by Nick Thacker
"So, what do you want me to do?"
"I can tell you what I know, just from what I've learned from my friends and some professional shooting instructors. But you can't teach shooting by talking through it, so we'll just have to hope that it will be enough to get us through this week. The best thing you can do from now on is to try as hard as possible not to have to shoot anything at all."
“That sounds like a pretty good strategy to me,” Eliza said.
"It's pretty much the only strategy I follow," Ben answered. "Do whatever you can to not have to shoot anything, not to have to even lift your finger off the trigger guard. If you do have to shoot, then by all means wait as long as possible, so it's a can't-miss shot. Let them get right up into the crosshairs, fill them up, so even if you shoot wide or high, you're still hitting something vital, dropping them as quickly as possible."
“Christ,” she said, “you talk about it like it’s easy. Like we didn’t just see Clive get shot and die in front of us.”
Ben sat silent for a moment before answering. "Yeah, it is easy to talk about. Now, anyway. But talking about something and thinking about something — and especially acting on it — are all very different things. Trust me, if I could go back and once again make it hard to talk about this kind of stuff, I would. But I've made my bed; I guess I have to lay in it."
She looked confused. “Is that some American expression or something?”
“I guess,” he shrugged. “Something my mom used to say. When my brother Zach and I would mess up our rooms, she would always come in and tell us that. It never really made sense in that context though, because Zach and I were always fine sleeping in a cluttered bed, one filled with toys and books.”
“What’s he doing now? Your brother?”
Ben shrugged again. “You know, I’m not really sure. He was at my wedding; he showed up there for a little bit but ducked out without saying goodbye. It was like he had some super-secret cool thing to do, but he wanted to see me anyway, if only just for a moment.”
“But that was in Alaska, right?” She asked. “Which means he either drove or flew all the way up there just to see you guys. Weird that he would only stay for a little while and then disappear.”
“Yeah, it is,” Ben said. “But I’ve stopped asking questions like that of my life, and started just doing my best to do the right thing when confronted with the opportunity.”
Eliza frowned. “Very philosophical. But what the hell does that have to do with your brother Zach?”
“I just mean, if Zach is in some sort of trouble or doing something he shouldn’t be, that’s not my business. I mean I would help him I guess, but I’m not going to insert myself into his life.”
“Seems like that’s what family is for — to insert themselves into your life.”
Ben wasn’t sure if she was making a joke or being serious. “Yeah, well, last time I tried inserting myself into my family life it got some of them killed.”
Eliza didn't seem to have a response for this. Ben sat there, looking up at the cloud patterns and trying to figure out if the weather would hold. It was warm today, and the snow was even starting to melt when it came in contact with the sunlight. He didn't know if there was snow in the forecast, but either way — he didn't want to be out here when night fell. They needed to keep moving toward EKG and see about getting inside, without being shot by the asshole who had killed Clive.
He didn’t want to bet on their odds of getting inside safely, and he didn’t want to think about the odds against getting inside and finding nothing in the way of resistance. In his experience, places that engaged in the sorts of things EKG was purportedly doing didn’t take kindly to outsiders snooping around in their business.
And yet, the most important part of any defensive strategy was in locating your base of operations in a proper place. EKG had put this division of their company way up here in the Swiss Alps for a reason — they wanted to make it as hard as possible for anyone to find them, and they had succeeded. It wouldn’t be overkill to have guards stationed in and around their headquarters, but Ben couldn’t imagine anything more than a few armed security forces milling about.
That was another reason they needed to get there as soon as possible: it would give him more time to recon the facility and its protection.
He turned back to Eliza to see her resting her eyes once again. He wanted to wait here long enough for her to let the swelling in her knee recede, but he also wanted to get the company land in his sights. He would give her fifteen minutes, and then he would do his best to explain this crash course in rifle technology and how to line up a shot.
After that, it would be up to her — and they would have to take whatever she had to give.
He rummaged around in Clive's pack, looking for anything that might help them now. The man had been very prepared, and Ben wondered if he would find some sort of painkiller in his first-aid kit.
He dumped everything out in front of him and got to work.
42
Ben
They rested at the rocks for half an hour, Ben working on consolidating Clive's equipment with their own while trying to find something that would help Eliza.
He lucked out — in the first aid kit, he saw some bandage wrap material as well as a few pills labeled as generic painkillers. He gave her 800mg of the medication and wrapped her knee, trying to keep it slightly bent so it wouldn't cause her undue stress.
He helped her stand up and supported her as she hopped around in small circles, testing his handiwork. She seemed to be able to move better with it on, and he knew that once the painkillers hit, she would be able to walk almost normally. Running would be out of the question, for the most part, but hopefully, they wouldn't need to run from anything anytime soon.
“Feels good,” she said. She thanked him.
"Well, hopefully, it will at least get us to EKG. After that, you'll either need to get some real medical help or we’ll be too dead to care."
She shot him a look of annoyance.
“Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “Bad habit. I tend to try to make things funnier so that they’re easier to swallow.”
“Emphasis on ‘try to.’”
Ben laughed. “I said sorry.”
“Well, keep it up and I’ll make sure one of us is dead before the end of the day,” Eliza said.
Ben smiled again, glad she was still in a good mood considering her injury. “Ready to go?” He asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. We’re heading almost due east now, yeah?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Ben said. “Be on the lookout for anyone trailing behind us or any guards. I’m not sure what EKG is packing, and it doesn’t seem to make sense to be constantly patrolling the woods on the outskirts of their land, but we need to be prepared for anything. Look for anyone walking around, crouched behind trees or rocks, basically anything out of place.”
“Like giant, twenty-foot-tall silverback gorillas?” Eliza asked, one of her eyebrows raised.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Definitely be on the lookout for those.”
“Do you think he was right? Do you think there’s really something like that out here?” Eliza asked.
He had been thinking about this very thing nonstop for the past hour, but he hadn’t yet formulated his thoughts about it. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Something clearly spooked the guy, and something clearly killed those men. And it wasn’t just murder, either. It was brutal — you saw it. Whatever it was had to be at least twice as strong as a grown man, to be able to pull back the ribs like that and…” He trailed off. It sounded almost too horrific to say out loud.
“Yeah,” Eliza said. “It’s so jarring, so out of place. The fact that there could be something like that out there is insane, but then again this is EKG we are dealing with.”
“You showed me pictures of some of their experiments. Those were of a chimpanzee, right?”
"Yes," she said, nodding. "And those c
himps — or at least the one in the images — are the most common ape chosen for experimentation, whether it's for drugs or medical research. The reasoning behind it is simple: a chimpanzee's brain structure is most similar to that of humans. The larger apes — gorillas, orangutan, baboon— not only are they too big to deal with, but their brain usually operates at a lower level. It's not as helpful for research purposes, though it's not unheard of.
“Chimps are genetically similar enough that they’re actually quite a good fit for neurological testing. And there are other reasons, too: like Hepatitis B vaccination study. Chimps are the only nonhuman organisms that can host the causative vector. But I believe that if done properly, using controlled experiments, it can be above the line, ethically.”
“But there are organizations still fighting against using any animals in testing, right? Like PETA?”
She nodded. "Yeah, they're braindead, though. To them, it's all about political power and clout and less about animal rights. The rest of us — the ones actually concerned about the ethical treatment of animals — are fighting a more challenging battle. One of give and take. It’s a fight we’ve been battling for decades.”
They started moving, once again Eliza leading but Ben following behind her more closely this time. They continued to talk as they worked their way downhill toward the valley.
“You think they could be experimenting on gorillas as well?” Ben asked.
“Anything is possible, I guess,” she said. “And there definitely aren’t any gorillas native to Switzerland.”
“But why gorillas instead of chimps?”
She shrugged. “Even though chimpanzees are a decent representation of human neurology, in some cases it might make sense that they would use gorillas instead.”
“And what cases are those?”
"I don't know; I guess things that require a larger cranial cavity? More mass to work with? It's impossible to tell without knowing what they were working on. That's what I want to find out. If I can get something — anything — that proves they are doing this sort of thing, we can bring them down.
“What do we need to find? What would be considered enough proof?”
“Anything and everything that seems to be specific to their research. Documents, medical charts, information on their test subjects. If we can take entire hard drives with us, that would be ideal. There’s a good chance they aren’t working with paper copies of anything, but if we can find files or folders of hard data, that works, too.”
“So, as much as we can carry?” Ben asked.
“Yes, within reason. We can parse through it all later and pull out what we need. But these sorts of battles are fought with information, provable data. If we can get accounts of test trials, experimentation journals, that sort of thing is perfect. But any meeting notes, recordings of conversations, anything like that might be useful as well. We can put things together and read between the lines, but it will have to be a case that’s strong enough to make in court, which is why we are targeting hard data here.”
“I see,” Ben said. He thought back to the time they had infiltrated a research station in Antarctica, fighting against both a few squadrons of professional soldiers that had been hired by the research company as well as a small army of Chinese forces, hoping to extract the same information the CSO had come to find.
They had barely escaped with their lives, but they had been — ultimately — successful. They had brought the place down around them, decimating the facility and destroying any evidence that remained. Eliza would probably disagree with his assessment, but if they weren’t able to escape alive or with useful information, there was always the possibility they could just burn it all to the ground around them.
It wasn’t ideal, but Ben was starting to get the feeling that it was important enough of a mission to keep all possibilities — even the drastic ones — in mind. The question he had to answer now was whether or not he could do what it would take to bring it all crashing down. Could he sacrifice everything, including his own life, to get the job done? Was it worth it to him?
He and Eliza talked about EKG and their research for another few minutes; then the conversation turned back to Ben. She asked him questions about his past, about his parents and brother, and Ben got the sense that she was trying to repair some of the damage done in his previous life. At first he resented the thought of her meddling in his personal affairs, but then he warmed up to her questioning.
She wasn’t hostile, nor was she trying to lead him into some sort of psychological trap.
The conversation was jovial, lighthearted. It was completely different from the sorts of things they had been talking about for the past two days, and Ben welcomed the diversion. There would be plenty of time to get serious again, so he took to joking around with her while they walked slowly and leaned into the opportunity to take his mind off of all the death surrounding them.
43
Eliza
They continued for another forty minutes before reaching the edge of a long, flat meadow. Eliza had seen nothing out of the ordinary, and while she appreciated having Ben behind her as she hobbled along, her growing frustration with her knee injury made her want to tell him to stop babying her, to stop trying to take care of her.
He was a good man, and he did remind her of her late husband. Attractive, strong and confident, in many ways like all of the men she had dated in the past. She knew he was married, and she wasn’t remotely interested in trying to pursue him in a romantic way, but she still felt the swaying of girlish butterflies when she caught him looking at her. He had only done it a few times, but each time been in a moment of high stress and when there had been no time to stop and discuss it, but it made her wonder what he was really thinking.
He didn’t strike her as the type of man who would engage in romantic interludes while his wife was not around, but then again Eliza ultimately didn’t know him very well. She wasn’t out here trying to land a second husband, nor was she interested in entertaining the thought, but she had to admit it did feel good to be pursued, if that was what he was doing.
He had cared for her well over the past two days, gently working the bandage around her knee and helping her along as it healed, and he had been kind and encouraging with her when explaining to her his thoughts on weapons. Still, none of that meant anything — he would have been the same man when explaining that stuff to Clive or anyone else, and he would have treated anyone on his team with respect. He needed her in good health, so he wanted to do whatever he could to keep her knee safe and secure.
She pushed the thoughts away as Ben yammered on about his younger days at Yellowstone National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. He didn’t strike her as someone who enjoyed talking much, but he had apparently found a subject he enjoyed: the outdoors and nature.
She smiled as he told her a story about cleaning privies at Rocky Mountain when he had just gotten started as a junior ranger. It reminded her of some of the drudgeries she had done at the start of her own career as well, and she was about to bring it up when he changed the subject.
“Hey, I forgot to ask,” he said. “Do you know anyone in Grindelwald named Alina?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered. “Who is she?”
“Well, she’s college-aged and was visiting her parents when she disappeared.”
“Disappeared? From Grindelwald?”
“Yeah, apparently a few nights before we started out here,” Ben said. “I didn’t think much of it until we started walking around out here and finding these dead bodies. I mean, of course I hope nothing like that happened to her, but I still can’t help but think it’s all related.”
"Yeah, I've stopped believing in coincidences," Eliza said. "Lately, it seems like everything that's been going on points back to EKG somehow. How did you hear about her?"
"Like you said earlier, the city talks. My first night in town, I was at a bar and the bartender asked me to go check in with her father, who owns a bed and bre
akfast. He said the town was up in arms about her disappearance, and that while I was in town and looking around, I should keep my eyes open."
“What did her father say?”
“Same thing, really,” Ben said. “He told me she was a good kid, that she wouldn’t do something like run away, especially not after she’d gotten to town. That sort of thing. Anyway, like I said, I didn’t even really consider that it might be related until we started seeing the bodies in the woods.”
“You think our giant gorilla thing took her?”
“Who’s to say, but that sounds pretty ridiculous to me. If this thing was going to kill her, why not just do it in town, where she was? Unless she was walking into the woods and stumbled onto it, the thing that killed these people doesn’t seem like the same sort of thing that would walk into town and snatch some college kid.”
“And yet none of this makes much sense,” Eliza said.
“True. We need to consider every option. And you’re right — we need to get to EKG as soon as possible to see what’s really going on.”
Eliza was about to respond when her eyes darted to the side, something in her subconscious pulling her attention. She stopped. Ben nearly ran into her.
“What’s up?” He said.
“Over there,” she pointed. “It’s — it’s…“
“It’s another body, isn’t it?” Ben asked.
She nodded, then took a step in that direction.
Like the first body they had found, this one was lying against a tree. But that was where the similarities ended. This body had clearly been out here for far longer than the first had. Most of its skin and flesh had been picked off by forest wildlife, and the skeleton was all that remained. It had sunken in on itself, as if it had fallen asleep and simply not woken up. Some of the ribs, however, were lying to the sides of the spinal cord, implying that it, too, had been ripped open and the insides of the carcass pulled out.