The Mendel Paradox (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 9)

by Nick Thacker

  Ben looked into his eyes, seeing the intelligence there, watching it examine him as much as he was examining it. For what seemed like an entire minute, man and beast stared at each other, assessing one another.

  Come on, big guy, Ben thought. Don’t make me shoot you.

  Eliza was sobbing, and he noticed she was hunched over her right leg, leaning heavily on her crutch. Her rifle and pack were laying in the field nearby, but not close enough that either would be any help to them.

  Ben tried to take a step forward.

  The gorilla bolted. “No!” Ben shouted, but it was too late.

  The gorilla barreled toward Eliza, closing the distance in half a second.

  Ben winced, involuntarily closing his eyes.

  When he opened them a moment later, the gorilla was gone.

  Then he saw it, still moving, picking up speed as it hurled itself toward the men on the other side of the clearing.

  Ben didn’t hesitate. He ran toward Eliza, closing the last five yards and coming to her side, wrapping her up in his arms and lifting her off the ground. She yelped in surprise, but Ben didn’t stop.

  She dropped her crutch as Ben spun around quickly and aimed back toward the fence. He threw her over his shoulder, holding her by the back of her legs, and he felt her shaking and heard her groaning in pain as he squeezed on her right knee.

  It’s okay, he thought. It’s going to be okay.

  "Hold on," he said through gritted teeth. She felt as though she weighed nothing, and Ben tried to run as though he wasn't being weighed down by a full-grown human being. Everything happened in slow motion, but Ben pounded forward with powerful legs, not willing to turn around to see what was happening.

  He heard the weapons of the men, firing more rapidly now, but he didn’t dare stop to see what they were firing at. He hoped — he assumed — they were firing at the gorilla, but he couldn’t be sure they weren’t trying to hit him and Eliza instead.

  He reached the fence at about the time the firing stopped. All three men were reloading now.

  Or the beast had reached them…

  “Did you cut through the fence yet?” He heard Eliza ask.

  “Almost all the way,” Ben said. “But I’ve cut through enough that we can bend it back and get through. There’s no time left to open it more.”

  He set her on the ground but kept an arm under her shoulder to support her. He once again set the rifle down against the fence to the left of the hole, then reached in and pulled the chain-link back, bending it toward him and Eliza. It moved easily, pliable enough for him to open a triangular hole in the half-arch he had cut earlier.

  "We'll have to go one at a time," Ben said. "And you don't have a crutch. Let me go first, and I'll hold your hand on the other side."

  “I’m fine,” Eliza said, venom in her voice. “Those bastards are shooting at that gorilla. If we can’t stop it, we need to get inside.”

  Eliza was surprisingly lucid, and he wondered if the pain medication was helping her to stay focused. He nodded, letting her catch her balance before releasing her and stepping through the hole in the fence.

  He wondered if this was a suicide mission, a guaranteed failure. Eliza wasn’t naive, but he understood her more now. The woman was driven, guided by the singular solution she had landed upon. There were no alternatives, no other ways out. Her life’s work had been wrapped up in this, and her entire life had been taken from her because of this.

  And yet Ben knew she wasn’t prepared for the death they’d already seen. He could see it on her face, behind her eyes, an adrenaline-fueled determination that he knew would shatter horrifically when things got more intense. It wasn’t a question of if — it was when. She would go down, and he only hoped he would be in a position to help her back up.

  It’s too late to back out now, he thought.

  Once on the other side he reached through and grabbed his rifle, then held it up as Eliza slowly worked her way through the open hole in the fence. It took a few seconds, but she made it to the other side and used the fence for support.

  Before they moved on, Ben reached through the hole and pulled the chain-link back into place. He tried to flatten it out, to make it appear as though it had not been cut. From a distance, he hoped it would look as though they had simply found another way in. It might slow them down, it might not. But at this point, Ben would take any opportunity he could to get another lead.

  As he finished the last section of chain-link, he dared a glance upward and across the meadow.

  The three men and the gorilla were gone.

  46

  Ben

  The warriors returned a few seconds later, as Ben watched on. The men were running, chased by the gorilla, out of the cover of the trees and into the clearing once again. Ben saw the gorilla run toward the other group. The three men stopped near the edge of the clearing, a few feet into the meadow. The grass in that area was tall, and he watched one of the men drop to his knee and nearly disappear behind the wall of thick meadow grass.

  That man pulled his rifle out and aimed it toward the gorilla. He fired two shots in quick succession, but neither hit the gorilla.

  Or, Ben realized, neither shot was strong enough to wound the gorilla.

  The gorilla kept running, now only ten feet away from the men. It reached the first man, the one who had fired at it, and it smacked him aside as if he hadn’t even been there.

  Ben recognized the man as he flew through the grass. It was the large man from outside the pub, the one who had pulled Ben aside and told him not to come out here, underlining his point with physical touch. Ben couldn’t believe the strength of the gorilla, how the man had just flopped through the air as if he were nothing but a rag doll.

  And the gorilla was still moving. It bowled over the next two men, and they both fell, scrambling to get out of the way as the gorilla simply cruised over them. It didn't continue after that, however. The gorilla stopped, whirled around, and looked down at the two men. It was as if it were deciding which of them to kill first.

  Ben couldn't see the two men lying in the grass. The large man that had been hit first was now working on standing up, obviously shaken and without his weapon, but he seemed to be intact.

  Suddenly the other man jumped up and lurched aside, preparing for a breakaway.

  Ben remembered the old joke: you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other person in your party.

  But this was no bear. Apparently, the gorilla had an eye for this man specifically, for whatever reason. It followed the man and ignored the other two, taking a few huge strides before grabbing the smaller man around his thigh. It snapped him back with almost no effort whatsoever, and the man screamed and flopped to the ground. The gorilla held on, yanking the man's leg and pulling him back toward him.

  Ben heard the man’s screams from across the meadow.

  The gorilla used its other hand now, grasping the man’s shoulder and twisting his body around. Ben saw man and beast stare silently at each other for a moment. The gorilla seemed to be examining this man, trying to identify him.

  And then, as if it were a twig, the gorilla twisted the body apart, snapping the man’s neck.

  Ben winced. Never in his life had he seen such a thing. So simple, easy. It was horrifying and brutal.

  And yet…

  There was something calm, something graceful, about the magnificent creature. The way it looked at the man in its hands, as if it had been ashamed of what it had done.

  The gorilla held the man, now limp and lifeless, in his hands for another few seconds. It was too far away for Ben to hear, but it looked as though the gorilla chuffed or grunted as he tossed the man to the ground and turned his attention elsewhere.

  Eliza was sitting on the ground next to Ben, and he knew she couldn’t see what was going on. He didn’t want to tell her, but he had a feeling she could imagine exactly what was happening out in the meadow.

  The gorilla leaned down, and with a
quick snap of its finger ripped the man’s shirt from his chest, tearing it into two pieces.

  Oh my God, Ben thought. It’s going to eviscerate him, just like the other bodies we found.

  The gorilla raised a hand high above his head, but before it could descend down and begin tearing into the man, Ben heard a gunshot.

  The gorilla roared and stumbled to the side.

  Ben started walking in their direction.

  “What are you doing?” Eliza asked. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

  “I have to go help,” Ben said. “That thing is going to kill all of them.”

  “They’ve been trying to kill us,” Eliza said. “Let them get killed.”

  Ben looked down at Eliza and found that she wasn't even looking in the men's direction. Her eyes were turned toward the entrance to the building behind them. She was riled up, shaking visibly, and Ben knew she wasn't thinking clearly.

  “You don’t mean that,” Ben said. “I’ve been shot at before, and I’m a pretty good shot myself. If they try to turn the gun on me…”

  His voice trailed off. Was he really going to march into a battle between three men and a giant gorilla and hope to come out of it unscathed? He knew it was a recipe for suicide.

  Still, he felt he had to do something to help out.

  He had always felt an affinity toward animals, how they were driven by pure instinct rather than some bastardized form of logic and emotion that humans had tried to develop. But he had also seen firsthand a deadly animal attack, and the memory had been haunting him for ten years. He wanted to prevent another similar memory if he could.

  If there was anything he could do, he would do it.

  He crouched down and looked into Eliza's eyes. "Stay here; get some rest. I'll be able to see you from over there, so I'll be able to run back if you need help."

  Eliza opened her mouth to protest. “But —“

  “No,” Ben said, cutting her off. “There’s been enough death already. I’m going to stop it if I can. For Clive. Eliza — ” Ben looked down at her and waited until she returned his gaze. “— we made it. You made it. This is it. EKG. If something happens to me, you can still find a way inside. You can still figure out what they’re doing. Your camera is still intact, and we have our phones, with a little bit of battery power. Go in there and record what’s going on and get back out.”

  He thought he saw Eliza nod.

  With that, Ben turned again and set off toward the three men.

  As he neared the scene, he could see that the gorilla was gone. It hadn’t been killed — there was nothing on the ground next to the dead man and his two coworkers — and Ben couldn’t see any large, white lumps on the ground nearby. It must have disappeared shortly after getting shot.

  Still, Ben ran on. He wanted to have a word with this goon who had attacked him.

  47

  Ben

  Ben hustled over to the man who was sprawled out on the ground — the one who had been flung through the air. As he drew closer to him, the man shifted, trying to pull himself up onto an elbow. He failed, gasping for air as he sank back to the meadow grass.

  Ben slowed, then sank to one knee near the man’s feet. He clutched his rifle tightly, knowing that it would be difficult to get a shot off this close to the enemy, but not wanting to be completely unarmed. This was the same man who had taken him by surprise three nights ago outside the pub, and he wasn’t about to let this guy get a jump on him again.

  For all he knew, this man was just faking his injury and waiting for Ben to get close. Ben squeezed the stock of his rifle, knowing that he could easily smack the man across the face with the butt of the gun if it came to that.

  The man grunted, looking down at his chest. Ben followed his eyes, flicking them down quickly to see if there were any open wounds. He saw nothing but knew that the man's clothing could easily be hiding a large bruise or signs of a ruptured organ. The gorilla had lifted this man — easily 250 pounds — completely off the ground and thrown him as if he were nothing but a crumpled paper sack. Surely he had to be feeling it.

  “Are you okay?” Ben asked. He wasn’t sure he was going to help this man yet, but if he could play nice for a minute to extract some information, he would take the opportunity.

  The man stared at Ben for a long moment and then shook his head. “I told you to stay away from here,” the man said, his voice a growling whisper.

  “I’ve never been so good at taking orders,” Ben said, shrugging. “Probably would have been best for me to join the military to learn how, but I didn’t like the sound of getting barked at all day.”

  The man on the ground took this in for another long pause, and Ben wasn't sure if he was considering his response or if he was trying to parse Ben's words into his native tongue. It was clear from the man's accent that he wasn't a native English-speaker, but outside the pub, they hadn't seemed to have any trouble communicating.

  “This wasn’t your fight.”

  “Well, I think it is now,” Ben said. “That… thing. That gorilla — is that what you were afraid of?”

  The man let out a gurgling laugh and then tried to speak again. He coughed, and Ben thought he saw a bit of blood on his closed fist as he pulled it away from his mouth. “I’m not afraid of it," the man said. "The men who hired me — one of them is lying dead right over there — they’re the ones you needed to be worried about.”

  Ben hadn’t expected this response. Sure, he assumed this macho soldier guy would be above admitting personal fears, but he hadn’t expected to sell out his compatriots so quickly. “You could have just said as much back at the pub,” Ben said.

  “You know I couldn’t.”

  “They hired you?”

  The man nodded. “The company behind it, they —“

  “EKG?” Ben asked again, cutting him off.

  “You know about them?” The man asked.

  “I know enough. The redheaded woman I’m with; she used to work there.”

  Ben thought he saw a flicker of surprise in the man's eyes, a quick widening and narrowing. But a second passed, and the man's face was once again a mask, hidden behind an expressionless pair of eyes and a full, thick brown beard.

  “Did the company — EKG — torture that thing?” Ben asked.

  “No idea,” the man replied. “I wasn’t hired to study it. I was hired to kill it.”

  "And us?" Ben asked. "Were you hired to kill us as well? Clive, that kid we were with? You shot him in the chest, and I watched him bleed out."

  The man shook his head again. “Not me,” he said. “The other man I was with. The Frenchman. Waste of air, that one.”

  Ben looked over. “He did this? Why?”

  “Wish I knew,” the man grunted. “Best guess, they don’t want anyone else screwing with their operation here. They hired me to find that thing two weeks ago. Well, I couldn’t do it. No sign of it, either. I was running around like a city-dweller on a camping trip. So they called me in and told me they were going to help me out. That they were going to ‘come with me.’”

  "That doesn't explain why he killed a member of our team and took potshots at us," Ben said.

  "As I said, I wish I knew why they wanted you out of the picture,” the man continued. “But I just know they wanted you dead. Wanted everybody dead. I had a feeling they’d even make a go at me after this was over, just to make sure I’d stay quiet.”

  “And so they wouldn’t have to pay you,” Ben said.

  “I’ve had enough of this hell to worry about money anymore. I’m old now, tired of this.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  "Well, not much. They were sly if anything. One of them kept sneaking off, taking secret phone calls in the morning before he thought the rest of us were awake. I heard the gunshots too, but he always said it was just 'target practice' or 'hunting.' Asshole never brought down any game, though. Worst hunter I've ever seen."

  “Who are you? How did you end up all the way out here
, working for them?” Ben asked.

  The man studied Ben for a long moment, clearly having difficulty breathing. After a long sigh, or what Ben assumed was supposed to be a sigh, he turned his eyes up to the clouds above. “It is beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

  Ben sat back and waited for the man to go on. It was a strange thing to say, especially in the moment, and coming from a man such as this, but then again, Ben had no idea who he was or what he was indeed like.

  “My name is Elias Ziegler. I am a trained hunter, much like that kid you had. He was young though, inexperienced.“

  “You mean he wasn’t used to hunting other humans?” Ben asked.

  The man arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s about what I mean. Anyway, this is what I do for a living. Or what I did. Not sure there’s going to be much living after this.”

  Ben had the urge to help the man sit up. He pulled on his shoulders and the man slowly rose to a sitting position, his hands now holding his side.

  “Spleen, I imagine,” the man said. “I’ve been shot before, more than once, but I’ve never been tossed around by a damn ape.”

  “There’s a small hospital back in Grindelwald,” Ben said. “No reason they shouldn’t be able to fix you up and —“

  “I’ve got a job to do, son. I may be bleeding internally, but that thing is still out there, running around and killing anyone it recognizes. If I’m able to sit up and talk about it, I’m able to kill it, too.”

  He was about to go on, but Ben held up a hand and stopped him.

  It was something the man had said—something Ben and Eliza had been considering.

  “Wait. What? What are you talking about? It’s killing anyone it recognizes?”

  "Well, no shit, son. Why do you think it jumped over your lady friend and your dead buddy? Why do you think it just tossed me aside? I was in the way, but I wasn’t its target. Same with you two.”

  Ben chewed his lip. “Why not? You had a gun, you shot at it, even.”