The War Within #1: Victims

by Rodham Perry, Marcus

  They had guns on their shoulders, faces hidden behind gas masks and the master’s whip on their backs.

  IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, CALL THIS NUMBER

  When Thomas finally stopped crying, he wiped his face with his hand and opened the backpack. Inside was the metal cylinder. Without a word, Thomas picked it up and handed it to Asimov.

  “Take it,” the boy said.

  Soundless, Asimov took the cylinder on hands, trying to understand what was happening, even though it was extremely obvious. The cylinder was surprisingly light. Not standing on any ceremony, Thomas typed the code on the keyboard and the lid was unlocked with a small hiss.

  “Open it,” Thomas said, to which Asimov hesitated, invaded by the sense that the moment must be accompanied by a sort of ritual.

  Just open the damn thing¸ he told himself. Carefully, he removed the lid. Inside was a small steel tube, and around it was a series of rows of tiny glass vials containing a black liquid. Asimov counted thirteen vials but also noticed the empty compartments.

  Asimov looked at the boy’s face and saw the recorded truth there before even asking his question. He remembered Thomas scratching his arm, commenting on some vaccine he’d taken. “Is this your medication?”

  The boy nodded. Asimov swallowed dry, not being naive enough to believe it was a simple inoculation against flu. He couldn’t deny the astonishment that seemed to fill the room. He looked at the vials, trying to figure out what that might be, and then turned his eyes to the cylinder. There were a few more things inside— a handful of sealed syringes and a crumpled note. Asimov removed the items and put the rest in place, closing the lid which was sealed with a snap.

  He read the note.

  I did some tests. It may be a little early to say, but I think our boy is healed, forever. Let’s just go on with a few more injections, to be sure. I think I have another month of work; Cussler will continue to help you until I finish things around here. See you soon. Remember, in the case of emergency, call this number on the back of the sheet.

  Hugs, Antoine.

  “Antoine... it’s your father?”

  “Yes.”

  Asimov glanced at the number on the back of the paper and then lowered the paper thoughtfully. Thomas watched him, trying to assess his posture and understand what was going on in his head. “Why are you showing me this, Thomas?” Asimov asked him.

  Surely it wasn’t the answer the boy was longing. Thomas thought of something to say, and his answer stuttered, his foreign accent becoming more evident with every word.

  “Olivia said we’d have to show the case when we got to Ilha Bela. She said we couldn’t board the ship without it.”

  “The ship, of course,” Asimov said. Maybe the boy didn’t know the whole truth, whatever it was. “How do you know that ship exists? Who will still be there, waiting for you?”

  Thomas hesitated, thinking, and then he opened the backpack and pulled out a cell phone, extending it to Asimov. When Asimov picked up the device, he saw that it was actually a satellite phone.

  “Every day, Olivia used to talk with the captain of the ship,” Thomas explained. “She tried to call them early on today, but she couldn’t because of the rain. But they’re there waiting for us, I know that.”

  Asimov picked up the phone and assimilated that response. He looked back at the note. “She called that number, I suppose?”

  “Yeah, I think,” the boy said, and then he repeated it more vehemently. “Yes.”

  Asimov put the phone down and scratched his chin. Though his posture was relaxed, his mind was agitated in a whirl of questions. What the hell were those vials? So Olivia was going to meet someone on Ilha Bela — but who would be? He realized how crazy it all seemed, but what hadn’t been madness that morning? The only correct question was what he intended to do now...

  “So?” Thomas asked, impatiently. “When are we going? We’re going, right?” he spoke with a statement that demands a yes. Even so, Asimov said nothing.

  Footsteps. Quickly, Asimov slipped the note into his pocket and quickly put the remaining objects back to Thomas’s backpack. A moment later Cássio appeared at the door.

  “Hey, let me show your quarters.”

  They left the house, this time without guards escorting the newcomers. Cássio was walking fast because of the rain, and Asimov found it a little tricky to accompany him. They came to a small house on the other side of the street; there wasn’t much furniture inside, just a few chairs and old beds in the rooms, the whole thing very rustic.

  “It’s not a five-star hotel,” said Cássio, “but you can spend the night here. The blankets are old and the mattresses hard, but we do what we can.”

  “Thanks,” Asimov said, “it’s more than enough.”

  Cássio nodded. “I suppose you’re going to stay…” When Asimov didn’t answer, Cássio cleared his throat. “I can’t force you to stay. If you refuse, I can give you some supplies for your journey, but—”

  “No, it’s not that,” Asimov cut him, glancing at Thomas. “I just... I need time. In the morning I’ll give you an answer.”

  If Cássio felt resentful about it, his face didn’t show. They shook hands and Asimov and Thomas were left alone in the house. Asimov sat on one of the chairs in the room and took a deep breath.

  “Well…”

  “You aren’t going to help me, are you?” The deception was so evident in Thomas’s voice that it almost sounded as if he had been betrayed. Asimov looked at him, weighing the answer he should give. He didn’t want to crush the boy’s hopes, but the truth was that he himself had no idea what to do next; it was just too much to assimilate, to reflect. That entire fucking day was a mess of things that required him to reflect, to understand.

  “Thomas, I... I need time to think, okay? Just let me think a little...”

  But Thomas was still a boy and, for any kid, when an adult says he “needs to think” it always means “no” in the end. With an angry silence, Thomas put the backpack next to Asimov’s chair and retired to one of the bedrooms.

  Alone, Asimov opened the backpack and picked up the phone. He took the note from his pocket and his eyes went from one to the other. Olivia was dead, but the person she was talking to shouldn’t be. Would this individual, whoever it was, agree to talk to him instead? And if he or she did agree, then what?

  Thomas seemed convinced the “ship” would get them out of there, that would take them to safety. Was this just part of the fiction created by the girl, or the truth? In fact, if it wasn’t the search for a safe place, why would she struggle to go there? But would this person really be a friend? Maybe it was the boy’s father, wasn’t it? And those vials he had seen in the cylinder... The note said that the boy had been “healed”, alright, but of what?

  Questions, questions and more questions! Asimov looked at the satellite phone and then at the number written on the ticket. Should I call?

  At the same time he questioned his options, he notices that he has no real choice. On the contrary, in the moment that he had agreed to travel with the boy to Ilha Bela, he had dive inside his crisis and was now part of it. Asimov fate was now connected to his, for the better or the worse.

  Now, he knew he should at least try.

  He opened the phone and pressed the power button. It came to life with a quiet beep and showed that it has only 10% of power and just a signal bar. He hesitated for a moment, staring at the dial on the keyboard.

  What harm would it do? His situation wouldn’t improve. In fact, he was sure that, as he regained his memory, all he’d find would be death and sorrow. Because that was the world now, right? A cold place where monsters roamed the streets. Doesn’t matter what happy place he once had owned, he had no more.

  He typed the number, pressed the phone to his ear and waited.

  ♦♦♦

  Hendrix turned the wheel from side to side, the big automobile swallowing the road, making the turns automatically, his foot slamming on the gas.

  Th
e idea that at any moment they would lose control and the R9 would be thrown against the gorge didn’t leave Desmond’s head. Down below there was nothing but rocks and salt water. If they managed to pass through that part of the road intact, the canyon would be replaced by a beach on one side and houses on the other.

  Not that they would make that far. The speedometer was showing now 110km/h — Brazil uses kilometer instead of miles —, and with each turn, the car moaned and leaned heavily off the road.

  “Okay, can you go just a little slower?” Desmond said at last. Far from being a surprise, he was totally ignored by Hendrix. A very tight curve to the left and the car was only a fraction of a second away from the road fence and the fall. Desmond held a curse. The R9 made the turn and went on.

  “You never took a ride in a car before, geek?” Schaeffer mocked in the backseat.

  “The satellites have shown that this area is infested with Shades,” Hendrix said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I would rather risk a car accident than be devoured alive.”

  I don’t, Desmond thought. The idea of surviving the closest phenomenon to the zombie apocalypse, only to die in a car accident in Brazil, was far from elegant.

  Through the rearview mirror, he saw that Devereaux, driving the other vehicle, needed to slow down or else he’d cross directly through the rail. While Hendrix, Desmond, and Schaeffer had a powerful R9 available to them, Devereaux, Knight, Archer and Reznik were stranded in an Amarok, keeping some distance from the supercar so they could react in case of an attack.

  In part, Desmond shared the urgency of Hendrix. They had taken too long to get out of São Sebastião, trying to find a route through streets crowded with vehicles and rubble, and now the night was coming, the hunting time of the Shades. Each lost second endangered the mission and they couldn’t afford to suffer a confrontation with the Shades.

  Yeah, but crash and die also won’t help at all…

  He shook his head, trying not to think about it and focus on his work, which was to find the girl. He lifted his forearm map and compared with the coordinates on his tablet. Olivia’s satellite phone had stopped transmitting somewhere near the border between São Sebastião and Caraguatatuba. Now, based on the images provided by satellite, Desmond had managed to limit the search radius to three kilometers. It was still too much, and the search zone only increased as time passed.

  Desmond gritted his teeth. If only she’d called us...

  He was still thinking about it when he heard the buzzing of his satellite phone.

  That caught him off guard, and for a moment he didn’t know what to do. He felt Hendrix’s eyes take off from the road to face him, and Schaeffer had also leaned forward. Trying to ignore them, Desmond pulled the phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.

  God, he could feel the men holding the air as he held the device to his ear — in fact, Hendrix even seemed to relax his foot a little on the accelerator.

  “Olivia?”

  “Quem é?” the answer came in Portuguese, pronounced by a male voice.

  Desmond swallowed hard. It wasn’t Olivia. He asked for her and the boy, but the stranger didn’t seem to understand what he was saying. Desmond tried the bit of Spanish he knew. It wasn’t productive at all and he pushed the phone away from the face. “We have a problem.”

  “No kidding,” Schaeffer said. “It’s not her, is it?”

  The analyst nodded, “Do any of you speak Portuguese?”

  Schaeffer raised his hand.

  “Really?”

  “Just give me the damn phone...” Schaeffer answered, picking up the satellite phone and switching to Portuguese. “Sim?”

  “Ask who he is and where Olivia is,” Desmond said. Schaeffer motioned for him to shut up and kept talking on the phone. Desmond couldn’t hear the voice on the other side, but from the look on Schaeffer’s face, it looked like he was getting somewhere.

  ♦♦♦

  Asimov’s eyes widened as someone began to speak English on the line, and then Spanish. He didn’t understand anything beyond a few words — the ones that were “Olivia” and “boy” —, but, after a minute of senseless questions, he was talking to someone else, this time in Portuguese — a very awful but still discernible Portuguese.

  So, yes, there was someone really waiting for the boy. And he didn’t need to think too hard to know the Americans were probably more concerned about that metal cylinder than the boy himself.

  The conversation didn’t last long. Whoever was the person on the line asked for his identity and how he got that phone — he told them about Thomas, Olivia, and the metal cylinder. There was no reason to play games, as there was no reason to explain his short life story.

  But Asimov was still cautious. He didn’t want a fight, but to deliver the boy to the people waiting for him. However, which doesn’t mean that he’d simply hand the boy over to strangers who could be as dangerous as the Shades and thugs he faced that morning. He needs to have at least something close to a guarantee that he was talking to friendly people.

  He spoke a little and asked some questions. Some answers he received, others don’t — whoever was on the other side was being cautious as well. And then he just listened as the man spoke. As he heard the voice on the other end of the line, his vision caught a glimpse of movement at the door.

  The woman was there. She smiled, putting the umbrella aside, and approached him. Asimov watched her as she bent down to kiss him on the side of his face and then whispered something in his ear. Before he knew it, he was repeating the words to the man on the phone.

  “Yes. Yes, I will do it, but you have to do something for me...”

  ♦♦♦

  “So?” Hendrix asked.

  “He said his name is Asimov,” Schaeffer explained, covering the phone with his other hand. “I asked for his credentials. Looks like he’s a Military Police Colonel from something called BOPE,” on the steering wheel, Hendrix didn’t seem to think this was a big improvement. Schaeffer added, “He said he’s with the boy.”

  “And the girl?” Desmond demanded. Schaeffer shook his head and the analyst cursed under his breath, “Shit!”

  “Well, what now?” Hendrix said.

  “Now we went on deep shit,” Schaeffer said, looking at Hendrix’s face through the rearview mirror. “He seems to know why we’re here, or at least he has an idea of what’s going on.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “He doesn’t know about the ‘cure’, but he knows we aren’t here to merely extract a child,” Schaeffer explained, turning to Desmond, “He spoke of some ‘vials’ and a ‘special serum’. Does that remind you of anything?”

  Desmond opened his mouth to reply but decided to close it again. “Okay,” he said. “And the plot thickens. How do we know he’s not lying to us?”

  “We don’t,” Hendrix replied, “but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  “He said he’ll do it.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “He will deliver the child and the serum to us.”

  This raised everyone’s eyebrows in the car. “That simple?” Desmond asked.

  “Yeah, that simple.”

  “I’m not convinced,” Hendrix muttered, “But I’m not discarding anything either.” He paused, doing his calculations, and then asked, “What does he want in return?”

  “Get out of here. Out of Brazil. He wants to go back with us.”

  “We can do that,” Desmond said.

  Schaeffer cleared his throat and explained, “Him… and every soul in his refuge.”

  “How many people?” Hendrix gritted his teeth.

  “I didn’t ask, but apparently it’s too much.” Schaeffer paused. “So, should I tell him to go fuck himself?”

  “No, wait,” Desmond called. He knew there was no way the military could hitch a refugee camp, mainly because they had no space on the submarine, but there wasn’t a reason to make matters worse. “Tell him we accept,” he said, turning to Hendrix. “We’ll handle it later.�
�

  After a moment of reflection, Hendrix nodded.

  “Say yes,” he ordered, and Schaeffer spoke on the phone again.

  ♦♦♦

  “You have a deal.”

  “Great,” Asimov said, surprised at how easily the stranger had said yes. He couldn’t help but find all that suspicious. He conceived his next step, beyond the repercussions of that dialogue. Had he just asked extraction for a sanctuary that he didn’t know right? Hell, would the people there accept?

  One thing at a time, yes?

  “Well, what now?” he inquired, “Where do we meet?”

  There was a pause on the other side, and then, “Give me your address and we’ll go to you.”

  Asimov gritted his teeth. He hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t even considered taking strangers to that condo, and his military caution shouted at him not to do it. No, it would be best to choose a neutral place.

  He was thinking of saying this when something came to his ears. He lowered the satellite phone and stopped. For a second he thought he had heard wrong.

  He didn’t.

  No, it was real.

  The adrenaline was pumped as if there was some kind of piston in its bowels. His heart rate quickened and Asimov let phone fell from his hands.

  ♦♦♦

  “Hey? Hey!” Schaeffer called. The tension that had just begun to dissipate in the car returned home with seven other spirits. “Boss, something is happening...”

  “What? Hendrix asked. “What the hell?”

  “Shit,” Schaeffer muttered. “Boss, I think I heard gunfire.”

  COMING SOON:

  THE WAR WITHIN, EPISODE 2

  VILLAINS

  In addition, acquire now THE WAR WITHIN, paperback edition, with the entire series