a good position. Bishop, go with him.”
It was, Knight thought, either a tacit vote of confidence, or an indication of just how desperate the situation was, that King had sent him to do his old job. Or maybe he just forgot that I’ve taken a fifty percent reduction in my ability to see. Whatever the explanation, Knight had no doubts about his ability to do the job. He ventured deeper into the dark structure, searching for a flight of stairs that would take him to the upper reaches of the building, or ideally to the roof, where he would be able to fire in any direction. There was only open space beyond the entrance—no interior rooms or offices—but he could make out the exposed lattice of rafters and support beams up near the ceiling, and a narrow elevated catwalk that ran lengthwise through the building, supporting some kind of rolling pulley system. With Bishop in tow, he skirted the wall, but after just a few steps, the proof to back up Rook’s comment, literally slapped him in the face.
The impact caught him on his blind side, a cold wet collision that almost knocked him down. The object was dense and solid, but had yielded a little—more like running into a person than a wall. He took a step back, bringing both his gaze and his MP5 to bear. Through an almost opaque curtain of flies, he found a carcass hanging from an enormous hook mounted to an overhead rail. The body swayed back and forth. The head and limbs had been removed, and it had been skinned, gutted, and cut in half lengthwise, exposing muscle and bone. As the swarming insects settled back onto the exposed meat, Knight saw that the carcass was only one of several that were lined up in a row in front of them. The floor underfoot was sticky with blood.
He swallowed down his disgust and was about to start forward again when he felt a hand clasp his shoulder.
“Knight,” Bishop said, barely able to get the word out. Beneath her dark hair, her face had gone ghostly white, and she looked about ready to vomit. She nodded at the hanging hunk of meat. “That is not animal.”
37
Roanoke Island, North Carolina
The shadowy woods near Fort Raleigh reminded Beck of something from a fairy-tale. Not the enchanting happy kind where woodland creatures and magical sprites cavorted to celebrate the beauty of nature, but the dark ominous kind, where monsters and ravenous wolves lurked, ready to devour the unwary.
After the horrors they had witnessed at the hospital, her apprehension was warranted. While they had easily outpaced the wendigos roaming the streets of Manteo, the short drive to the Fort Raleigh National Historical Site had not put enough distance between them and the monsters, or the unseen agent that had created them. Rather, if Sara’s suspicions were true, they were now at ground zero for the outbreak.
Ellen brought them to the edge of a shallow hole and began searching the surrounding area. Beck immediately spotted the signs of recent activity, not just the excavation—piles of dirt and a discarded collapsible shovel—but the trampling caused by heavy foot traffic.
“Here.” Ellen pointed to something on the ground.
Sara slipped on a pair of sterile gloves before reaching down to retrieve the object. Beck saw that it was a bone. As Ellen had earlier indicated, it was the wrong shape and size to be human, but it did not require a leap of imagination to believe that it was from a wendigo. Sara put the bone in a plastic bio-hazard bag, then turned to Ellen again.
“Jason began showing symptoms after he found this?”
A nod.
Sara looked closely at the contents of the sealed bag. “There are some organic pathogens that can remain dormant for years. Centuries even. I think we have to work from the assumption that it was transmitted on contact. Did Haley touch it, too?”
“I don’t recall. He showed it to us, then went back to work. It happened a few minutes later.”
“Her exposure could have been secondary. She got it from touching Jason, as did the paramedic. Probably through contact with his sweat or saliva. What I still don’t understand is why you weren’t affected?”
Beck grimaced a little at Sara’s clinical, almost calloused detachment, but she knew that the disease investigator was simply doing her job.
Sara went on. “My first guess would be that you have an immunity to it. Hereditary, if what you say about Eleanor Dare is true.” She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. “Back at the hospital, the staff—and me, too... We all received direct exposure, but nothing happened for several hours. What triggered the change?”
“Some people get sick faster than others,” Beck ventured, then immediately felt foolish. Sara Fogg was an expert on this subject, while she had little more to go on than unscientific observations.
Sara, however, grasped at the idea. “Okay, let’s start with that. Something about Jason and Haley made them more susceptible to rapid onset. A weakened immune system, perhaps. Or something they…”
She trailed off and then stiffened, as if she had received an electrical shock. Without a word of explanation, she tore open the bio-hazard bag and held it close to her face. Beck jolted in alarm at the sudden action and groped for her pistol, half-expecting Sara to begin transforming into a wendigo. Sara was too focused on the contents of the bag to even notice, but after a moment, she lowered
it and faced Ellen again.
“Breakfast. What did you eat for breakfast yesterday?”
Nonplussed, Ellen stammered, “Uh, hash browns and coffee.”
“And the others? Jason and Haley?”
“I don’t… I think Jason got a breakfast burrito.” She snapped her fingers. “Yes. I remember now. A chorizo burrito. Haley gave him a hard time about it, but he insisted that she try it.”
“But you didn’t taste it, did you?”
“No.”
“That’s the explanation. The common factor.” Sara shook the bio-hazard bag emphatically.
“Can you dumb it down for us a little?” Beck asked.
Sara pursed her lips together in thought for a moment. “Think of it like an allergic reaction. Bee stings for instance. A person might get stung once and have only a mild, seemingly ordinary reaction, but if they have a genetic predisposition to becoming allergic to bee venom, that one exposure establishes an immune response in their body, and the next time they get stung…bam.”
“Well that clears it up,” Beck muttered. “So some people are allergic to wendigos and others aren’t?”
Sara shook her head. “No, it’s not that simple. You told me to dumb it down, remember?”
“What does that have to do with my breakfast?” Ellen asked.
“Jason and Haley both ate something that contained meat. And just before the outbreak at the hospital, everyone else ate meat, too.” She waved the bio-hazard bag again. “There was a strange… I think it was an odor…in the hospital. I noticed it when I first got there. It was really strong in Jason’s room, when my suit got ripped. But I also smelled it in the lounge. It was coming from the food. And it’s very faint, but I can smell it on this bone. There’s a connection between food—specifically meat—and this outbreak.
“And I would guess,” she added, “that it’s also responsible for what happened to the Lost Colony.”
Beck held up her hands. “Let me get this straight. That bone has a disease on it that turns people who eat meat into monsters?”
“There are unique enzymes found in certain types of animal tissue. A good example is something called alpha-gal. It’s present in non-primate mammals, like cattle. In a healthy person, alpha-gal poses no problem at all, but there have been cases where people who have been bitten by the Lone Star tick develop an allergic reaction to alpha-gal. They literally become allergic to red meat overnight.
“This is obviously a reaction on a different order of magnitude, but it might explain the causal pathway. Exposure alone isn’t enough. You can’t become infected unless those enzymes are present in your body.”
Ellen’s brow furrowed. “This virus—”
“My best guess would be a prion,” Sara interjected.
“A prion then, wiped out the Roanoke Colony, except for a few survivors? Then went dormant until we dug it up?”
Sara nodded. “That’s my working hypothesis. In a way, you were right about the curse. But it wasn’t divine vengeance. Just bad luck.”
Ellen shook her head. “We’ve been trammeling this island for hundreds of years. Archaeologists have excavated everywhere. Are you saying that in all that time, no one ever encountered this…this prion?”
“Well, they may have encountered it, but without the additional catalyst of those specific enzymes, there wouldn’t be a reaction.”
“The people living in the Roanoke Colony would have eaten wild game and fish,” Ellen countered. “The same as the native tribes, and all those who lived here afterward until the twentieth century.”
“She’s right,” Beck said. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Those things are alpha predators. They wouldn’t just vanish completely.” Working for Richard Ridley had given her at least that much of an education in science. “They’d multiply and spread like some kind of zombie outbreak.”
Irritation crept into Sara’s expression. “It’s the best explanation. It may not be perfect, but it’s a place…” She stopped mid-sentence, and then a look of hopeful enthusiasm came over her. “No, you’re right. They would have propagated exponentially unless there was some kind of control mechanism in the environment. Ellen, where can I find more information about the native people who lived here? Specifically the tribes that would have interacted with the colony.”
“You mean aside from Wikipedia? You can’t throw a Frisbee on this island without hitting some kind of museum. Why?”
“Because there’s a way to stop this. And we’re going to find it.”
As if to punctuate the hopeful pronouncement, there was a loud snap—a twig breaking—in the woods nearby. Beck whirled in the direction of the sound, gun drawn, just as a pale figure emerged, loping toward them.
It was not alone.
38
Mexico
King moved quickly toward the center of the open area, sweeping in every direction with his SCAR. There was still no indication that anyone was laying in wait, but every step forward brought a new revelation about the building and its role in Hector Beltran’s grander scheme. He did not question Rook’s assessment. The building did indeed house an industrial scale slaughterhouse, replete with butcher’s tables, saws, enormous meat-grinders and rolls of paper.
His first thought was that the cartel might be operating a meat-packing business as a way to smuggle product out of the country, but that did not explain why Beltran was herding wild boars when raising domestic livestock, or for that matter simply purchasing animals raised and slaughtered elsewhere, would have been far more efficient. Nor did it mesh with what they had found in Mano’s compound to the east, where the boars had, to all appearances, served an entirely different purpose.
The incongruity was worrisome, because King sensed that the underlying purpose was probably darker than anything he could imagine. If they were going to escape and ultimately defeat Beltran, he would need to understand the man’s motivations. Plumbing the abyssal depths of Beltran’s psyche was not the immediate priority, but King had the nagging sense that he had overlooked something critical.
Too many pieces, and none of them fit.
Queen’s voice cut through the fetid air. “King! Over here!”
It was strange to hear his teammates speak in anything but a sub-vocalized whisper. The q-phones and the glasses had so totally revolutionized their techniques that ordinary speech seemed primitive and awkward. Guess I’d better get used to it, he thought, but his musings on the dire future they all faced were immediately set aside as he beheld Queen’s discovery.
Parked in front of the large sliding door that they had seen from outside, was a medium-sized delivery truck.
“That’s more like it!” He half-turned and shouted over his shoulder. “Change of plans. Get down here. We’ve got wheels!”
Queen raised an eyebrow. “If we can get it started.”
“I have faith in you.”
“Me?” She shook her head in mock-despair, then climbed up into the cab.
King approached the truck for a better look. Unlike the building, the truck was not only relatively new but it appeared to have been well-maintained. The exterior was streaked with road dust, but the cargo shell, which King now saw was insulated with a refrigeration unit mounted behind the cab, was not only completely intact, but adorned with a detailed likeness of the famous Aztec sun stone. Bold red letters above the disc read ‘Azteca.’ The legend beneath added ‘Proveedor de Carnes.’ Loosely translated: meat supplier.
Impelled by morbid curiosity, he circled to the rear of the truck and threw open the roll-up door. Cool air washed over him, but there was nothing visibly sinister in the neat rows of waxed cardboard boxes stacked inside, with stenciled letters that proclaimed carne de cerdo molido. He turned away, leaving the door wide open, and headed forward to check on Queen’s progress. As he reached the open door to the cab, the engine roared to life, belching out a black cloud of diesel smoke.
He flashed her a thumb’s up and then continued past the truck to the
sliding door, where he paused, waiting for the rest of the team to gather. Rook was the first to arrive. He skidded to a halt when he spotted the idling truck, and at King’s direction, he clambered into the open cargo area to establish a mobile firing position from which he would be able to cover their escape.
Knight and Bishop were not far behind. As they stepped into view, King was struck by the look of absolute horror on their faces, but neither of them volunteered an explanation. “Knight. Cover me at the door. Bishop, take the shotgun.”
Knight hastened forward and aimed his machine pistol at the door, but then he stopped and cocked his head sideways. “Do you hear that?”
The only thing King heard was the chug of the big diesel engine, but he trusted Knight’s keen senses. “What is it?”
Knight spun around and began moving toward an area of the building they had not yet explored. Recalling his earlier wariness, King brought his rifle up and started after Knight. The back of the slaughterhouse was cloaked in shadow, but a strange glow was emanating from the floor. The light grew steadily brighter, and he saw that the light was coming from a ramp which descended below the main floor level, as if to a basement or a tunnel.
Suddenly, the connection was clear, or at least a little clearer. He still didn’t understand the why of Beltran’s ramshackle meat supply operation, but he knew where the cartel fighters were keeping their semi-wild livestock and why Beltran had chosen the old ruins as the place to set his ambush. The slaughterhouse and the ruins were connected by a tunnel system. There were probably dozens of hidden exits and underground warehouses for storing narcotics or guns…but meat?
Why meat?
Wild pigs evidently were not the only creatures that used the tunnels. King could hear the sound clearly now, a loud harsh buzz like an unmuffled chainsaw or a…
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