The Mendel Paradox (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 9)

by Nick Thacker

  64

  Eliza

  The chimp reached in and simply flung Canavero through the airlock. Lars stood, a look of awe and terror on his face, for precisely one second before he too was yanked by one of the chimps and tossed into the airlock.

  Eliza watched it all happen while she was standing by the doorway at the side of the room.

  “Eliza!” Ben called. “Help me!”

  She ran over, trying to ignore what was happening in the airlock.

  But she couldn’t block out the sounds. The screams. The noise of ripping — clothing, body parts. It was gruesome.

  She reached Ben and immediately started dismantling the IV line and other devices that were still connected to Alina’s body. There weren’t many, as she was stable on her own, unlike Lars’ sister in the other room.

  When they finished, they both gently helped Alina up and onto her feet.

  “Can you walk?” Ben asked her.

  She paused, testing it for a moment. “Yes,” she finally said. “I can walk. But I may need your help.”

  Ben and Eliza kept their position on either side of her, steadying her as the young woman tested her legs.

  The noise from near them was impossible to miss, and Eliza knew they would have to walk dangerously close to the chimpanzees to get by them. Even then, they would have to sneak by the remaining chimps in the larger lab outside.

  If they were going to attack, it would be mere seconds from now. She could see that Lars’ broken, bleeding body was now simply being tossed back and forth between the chimps inside the airlock.

  She heard the sound of gunfire, the tiny rounds pockmarking the glass of the airlock. She wondered how long Canavero had before the chimps got to him.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Now, while they’re occupied with Lars.”

  Ben nodded, and together they half-pulled Alina around the three chimps standing nearby. None of them looked up from Lars’ body.

  Canavero was inside, shaking, cowering in the back corner of the tiny airlock. He was alone, obviously terrified. “Shut the door! Quickly!” he yelled. “They will get in.”

  The doors slid shut on their own, and Eliza watched the doctor for a moment, hoping he wouldn’t try to shoot at them. If the man fully intended to take out the chimps, he’d need as much ammunition as possible. Eliza hated the thought of it, but she knew they were probably safer from his gunfire because of it.

  They made it to the inner airlock doors before any of the chimps seemed to pay them any attention. But when Eliza looked out, she noticed two larger males that seemed to be guarding their escape. They were blocking the outer airlock doors, and Eliza caught the eyes of the one on the left from the other side of the glass.

  She slowed her breathing, forced herself to relax. She hoped her nonverbal communication was visible through the pane of glass, but even more she hoped the chimps understood the dynamic of what was happening. We are on your side, friend, she thought. She wished there was a way to get the message into the small mammal’s brain, but she knew their life was most likely going to come down to the animals’ desires.

  She was torn between two horrible alternatives: stay with the mad doctor and wait until they ran out of air or someone found them, or open the outer doors and hope for the best.

  Thankfully she didn’t have to make the call.

  “Canavero,” Ben said, turning to the doctor. “Stay here.”

  “What?” The doctor responded. “Are you insane? They will kill me. They will shred me like paper. You saw what they did to Lars — to the guards! I am not going to participate in your idiotic plan to sneak around them.”

  Ben sniffed, then handed the young woman to Eliza, who leaned against the airlock's wall for additional support. Ben walked over to Canavero; his weapon pointed directly down at the man.

  “Wh — what are you doing?” Canavero asked. He slid sideways in a pitiful attempt to get away from Ben.

  Ben sidled up next to the man, then crouched down so his face was directly in front of the doctor’s. Eliza watched on with curious intensity.

  “You’re a man of science. A doctor. The kind of guy who’s supposed to understand things like life and death.”

  Canavero sneered at him but finally nodded. "What is your point?"

  “I’m the kind of guy who tries my best to stay out of that sort of thing. It ain’t my call who lives or dies. I’ve always left that up to someone else; someone bigger than me. But the thing is, I also believe that someone gives us all opportunities. Opportunities to prove whether or not we’re worth that life.

  “You — folks like you, anyway — you’re the kind of people that make me pause. You make me wonder if it’s worth taking the high road. People like you seem to forget that there are two sides to every equation. You think you’re all about life because you understand it, what makes it tick, how to give it to other people by cutting their brains out and plopping them into someone else’s head. But you know what?”

  Canavero didn’t respond.

  “I think you’ve totally forgotten to study the other side of that life-death equation. You forgot what it feels like to die. I know what that feels like, my friend, because I’ve been there a few times. Came out of it okay, but it’s no fun to experience. I think you’re the kind of person who’s never experienced that, and that’s why you can do the kind of shit you’ve been doing here. Because you haven’t really studied the other side of the equation.”

  “Ben,” Eliza said. “We have to go. Now.” There were more chimps gathering outside the airlock, watching in on the humans as they conferred.

  Ben nodded but kept his gaze on Canavero. "You've made this really difficult for me, Canavero. I'm usually the kind of guy who wants to save as many lives as possible, but lately I've been changing that perspective to saving the right lives. Doesn’t matter how many it is, as long as it’s the right ones.

  “And people like you, who ignore the equation and try to forget that this strange, twisted form of ‘life’ you think you’re creating comes at a cost, you forfeit that right. So, no, you’re not at all part of my ‘idiotic plan to sneak around them.’ In fact, that’s not my plan at all.”

  Ben leaned back, then swung the butt of his rifle up and over his head, bringing it down violently onto the doctor’s left leg, right at the kneecap. Eliza heard the sound of bone crushing all the way from the other side of the room.

  Canavero wailed in agony, dropping the submachine gun and squeezing his hands over his leg. “You — you basta —“

  “We’re done here, Doc,” Ben said, standing up. He returned to the side of the room where Eliza and Alina were waiting, then looked at each of them.

  Finally, with his free hand, Ben smashed the red button near the outer airlock door. It slid open slowly.

  And twenty chimpanzees glared back at them, no longer separated from them by thick glass.

  65

  Ben

  Ben calmed himself down. The adrenaline was coursing through his veins, the chemicals in his brain secreting and producing all sorts of exotic compounds it thought he might be needing right now.

  In truth, he wasn’t sure what he needed. Everything was confusing; everything was strange. He was standing face-to-face with scores of apes, all watching him, all interested in what he was about to do.

  He wasn't sure how he felt about what he'd done to Canavero. He had never signed up for this sort of thing, never intended for his life to take a turn like this. And yet he couldn't argue with his decision. He wanted Canavero dead, for what he'd done to these animals, for what he'd done to humans under his control.

  But it didn’t mean Ben was the person responsible for taking the man's life. He'd wanted just to put a bullet through his head, to end it quickly, fairly even. Yet if Canavero deserved fair, he deserved a fate far worse than death. He deserved to be judged not by a jury or a panel or by Ben or Eliza.

  The man deserved to be judged by his subjects. They all did.

  So Ben
had opened the airlock door, watching as the twenty-odd animals looked on at the three of them. He didn’t understand the expressions on their faces, but he had a feeling he didn’t need to be an animal behavioral expert to know the message they were trying to convey.

  This ends now.

  Ben looked at Eliza once more, to make sure she was ready, and he slid his arm underneath Alina’s to help support her once again.

  Here goes nothing.

  He swung his left leg forward and pressed it into the floor, directly over the sliding door’s threshold. Immediately the chimpanzee to his left, closest to him, bared its teeth and frowned.

  Ben stopped. He waited, but the chimp didn’t change its expression.

  Finally, Ben leaned to his side slowly, placing the assault rifle on the floor, just inside the airlock. He released it gingerly and stood up again, feeling the stress of knowing his best chance of defending himself and the others with him was now lying on the floor, out of reach.

  The chimp’s face relaxed, and it hopped sideways, out of the way.

  Ben waited for another second, but the chimp seemed satisfied, so Ben took a step into the larger room. Eliza and Alina were right there with him, but he still tensed his upper body, holding his breath.

  All throughout the room, the chimpanzees seemed to follow the cues of the first one, and they stepped or slid out of the way, clearing a path in the center of the room.

  Ben sighed a breath of relief, feeling the wave of terror subside. He walked slowly, purposefully, keeping his head up and focused on the doorway at the far end of the room.

  The first chimp watched him pass; then, just as Ben stepped forward again, it scampered toward the airlock door.

  Ben's rifle was still sitting on the floor halfway between the lab and the airlock, and the chimp pushed at it with his foot. It slid to the edge of the airlock door just as it began to close. As it did, the door caught between the magazine and stock and pressed it tightly up against the doorframe, the rifle keeping the door open about a foot.

  Ben was about halfway through the room when he turned to look back. Three chimps were working on the door, using their strength to try to force it open. It slid a few inches, and four more chimps slipped inside the airlock.

  Where Canavero waited.

  They reached the opposite end of the room safely, and Ben helped Eliza get Alina shifted around to prepare for the descent down the stairs. She was fully lucid and even starting to put weight on her legs.

  Ben took a final glance at the doorway across the large laboratory, noticed more and more chimpanzees spilling through the crack, and saw the dark shadows of moving shapes just beyond. He didn’t hear anything — no screams, no gunshots, no hollering from the animals inside with the doctor.

  He decided not to imagine what might be happening to Lars’ renowned doctor and instead focused on the stairs.

  As they climbed down over the pieces of the bodies of the guards that had tried to run, he sighed once more, feeling the weight of what they’d just been through beginning to take its toll. He needed to get to Grindelwald, to get Alina back to her father.

  And, more than anything, he needed a beer.

  The Downtown Bar still had his tab open, if he recalled.

  66

  Ben

  Three Days Later

  Anchorage, Alaska

  Ben rolled over onto the edge of the bed, precariously perched above the floor, trying to slide away without waking Julie. He’d arrived in the middle of the night last night and had been greeted by a zombie-like “mmmwwwrrrr” from his wife, so he’d opted for the stealthy approach of sneaking under the sheets.

  As he put his feet on the floor and pressed upward to stand, the entire cabin seemed to groan in despair. The wooden floorboards of the old place spoke to the walls, which yelled for the ceilings, and before long, the entire house seemed to be screaming in agony with a high-pitched whine.

  Ben sighed. If that doesn’t wake her up, I don’t know what will.

  He’d seen the empty bottle of wine Julie had finished off last night as he’d come in, and he knew she’d been excited to see him. But it seemed the wine had worked faster than Ben’s drive home, and his wife was now going to be sleeping off a bit of a hangover.

  He chuckled as she snored loudly, watching as she yawned and then rolled back over as if the loud deterioration of their home falling down around her was the least of her worries.

  She was cute in bed, wearing an old ratty t-shirt, a collar that was so worn the head hole slipped down and revealed almost both of her shoulders. He considered sneaking back into bed to see if she was more awake than she had been letting on.

  Instead, he put on his slippers and bathrobe and strode through the door to the living room, and then into the kitchen. It was barely 7 am, and he'd been flying for the better part of two days, but he was home, and his body seemed to know it. It wanted to return to its regularly scheduled programming, including waking up with the sunrise.

  He yawned, stretched, and ran a hand through his hair. The past week had been insane — first discovering what EKG could be up to, and then finding out that the truth was far worse. Add to that the fact that Ben had had to crawl back to Olaf’s outfitter shop and home and explain to the man what had happened to his son Clive.

  A search party had retrieved the young man’s body and returned it to his father, who was planning a proper funeral and burial.

  The chimps had stayed inside the laboratory and building since there was no way for them to unlock the exterior doors. A local nature reserve sent in truckloads of specialists and equipment, including tranquilizers, to rehabilitate and re-home the animals in sanctuaries and zoos across Europe. The chimpanzees were unfortunately unable to be re-released back into their wild habitat, as all of them had grown up in the lab.

  Roger Dietrich and Lars Tennyson were — supposedly — going to be under investigation posthumously for a long list of crimes that Ben didn’t even begin to understand, and Eliza Earnhardt was already being prepped by animal rights activists and the lawyers of humanitarian organizations as a prime candidate for questioning.

  She was excited about the opportunity and had emailed Ben a list of questions she wanted his input on.

  He started the coffee pot, opting for the production level of the larger carafe instead of the single-cup pod machine Julie had bought on sale last year that was sitting next to it. It was going to be a three-cup day, for sure.

  He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he’d be getting through today without a nap or if he’d need to sneak away sometime after the CSO scheduled debriefing that was supposed to take place. Julie had arranged the time with Mrs. E, and the entire team was planning to videoconference in from wherever in the world they were, excited to hear the details of Ben’s story.

  As he waited for the pot to heat the water and prepare the elixir he needed most right now, Ben paced over toward the small kitchen table where he and Julie shared most of their meals. Her computer was lying on top of a stack of papers, and Ben opened the laptop.

  He wanted to check his email, and so after the screen turned on and the WIFI icon signaled that the machine was connected, he clicked on the icon for Julie’s web browser.

  The window that opened wasn’t a new window, but one that had been minimized.

  It filled the laptop’s screen and began to load — a news website.

  Ben frowned. Julie had been reading up on EKG and related businesses, apparently.

  But when the article finally loaded — translated automatically into English by some fancy algorithm — Ben read the headline and swallowed.

  It wasn't about EKG, per se — it was about its founder and leader, Baden Tennyson.

  And it wasn’t research Julie had been doing. The article had been published about twelve hours ago, on a regional economic website’s blog. It was current news.

  The title was in large print and hard to miss, and it gave Ben a sinking feeling in his stomach as he read it.
>
  EKG Owner Outraged at Betrayal; Seeks Recompense

  The article detailed some of the legal battle Baden Tennyson was facing for negligence, though the author of the piece suggested that his attorneys and shareholders would simply buy their way out of any serious trouble. The man was incredibly wealthy even outside of his company, and he — like his grandson — was used to throwing whatever resources necessary at his problems to make them go away.

  Ben read on, and one particular line made him grip the table tightly as the coffee machine sputtered to life. It was a direct quote from Lars’ grandfather.

  “This division was extremely important to the future operations at EKG. I am disappointed in my grandson’s failure to maintain order there, but I am more concerned with the fact that there are unknown parties seeking to upset and sabotage our existence.

  “I plan to make it my personal mission to find, root out, and bring to justice these individuals, using every means necessary.”

  Ben looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to believe what the article was claiming, but knowing it was the truth.

  So it continues.

  ###

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  Afterword

  If you liked this book (or even if you hated it…) write a review or rate it. You might not think it makes a difference, but it does.

  Besides actual currency (money), the currency of today’s writing world is reviews. Reviews, good or bad, tell other people that an author is worth reading.

  As an “indie” author, I need all the help I can get. I’m hoping that since you made it this far into my book, you have some sort of opinion on it.

  Would you mind sharing that opinion? It only takes a second.

  Nick Thacker

  Books by Nick Thacker