THE LUPIN PROJECT
Allan Leverone
First edition © 2017 by Allan Leverone
Cover design by Elderlemon Design
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, some of which may be based in part on actual names, characters, places and incidents, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is unintended and entirely coincidental.
First eBook edition: 2017
PROLOGUE
Dr. Jason Greeley tracked the wolf pack’s progress through a sophisticated system of video monitoring equipment. The surveillance was designed to capture virtually every square inch of the U.S. Army’s massive Tamerlane Research Facility.
What he was doing now, Jason had done hundreds—perhaps thousands—of times over the past eight years. Video cameras recorded the wolves’ every move in real time, relaying the data to a series of high-definition television monitors covering one full wall of Dr. Greeley’s lab, and storing the footage in an array of hard drives for future study.
But today wasn’t just another day at the office for Jason Greeley. Today was Project Evaluation Day, the quarterly demonstration Jason was required to provide to the high-level parties funding the Lupin Project. Jason had never learned the actual identities of the men bankrolling his groundbreaking research and had long-since tired of asking.
And by now, he knew full well how the game was played. Even as immersed in his own research as he was, Jason Greeley was not stupid. The bland-faced men in the anonymous-looking suits who came to observe his progress on the Lupin Project every three months like clockwork were CIA.
Or NSA.
Or DoD.
What could they be, other than spooks for some government alphabet agency? Their sharp eyes missed nothing. They asked intelligent, probing questions while revealing as little to Jason about themselves and their business as was humanly possible.
Jason’s money was on CIA.
Over the years, Jason had become accustomed to their presence, which was not exactly the same as saying they didn’t make him nervous. They always made him nervous.
But up until recently there had been no reason for anything more than the usual Project Evaluation Day jitters when the CIA men showed up.
This time was different.
Jason’s palms felt hot and sweaty, his stomach roiled incessantly, and he felt claustrophobic, as if he and Toler and the bland-faced men were packed standing-room-only inside a broom closet rather than seated comfortably in his spacious lab.
He knew his concern was warranted. Hell, he knew it better than anyone. Progress on the Lupin Project had stalled over the last several months and, in fact, advances he’d made with the wolves were regressing at an alarming rate.
To this point, Jason doubted anyone else had noticed. Or if they had, he was certain they could not tell the extent of the wolves’ deterioration. He’d worked almost exclusively with the wolf pack since completing his revolutionary neural conditioning brain surgery on the animals more than seven years ago and he knew the ins and the outs of the animals’ behavior as well as he knew his own name.
Maybe better.
And something was definitely wrong.
The bland-faced men in the anonymous suits hadn’t said anything yet, but if things continued on their current trajectory, it was only a matter of time.
He tried to keep his nervousness hidden as he spoke into his headset, enunciating the commands—he hoped—crisply and clearly. Authoritatively.
“Turn left,” he said, and the pack, which had been loping through the fields behind Tamerlane, executed a ninety-degree left turn.
Perfect.
“Turn right.” Ninety-degree turn to the right, but the formation became sloppy, as the wolf on the far left flank stumbled, grazing the animal next to him and causing that wolf to jostle its neighbor. The third wolf snapped at the one who had bumped him as the pack ran on.
This was not good. A trickle of sweat formed under Jason’s right armpit and ran down his ribs.
“Keep it together,” he mumbled, willing a satisfactory performance out of his pack.
One of the bland-faced men said, “Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “Sorry about that.”
He returned his attention to the monitors. This was where things were going to get tricky, and where they could go sideways in a hurry. A dummy had been tied to a tree roughly one hundred yards ahead of the wolves’ current position, and today’s demonstration would involve talking the pack through maneuvers that he knew would impress his visitors.
If they were successful.
“Turn right,” Jason said into his headset, and the animals altered their course.
“Stop turn.”
“A man is tied to the tree ahead,” he said. “Chew through the ropes and release the man.”
Jason held his breath as the animals charged the dummy. It had been constructed in as lifelike a manner as possible and then dressed in clothing worn by a member of the Tamerlane staff, so the human scent would be clear to the pack.
The pack’s alpha, Dakota, began gnawing on a rope positioned across the dummy’s midsection, while the other five wolves performed the same maneuver with ropes securing the dummy’s wrists and ankles to the tree.
Dakota finished first, his razor-sharp incisors slicing through his rope in seconds. It fluttered to the ground, and Jason began to think today’s demonstration might actually end well, or at least not turn into the disaster he feared.
But at that exact moment, things began to fall apart. The wolf working on the rope tied around the dummy’s right hand stepped on the paw of the wolf working on the right ankle. That wolf dropped his rope and snarled at the offending animal, crouching and baring his teeth aggressively.
The first wolf reacted instantly and then they were fighting, slashing at each other’s throats, rolling on the ground in front of the still-immobilized dummy. The other wolves stopped what they were doing and eyed the fighters with interest as Dakota began edging toward the duo.
Jason’s blood froze in his veins at the sight captured by the video feed: a thin line of foamy drool appeared to be dripping slowly down the alpha’s muzzle.
Oh, God. Jason grabbed at his boom mike and pulled it more securely in front of his mouth and commanded, “Halt!” and then quickly, “Sit!”
At first the animals ignored the commands and Jason feared he had lost them. Then, slowly, reluctantly, the wolves obeyed. Even the pair of fighters stopped snapping and slashing and moved clumsily to join the others, where they then formed two rows of three wolves apiece. After a moment the animals sat shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder, panting—and in the case of the two fighters, bleeding as well—but awaiting further instructions.
The foamy drool Jason thought he had observed a moment ago on Dakota’s muzzle seemed to have disappeared. Thank God. Maybe he had imagined it.
Typically, the rows formed by the wolves following their “Sit” command were arrow-straight and militarily crisp, but today the animals’ formation was anything but. It was ragged and undisciplined.
Jason doubted the bland-faced visitors noticed, but at this point, what did it matter? It wasn’t as if the men could possibly have missed the dangerous
and aggressive behavior of the pair that had begun attacking each other.
And to top things off, their mission to remove the ropes binding the “hostage” to the tree had failed.
Miserably.
Only Dakota’s rope had been removed. The others were still tightly wound around the dummy. And attempting to continue the mission now would do nothing but invite an even bigger disaster. After the aggressiveness they had just demonstrated, Jason feared the animals would attack not just each other, but the dummy as well.
Project Evaluation Day could not have gone any worse. One of the bland-faced men turned to Jason and said, “Well, Doctor, it appears you still have quite a lot of work to do.”
Jason smiled weakly and looked away. He had no idea how to answer. The man’s assessment was obviously correct, but the real problem went much deeper than the CIA visitor realized.
The progress Jason had made over the course of eight years of hard work was slowly but surely unraveling as the animals devolved.
And Jason Greeley, their “creator,” at least in the neural-conditioning sense, had no idea why.
And, even more importantly, no idea how to stop it.
The bland-faced men in the anonymous-looking suits turned as one and exited Jason’s lab without further comment. Jason was left standing with Tamerlane’s administrator, Colonel Frank Toler. On the monitors, the wolves sat patiently awaiting further instructions. It was as if their frenzied, out-of-control behavior moments ago had never occurred.
“What the hell just happened out there?” Toler spat. He was a man to whom subtlety was as foreign a concept as kindness.
“I—I don’t know,” Jason said. “Whatever is causing the wolves’ brains to deteriorate is worsening. And the process is gaining momentum.”
He screwed up his courage and turned to his boss. “Colonel, I really think it’s time to—”
“NO. We’re not pulling the plug on this project, Doctor. Not now, not ever.”
“Sir, I wish you would reconsider. It’s becoming—”
“I said forget it. It’s not just your career on the line here, you know. It’s mine as well. Lupin is Tamerlane’s showcase project. Everything else we do here is small potatoes compared to this. I’m not approaching our financial backers at this point and telling them eight years of work and millions of dollars in funding has been flushed down the toilet with nothing but a big, fat goose egg to show for it.”
“But, sir—”
“No buts. I couldn’t have said it better than our visitors just did. You’ve got work to do. A lot of work. I suggest, instead of wasting time trying to convince me of something that’s never going to happen, you buckle down and start regaining some of the ground you’ve managed to lose.”
Toler stalked out the door and Jason was left standing alone in the lab.
He sighed and glanced at the monitors. The wolves continued to sit patiently in the field, panting.
Out of nowhere it occurred to him he had never felt so confused. Or so helpless.
1
Eddie Senna’s ancient Chevy Caprice squealed and groaned, the car showing its age as it bounced along the old logging road north of New Quebec, New Hampshire.
At one time, fleets of trucks loaded down by as much as forty tons apiece of freshly cut pine logs had kept this trail, and many others like it in the New Quebec area, drivable for eight months a year despite its lack of paved surface. Logging roads snaked through the north country like veins inside a human body as drivers hauled construction timber out of the wilderness.
Those days had ended nearly three decades ago, when evolving clear-cutting policies reduced the yield to below what was necessary to sustain profitability. One by one the logging companies pulled up stakes and moved on and the trucks followed, rumbling away and leaving New Quebec behind forever.
Since then, the only use this and dozens of other rutted trails surrounding the isolated town had seen was as Lovers Lanes, places where romance-minded teens could almost always be assured of finding privacy.
Tonight was one of those times. Tonight represented the payoff for the weeks Eddie had spent sweet-talking Alicia Havens.
A senior at New Quebec High, Eddie had at the beginning of the school year made it his mission in life to date the pretty junior. He took it slowly at first, chatting her up in the hallway between classes, seeking her out after school to walk her to her car. He got to know her friends. He figured the end result would make all the effort worthwhile; she was cute and sweet and exuded an innocent, All-American-Girl vibe he loved.
After a while he moved on to sort-of-but-not-really dates after school, taking Alicia to New Quebec’s only Dunkin’ Donuts. During their sort-of-but-not-really dates they would sit in the hard plastic and metal chairs and sip flavored iced coffee while chatting about school, and about their futures, and about how much they both hated living in an out-of-the-way town located in an out-of-the-way state barely more than a Tom Brady pass south of the Canadian border.
Not long after that they graduated to real dates: movies following Friday night football games, dinner at the one restaurant in town where the food wasn’t served by a kid from school on a molded plastic tray across a counter top. Small-town stuff that had formed the basis for relationships for generations.
Alicia was out of Eddie’s league. He knew it and so did most of his friends.
Or all of his friends, if he was being honest.
But he’d been nothing if not determined, and after a while the first forced, stilted conversations in the school hallways had given way to real communication and—maybe, if he was really lucky—actual romance.
Eddie had started the Alicia Project back in September mostly as an interesting challenge, to see if he could pull it off—and, of course, to get lucky in the event he was successful—but as the weeks went by he discovered he actually liked Alicia. She was funny and smart and sweet, and of course pretty, and best of all, she really seemed to dig him.
Eddie knew pursuing a relationship during his senior year was probably not the smartest thing he could have done. He’d already applied to Syracuse University and several other schools, all of which were located hundreds of miles from New Quebec. He’d been determined for as long as he could remember to leave this isolated little town in his rearview mirror as soon as he could manage it.
But there was no accounting for love, and he was beginning to think he might actually be in love, or something that could eventually translate into it.
Relationship concerns, though, were for another day. Tonight it was just he and Alicia and the six-pack of beer and bag of weed he’d scored from his brother Rob, a senior at the University of Maine at Orono.
They bounced along the trail until leaving Mountain View Road far behind. He figured he’d continue on a little farther for good measure, just to ensure they suffered no untimely interruptions. Then he would stop the car and kill the engine and it would be like he and Alicia were the only two people in the world, even though they were just a few miles outside of town. They’d pop a couple of brews, share a joint and let nature take its course.
Butterflies of anticipation fluttered inside Eddie’s stomach, and he could tell Alicia was nervous as well. The conversation had been strained as they drove the winding roads of New Quebec, its awkwardness reminding him of when they’d first met, and then dialogue melted away entirely after they turned onto the logging road.
“This is probably far enough,” Alicia said, turning in her seat and peering out the rear window. She sounded more than a little nervous, like she’d never been this far down one of the old trails before. Probably she hadn’t.
Eddie had to admit he felt the same. It was creepy out here. Behind the Chevy the thick forest and overcast skies combined to create an inky gloom that did a lot more to promote nightmares than romance.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” He had meant for the words to come out lightly, teasingly. But the darkness pressing in on the car seemed to suck the hum
or out of his voice, leaving it sounding weak and hesitant.
She didn’t answer the question. Instead she said, “You know, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I mean, it’s pretty isolated out here.”
Eddie chuckled. “That’s the point, remember? To find a little privacy? Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you. Besides,” he added, resting his hand on her inner thigh, “The paranoia’s not supposed to hit until after you get high.”
As he spoke, he eased the Chevy to a stop. Flicked off the headlights and shut down the engine. Pulling to the side of the trail was impossible, because there was no side of the trail. After decades of the forest reclaiming rightful ownership of its land, the road was barely wide enough to accommodate a single car.
“Care for a beer, babe?”
“I don’t mind if I do,” she answered, the words floating out of the darkness. Alicia was seated right next to him in the front seat, but the blackness was so complete if he hadn’t been touching her there would have been no way of knowing she was even there.
Eddie reached into the back seat and opened the cooler, relieved that Alicia’s voice now sounded a little less tense. Closer to normal. He cracked two cans and handed one across the bench seat. Took a long pull and listened as his—hopefully—girlfriend did the same.
“So I was thinking,” he said.
“About what?”
“About this.” He reached down and placed his beer can onto the floor next to the door.
Leaned over and felt for Alicia’s shoulder.
Then he slipped his right hand behind her head and pulled her close and began kissing her. He had intended to have a couple of beers and share a joint before getting down to business, but now that they were out here, and she was so close, and so pretty, and smelled so goddamned good, he just couldn’t convince himself to wait any longer.
She returned his kiss and he slipped his tongue into her mouth. She tasted like peppermint gum mixed with Budweiser. She tasted like love and lust and desire, and her lips were soft and warm. And willing.
The Lupin Project Page 1