[Anthology] Killer Thrillers

by Nick Thacker

  “Production of what?” Josh asked.

  “Do you remember the trip to the Northwest Territory that I took a year ago?” Valère asked.

  Josh frowned, but nodded. It was an interesting and sudden change of subject.

  “I visited the site of a native tribe of people who have long since perished. There, we also found the remains of a camp, and what we assumed was a Russian expedition.”

  “We? I thought you went alone?”

  “I met with my investors — as you know, we have been business partners for a long time.”

  “So this was a business trip?” Josh asked. He was growing more and more confused.

  “Of sorts, yes. Anyway, we discovered the cause of death for these poor explorers. It was an ancient plant that releases a small amount of its natural defense mechanism into the surrounding air when disturbed. The powdered form of its dried remains, I believe, was used by this native tribe as some sort of hallucinogenic substance. However, after many years of settling, that same defense mechanism turned into a lethal substance.”

  “You’re talking about the sample you’ve got in the freezer, right? Those boxes that were shipped back with you?”

  Valère nodded. “We wished to also use this substance as a defense mechanism, just like the plant itself. However, I needed to strengthen it; to improve its potency —”

  “You created a virus?”

  “I discovered one, yes. In its natural state, it was barely enough to harm a small mammal, unless it is ingested in quantity. But with a few alterations and improvements —”

  “What are you talking about?” Josh was horrified. “That’s not a medical application, Francis —”

  “It does not concern you what the application is,” Francis said.

  Josh stepped up to his ball and slammed his club down in a reckless swing. The ball flew off the ground, leaving a dirty streak of brown in the grass. He watched, his anger building, as the ball careened to the right and over the line of trees. Without turning back around, he began walking toward the trees to find it.

  How could he do this? he wondered. Josh had been working with Valère for over three years, and he thought he knew the man. They both had been interested in preserving life through their work and science.

  This sounded like the exact opposite.

  He crashed through the thick bushes that marked the end of the golf course and the beginning of undeveloped land, and kept walking toward a stand of pine trees he’d last seen his ball flying toward. As he neared the trees, he could hear the sound of running water.

  The trees stood like sentinels in front of a steep hill, standing guard over the cliff. The hill fell away at a steep angle down to a river, where he could see water tumbling over rocks and forming small rapids as it wound through the canyon.

  What he didn’t see, however, was his ball.

  “I believe it landed farther up,” his boss’s voice called out from behind him. Valère had driven their cart to the edge of the course and walked to Josh.

  “You can’t do this, Valère. You can’t sell us out like that. Who’s buying, anyway?”

  “It is not a matter of money —”

  “Bullshit!” Josh yelled. “Of course it is! Why else would you have kept this from me?”

  “I told you, it is not something you should concern yourself with. This plan predates our arrangement, Josh.”

  Josh watched as his boss removed Josh’s driver from his bag. He inspected it, examining the lightweight graphite build. “We have been working for a lifetime on this, and it is not something I will abandon before I am finished.”

  Josh took a step backward toward the hill, a pained expression on his face. “You’re a terrorist. That’s all this is. You’re a smart, suicidal, ignorant terrorist.”

  “You have your names for what I do, and I have mine. I am working on something far bigger than anything you can imagine,” Valère said. “Something much more significant.”

  “You won’t get away with it,” Josh said. “You won’t be able to run from it when you’re done.”

  Josh’s eyes widened as he noticed Francis raising the golf club into the air.

  “I am not planning on running, Josh. I am here, and I will stay right here. And if I am removed, there will be another to take my place. And another.”

  Valère turned his head slightly sideways, examining his employee and business partner as if intrigued. “It is truly a shame, Joshua.”

  “What?”

  Valère lashed out with the club and struck Josh in the head. There was a sickening smack, and Josh immediately fell to the ground. The pain was excruciating, but Josh’s brain felt like mush. He couldn’t think straight; he couldn’t speak.

  “It is a truly a shame to lose a mind such as yours, my friend. But you are wrong. I will get away with it. America is not united enough to save itself.”

  He lifted the club again. Josh tried to close his eyes, to raise his arm, to do something — but couldn’t.

  He could only stare as his boss bought the driver down onto his head.

  8

  Ben and Julie sat tucked away in a back corner of the staff cafeteria that was connected to the main facilities building. He examined the peeling coat of paint on the cafeteria walls that had gone unnoticed for years. The faint smell of fryers and old food mixed with the subtle aroma of cleaning supplies. As unpleasant the overall feel of the place may have been for a newcomer, Ben felt oddly at ease in this room. He’d spent countless meals here, mostly listening to the conversations of his coworkers and supervisors as they engaged in workplace chatter.

  It was the first time in perhaps ten years that he’d felt nostalgic.

  Down the hall and around a corner was the same lounge area that Ben had found himself in an hour after the incident. While the majority of the police and SWAT team had gone back to their offices, a few government employees, park officials, and some stragglers were milling about the room, swapping stories.

  The news broke to the local and regional stations while Ben and Julie were outside, and the national media was no doubt on its way to pick up the fragments of what was known and embellish or make up the rest.

  Ben sipped a cup of black coffee, almost too hot to drink, as he waited for Julie to ask her next question.

  “Did you know Rivera well?”

  “Not really. If you haven’t guessed, I’m somewhat of an introvert, and I don’t make friends too quickly out here.”

  “Right. And this job of yours. You and Rivera were supposed to deliver a bear somewhere?”

  Ben smiled. “Well, relocate is the right word. A grizzly, actually. One we’ve run into before. Mo is his name.”

  “His name?”

  “Yeah, we give names to some of the frequent offenders. Mo’s got three strikes now, but we got him moved up there pretty far. Hopefully he was okay after the, uh, incident.”

  Julie scrawled some notes in a miniature notepad she’d taken from her back pocket. Ben sipped his coffee, waiting for her to finish. He listened to the gentle commotion emanating from the front lounge, bits of conversation floating in from rangers and park staff.

  “...Was probably nuclear, right?”

  “No way, too small — I mean, could have been a test or something gone wrong...”

  “...Government’s probably gonna try to cover this one up and sweep it under...”

  Julie looked up and caught Ben’s eye. “This wasn’t an accident, but it certainly wasn’t a government test or anything. They’re going to be all over this place within the hour. By tonight, Yellowstone will be crawling with FBI, CIA, DoD, every acronym you can think of.”

  Ben cringed.

  “By the way — you have any questions for me? I feel like I’ve been asking you everything all morning.”

  “You have, but that’s your job.” Ben smiled. “What’s BTR?”

  “BTR is the Biological Threat Research wing of the CDC. Not exactly top-secret, but it’s a new program the CDC’
s trying to get funding for. We’re keeping it quiet until we have some victories under our belt.”

  “Like trying to figure out who bombed Yellowstone Park?”

  She laughed. “Well, more like trying to analyze the long-term negative environmental effects of possible radiation in the fallout zone.”

  “Hmm, not exactly tabloid-worthy.”

  “No, it’s pretty unexciting stuff, and that’s why it’s just an idea at this point. But if I — we — can write up something the brass likes, they might just make it a formal department.”

  Ben nodded. “And your office is in Billings. Seems like a pretty small city for a CDC office.”

  “It is, and that was part of the attraction. It’s a skeleton crew right now, just me and my team. I run a group of five others, including two part-time assistants. Then there’s my boss —”

  A loud shout came through the corridor from the other room, followed by a growing commotion and more voices. Ben and Julie both stood, walking toward the cafeteria door.

  “Get him inside, on that couch!” one voice shouted.

  “Who is it?” Ben heard.

  The voices grew hectic, then calmed a little as Ben heard the deep voice of his boss, George Randolph, deliver orders over the din. “Get him down and get some water. Pull his shirt off and let’s get a look at that rash.

  “How much is covered? Hands, arms?”

  Ben heard someone confirm.

  “And his head — look at his neck!”

  Ben pushed on the swinging door to the hallway, but Julie grabbed his arm. “Wait. We don’t know what that is, but it’s not going to do anyone any good if we walk in there, and it’s contagious. They’ve got enough people in there anyway.”

  “But —”

  “Stop. Trust me. Let’s just get out of the park for tonight. Like I said, this whole place will be crawling with suits within a few hours, and we can use a little space. And —”

  She stopped when her cellphone started ringing. “Crap, this is my boss. Hang on.” Julie moved toward a cafeteria table but didn’t sit down. “Richardson,” she said as she brought the phone to her ear.

  After a minute, she banged her phone on the table.

  Ben stared at her. “A bit one-sided for that to have been an argument.”

  “Come on,” she said. She didn’t wait for Ben to follow as she slid out the cafeteria’s rear door, through the commercial kitchen. They exited the building and were met by a bright noon sun, covered by a thin layer of smoke and reddish dust from the morning’s blast.

  9

  Northwest Territory, Canada, One Year Ago

  The rest of the afternoon faded quickly into evening, but thankfully, their excavation moved at a brisk pace as well. Before nightfall, the team of six — five students and the professor — had uncovered most of the Russian camp.

  It was arranged traditionally, in a semi-circle around a central opening, in which one student found the remnants of a campfire. Another student found a nearly-complete flap of canvas tent, with tie-downs and a large tent stake. Next to it, a small pouch containing five silver coins — a miraculous find. They shared the information about depth, soil density, and procedure as they went, and just as dusk approached, the team found three more tents, all collapsed onto themselves and preserved reasonably well beneath layers of the cold soil.

  Together they marked, documented, and mapped the entire area, eventually creating a computer model of the landscape and coordinates.

  But it wasn’t the tents, artifacts, or even the coins that caused the most commotion.

  Instead, it was what the team had found beneath the tents.

  As two students carefully removed the canvas from the ground under the watchful eye of Dr. Fischer, the ground beneath the tent, having been protected and thus undisturbed for three centuries, was visible.

  And on that ground, lying solemnly in a semi-preserved state, were the corpses of the Russian expedition. Some of the bodies had been preserved better than others, but it was clear from the clothing, cranial structures, and some of the additional artifacts and books found nearby, that it was the lost Russian expedition of the early 18th century. Dr. Fischer was ecstatic; this was a discovery that, to him, surpassed anything he’d ever done in his professional career. He would write a book — maybe a volume of books — about this expedition. What it was attempting to accomplish, where it had been, and what had led to their eventual demise.

  Of course, there were questions to answer before these secrets would reveal themselves.

  They had pieces of maps, journals, and scraps of clothing, but they could use a little more to piece things together. And now that Dr. Fischer had committed to exploring the nearby caves tomorrow, they had even less time to spend at this site.

  He moved to another rectangular opening in the earth; a new hole they’d dug to continue exploring beneath the earth’s surface. Another three tents were revealed, and another six skeletal bodies were uncovered. In one, a student had removed a carved bone smoking pipe and a small journal. The student gave the pipe directly to Gareth, who was hard at work logging the items into the computer database and mapping the precise location they were found. But the journal he handed to Dr. Fischer.

  “Thought this might be interesting to you,” the student said.

  Dr. Fischer donned a pair of fresh latex gloves and held the journal delicately between his two hands. He felt its leathery surface, noticing the fine craftsmanship and attention to detail. After so many years, it really was remarkable.

  Most remarkable, however, was the fact that some of the paper inside the journal was still intact. Dirty, smudged, and difficult to read, but intact nonetheless.

  He held the journal open, barely enough to peer inside, as he did not want to damage the worn spine, but he moved the book around to let enough light in to see what was on the right-hand page.

  “Anyone read Russian?” he called. “This is too small to see.”

  “Losing your vision already, old man?” one of the students yelled.

  Dr. Fischer laughed.

  Gareth stood from behind the computer and stretched. “I got it,” he said. “I can use a break anyway. Anyone want to take over?”

  Another graduate student fell in behind the computer screen and continued to document the dig site.

  “You read Russian?” Dr. Fischer asked.

  “Yeah, it was an undergraduate minor. Something I was interested in.”

  “Why?”

  “Girl. Hottie, too. Too bad she was into German.”

  Dr. Fischer shook his head and grinned. Whatever it took... he handed the small book to the student and waited.

  “Okay, yeah, I got this. Pretty good handwriting, actually. Let’s see... ‘One more eventless day. Full moon last night, and one of the men has caught a rabbit.’” Gareth looked up. “Pretty exciting stuff, Doc.” Some of the other students who had gathered around chuckled.

  “Keep reading,” Dr. Fischer said.

  “‘One other place in my life I have found solace such as this...’ Can’t read that word; I think it’s a town or something. ‘The wind whispers through our ranks; the snow crunches beneath our feet, and you would imagine it was the loudest noise in the forest.’ Let’s see if we can find anything interesting,” Gareth said.

  By now, the other four students were gathered around Gareth and Dr. Fischer, each leaning on a shovel or sitting on the ground.

  “Flip to the end,” Dr. Fischer said.

  Gareth nodded, turning pages in the small leather journal. “Here we go. Last entry: ‘The baskets were full of some sort of powder, along with the coins. It has consumed us all. I am to die here alone, with my words and my comrades, without so much as a hope to return to my homeland...’” Gareth’s voice trailed off just as the words of the journal entry had. His eyes were wide, a look of surprise on his face. “Woah. Pretty intense.”

  “Damn,” another student whispered.

  Dr. Fischer was replaying the words
in his mind, trying to commit them to memory. They’d found baskets somewhere. Somewhere close to where they now stood. Whatever was in them, besides these coins, was deadly. He looked up sharply, finding a young woman’s face in the crowd. “Steph — did any of you find any of these baskets? Or more coins?”

  She shook her head. “No, we’ve been scouting the area around the dig site but haven’t found anything yet…” her voice shook.

  “No, no, that’s fine,” Dr. Fischer said. “There’s nothing to worry about, then. The coins were out in the open, so they should be fine. But we need to change our plans a little. I’m not sure excavating any more of this area tomorrow is such a great idea.”

  The students nodded, solemn looks of grief on their faces. It was as if they suddenly understood the horrible massacre they were standing in. It wasn’t the peaceful, silent death of twenty-seven men and explorers they’d come across. It wasn’t a simple gravesite; one created when the group died of starvation, natural causes, or both.

  The men that lay beneath their canvas tents, caught in eternal sleep, weren’t men who’d given in to their fate. It was the site of men who had been taken by something sinister that had been hidden away for so long.

  It was the site of a massacre.

  10

  “David Livingston,” Julie said to Ben as they walked across the parking lot, “is pretty much exactly what you think of when you think ‘bureaucracy by the book.’ He’d rather fail doing it the right way than succeed by not following the rules.”

  Julie turned left and started walking down a row of parked cars, Ben in tow. He could see only sedans and small station wagons and wondered which was Julie’s.

  “He’s not exactly the easiest person to work with, either,” she continued. “Actually, you don’t work with Livingston at all. You work for him. In his world, that means everyone’s working against him, and it’s up to him to right all our wrongs.”

  “Sounds like a stand up guy,” Ben said as they passed yet another Subaru Outback. “Which one’s yours?”