“I need you to wake up now.”
She stirred and turned her face toward his. Her forehead was hot against his neck, despite how badly she shivered. She struggled to keep her eyes open and focused on him.
He knelt, set her on the ground, and propped her back against the trunk of a tree. Her eyes widened with fear and her lashes welled with tears.
“G-go on,” she whispered. “I’ll be…all right.”
Brooks felt his heart break. She thought he was leaving her there and continuing without her.
He tipped up her chin so she couldn’t look away.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
She tried to smile, but only ended up crying harder and clutching his hand.
He placed the rest of the bistort and the larvae in her palm. She stared down at them for a few seconds, then looked him in the eyes as she shoved them all into her mouth and started to chew.
Brooks leaned across her and pointed in such a way that she could see straight down his arm.
“See those flags? That’s the bridge. I estimate the distance to be under a quarter-mile. You’ll need to go down those rocks over there and cut through the forest along the edge of the gorge until you reach it. Once you cross, go as far as you can before you have to stop and find someplace to hide.”
“I don’t think—”
“You can do this, Adrianne. You’re the most determined woman I’ve ever met. I need to you be that person now.”
“What about you?”
“Just keep going. I’ll catch up with you. And if I don’t… Remember that old farmhouse with the shutters? The one we passed on the way in? Get there. I have a feeling they’ll know what to do.”
“Come with me.”
“You’d better believe I’ll be right behind you, but we won’t get very far with them right on our heels.”
“You can’t be thinking of confronting—”
He kissed her with everything he had, willing his strength into her. And in that moment he made an unspoken promise to her that he fully intended to keep.
“Now listen carefully. This is the most important part. When you reach the bottom of this cliff, you need to cover yourself with mud as quickly as you can. Hurry and get as close as you dare, but don’t attempt to cross until you hear my signal. Then get your butt across the river. I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to give you.”
“How will I know the signal?”
He reached behind his back and removed the pistol from beneath his waistband.
“It’ll be pretty hard to miss.”
“But there’s only one—”
“You just get yourself across the bridge. Trust me. I have everything worked out.” He hoped his smile conveyed more confidence than he felt. “We need to hurry and make our move while we still can.”
He stood and offered his hand.
Her hand shook when she reached for his. Her grip was weak, but to her credit she pulled herself up and stared down into the mist.
“Don’t you dare leave me now,” she whispered.
“Like I said, it’s going to take a lot more than this to get rid of me.”
He pulled her to him and kissed her one last time. Without a word, he turned and headed away from the river before he lost his nerve. He didn’t look back. He had to trust that she would make it on her own or all of this was for naught.
His pulse thrummed so loudly in his ears it reminded him of the sound of primitive war drums. Each breath came faster until he was on the verge of hyperventilation. If this plan failed or the weapon somehow fired prematurely, he was going to get a really good look at whatever these things were.
He suddenly understood why Brandt—the Brandt from the institute bearing his name—had never come back. If he had seen even half of what Brooks had and escaped with his life, then the prospect of ever returning must have scared the living hell out of him. It was no wonder he opted to send others in his stead, especially knowing how close he must have come to one of them in order to cast its face. As it was, Brooks had seen little more than hairy shapes crashing through the branches and a silhouette from the distance. And despite all of the death and the lies and his growing fear, his professional curiosity had never been more aroused. He wanted to see one of them up close before he left or he’d never be able to forgive himself. It would be his greatest regret and one he’d have to live with for the rest of his life…because there was no way he was ever coming back.
There was a reason this secret remained so carefully guarded. With all of the technology at their disposal, geneticists could use the virus like a skeleton key to unlock the Pandora’s box that was human evolution. Mankind had already demonstrated its willingness to advance science at all costs, even if it meant wielding it like a sword. People of all races and walks of life would be subjected to experimentation, both willingly and against their wills. Governments would set about creating super soldiers and corporations would use the knowledge to enslave humanity.
Brooks recalled Adrianne’s words.
Nature perseveres, but in its own best interests, not in those of any particular species. The ecosystem must always remain in a state of balance. Any major shift would prove catastrophic.
Nature had found a way to contain this mutation inside of one of the most isolated regions on the planet. It was never meant to get out, but rather to serve as a small, but integral piece of the complex puzzle that was Motuo. The evolution of some subset of man as an apex predator released upon an unsuspecting world would be more than catastrophic; it would be an extinction-level event.
No evolutionary anthropologist could view it as anything else.
So why had Brandt sent other expeditions into this horrible place knowing that the secrets could never be made public knowledge, when even he had already shown his commitment to suppressing the discovery? It was a contradiction on so many levels. If anyone from Brooks’s team managed to return home, they would undoubtedly be in some stage of infection. For whatever reason, Brandt wanted the virus, but he had no intention of sharing it. So what did he intend to do with it?
Brooks followed a game trail down from the high ground, clinging to the bushes that somehow grew from the steep slope. He skinned his knees and thrust his hands into brambles, but he hardly felt it. The throbbing in his head occupied all of his attention. He could feel the source of the pain in three dimensions, from his temples all the way inside to his corpus callosum and along the length of his optic nerves and into his eyes. The pressure in his sinuses was beyond anything he’d ever experienced.
He isolated the course of the main path—and the route of least resistance to the bridge—from just above the level of the canopy.
The rain started to fall once again as he descended into the camphorwoods and elms. The wind arose with a howl and violently tossed the upper reaches, which clamored with the siege of raindrops. He hadn’t anticipated this contingency and its potential impact on his plan, but it was too late to worry about it now. Adrianne had to be nearing the bottom of the cliff by now, if not already smearing mud all over herself.
He found his own reeking pool swarming with mosquitos near the path. He had neither the time nor the patience to apply it. He simply dropped to the ground and rolled around in it until he was so covered he had to claw it out of his eyes and off of his lips. Maybe it was an unnecessary precaution, but he could think of no other reason the predators hadn’t already found them.
He flung the excess mud from his hands. With as badly as he smelled, he’d want to stay as far away as possible, too.
The path was less than fifty feet away. He approached it with as much caution as he could afford. Even if Adrianne was still holding her own, whatever reserves she’d tapped wouldn’t be bottomless.
Brooks stopped within clear sight of the trail. The way the trees shook, he couldn’t tell if it was caused by the wind or something else. At least there was nothing standing on the path directly ahead of him, which was about as muc
h as he could have hoped for.
He stepped out onto the trail and looked quickly one way, then the other. Both directions led into deep darkness and overhanging trees. This section looked somewhat familiar, but not familiar enough to pinpoint his location. Maybe just under a third of a mile to his right was the bridge, now so far away he couldn’t hear the river. Of course, with as hard as it was raining now, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it anyway. At least it helped conceal the less than surreptitious sounds of his movements.
There was standing water on the path and he could feel the rain that penetrated the canopy washing the mud from his hair and down his neck. He couldn’t risk staying out in the open for very long.
He drew the pistol from the back of his pants, made sure the safety was on, and then ducked into the bushes on the opposite side of the path. He found a camphorwood tree around which dozens of saplings shot up toward the gap in the canopy. The one he wanted was roughly three feet tall and grew directly beneath a sturdy horizontal branch of the larger tree. He stripped the leaves from the sapling and tore off all of the side branches until it was nothing but a long green stick rooted in the ground. The overhanging branch was roughly the width of his finger and bent easily with the application of pressure. He stripped it, too, and fed it straight through the trigger guard until the Type 54 hung from the branch above the naked sapling. He pushed down on the larger branch and threaded the tip of the sapling through the trigger guard as well, then pulled it back down upon itself. It bent like a stiff cord and pulled the gun downward with it, forcing the upper branch to bow and placing enough pressure on the trigger to fire the gun if the safety were disengaged. He tied the sapling back to itself as tightly as he could and held it in place while he inspected his work.
It wasn’t prefect by any means, but it just might work.
He carefully released the sapling and watched the knot draw even tighter. It wouldn’t hold forever, which was was the whole point.
He searched the ground around his feet and found a damp twig the width of a paintbrush. He broke off a piece about an inch in length and wedged it inside the trigger guard, only this time in the slim gap behind the trigger itself. It was barely wide enough to stay in place and would undoubtedly either fall out if jostled hard enough by the recoiling branch or snap in half under the steady application of sustained pressure.
Brooks stepped back and did his best to steady his hands. There was only one thing left to do.
He turned to the west and prepared to run for his life is this didn’t work like he’d drawn it up in his head.
A deep breath in.
His heart hammered so hard and fast it was all he could hear.
Blew it out slowly.
He reached for the side of the pistol, right above the trigger…
And flipped off the safety catch.
Part X:
Yeh-Teh
Forty-six
Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin
Motuo County
Tibet Autonomous Region
People’s Republic of China
October 17th
Today
The trigger bit down on the tiny stick, which bent against the pressure and made a distinct cracking sound, but didn’t break.
It wouldn’t last long, though.
Brooks glanced at the knot in the sapling. It was already starting to unravel.
His heart leapt into his throat.
It was going to fire too soon.
He dove away from the booby trap and crawled into the bushes. The ruckus of the storm assailing the upper reaches masked the sounds of his passage. He stayed low to the ground and moved as fast as he dared.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
He lowered himself to his belly to decrease his visibility and dragged himself though the mud with his elbows and knees.
Twenty-five feet.
Thirty.
He rolled over onto his back and used his heels alone.
Thirty-five feet.
Forty.
All the while he searched the trees overhead for any sign of the predators lurking in the shadows. The mud served to decrease the noise of his exertions and reduce the friction, making it so he almost glided across the ground.
He risked a faster pace. His heels squelched in the mud and his shoulders shook the branches. Faster still.
He lost track of his distance from the trap, but the farther he was from it when it went off, the better his chances.
Any second now the twig would snap or the knot would release and the gun would fire. When it did, he needed to be prepared for everything within earshot to converge on the sound.
And then he needed to be ready to run.
The boughs passed in the darkness above him. The shadows were alive with expectation. He saw silhouettes where there were none and movement behind the swaying branches and shivering leaves. He had no doubt that at any moment he would look up and see something looking back down at—
A piercing pain on the back of his head. It traveled through his skin and toward his left ear.
Brooks stopped and reached for his scalp. He felt the warmth of blood. The grime from his fingertips burned the laceration. He traced it toward his ear until he found where the thorny branch was still hooked under the skin.
The pain made his eyes water, but he resisted crying out. He pried it out and put pressure on the wound to stanch the bleeding. If he was right about their evolved sense of smell, then there was one scent that would summon them faster than all others, and that was fresh—
A dark shape materialized from the shaking branches overhead. Leaves and twigs fell to the ground all around him.
Brooks held his breath and watched as the silhouette drew contrast from the shadows. A hunched form crouched on a thick bough maybe twenty feet above him, holding on with both hands and feet. Its wet hair hung in ropes beneath it like Spanish moss. Its knees were bent straight up, its thighs pressed against its chest. Above them loomed a head with human contours and dimensions.
It rocked back, thrust its face to the sky, and drew a long inhalation he could hear from all the way down on the forest floor.
When it made no immediate move, Brooks nearly breathed a sigh of relief.
Its head snapped down and its body stiffened.
Even though he couldn’t see its eyes, he could feel them scanning the bushes beneath which he hid.
Lightning flickered in the distance, freezing the raindrops in midair. He caught the merest flash of reflection from its eyes. And then they were gone.
Thunder crashed.
There was no longer anything up there.
Brooks slowly released his breath and held perfectly still. Had it not smelled him and moved on? He slowly bent his knees in preparation of pushing off again and—
Movement from the corner of his eye.
He turned to see the branches to his right part, then fall back into place.
His heart pounded so hard he feared it would give him away.
The bushes moved again, closer this time.
It knew he was in there.
He looked lower to the ground and saw the outline of two hairy legs through the leaves. They took a step closer. Paused. Took another still. He saw a foot with the great toe turned inward—a hallux varus configuration common in primates—like an opposable thumb on the foot.
A flurry of sniffing.
Brooks held his breath and pressed the back of his head into the mud in hopes of concealing the smell of his blood.
The branches were again ripped aside and he saw the silhouette of shoulders and the side of a face. Its prominent jaw bulged outward as though closing its lips over a slice of orange.
The leaves fell back into place and again he saw the movement of legs. Barely two feet from his right shoulder.
It would see him this time. There was no doubt in his mind. The leaves directly overhead shook as fingers with long, ragged nails reached into the bush and—
Tho
om!
The entire shrub shook as the shadow bolted toward the source of the gunshot. Its legs flew past in a blur.
The report rolled through the valley.
Shadows darted through the canopy high above him, moving with such speed he could barely see them, let alone count how many of them tore through the foliage.
Brooks flipped over and propelled himself through the bushes and toward the path. He hit the trail running and prayed he’d given himself a big enough head start.
The branches whipped at him from either side. He threw his arms up in front of his face and tried to navigate the narrow corridor through the forest. The slick ground did its best to rob him of his balance. He was still so far from the river he could barely hear it.
A booming roar from behind him.
They’d discovered his ruse. The hunt was on.
Ahead, the fog descended through the lower canopy and surrounded the trunks, limiting visibility. The Yarlung Tsangpo called to him from a seemingly insurmountable distance.
He was already panting and the muscles in his legs burned. If he fell now, he feared he wouldn’t be able to get up again. And even if he did, any time he lost would cost him what little separation he had.
The sound of the river grew louder until it became a physical force against his chest. The ground sloped steeply downward so abruptly that he left his feet and slid through the runoff into a waiting rhododendron, which helped him to struggle to his feet once more.
Crashing from the trees behind him, but he couldn’t spare a backward glance. He knew what it meant.
They’d already caught up with him.
He wasn’t going to make it.
More crashing sounds and swaying branches uphill to his left.
A flash of lightning froze the world around him. He saw raindrops and leaves and the pile of stones at the bend ahead, where the cairn had once stood.
The trees all around him positively shook.
He was so close…
Thunder pealed as he burst from the forest and sprinted toward the bridge. The wind buffeted him and assaulted him with raindrops. The thinning fog rolled past beneath the bridge at the behest of the gale.
Fearful Symmetry: A Thriller Page 29