Cannibal

by Jeremy Robinson

  “What?”

  “Tom Duncan must disappear.”

  Epilogue

  Florida

  It was a small service, attended only by a handful of staff from the assisted living home—a doctor, a nurse, some orderlies and cooks. The staff was encouraged to attend the memorial services for patients who had passed, as a way of preserving their dignity at the end. So many of the people for whom they cared were already dead—gone and forgotten, as far as their families were concerned.

  No one believed that would be true of the woman being laid to rest today. She had only one living family member, a grandson—a man of means, who had spared no expense to ensure his grandmother’s comfort during her final days. It was unthinkable that he would not be present on this day. He had made all the arrangements by telephone a few days earlier, and had given every indication that he would be present to say his final farewell.

  But there was no sign of him.

  The staff members were disappointed, but it was not the first time a survivor had chickened out at the last minute. The service went ahead, more or less on schedule. The attendees paid their final respects, and then they dispersed to go on about the business of their lives.

  They would have been surprised, and perhaps a little dismayed, to learn that their every move was being observed through a high-powered sniper scope.

  A treetop perch two hundred yards away was as close as Knight dared get to his grandmother’s funeral. Admiral Ward’s thirty-six hour deadline had come and gone, and now he and the rest of the team were officially fugitives from justice.

  The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Just a few days ago, he had been ready to walk away. To leave the team because he no longer felt capable of doing what was required of him. Now, in spite of what it would mean, possibly for the rest of his life, he couldn’t imagine being anything else. He did not regret that his decision to stay with King and the others had cost him a chance to say good-bye to his grandmother, but that did not mean he felt nothing. He felt grief, he felt sorrow. Most of all, he felt anger.

  Anger at the fact that he and the others, after having given so much, so often, were now forced to skulk in the shadows, cut off from the rest of the world, treated like criminals when they should have been treated like heroes. He had never been in it for the glory, but damn it…was it too much to ask for a simple thank you?

  He felt anger at being left alone. For more years than he could remember, his grandmother had been his only living relative, and even though her mind had been slipping away, she had always been in his life. She was his connection to his past, to his heritage and culture. And now she was gone forever, and he couldn’t even say good-bye.

  He trained the scope on the grave and watched as two workmen lowered the casket into the ground. It had been his intention to arrange for a traditional Buddhist funeral, but subsequent events had required him to sacrifice tradition in favor of expediency, and that too contributed to his anger. Instead of a ceremonial cremation, her mortal remains would be buried in the ground.

  “When all of this is done, halmeoni,” he whispered, “I will return and honor you in the right way.”

  After the workmen left, a lone figure approached the plot—a young woman with long dark hair. She was dressed in a simple black dress, with a long coat draped over her shoulders. With her back to Knight, she knelt, grabbed a handful of dirt, and tossed it into the open grave. She contemplated the open hole in the ground for a moment, then turned away slowly, gazing into the woods as if searching for someone.

  Now Knight could see that one of her arms was in a sling. He kept watching her. The scope was powerful enough that he could see the tears that streaked her pretty face.

  After a moment, she turned back to the grave, knelt again and placed something on the ground in front of the low gravestone. When she stood up again, Knight could see wisps of smoke rising from a pair of incense sticks that protruded from the soil.

  Knight sighed and moved the scope away from the grave site. He scanned the cemetery and the surrounding woods, and when he was certain that no one else was lurking nearby, he put the scope away and climbed down, wincing as his sprained ankle met the ground. He gritted his teeth through the discomfort and moved through the woods with a stealth that belied his injury. He caught up to her just as she reached the edge of the lawn.

  “Anna!”

  She turned, the smile already on her face, and embraced him. He returned the hug gently, fearful of aggravating her injuries. “I’m glad you could make it,” he breathed into her ear.

  “Where else would I be?”

  He held her in silence for a few moments, drawing strength from the feel of her body next to his. “How’s the arm?”

  “Still broken,” she said with what might have been a chuckle. “It will be at least a year before I can arm wrestle again. But it beats the alternative.”

  That brought a smile to his face, and he hugged her again. “I have to go.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  He thought about how to respond to that. Part of him felt guilty. He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe, not drag her down into his new fugitive existence. Rootless, rudderless, always looking over their shoulders. And if they screwed up, if the hunters eventually caught up to them, she would share his fate: imprisonment or worse. What right did he have to subject her to that?

  Part of him was desperately happy that she wanted to be with him.

  “Well, you can always change your mind.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  He could have listed a dozen reasons, but instead said simply, “Where’s your car?”

  “I took a cab.”

  “That simplifies things.” He took a step back and gestured to the woods. “My car is that way. It’s a bit of a hike.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t worry about me. You’re the one that can barely walk. Maybe you should just give me the keys. I’ll go get the car and bring it around.”

  “You? You’ve only got one good arm.”

  “You’ve only got one good eye. And one working foot.”

  “I guess together, we make up one functional person.”

  “I would have put it more romantically,” she said, “but isn’t that pretty much the definition of love?”

  Georgia

  Although she had been working for over fourteen hours without interruption, Sara felt a mixture of guilt and anxiety as she left the Bio-Safety Level Four laboratory. Guilt because the work was far from complete, and even though the outbreak had been stopped, the threat would remain until she could find a way to eradicate it forever. Anxiety because work was her only refuge from the pain of what had been lost.

  Always driven, and a classic loner, Sara had lived most of her life content with the idea that she would never marry, never have a family. She told herself those things didn’t matter to her. She rationalized that the world was much too dangerous a place to bring children into, and for the most part, she had succeeded in convincing herself. Even when Jack had entered her life, she had persisted in her belief, and why not? Their respective careers kept them far too busy for the sort of traditional family life that everyone else seemed to think was the very pinnacle of human existence.

  Yet, as the day of their wedding drew closer, she had allowed herself to contemplate what that might be like, and had realized that all her protestations had simply been a way of protecting herself from the possibility of disappointment.

  Disappointment like what she felt right now.

  She had been able to put that disappointment out of her mind while working, especially given the urgency of the task at hand, but all the tests that could be run were either in progress or already complete, and as her colleagues had pointed out repeatedly, she was due for a break.

  As she made her way out of the facility, she contemplated different scenarios for the next round of testing. She had successfully isolated the proteins secreted in the wendigo bodily fluids that caused a react
ion in susceptible test subjects. The tests were limited to samples of human blood taken from people who admitted to having eaten at Mr. Pig. Not everyone in that group produced a positive result, suggesting that contamination of the meat supply had been random, but there were a few samples where a violent and instantaneous reaction was observed. Specific protein sequences in the cells—proteins that could only be created when the body digested human tissue—reacted to the presence of the wendigo like switching on a light, triggering a cascade effect. Her working theory was that a unique confluence of proteins activated a latent sequence of non-coded, or as it was often called, ‘junk DNA’ that made up the majority of the human genome. Proving that would require months, perhaps years, of research. Right now, all that mattered was stopping the disease cold.

  The next step had been to observe the reaction when wolf spider venom was introduced to the cells. Once again, the reaction was immediate. A specific protein in the spider venom killed the wendigo protein by triggering an anaphylactic response. Wendigos, it seemed, were allergic to spider bites.

  Her highest priority now was to find a way to inoculate those at risk for infection. All the thousands of Americans who had unwittingly ingested human protein in their barbecued pork sandwiches. Would the venom make them immune? Or would it kill them when exposed?

  The results so far were very promising, but she would have to collect a lot more data before she would even contemplate a human trial. Unfortunately, the infection was unique to humans; there would be no way to test it on laboratory animals.

  The ethical ramifications, as well as trying to forecast scenarios based on different sets of results, helped keep her mind off her personal woes as she crossed the parking lot and got into her car. She was mentally drafting a set of protocols for initiating human testing, when a voice spoke to her.

  “New course set.” It was the onboard GPS. “In three hundred feet, turn left.”

  Her eyebrows drew together in a frown. She had not put in a new destination, and she rarely ever used the GPS, since most of her driving was limited to commuting to work or to the airport. She tapped the screen of the device, tracing the blue line on the map that showed a route leading out of the Atlanta metro area, north and east some fifty miles to the north end of a big lake that infiltrated dozens of little valleys, giving it the appearance of a crazy Rorschach blot.

  “Lake Sidney Lanier,” she murmured. “Never been there.”

  She traced the line with her fingers to a spot near the lake shore. Her heart skipped a beat when she reached the end of the line. Instead of the customary pin, the destination was marked with a tiny chess piece.

  A King.

  For the next seventy minutes, she was barely aware of anything but the voice of the GPS, guiding her through Atlanta traffic, onto the freeway and then off again near the city of Gainesville. From there, she hung on every synthesized word, navigating a maze of roads to the lakeshore, and ultimately to a large A-frame cabin built of stone and cedar.

  Jack Sigler stood in the driveway, as if he’d been waiting all day for her to arrive. “You made it,” he said, grinning.

  “How did you manage to hack my GPS?”

  “Deep Blue—Lew did that. Said it was child’s play. I’ll have to take his word for it.”

  She was in his arms before she knew it, hugging him and kissing him, and yet her joy at seeing him could not quite remove the anxiety that had been plaguing her for days now. When he had left her with Ellen and Beck, he had warned her that it might be a while before they saw each other again. There had not been time for specifics, let alone to talk about their future together, but seeing him again now, so soon after parting, filled her with dread rather than hope.

  She pulled away. “What’s wrong, Jack? Something is wrong. Don’t try to tell me it’s not.”

  His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Remember how I told you that we would be going off the grid for a while? Well, we’re officially there. The military is going to come after us, so we’ll be dodging them for a while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He put his arm around her shoulders, gently guiding her toward the steps that led up the deck that wrapped around the house. “If we turned ourselves in right now, we’d get a slap on the wrist. Administrative punishment. The worst they’d do is a court martial and maybe a dishonorable discharge, but that would be a lot more trouble than we’re worth.”

  “So do it. Get out. You were happy leaving the military behind.”

  “That’s not the problem.” He took a deep breath. “Deep Blue—President Duncan—has been arrested. We’re going to try to spring him. Doing that is probably going to put us on the FBI’s most wanted list. We’ll have to create new lives, sever all ties with the past. Zero contact.”

  Despite the humid lake air, Sara felt a chill. Her worst fears were being realized. “You mean me.”

  “I’m...sorry.”

  Part of her wanted to tell him not to do it. To choose her and their life together, over Duncan, but she knew how unfair that would be. The man she had fallen in love with was not someone who would leave a friend to rot in prison.

  Part of her wanted to go with him. If he was going to have to invent a new life, why not one with her? But that too was something she couldn’t do. Her work at the CDC was more than just a career, it was a calling. He saved the world by fighting terrorists and monsters. She saved it by stopping pandemics. The woman Jack Sigler had fallen in love with was not someone who would turn her back on something like that.

  “I always knew that being married to you might mean that one day you wouldn’t come back,” she said, a little surprised that she was able to get the words out. “I just didn’t think it would be quite like this.”

  “I guess it’s good that we never officially tied the knot.”

  She pulled away and faced him. “Why would you say that, Jack? I love you, and I’m going to keep on loving you no matter what happens. I want to be your wife. Do you get that?”

  He stared back at her for a long time. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

  He led her inside the cabin. She was not at all surprised to find the others there: Queen and Rook, Knight and Anna Beck, Bishop, Lewis Aleman and a man who was introduced as Domenick Boucher. Strangely, they were all wearing formal attire—the men wore tuxedoes and the women were in elegant evening gowns. There was one other person in the room, a middle-aged man wearing black clerical attire.

  “This is Father Santini,” Jack told her. “I’ve asked him to perform the ceremony.”

  Sara gaped first at the priest then at Jack. She leaned close to his ear and whispered. “Uh, I’m not Catholic. Come to think of it, neither are you.”

  Santini must have overheard. “I won’t hold that again you, Miss Fogg,” he said with a grin.

  “Father Santini is a friend of a friend. I’m afraid this won’t exactly be a conventional wedding,” Jack explained. “We can’t very well apply for a marriage license, so legally we won’t really be married.”

  She mulled this over for about half a second and then smiled. “Screw legality. If we say ‘I do,’ that’s all that matters.”

  He gave a relieved sigh. “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  Jack Sigler and Sara Fogg said “I do,” and vowed to love, honor, comfort and keep each other, forsaking all others, until the end of their days. They exchanged rings and a kiss, and then became Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sigler in every way that mattered to them.

  King did not allow his anxieties about what lay ahead to darken this moment, the culmination of one journey and the beginning of another.

  He was acutely aware of those who were not present—Fiona, George Pierce, his parents, Tom Duncan—but one lesson life had taught him was that circumstances were almost never perfect, and to wait for ideal conditions was to waste precious time that could never be recovered. Life was too short and tragedy could close a window of opportunity
all too suddenly. Maybe one day they would have a real wedding, but for now, this was enough.

  Sara was resplendent in her dress—Queen and Bishop had somehow managed to penetrate the FBI presence at the Bible Conference Grounds in Pinckney to retrieve both the gown and the rings from the Honeymoon Nook cabin, where King and Sara were to have spent their first night together as man and wife.

  “How did you pick this place anyway?” Sara asked.

  “The owner is an old friend. He’s out of the country right now, but he said we could crash here for a while. I figured since it was pretty close to Atlanta…”

  “Must be a pretty good friend.”

  “The best. We had a few adventures together back in the day.” One of the benefits of living a few extra lifetimes was that you made friends that no one else knew about. King had a feeling that would come in handy in the days to come. “He’s pissed that he wasn’t here for the wedding, but he’ll keep our secret. He’s the one who recommended Father Santini.”

  “Well, it’s not what I imagined, but it’s still perfect.” She gave him another long passionate kiss. “I have to ask, though, are we all staying here? Because I was kind of hoping to get you alone.”

  Before he could answer, Boucher called for everyone’s attention. King thought the former CIA director was going to offer another toast, but instead he directed everyone to the large plasma screen television in the house’s living room. “One of my contacts just called. The President is about to speak.”

  Despite the timing, King was curious to hear what President Chambers would say. As far as anyone knew, Marrs’s plot to unseat the president had ended with his arrest, but there were plenty of other reasons for this special address.

  The screen filled with a shot of the White House Press Briefing Room, where a procession of people were stepping onto the podium, lining up in front of the blue backdrop. There was a buzz of conversation in the room, and then the announcement, “Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States.”