by Hunter Shea
“Do we have to stay inside all day?” Dom said, not bothering to take one iota of the whine from his voice. Bobby raised his little eyebrows, pleading.
She looked at them both and Bobby could see she was starting to break. “Can we go out for just a little while?” he asked.
Dom’s mother flipped a dish towel over her shoulder and leaned against the counter. She looked up at the pig clock on the wall. “You boys have one hour to get everything out of your system, but you have to promise me you won’t go near the water.”
“We won’t,” Dom said, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape.
“We promise,” Bobby added.
She shook her head, smiling. “One hour. Any longer, and it’s no comics or movies.”
They ran out of the house before she could dictate any more restrictions. The already humid air felt like an elixir to their young lungs. “You wanna check the bird?” Dom asked.
The day before, they’d come across a dead bird lying in the grass with its stiff claws pointing skyward. They’d found a thick stick, used it to dig a deep hole and given it a proper burial, complete with a Hail Mary. Bobby had found a speckled, polished rock and sunk it into the soft earth as a miniature headstone.
“It’s only been a day,” Bobby replied.
“So? You waiting for it to turn into a zombie?”
“That’s stupid.”
“Right. Come on.”
Dom sprinted through the backyard, scaling the five-foot picket fence like a seasoned marine. Bobby was just as fast and nimble and at his side in no time. They ran to the vacant lots behind Mrs. Losapio’s house. Maple trees filled the lots and were a favorite shady spot for the boys to escape the heat of the day. They also made good climbing.
The tiny headstone was where they had left it but had been knocked on its side. Dom searched the ground for the stick they’d used the day before.
“It’s probably gonna smell,” Bobby said.
“So does your butt,” Dom said, laughing. He walked over, holding the stick. “We can check it every day to see how it decompotes.”
“I think it’s decomposes,” Bobby corrected.
Dom started digging. “Whatever. They say worms eat dead things from the inside out. You think it’ll be full of worms?”
“It’s in the ground where worms live, so, yeah. If it stinks, I might puke.” Bobby pulled his shirt up over his nose just in case. Dom shook his head at him.
As he pulled the dirt away from the grave, Dom said, “This is going to be cool. Gross, but cool.”
A strong wind huffed from between the maples, chattering the leaves. Bobby fanned his hand in front of his face. “Crap, it’s worse than I thought. Put the dirt back on.”
Dom’s nose crinkled. He dropped to his hands and knees and plunged his head into the hole. “It’s not coming from here.”
“Then what’s making that smell?”
They turned to face the secretive darkness between the trees.
Dom pointed. “I think it’s coming from somewhere back there. You think it’s another dead animal?”
Bobby did his best to breathe out of his mouth, but it only made it feel like he could taste the stench as well. “It’s gotta be big to smell like that. Maybe a deer or something. And I’m not burying a deer.”
“Me neither. But I want to at least see it before my mom locks us up. Let’s check it out.”
Before Bobby could protest, Dom was creeping through the trees. There was no questioning whether he would follow or not. He was just as curious as his best friend, just a little more cautious.
A reedy whistling called to them like a mythical Siren. It was like the sound of a tiny, boiling teakettle.
They followed their noses, several times gagging as they got closer to the source.
When they stepped past the last row of maples, they found it.
Dom felt like he’d been hit with some kind of paralyzing ray. He didn’t hear Bobby whimper with pained, sucking breaths. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.
The flesh began to expand, the surface bubbling like a peach balloon hooked to a helium canister. The boys watched, mouths hanging open.
Dom thought about his mother and wished like he’d never wished before that he’d listened to her. They would have been at the comic book store right now, far away from here. That’s all he wanted to be. Far away from here.
Then it erupted.
CHAPTER 21
Meredith drove them out to the North Fork in her Chevy Suburban. What she lacked in speed on her feet now, she more than made up for behind the wheel of the SUV. Dalton actually loved the reckless way she drove. Punching the accelerator in his squad car when he chased down speeders was always the highlight of any shift. He wondered if all cops were secretly speed junkies.
The Cross Sound Ferry that shuttled folks between Long Island and New London, Connecticut, mostly so they could gamble at the big Indian casinos, hulked in the dock. The huge ferry bobbed empty and silent.
“Looks like we missed takeoff,” he said.
“Takeoff is for planes,” Meredith said, grinning. “We’re not taking that ferry, unless you want to visit the submarine museum.”
“Some other time.”
She pointed at another, smaller ferry to their right. “That’s our ride to Plum Island.”
There was a small car lot surrounding the slip for employee cars. At the moment, several dozen cars filled the white-painted slots. The ferry itself was a two-level structure. It was designed to transport people, not their vehicles. Dalton looked at the name imprinted on its side.
“Fort Terry Ferry. Cute,” he said.
“It’s anything but. Fort Terry was built on Plum Island during the Spanish-American War as a first line of defense for New York. It’s ironic that what they think they’re doing out there is still in the vein of defending the country. I hear you can still see remnants of the fort out there.”
He nudged her with an elbow. “You know a hell of a lot about this place.”
“Like I said, seeing that thing on the beach and the way it disappeared opened my eyes. I’ve had a lot of time to do research.”
A massive-shouldered, square-jawed man emerged from a small hut and waved. When he saw Meredith, he broke into a blinding smile. He walked with a military stride, his close-cropped hair slicing the air.
Dalton nudged Meredith. “Was dating this guy part of your research?”
She gave him a look that could melt an iceberg in seconds. He’d hit a raw nerve, and he realized just how deep she’d gotten into her quest for the truth. While everyone else on the island was running around chasing their tails and afraid of the dark, she saw this as a sort of personal vindication and a chance to uncover a disturbing mystery. If he hadn’t seen the beast with his own eyes and what it did to Anita, he would have turned right around.
All of this was crazy, right? What Meredith had said couldn’t possibly be the truth. It had to be far more mundane. Sure, he saw something that he couldn’t explain, but he was no vet or zoologist. Dogs were born deformed and diseased just as much as people.
But Anita couldn’t even tell what that thing was.
“Robert Nicolo, this is Gray Dalton.”
He’d been so lost in thought, he hadn’t even noticed their quick reunion. The big man rested a hand over Meredith’s shoulders. He held out the other to him. His grip was surprisingly soft.
“Hey, Robert,” Dalton said, meeting the man’s steel gaze. “I’m kind of tagging along on this. Meredith is the one in charge.”
Robert smiled. “She always is.” There was a hint of regret in his voice.
The midday heat baked off the lot’s blacktop. Dalton felt sweat trickling down his sides. “Meredith tells me you’re with Homeland Security.”
“Five years in,” he said. “Before that, I worked homicide in Queens. This place has been a vacation compared to that. Though they do ask me to do stuff I’d never dreamed of.”
“Like p
iloting the ferry?” Dalton asked.
Robert shook his head. “Budget cuts. Almost everyone who draws a paycheck from Plum Island has more than one job. When they heard I used to pilot fishing charter boats out of Red Bank, I became the de facto ferryman. Come on aboard.”
As they stepped onto the ferry, Meredith turned to her former boyfriend and said, “Look, I don’t want you to lose your job over this. You can tell us to hit the road and I won’t take it personally.”
He ran a hand over the short spikes of his hair. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little concerned about things out there.”
“How come?” Dalton asked, leaning against a rail, listening to the chop of the water as it sloshed against the big boat.
“Things have been getting stranger the past few months, and that’s saying a lot for this place. And after everything Meredith told me about what’s been going on in Montauk, I get the feeling something’s gone wrong. There was talk of shutting everything down and moving all of the labs to a place in Kansas. They had already closed and sealed Lab 257 and moved everything over to Lab 101 a while ago. The writing was on the wall. Head count had been cut by over thirty percent. I was waiting for them to tell me I’d been reassigned, but it never came about.” He went to the narrow staircase that led to the upper deck. “Let me get this tug started and I’ll tell you the rest on the way over.”
The ferry started up with a dull thrum and Robert came down to untie it from its mooring. They followed him back up to the pilot’s cabin. Inside was mercifully air-conditioned. Tinting on the windows kept the broiling sun at bay.
I’m all in now, Dalton thought as they pulled away from the dock. And so are Meredith and Robert. Either they’re both insane or there’s some validity to this. They were either on the path to career suicide, exposing a colossal black-op-type situation—which would make them heroes or snitches, depending on each person’s perception—or waltzing right into the heart of something so savage, there was no getting off the island alive. At best, they’d be taking a leisurely jaunt to a prohibited island, find out that Meredith’s theories were unfounded, and somehow make it back undetected.
He didn’t hold out much hope for that last one.
“Fuck it,” Dalton said under his breath.
Meredith snapped her face in his direction. “What did you say?”
“Just thinking out loud. Robert, just so I’m a little more comfortable with this whole thing, tell me why someone who works for Homeland Security is willing to break his oath and risk his job by taking us to Plum Island. I know Meredith is awesome, but it can’t all be for her.”
Again, she tried to liquefy him with her gaze. The way Robert looked at her, he could tell the man still had strong feelings for her. She had to have been the one to break it off.
Robert turned the wheel, scanning the horizon. A tiny smile curled the corners of his lips. “Not to deny Meredith’s allure, I haven’t been comfortable with the way things have been run lately. Over the past thirty years, Plum Island has been a disaster waiting to happen. I’m sure she told you about the different diseases people believe escaped from the labs onto the mainland.”
Dalton nodded. Meredith settled into the copilot seat, resting an arm over her crutch.
“The place was initially built to study different animal diseases, specifically hoof-and-mouth. Did Meredith tell you that a former Nazi was actually one of the founders of the lab?”
“No, that’s one thing she left out.” The bizarre was taking a turn to the surreal.
“Sounds nuts, right? Back in the ’40s, Operation Paperclip was designed to import all of these Nazi scientists into the country and get them working for us. One of them was Erich Traub. He worked on biological warfare agents during World War II. Someone in our government was willing to forgive his dubious past so they could use his mind against our enemies. They needed someone who could help us come up with offensive and defensive capabilities against the Soviet Union. Traub was only too happy to accept a full pardon and assist. For a Nazi operating under the Third Reich, I’m sure he felt right at home. Did you know they used to experiment on Gypsies and other races to see how each responded to different diseases?”
Dalton shook his head. He’d never been a big history buff. He knew Nazis were the embodiment of evil, but was fuzzy on their specific atrocities outside of the death camps.
“Nazi scientists did anything their sick little minds dreamed up without having to heed to a code of ethics or morals. When they weren’t pumping other races with diseases to see how they reacted, they looked for ways to sterilize anyone that wasn’t in their plan for a master race.”
It didn’t take long for the island to come into full view.
“We’re going through what’s called Plum Gut right now,” Robert said. He pointed at an old, brass-colored lighthouse. “Believe it or not, that’s a functioning lighthouse. Coast Guard automated it a long time ago. Plum Island isn’t a place for lighthouse keepers.”
The island was chock-full of trees and high grass. It looked like an untended, wild sanctuary from this end.
“Why is it called Plum Island?” Dalton asked.
Meredith said, “Because of all the plum trees. I wouldn’t eat any fruit grown there, though. If you could see Plum Island from above, it looks a little like a musical note. Most people call it the pork chop. Naturally, it was first inhabited by Indians, then ownership passed down to different families until the government took it over to make Fort Terry, then the animal disease labs.”
Dalton waved his hands. “Hold up. I’m still stuck on the Nazi part. So this place was made for crazy Nazi scientists to make diseases?”
“Not exactly,” Robert said, angling around the eastern side of the island. “Traub, I’m pretty sure, was the only former Nazi involved. Everyone’s job was to study existing diseases, find cures, as well as ways to militarize them. Think of it. The best way to bring a country to its knees is to destroy its crops and livestock. Sick, starving people will either overthrow leadership, or be too weak to defend themselves. All it takes is a few well-placed microbes, and you win. The U.S. and the Soviets were both looking for ways to take each other out, as well as defend themselves from the other. Plum Island was at the center of that. Like Wernher von Braun, Traub was milked for his knowledge. We used them as much as they used us.”
Meredith chimed in, “Foot-and-mouth disease was their first area of concentration, but they moved on to things like the Marburg virus, Ebola, Rift Valley fever, you name it. Plum Island is home to almost every deadly disease known to man. And the scary part is, between management and budget issues, the labs are not the most secure facilities. Contaminants get out all the time. Plenty of workers have gotten sick and died, and have even brought lawsuits. So far, no one has been able to beat the island in the courts. Everything associated with Plum Island gets swept under the rug.”
Dalton watched a lot of History Channel and saw an immediate correlation. “Sounds a little like Area 51.”
Meredith snickered. “Kind of like that, yeah, but without the little green men. The shit here is real and it’s serious.”
“Gray men,” Dalton countered.
Meredith and Robert looked at him. He stood his ground. “The aliens are gray. At least that’s what they say.”
It broke the tension that had been building as they chugged toward the island. A grouping of white buildings appeared out of the green forest.
“That’s Lab 101,” Robert said, positioning the ferry so it faced the dock. Turning to Dalton, he said, “I wouldn’t blame you if you ask me to turn back.”
“Holy crap.”
Mickey Conrad removed his hat, hoping the sun would evaporate some of the sweat that beaded his head like he’d stepped into a downpour. He looked over at Jim Kanelos, one of the daytime-shift cops who was more comfortable doing stop-light warnings than body patrol. Jim had his back to him, trying to shield the woman and two boys from the mess of human flesh piled in the crimson depress
ion within the empty field.
The boys’ faces and shirts were smeared with blood. So was the mother’s. After finding the body and having the misfortune of being there when the corpse’s internal gases blew out of the distended stomach, they’d run home like an axe murderer was on their heels. It was obvious she’d held them both tightly, calming them down, forgetting to wash the stains off. Her hands caressed their heads, keeping them from looking. Mickey didn’t think the kids would ever want to glance this way again.
“You can get them back to the house, Jim.”
Kanelos said, “I’ll come back.” He was a slight guy, maybe one-fifty on a good day, with olive skin and a perpetual five-o’clock shadow. Mickey liked to joke with him that he was the swarthiest Greek that had ever stolen his way into America. Jim liked to tell him what he could do to himself with a bottle of olive oil and a shish kebab skewer. The guy loved to laugh, even if it was at his own expense.
Mickey had never seen him so serious. Everyone was nervous. Not a single soul knew what they were dealing with. Since morning, things had quieted down. And now there was this. He’d been hearing rumors about something going on at the hospital and sightings of a procession of strange, white vans. He’d yet to come across them, but something was up. He could feel it in the atmosphere as easily as a strong ocean wind.
When Kanelos turned, Mickey saw the moist patch of scarlet on his partner’s hand. He called him over.
Keeping his voice low, he tilted his head toward Jim’s hand and said, “Wash that off as soon as you get to the house. Try not to get any more on you.”
“Shit, you think this is some kind of infection?” Jim Kanelos’s sizable Adam’s apple bobbed.
“It’s better not to take any chances. Pull the paramedics aside and tell them what happened. Maybe they’ll know how to properly disinfect it.”
He spat a string of Greek under his breath. By the tone, Mickey assumed it was all foul. Kanelos composed himself and walked the woman and kids back to her house.