Virus

by S. D. Perry

  Suddenly she heard it, heard the splashing of something huge somewhere in the dark, moving towards her. The panic intensified, all rational thought lost as Foster rolled over, kicking, trying to swim through the corpse-infested fuel oil.

  She heard and felt the thick, clammy waves of oil push against her, the bodies of the Russian crew tossed aside as Goliath came for her. A screaming filled her ears, her own voice echoing back at her through the vast hold and urging her to new heights of terror as she paddled wildly. Pallid bodies pressed against her, bloodless lips yawning, contorted death masks and cold, outstretched hands brushing her skin—

  —and a huge, frigid talon closed around her ankle and ripped her backwards, dragging her through the oil. Her face was submerged. She struggled, managed one choking mouthful of air before her head was plunged forward again and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t raise her head, which had grown heavy, heart pounding and lungs dying . . .

  The blackness overtook her and Foster knew no more.

  • 25 •

  Nadia was standing in a room she couldn’t quite see; she had an impression of softness and white in the flickering shadows, but the dimensions of the space distorted past her immediate surroundings, faded off into a vague distance.

  She didn’t know where she was or what had brought her here. Her thoughts were jumbled, confused. Something had happened, but she couldn’t fix on what it was—and yet she wasn’t afraid, not in this soft, peaceful place where no one was screaming—

  —screaming? Why would anyone be screaming?

  She had a memory of being very tired and shook off the troubling thought, relieved. The vagueness of the room suddenly made sense; she was asleep.

  “Nadia.”

  A familiar voice, deep and compelling. She turned and felt her eyes well with tears, suddenly overwhelmed with happiness. Alexi Sagalevitch stood a few feet away, smiling with kind eyes, wearing the green sweater she’d bought for him in Kiev. The man she’d loved and married, her dearest friend and her captain—

  —captain. Of the Vladislav Volkov, where I am an officer . . .

  It all came flooding back, the terrible, unbelievable things that had happened to them. The transmission from the MIR. The screaming, the hiding, running through corridors that had become shadowed by an evil intelligence—Alexi separated from her when the typhoon had hit and the dreadful, numbing loneliness that had followed as she’d waited for him. The Americans who had come aboard, who had found her husband, horribly transformed—

  “Why are you crying, Nadia?”

  He was whole again, here in this place. His short hair was clean and swept back from his high, clear brow; his voice was the melodic rumble that she had thought she’d never hear again, the sound of it a soothing balm to her frayed nerves.

  “You are dead, Alexi,” she whispered, tears coursing down her face. And she realized suddenly what that meant, what it had to mean.

  The thought filled her with an intense, sweeping relief.

  Alexi shook his head, still smiling. “You are alive, but time is short; endgame. Do what must be done, my brave girl . . .”

  He was fading, his body becoming transparent, disappearing before her wide and desperate eyes. She struggled to go to him, but her legs wouldn’t move in this dream reality. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to fight anymore without him . . .

  Nadia! Nadia, wake up!

  “Do what must be done,” Alexi whispered again, and then he was gone. The pain she felt transcended emotions, crept from her heart to her head and centered in her right temple, throbbing in time to her shaking body—

  “Nadia, are you okay? You gotta wake up! Ah, shit.”

  The shaking was a warm hand on her shoulder, the words English. Nadia opened her wet eyes and saw Steve, intense, blood smeared across his face—and the rest of her memory clicked into place as she breathed in stinging fumes, saw the grates of the catwalk around them in the murky light from above.

  The detonator. Fuel oil. The intelligence had taken a new form and knocked Steve out, she had been pushed into an open hatch over the hold, hit her head.

  “How long?” Nadia managed.

  “Eleven minutes left.”

  “Foster?”

  Urgency flashed in his dark eyes. “It took her.

  I heard it, heard her scream.”

  The pain in his voice, the loneliness.

  “We must hurry,” said Nadia, and Steve blew out sharply, reached down, and helped her to her feet.

  “The thermite—” he started, but she shook her head. If the intelligence killed them, there’d be no one to reactivate the timer.

  He handed her one of the semi-automatics and then they were climbing, Nadia wiping at her eyes from the dream of her dead husband—and praying that they weren’t too late to save Foster from a fate as horrible as his.

  Foster opened her eyes blearily, forced into consciousness by the screaming ache in her arms and shoulders. Her first realization was that she was alive. The second was that she was suspended from her wrists, hung from an overhead pipe in the back of a shadowy room. And the third was that she was in some very deep shit indeed.

  There was an electrical cable affixed to her forehead, leading to a computer console next to her. The monitor was blank, but the ones next to it weren’t. Goliath was in front of them, standing perfectly still as information flashed across the screens.

  Foster stared at the glowing screens for a moment and then closed her eyes, searching herself for a strength that she wasn’t sure she had. One screen had shown a layout of the human nervous system; the data on the other was mostly text, but she’d seen multiple diagrams of various parts of the brain.

  She tried to find the voice of her father, tried to hope that Steve was still alive, that he and Nadia had made it off the ship—but the best she could do was a desolate wish that the Volkov would blow soon and put an end to her miserable fear . . .

  Goliath moved and Foster opened her eyes, watched the monstrosity step towards her. She could smell the decay of human tissue beneath the heavy odor of fuel oil, see the bloodless tears in the flesh that stretched across its limbs and body. There was an instrument panel set into the peeling skin just below its massive, insectile head and she saw something emerge from the panel, unfolding.

  A spindly metal hand extended and took hold of her face, cold, rounded fingers pressing into her skin.

  Goliath’s rumbling, mechanical voice emerged from a speaker in its chest. It asked her something in Russian, the tone soulless and deep. It waited a moment and then spoke again.

  “Do you speak English?”

  Foster stared at it. “Fuck you.”

  Goliath didn’t seem to take offense. “English. Where is the detonator?”

  “I forgot.”

  The metal hand pulled her face closer and the eye lenses of the creature focused on her, glowing faintly with a strange light. The mandibles that were set into the lower portion of Goliath’s face started to shimmer with a crackling blue energy, and Foster realized that they weren’t mandibles at all; some kind of power conductor—

  Huge blue electrical arcs snapped into her face and Foster screamed, the sounds ripped from deep inside as the world turned brilliant and hot, hotter, intensifying. Every part of her spasmed and convulsed in the blue fire and she was dying, it was killing her—

  —and it stopped suddenly. Foster collapsed against her binds, her entire body throbbing, each separate muscle an agony unto itself. Her face was still held by the metal fingers and another tool extended outward, a shining probe that moved into position directly in front of her right eye.

  “The detonator. Where is it?”

  She struggled to turn her face away, wanting to tell him, it, the thing that had killed her, before it made the pain come again. She couldn’t think straight and it hurt so terribly—

  —pleaseplease don’t—

  Foster closed her eyes, the only denial she could manage, and there was another blindin
g flash of trauma, of death, of sickness—

  —and her own screams chased her into a gray place where all thought was lost.

  They heard the screams as soon as they stepped out of the fuel bay. Steve sprinted towards the sound, down a tilting corridor with Nadia close behind.

  The screams stopped suddenly as they rounded a corner in the dark maze of the deck and Steve wheeled around frantically, straining to hear a noise, some sign that she was still alive. The anguish in her cries had been terrible, threatened to drive him insane with a kind of fear he’d never known before—but the silence was worse, so much worse . . .

  . . . Don’t let her be dead, I’ll do anything, just please don’t let her be dead—

  From somewhere farther down the corridor, Foster shrieked and Steve was running again even as the horrible sound reached them. It fell away after only a few seconds, but the open hatch was in sight, not twenty feet away—

  Nadia stopped him before he charged in, laid a hand across his quivering arm and shook her head.

  Steve paused, took a deep breath, and then nodded. Running in blind would kill them. As it was, the small-caliber weapons would probably be more effective if they threw them at the giant—

  —and after this clip, that’s all that’s left.

  They stepped into the room and froze, taking in the terrible scene. The creature stood at a computer console in the back of an empty workshop, perfectly still. Foster dangled by her wrists from a pipe nearby, her head down, her body swaying. A thin cable led from her drooping head to the console where the creature stood. She was alive; he could hear soft moans escaping with each ragged breath, and he thanked God for the pitiful sounds as he moved closer to the fixated machine.

  Deep in the giant’s midsection was a glowing blue fire, the same blue as the electrical currents that snapped across its body—and, Steve realized, a lot like the blue jelly that had coated Everton’s brain.

  Gotta be the energy source. It’s our only chance.

  Steve motioned towards it, and Nadia nodded slowly, her own weapon raised.

  He approached the creature as quietly as possible, but the giant gave no sign that it was aware of anything except for the computer screen in front of it. Garbled sounds came from the unit as he edged forward—

  —and stopped. He was talking, his own voice coming out from the console’s speaker.

  “I gave us fifteen minutes.”

  A second later, Nadia spoke. “Checkmate.”

  He could see the screen now, saw a strange, distorted image of himself and Nadia in their life jackets—and he realized that the replayed scene was from Foster’s point of view. The creature had somehow tapped into her mind, stolen a piece of her memory . . . and now it knew where the detonator was.

  “That’ll be enough of that,” he snarled, and jabbed the barrel of the small pistol into the glow of the blue fire.

  He emptied the clip. Ten rounds cracked into the mass, sent squealing branches of blue light licking up the belly of the massive creature—

  —but that was all. The giant reeled around, undamaged, and swung at him.

  Steve leapt away and the enormous fist struck only air. He tripped on a workbench and went down, scrabbling backwards as the beast rotated its upper body completely around, drew to its full height, and emitted a deafening electronic screech. It took one step forward. One more, it would be on top of him—

  Bam! Bam!

  Nadia fired, the bullets bouncing uselessly off of the plated metal of the creature. She fired anyway, buying time. The monster spun towards her and Steve jumped up, searching wildly for something to use against it as it advanced on the woman. There was nothing, nothing that would make any difference—

  —and the dry click of Nadia’s empty weapon cinched it. They were dead, the creature would slaughter them and disable the explosive with minutes to spare; it was all over . . .

  And that was when a fireball exploded through the room and slammed into the chest of the monstrosity, knocking it down in a shower of fiery sparks.

  • 26 •

  Foster dragged herself out of the pain and saw the fireball slam into Goliath. Pieces of skin, bone, and metal flew across the room as the mammoth creature crashed to the deck, as a shadowy man stepped out of the corridor and into the glow of the room, backlit by fire.

  Foster opened her eyes wider, trying to clear her head. It was Richie, a grenade launcher in hand. She’d heard gunfire before, heard Steve’s voice, but she hadn’t been able to wake up.

  Steve and Nadia were both in the room, alive, staring at Richie. Foster fought against the gray waves of dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her again, felt astonishment take over as she realized that Richie had come back. He tossed a knife to Nadia and motioned towards Foster, his voice strong and cool.

  “Cut her down.”

  Not so crazy after all . . .

  Nadia moved towards her and clambered up on a console, started sawing at the cords that held her up, one arm around Foster’s waist. Foster stared at the fallen Goliath, crumpled against a support beam across the room. Richie stepped past it and helped Steve to his feet, talking fast.

  “Let’s get outta here, man.”

  Foster’s right arm came loose and she held on to the pipe, letting the simple ache of her strained muscles drive away the last of the gray as Nadia cut through the second cord and pulled away the cable. The other woman supported her as she slid to the floor and lowered her arms slowly, wincing. Angry red welts encircled both wrists and she leaned against Nadia, shaking, looking up—

  —to see Goliath rise smoothly and grab the steel bracing support for the ceiling above the two men, its armature smoking and sparking.

  Even as she opened her mouth to scream, the monster tore the brace away violently and slammed one mammoth arm into the decking.

  Steve and Richie turned, Richie raising the grenade launcher as Steve ducked—

  —and a ton of steel piping and debris crashed down over them. Dust billowed out and rubble spun across the room as Nadia tightened her grip around Foster, kept her from lunging towards them.

  “Steve! Richie!” Foster struggled, but Nadia was stronger than she was.

  “They’re dead, there’s nothing we can do!” Nadia shouted. She pulled Foster to the door and Goliath was turning, rotating its torn and crackling body away from the huge pile of wreckage—

  The two women ran and Goliath started after them through the dark.

  Nadia kept a firm grip on Foster’s arm as they dashed through the corridor, her thoughts racing, Foster stumbling, obviously in shock from pain and the loss of her friends.

  Seven, maybe eight minutes left, keep the creature running, find a way out.

  It was impossible, there wasn’t enough time—but there wasn’t any alternative, either. Nadia pulled Foster along towards the stern, praying that the intelligence hadn’t welded any more doors; there were storage rooms ahead, maybe they could find more weapons.

  The mammoth creature squealed behind them, close, the pound of its giant legs echoing through the darkness as the Volkov heaved against the rumbling storm.

  They came to a bulkhead hatch and Nadia pushed Foster through and followed closely, her heart pounding. Together they slammed the watertight door and Nadia spun the hatch wheel. Through the inset window they could see the monster’s crashing blue energy, hear the furious electrical screeching of the intelligence inside as it stomped towards them.

  The door wouldn’t hold out for more than a few seconds. Nadia grabbed Foster’s arm and they ran, Nadia trying to remember the layout—

  —the locker!

  Instead of continuing forward, Nadia stopped at the second hatch they passed and yanked it open. They scrambled through and Foster spun the hatch wheel.

  There!

  It was at the end of the smaller corridor; Nadia ran for it, pulling Foster, praying that something had been left behind by the deserting crewmen—and that the creature had lost them, at least for a few
minutes.

  She jerked open the hatch and they fell inside, panting. A single flickering bulb in the corner illuminated the tight compartment. Foster collapsed against the door as Nadia hurried to a cabinet and flung it open.

  Relief crashed through her at the sight of the bright orange suits that hung from the rack. And behind them, a thick-barreled gun and three loads in a mounted case.

  “Survival suits and a flare gun—Foster, we have a chance!”

  A chance—but very little time . . .

  She snatched up two of the heavily insulated jumpsuits and shoved one at Foster, who took it numbly, her face pale. For a moment Foster only stared at it, eyes shocked, unseeing—and then she dropped it on the deck and started to undress, pulling her stained fuchsia shirt over her head.

  Nadia stripped off her wet sweatshirt and tossed it aside—then scooped up the tags that hung from her neck and touched them, felt a rueful smile tug at the corners of her mouth. Foster was losing her spirit, she could see it in the other woman’s eyes . . .

  She took off the tags and held them out to Foster as the woman zipped up her suit.

  “Alexi’s ID tags,” she said softly. “They brought me good luck.”

  Foster took them, seemed to focus on them, her gaze sharpening back into reality. She nodded her thanks and Nadia turned away, climbing quickly into the suit and thinking about what Alexi had said to her in her unconscious dream.

  Endgame—and she wouldn’t leave until she could be sure that her opponent had truly lost.

  The workbench had been crushed beneath the hundreds of pounds of steel, but the braced legs had only buckled. Steve had missed a broken skull by about a quarter of an inch.

  He clawed through the sharp, cold edges of the shattered decking, feeling blood trickle from over a dozen stinging wounds in his back and legs. He could feel a sharp pain in his left side, knew from experience that he’d broken a rib or two—but his injuries were minimal, considering. He struggled into the settling dust of the empty room, choking.