The man’s body had also changed, with the arms becoming longer and thicker. A human spider, Allenby had seemingly challenged the limits of genetics and won. His voice had also changed, becoming more sonorous and echoed like water in a well.
“Goldman, if you’re seeing this, then here’s what I want. You and Istvan, the pig, will come to Lake Shasta. I presume you’ve figured out my location by now. Just the two of you, and I’ll spare your wife.”
A second later, the camera panned over to where Anastasia was bound, gagged and lying on a table. Two mutants, man-sized dogs mixed with zebras, with hound-like heads and striped, muscular bodies, hovered over her, salivating. Specks of drool coated the sides of their misshapen mouths. It became a question of whether they’d rape or kill her.
Their master, though, seemed to sense their innermost feelings and snapped his fingers. “Move back. Don’t harm her. I want her husband to see this.”
Seeing Anastasia tied up, Harry felt his rage build. “If you touch one hair on her head,” he began, knowing he’d just uttered the biggest cliché in existence, “you won’t last five minutes with me.”
Allenby leaned into the camera, practically ingesting it. “You are in no position to make demands. Bring the pig. You get your wife back. If you betray me yet again, I’ll peel the skin from her body slowly and film it for the world to see.”
The transmission cut off. Harry frantically tapped buttons, but the image did not reappear. With a cry of rage, he hurled the machine away and it landed with a clatter.
Overton went to pick it up, doing so wordlessly. “Well, it’s not broken, so that’s something.” He chose that moment to stare out the window.
Harry said nothing and sat with a bowed head, wondering how his life had gone from good to toilet level in such a short time.
Once Allenby started speaking, though, Leo had quickly moved to another seat and turned his head away. In contrast, Istvan, who’d not uttered a word the entire time, watched the entire broadcast, his face immobile. “I see what has happened. You will go and get your wife back?”
“Yes.”
“And you will trade me for her?”
Istvan’s voice had come out with a catch in it. He knew it was a death sentence. There was no other way, though. Harry startled to fumble out a reply, saying something to the effect of not wanting to but having to, and finally, hung his head, ashamed it had all come to this. “I’m sorry, it’s just that—”
“I know what Allenby want with me,” Istvan cut in, sounding surprisingly calm. “I know he means to use me. I know he has your wife.”
The mention of his wife made Harry snap his head up. “Istvan, wait...”
“No, you must hear me first.” Inhaling deeply, he straightened up and a note of passion, something which denoted decency and friendship and more, coated each word. “But I also know you love her and must be with her. So I will go with you. That is my honor.”
“More than likely, this is a one-way trip.” When Istvan stared at him in an uncomprehending manner, Harry simplified things and put his hand on the little man’s shoulder in a friendly gesture. “If I could do this any other way, I would. Thank you.”
He got a smile in return. “Maybe we will be lucky.”
Getting up, Istvan walked over to the other side of the airplane and curled up on a seat. Soon, he was snoring.
An ahem got Harry’s attention. He looked up and saw Overton gazing at him.
“What is it?”
“Are you ready for this?”
“I don’t have a choice.” Licking his lips, Harry added, “Thanks for coming with me. I know you got removed from your position, and—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Overton interrupted.
“You could lose your job.”
“I’d rather keep my self-respect.”
His words, simply spoken, brought a smile to Harry’s face. “This is hard for you,” the agent was saying. “It’s hard, I know that. But I’ll be there along with the pilot and—”
“No, I’m going with Istvan, just the two of us,” Harry interrupted and glanced at Leo, who still had his face averted. “This is on me. Allenby will kill her if he suspects anyone.”
“You know he’s going to try to kill you.”
Offering a shrug to indicate he was resigned to his fate, Harry didn’t know what to say at first and settled for, “It comes with the territory.”
Chapter Thirteen: Trapped
As they touched down, Harry rolled his neck around to get rid of the kinks. The tension had been building for the past couple of hours, and it would probably get even higher. It would do no good to worry about his wife, but he couldn’t help it. Love was something worth fighting for, after all, and he was prepared for a duel to the death.
Glancing at Istvan, he saw that as usual, he was sleeping, and it seemed only something on an apocalyptic scale was capable of waking the pig-man.
“Where are we?” Harry asked, once Overton came back to inform him of their arrival.
“We’re at Benton Airpark. It’s a city-owned public airport, near Redding. That’s the closest point I could get to Lake Shasta. The FBI has a private hangar here... we won’t be seen. I’ve got a car waiting.”
It seemed like a plan. As they touched down, Leo awoke, rubbing his eyes. “We are here?”
“Yeah, we are,” answered Harry, trying to formulate a plan of how things would go down. Nothing really came to mind. Get in, get Anastasia, and get out again. Simple, really, but it all depended on how open to cooperation Allenby was... and he didn’t come across as being open to anything save murder.
“What do I do?” A look of apprehension crossed the little mole-man’s face. “I not have idea of how to help.” His voice shook as he bowed his head, perhaps in fear or shame, Harry couldn’t tell which.
It was time to let him off the hook. “Stay here. Stay safe.”
Leo quickly retreated to the relative safety of another seat to curl up, but he didn’t go to sleep. Instead, he looked on, his eyes darting back and forth between the other occupants of the plane and his mouth half open as if deciding to make a statement or not. His biggest statement came when he said and did nothing.
Harry woke Istvan up. He yawned and stretched, and then, like Leo, realizing the moment of truth had arrived, got a look of terror on his round face. His earlier bravado seemed to have faded. “I know what will happen to me when we go there,” he gulped. “I know what will happen after.”
“He’s not going to get you,” Harry said as he laid a friendly hand on Istvan’s shoulder. “I promise you.”
Promises were often made in situations like these. But could they be kept? Harry didn’t know if he was capable of promising anything. Considering the odds against him, he came up with a few scenarios, all of them bad. One, he’d find Allenby, go up against him and lose. Two, even if he managed to find Allenby, there was no telling if Anastasia was safe or not. Three, if Anastasia was hurt or...
He stopped considering the options after number three. Losing Anastasia would be like losing his life, and he was determined not to let it happen. “Nothing’s going to happen. But you have to trust me.”
As the three of them disembarked, Istvan glanced around nervously. “I trust you, but I am scared.”
“Who isn’t,” Overton replied in the grimmest of tones as he checked his weapon. Satisfied, he thrust it back into his holster. “Let’s get going.”
Disembarking, they found a nondescript black sedan waiting. Overton got in and took the wheel. He drove out of the hangar and no opposition came their way. “So what’s the plan?” he asked once they hit the highway.
“We go there and I give myself up,” Harry answered. It wasn’t the smartest plan around, but there didn’t seem to be any other way. He couldn’t be sure Allenby wouldn’t hurt Anastasia, but he had to take that chance. Revenge was what this monster wanted more than anything. Perhaps he’d slip up somewhere.
“Let me go with you,” O
verton insisted.
“No, we will go.”
That came from Istvan, who spoke up, his voice clear and unafraid. “He will not kill me. Dead, I am of no use to him.”
His words, so simply spoken, made Harry doubly determined to beat this monster somehow. “Just keep driving. Once we get to the forest, we’ll find our way.”
Overton said nothing else and kept the sedan moving steadily along the highway, occasionally glancing at the GPS and nodding. A while later they reached the edge of the forest. There, Harry and Istvan got out. “Wish us luck,” Harry said.
“Good luck.”
We’ll need it. Harry kept a sharp eye out and trained his senses on the environment. The sound of bees buzzing, land-based animals scratching their way through the undergrowth and the flit of bird’s wings all came through, However, he wasn’t interested in the mundane. He was interested in the unusual.
Istvan did his part, dropping to the ground on all fours and snuffling along. “I cannot find scent of them. I only smell other animals, regular animals.”
Perhaps they’d wised up, using some other kind of body-masking agent to hide the stink. Or perhaps they were so deep underground no smell could filter its way up to the surface. Harry didn’t know and right now, he didn’t care. The thought of going beneath the earth scared him, but Istvan, in spite of his previous brave words, had to be terrified at the prospect of being trapped by a madman.
As they tramped along, a memory of the final fight against Szabo went through Harry’s mind. He’d faced off against Szabo, a giant in strength, an odd although lethal combination of bear and shark. The underground laboratory had been in Yakutsk, a Russian seaport city. Stark, stripped down to the bare essentials, he’d fought the giant in a broken down lab room. Nothing but tables, rubble, and a shark tank from which Szabo had received part of his DNA was in the room.
“You cannot beat me,” Szabo had said triumphantly. He’d tossed Harry from end to end, and did so easily. Battered and bruised, Harry had fought back, but against a larger and much stronger foe, he was destined to lose if he kept fighting in such a face-to-face style.
“Weak, you are weak,” Szabo declared. “You are also incomplete. You do not have a tail like your wife does.”
This much was true. When Harry had gone through the transformation process, it had been interrupted, hence his tailless status. However, he had something Szabo lacked—the ability to adapt.
Catlike reflexes allowed him to dodge the monster’s blows. Harry did what his feline genes allowed him to do. He evaded smash after smash, darted in to slash and punch, and quickly pulled back again.
When Szabo charged him, Harry had his back against the wall—literally—and a rusty spike protruded from the concrete. In a deft as well as a desperate move, he stepped aside and the shark-bear monstrosity ended up lobotomizing himself. Harry finished him off as quickly as possible and dumped his body into the shark tank. “Eat hearty...”
“What are you thinking about?”
Istvan’s question broke his train of thought. “Oh, uh, just what we’re going to do after this,” Harry answered, attempting to impart an air of unconcern. Hard to appear jaunty, especially in a situation such as this, but keeping up a façade was half the battle. “I mean, once we’re done, we’re going back to New York and fix something up for you.”
“Perhaps I can have a job?”
Make him happy... “Yeah, Overton talked about getting us jobs, you and me, my wife... all of us.”
It was a poor lie, but it did earn him a smile. “Yes, I will like working,” Istvan replied after a few seconds.
He trotted along the ground, wearing a somewhat enigmatic smile, as if he, too, was playing along with the lie. It was a curious look, and bespoke a sadness that went beyond being changed into something he’d never imagined or wanted.
To take his mind off the upcoming conflict, Harry asked, “What did you want to be back in Hungary?” Istvan had originally come from Budapest.
“An engineer,” the reply came. “I wished to help reconstruct my country as well as other countries in Europe. It was my dream.”
Halting in his tracks, he looked at his hoof-hands. “I cannot handle instruments well. I am only good for...”
Abruptly, he stopped talking. “We are close. I can smell them.”
Impossible... if they were underground, then how could he know? Harry thought his friend had gone into wishful thinking mode, a kind of delusion, but realized that Istvan possessed a better sense of smell, and also, Jason had said the power emanations were coming from the park. Better to verify first. “Did you find the entrance?”
“Close, it is close.”
Istvan snuffled along for a few seconds, searching this way and that, and finally came to a plot of grass that looked somewhat flatter than the surrounding area. “It is here.”
To make his point clearer, he tapped the ground and a faint metallic echo pinged back. “Great sense of smell,” Harry said admiringly.
“I am usually right.”
Harry went over to the spot and felt along with his hands. His fingers touched something metallic, hard, and circular. It was a ring, and he pulled back on it. Immediately, a door slid open. It must have been well-oiled, as it gave off nary a sound. “This is the place,” Istvan said softly.
After a moment’s hesitation, they entered and the trapdoor slid shut behind them. Immediately, they were plunged into darkness, and even with his enhanced night vision, Harry couldn’t make out anything around him. Training his ears to pick up any unusual noises, he heard absolutely nothing. “I cannot see,” Istvan complained.
“Grab my hand,” Harry said, and led the way.
Moving slowly, they picked their way down the stairs. As they descended, Harry stooped over and felt the stone, noting its smoothness and the precision with which it had been carved. Someone had been paying attention to details.
Istvan murmured something in Hungarian. “What did you say?” Harry asked.
“It is old poem about being alone in dark at night.” Istvan’s voice sounded fearful, but stopped short of being all-out terrified. “It goes like this.”
We are on a secret trip,
Sitting in darkness and surrounded by stars
On our planet, our old and lonely world
We are fleeing certain peril, yet greet it,
And so our enemies come to us, quietly, stealthily,
They come to steal our breath away.
To Harry’s ears, it sounded like bad poetry, but who was he to question? If it gave Istvan a measure of comfort, then he was not about to deny him that right. “It’s... interesting,” he finally decided to say.
“No, it is gloomy and sad, but I think of it just now.” Istvan suddenly jerked his head up. “I can smell something.”
“Is it human?”
“No.”
Just one word, but it was enough to send Harry’s pulse rate soaring and he told himself to get ready. After what seemed like a mini-eternity, they reached bottom. There, Harry’s fingers found a light switch. “Cover your eyes,” he ordered. “It might be bright here.”
As he flicked the switch, a light did come on, but it was a dull yellow color and of low intensity. They’d entered a laboratory, with numerous tables loaded with instruments, up-to-date and very advanced, instruments on them. Harry recognized centrifuges, DNA mixers and differentiators—no less than three different models—strand reorganizers, and more. He also saw a desktop with a recombinant DNA program running, and went over to check on the particulars. What he saw filled him with disgust combined with fear.
Istvan walked over and gazed uncomprehendingly at the data. “Is this place where they make people?”
Assuming this science tested out, it would create an aberration, something even worse than the current version of Allenby. “No, this is where they make monsters. Let’s move.”
With Harry taking the lead, creeping along, they ventured further down the path and came to a
door of solid iron. Harry pulled gently on the handle. It creaked open and he stopped every few seconds, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. Nothing but his breathing echoed softly off the walls.
Inhaling deeply, he smelled chemicals and musty air. While this underground lab undoubtedly had air vents, it also had circulation problems. An aroma of body odor and sweat filtered through to his nostrils. Unusual though, it had the aroma of... wet dog. They were here. Istvan must have smelled it as well, as he started to shake. “I smell them,” he said.
“Calm down.” Harry tried to slow his own rapidly pounding heart, and partially succeeded by drawing in a few deep breaths. “Follow me.”
Going through the door, he came to a ledge with an elevator attachment. Over a hundred feet below lay a cavern, an immense space roughly the size of a football field and possibly larger. Numerous thick cables like engorged pythons traversed the walls, and an uncountable number of machines, Genesis Chambers, and other scientific apparatuses dotted the floor. Tables held desktop computers, the latest models on the market.
Another larger chamber took up roughly five square feet by his estimation. Allenby was truly into upgrading. Part of Harry’s mind, the scientific, make-advances-in-medicine part, wondered about its purpose, but the other part, the rational, sane part, saw it as something to be destroyed, along with its maker if necessary.
On the ground, ten transgenic hybrid creations wandered around as if on guard duty. They were heavily armed, carrying machine guns and pistols. He heard their grunts and hoarse voices, but saw no sign of Anastasia.
“What we do now,” Istvan wanted to know, tugging on Harry’s pant leg.
Descend, for one thing, and find Anastasia, for another. “We take a look.”
Riding the elevator down was a sure path for disaster. It probably made a lot of noise and the last thing they needed was the attention, although Allenby had to be aware of an impending attack. To an outsider, it would seem foolish. He’d given away his position, but perhaps thought, arrogantly so, that he was prepared to repel any attack. He’d certainly been prepared in Spain. It was doubtful he’d make any mistakes.
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