Chimera

by David Wellington

  Chapel wasn’t entirely certain himself. But he’d begun to suspect something. He’d known for a while that Angel—and Hollingshead—had their own agenda in this. That capturing or killing the chimeras was only part of what they wanted to accomplish.

  Maybe it was time he had his own agenda. Maybe it was time to start thinking about what he wanted to get out of this. He looked at Julia again. This time she looked back, a question on her face.

  He still didn’t know what he wanted to happen. He didn’t know how this could end well for anyone. But he was going to make sure Julia came out of this alive. That was a start. Alive, and, if he had anything to say about it, free.

  If that fit into Hollingshead’s secret plan, so be it. If not—Chapel would have to start making up his own rules for this game.

  He had more important things to worry about just then, though. The time for his meeting with Funt was drawing near. He hadn’t counted on having to wait in line to get to the top of the mountain.

  “We’re going to cut it pretty close,” Chapel said, staring at his watch.

  The line moved forward again as the next car opened its doors. The tourists, and Chapel and Julia, filed in, filling all the available space. The operator of the Skyride announced that this was the last car of the evening, and that the mountaintop would be closing down in just thirty minutes. The tourists grumbled and booed but good-naturedly, disappointed that they weren’t going to have much time at the top.

  In compensation, though, they got to see the carving come alive with the sunset.

  Red light washed over the face of Stone Mountain, filling in every crack and crevice of the massive bas-relief. The mountain itself seemed to glow like a titanic jewel, a rich luster that only brightened even as the sun faded.

  “That’s kind of beautiful,” Julia said, leaning against the side of the car, pressing her face close to the glass of its windows. Behind her the tourists oohed and aahed, but Chapel only had eyes for her, this woman he’d dragged out of New York City and taken with him on this mad trip.

  “It’s exactly the same color as your hair,” he observed.

  She turned and faced him, her mouth curled up in a look of bewilderment. “I’m trying to give you the cold shoulder,” she said. “You shouldn’t say things like that to me right now. It was way too close to being sweet.”

  “Couldn’t help it,” he told her.

  She shook her head and turned to look at the mountain again. “I know you were just trying to protect me. But not telling me about the . . . about you know what. That wasn’t protecting me. That was hurting me.”

  “It was?” Chapel asked.

  “You took away my right to make decisions for myself. That’s what I hate about secrets. If I don’t know things, I can’t do anything about them.”

  “It’s important that some secrets be kept,” he said. Because it was what he believed.

  “I suppose so. And I suppose that’s your job.” She sighed. “Chapel, how can I ever trust somebody when I know they lie to me professionally? This is just weird.”

  “I can tell you one true thing,” he said. “When I came out of that hatch in the Underground, and you weren’t there, my heart almost stopped. I didn’t know what had happened to you. I was terrified you were gone. That I’d lost you.”

  “As it turned out, I didn’t need your protection,” she told him, though her voice was softer than the words would suggest. “Thanks. I guess.”

  “When this is over,” he said, “maybe—”

  “When this is over, I’m going back to New York. I’m going to live my life the way I choose to. Openly. Honestly. Or—or I’ll go . . . where they tell me. The Catskills. Wherever.” She shook her head, and her hair swung around in front of the red-stained mountain. He wanted to reach out and put his hands on her shoulders but he didn’t dare.

  “That’s what you want,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Just—we part ways, then. And I never see you again.”

  “Just . . . stop, Chapel. Don’t go there.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Listen, I can’t give you the silent treatment. We’re stuck in this thing together, and if I don’t talk to somebody, I’m going to go crazy. So we’ll work together from now. Be civil to each other. But that’s it. Let’s just keep this relationship professional, okay?” She was silent for the rest of the ride to the top.

  STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:31

  The top of Stone Mountain looked like a patch of the moon transported to earth.

  Nothing grew up there save a few scraggly bushes and some lichens. It was bare rock, smoothed out by the wind but broken into ridges and basins where a little rainwater could gather and support the sparse plant life. By that point the sunset was over, though a yellow smudge of light still lingered on the far horizon. The rock was lit blue with deep purple shadows that were fading to black.

  There wasn’t much to see up top. Just a visitors’ center where the Skyride ended, a few radio antennas topped with blinking bulbs to warn off low-flying aircraft—and the view. In the distance Chapel saw the lights of Atlanta scattered among the darkening greenery of Georgia.

  A few of the braver tourists walked out onto the naked rock, perhaps in search of better views of the sunset or the scenery. Park rangers stood around with their hands in their pockets, giving everyone a little time before they had to head back down. There was no sign of Jeremy Funt.

  “He must be here by now,” Chapel said. “This is right when he told me to meet him. Maybe he’s hiding inside.”

  “I wouldn’t blame him,” Julia said, rubbing at her arms.

  It was cold up top, much cooler than it had been when they boarded the cable car. She took out the pink sweatshirt she’d bought in the Underground and pulled it on, zipping it up to her throat. “This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever owned,” she said, “but right now, it’s my favorite.”

  Chapel wanted to take off his jacket and give it to her, but he couldn’t. If he did, everyone would see his holstered sidearm, and the park rangers would definitely have questions. If he was going to make this meeting with Funt, he had to stay inconspicuous.

  “Let’s walk over to the far side,” Chapel said, pointing at a fence on the other side of the mountaintop.

  “There’s nobody over there,” Julia told him.

  “I want to make myself as visible as possible so he can find me,” Chapel replied. He didn’t like this. He’d expected Funt to meet him as soon as he stepped out of the cable car. He’d expected the man to want to talk to him.

  Maybe that had been too much to hope for.

  “Chapel,” Angel said, “I’ve got bad news. Maybe.”

  “Go ahead,” he told her.

  “I’ve been listening to the chatter on the park service radio channel. They’re all checking in, confirming everybody’s off the mountain and they can close up shop for the night. Except one ranger hasn’t called in yet. They keep requesting he confirm his position, but he’s not responding.”

  “Could be anything. Maybe his radio’s battery just died. Or he could have ducked out for a smoke break.”

  “Maybe,” Angel said. “Considering how things have gone since we started with this case, you think that’s likely?”

  “No,” Chapel agreed. He bit his lip. “Damn. If the CIA knows we’re up here—” he began, but he was interrupted.

  “Chapel,” Julia said in a forced whisper, “behind you!”

  Chapel swung around just in time for someone to poke a gun barrel in his ribs.

  He froze in place.

  The gunman wore the uniform of a park ranger, including the Smokey Bear hat. He was grinning maniacally.

  “Hi,” Jeremy Funt said.

  STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:36

  “Nice to see you again,” Chapel said.
He kept his hands at his sides. Funt hadn’t told him to put them up, and he didn’t want the paranoid ex-FBI agent to think he was reaching for a weapon.

  “Give me a second here. Look behind you—there, you see?”

  From the visitors’ center a park ranger—presumably a real park ranger—made a series of hand gestures, rolling her hands around each other, tapping her watch. Clearly she was suggesting it was time for everybody to head back down. She looked over in the direction where Funt and Chapel were standing. Funt waved his free hand at her, then held up his fingers splayed out as if to suggest he needed five more minutes.

  The female park ranger shrugged and headed inside the center.

  “In a second we’ll have this place all to ourselves,” Funt told Chapel.

  “You know her? You set this up?”

  “Nope. I was up here about a month ago, scouting out new locations for booby traps. I watched the rangers and studied their routine. Half of them are hard-core pot smokers. They invite their friends up here after hours and they get high while the laser show plays on the side of the mountain. The supervisors don’t interfere as long as they don’t draw too much attention.”

  The tourists were all herded back into the visitors’ center and into the Skyride cable car to head back down to the park below. All the park rangers went with them, including one who turned out most of the lights in the visitors’ center before he boarded the cable car. Eventually it departed.

  “Okay, just us, now,” Funt said. “Why don’t you take two steps back, very carefully—the ground here is none too level. And then you can tell me who the hell Red here is, and why you brought her.”

  “She’s someone I’m protecting,” Chapel said, nodding in Julia’s direction.

  “I’m Julia Taggart. I don’t work for the government.”

  Funt didn’t look away from Chapel’s face. “Who do you work for, then?”

  “Cats and dogs,” Julia said. She sounded perfectly calm.

  Well, Chapel supposed that was easier when you didn’t have a gun pointed at your large intestine.

  “She’s a veterinarian. A chimera tried to kill her in New York,” Chapel said.

  Funt nodded. “I’ll buy it. For now. I did some checking up on you, Chapel. I still have a few friends left in interesting places. You’re definitely not CIA.” Funt stopped as if he’d just thought of something. “Wait a minute. Taggart?”

  “William Taggart is her father. You know William Taggart?”

  Funt shrugged. “I met him, a long time ago. Mad scientist type. Liked to clone up perversions of nature in his spare time. Made the chimeras.”

  “ ‘Made’ them. I guess that’s not a bad way to put it. What are they, specifically?”

  “You don’t know?” Funt asked.

  “I only know what I’ve seen. I got no briefing at all, just a warning they were tough. The one in New York was definitely that. He also had funny eyelids. I know what the word ‘chimera’ means, too. An organism with DNA from two or more sources. Which is more than they’re supposed to have.”

  Funt nodded. “Okay. I’m going to trust you, just a little bit. I can’t hold this gun on you all night, after all. So I’m going to put it away. But first, you’re going to give me yours. Then I’ll tell you what I know, and then we can discuss getting me out of Atlanta. That’s the deal. You okay with it?”

  “I’d rather hold on to my weapon.”

  Funt smiled. “I’d rather be married to Phoebe Cates. I’d rather be in Philadelphia right now, eating a cheesesteak. The last fifteen years, I’ve had to deal with how things are, not how I’d rather they were.”

  “Fair enough,” Chapel said. Very, very slowly he reached into his jacket and removed his weapon. He handed it to Funt by the grip.

  “Good,” Funt said, shoving it in one of his pockets. He lowered his own pistol, but he kept it in his hand. “Now we can talk.”

  STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:39

  “I have a lot of questions,” Chapel said. “Starting with what they are. I want to know about the one you called Malcolm, and what your relationship with him is. I want to know when you first encountered them and—”

  Funt held up his hands for peace. “Stop. I’ll tell you my whole story. That should answer most of your questions. But first I need something from you. I want your promise that when we’re done here, we’ll go straight to the nearest airport. You’ll make sure I get a plane ride to anywhere I want to go.”

  “Done,” Chapel said.

  “That easy, huh?”

  “I’ve got carte blanche to deal with the chimeras,” Chapel told him. “My boss—at the DIA—just wants to make sure they don’t kill anyone else.”

  “Oh, I’m certain that’s not all he wants.” Funt rolled his eyes. “Whatever. If you get me away from Malcolm, that’s all I care about. Okay. Let me think about where to start with this.”

  “The beginning’s always a good place,” Julia said.

  Chapel looked across at her. She was standing close enough the three of them might as well be whispering. Clearly she intended to listen in on this. Chapel knew that Hollingshead probably didn’t want her to hear it, but he figured this time he wouldn’t try to stop her. He was in enough hot water as it was. If Funt started revealing state secrets, that would be another thing, of course.

  But as far as Chapel was concerned, the chimeras were fair game.

  “It started in 1996. I worked for the bureau back then.” Funt looked at Julia. “That’s the FBI.” She just nodded, so he went on. “I wasn’t exactly famous; I mean, it’s not like I was a household name. But I had cracked some missing persons cases, found some kids who’d been abducted by religious cults or their parents or whatever and I had a reputation as the kind of guy who could find anybody. One day my AD—that’s assistant director—calls me into his office and tells me to sign out for the day, then take a train to Virginia and meet with some guy in Langley. It was all very hush-hush and I wasn’t supposed to let anybody know where I was going.

  “The guy in question was CIA, which wasn’t exactly a surprise—somebody says ‘Langley,’ that’s what you think. His name was Banks. Asshole. Giant asshole.”

  Chapel fought back a grin.

  “Tells me,” Funt went on, “that he’s got a missing person he needs found. A kid, about ten years old, named Malcolm. He’s been missing for over a week. I always hated hearing something like that. With abducted kids, unless it’s a parent who took them, if they’ve been gone more than forty-eight hours you think to yourself, I’m not looking for a kid. I’m looking for a body. That’s how you approach the case—otherwise you go insane when you do find the body. Banks assured me this kid was still alive, though he wouldn’t say how he knew that. And he told me it definitely wasn’t his parents who took him. Then he asked for my security clearance. He already knew it by heart, but I gave him what he wanted. He said I was going to see some things nobody was ever supposed to know about. At the time I didn’t realize that meant I wasn’t supposed to know them either, and I was going on his hit list.”

  Chapel interrupted. “Why did he bring you in on this in the first place? The CIA couldn’t find the kid on their own?”

  “This was the mid-nineties. There wasn’t even an Internet to speak of back then,” Funt pointed out, “much less the kind of satellites we have now. Back then when you needed somebody found, you went to the FBI. I was simply the best man for the job.

  “The CIA flew me up to some place in New York State, I never did find out exactly where. They introduced me to William Taggart—your father who, forgive me, miss, was an asshole as well, though not as big an asshole as Banks.”

  “I’m not exactly offended,” Julia said.

  Funt nodded in thanks. “He treated me like I was a kid. You could tell when he talked he was translating in his head, from big multisyllabic scie
nce words down to the kind of slangy English somebody like me might understand. He said the kid I was looking for was named Malcolm, and he was very, very special.

  “They showed me some of the chimeras. Had them come out and speak to me, say, hello, Mr. Detective, isn’t the weather nice today. Then one of them took off his shirt. There were a bunch of cinder blocks set up in the room. This kid—his name was Ian, I remember—goes over to them and breaks them, one at a time, by punching them. When he’s done, he’s breathing a little heavy and his eyes go weird. You know what I mean. An extra black eyelid slides down over his eyes and blinks at me a couple of times.

  “When I stopped wanting to scream for my mother, I said, thanks, that was very impressive, but what in God’s name did I just see? Dr. Taggart explained they were called chimeras, and they’re the next step in human evolution. Ninety-nine percent human, he said, just like you and me. The other one percent was cobbled together from DNA sequences he stole from chimpanzees and rattlesnakes and something called a water bear, which I’d never heard of. They were survivors, he said. They could live through anything, they could survive gunshot wounds, blood loss, hypothermia. They were faster than people, stronger, and, he thought, probably smarter, though they had a hard time testing for that.

  “I asked a whole bunch of questions, like how one percent difference could account for everything he’d told me, and why on earth he’d chosen to do this, and whether he thought the devil had a special place for him in hell or if he was just going to get the usual treatment. He got pretty pissed off then and walked out on me. It was another scientist, a woman with red hair like yours but going gray, who showed me the rest.”

  “That . . . would have been my mother,” Julia said.

  “Are you going to get mad if I tell you she was kind of an asshole, too?”

  “She’s dead,” Julia said.

  “Oh. Crap. I . . . didn’t know—”

  “She’s dead, which is the only thing that keeps me from agreeing with you,” Julia told him.