The Tide (Book 5): Iron Wind

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “You need something more,” Meredith had said. “Something to justify using this ship.” A mischievous grin had cut over her face. “That second guest cabin is pretty swank. I mean, it’s bigger than my apartment. How do you feel about a laboratory at sea?”

  And just like that, the seed had been planted. Although the yacht was long gone, the things he’d learned aboard it had helped him choose the Huntress and her crew.

  But this ferry was nothing like the ship he’d grown to love. It lurched like a dinghy in a monsoon even with the gentlest of waves on the Congo. Creaks echoed up and down its superstructure, and the smell of death rode with the boat like a ghostly passenger. Besides the odor of diesel, the only thing familiar about this craft was its crew.

  “Looks like we got a couple of followers,” Meredith said, staring out a porthole. Several Skulls were loping along the shore. Most of the monsters that tried to keep pace with the ferry had fallen away. Either they had drowned in the murky depths of the winding river, or the knots of branches and roots had become too much for them. Foliage snagged their spikes and jutting bony appendages, snaring them and slowing them until they could no longer keep up.

  But the three still chasing them were the Olympic champions of Skulls. They ducked under tree limbs and used their claws like machetes, cutting through vines and leaves blocking their path.

  “Andris,” Dom said, turning to the Hunter.

  Andris turned from his perch on a stool beside Renee’s still form. He nodded, slowly standing, and grabbed his MK11. He trod to the hatch of the pilothouse and opened the door. Bracing himself on the handrails, he sighted the Skulls. Three quick suppressed shots later, the monsters lay in heaps of bone and blood, their bodies ready to be retaken by the voracious jungle. With no apparent joy, Andris sat himself next to Renee again and set to cleaning his rifle. Glenn dabbed at Renee’s forehead with a wet rag in an attempt to cool the fever that had taken hold.

  Dom eyed Renee’s hands. No sign of yellow or bony growths. If she had been infected with the Oni Agent, the bones in her fingers would have long since protruded into wicked, hooking claws. Glenn peeled back one of her eyelids and shone his flashlight, checking for the spider-webbing crimson vessels signaling the onset of an Oni Agent transformation. Her eyes were clear but unfocused.

  Dom’s stomach lurched with a wave of worry and hunger. Should eat. Can’t eat, Dom thought. Terrence shot Dom a worried glance from his post at the wheel. The ferry slowly curved around another clot of wrecked fishing boats. Dom waved Terrence’s concern away.

  He needed to be doing something, anything.

  “She’ll be okay,” Meredith said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  The small bit of comfort Meredith offered did nothing to stem the tide of anxiety and guilt. He felt as though everything he had done, from that first yacht to now, had been building up to this moment. He’d started the chain of events that had led to the deaths of those who had trusted him. He approached Renee with quiet footsteps so as not to disturb her.

  Andris scooted aside and let Dom settle into a spot on the deck next to the woman. Her eyelids fluttered slightly. Veins burned blue beneath the sickly pallor of her flesh. Her mouth worked, opening and closing as if she was trying to say something. She licked her cracked lips. Whatever was eating her insides, the antibiotics and other precautions Lauren had suggested seemed to be doing very little.

  An unexpected smile inched over her face. “When I was a girl,” she said, “I wanted to be a pirate.”

  Dom tried to smile back. “And that’s why you became a Hunter?”

  Renee let out a laugh. It sounded more like the ratcheting cough of an eighty-year-old man suffering from emphysema. “No, that’s why I became a gymnast.”

  She’d told the crew stories of the Olympic aspirations that had never come to fruition, but her gymnastics background had always been part of her. From the way she carried herself with a certain grace aboard the Huntress to her uncanny poise and quick reflexes in the field, there was no doubt about her athletic prowess. In his mind’s eye, Dom saw her leaping up the ladder to the IBSL, climbing toward the oil derrick on their first mission involving the Oni Agent. Her hands had met each rung with the surety of a gecko scaling a wall, carrying upward as if gravity itself had reversed its pull.

  But now that strength was fading. Maybe gone.

  “You became a gymnast because you wanted to be a pirate,” Dom echoed. “Not sure I follow the logic.”

  “Oh, the logic’s there. Just got to open your eyes,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “How else can I make ready the sails and swing on ropes down from the crow’s nest? Gotta climb the rope ladders and leap aboard an enemy ship, you know.”

  “I’m sorry you had to settle for the Huntress.”

  “I’m not,” Renee said, her smile quivering wider. “Not one bit. Being a Hunter is so much better than being a pirate. You’re not just my crew; you’re my family.”

  Dom pressed his lips straight, biting the inside of his cheeks.

  “Don’t mean to get sappy on you, Captain,” Renee continued, “but there are some things that need to be said.”

  “I’m sorry I got you hurt,” Dom said. “I’m sorry we didn’t turn back.”

  Renee scowled. “Don’t say that. We can’t turn back. Not now. Not when so many lives depend on us. We don’t give up, and we don’t back down. Never. If you had tried to anchor us in the middle of the ocean to wait for this storm to blow over, I never would’ve forgiven you.”

  “You would have mutinied,” Dom said with a dry chuckle. “Or you would’ve taken a Zodiac and gone on to fight the Skulls by yourself.”

  “Until my last bullet,” she agreed. Renee coughed and then shot Dom a scornful look when she saw the pity etched across his face. “Stop that. I know what you’re thinking. If you had tried to drag me back to the ship through that horde, we’d all be dead.”

  Dom didn’t acknowledge her scolding. “We’ve never operated in such a vacuum of intelligence.”

  “No,” Renee said. “We’re used to someone doing the dirty work for us. Telling us where to go, who to take out, what to retrieve. No one else is going to do it for us anymore. We’re on our own.”

  For a moment, fierce strength radiated through her eyes with all the brilliance of the sun. “We are what the world needs right now, Captain. We are the last resort.”

  Then the strength faded, burned out just as quickly as it had ignited. Dom grabbed one of her hands, feeling the clamminess of her palm. “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

  “You’re a terrible liar.” She made a playful gesture as if to punch him in the shoulder. On any other day, the blow would’ve left a bruise. But not today. Then her expression softened. “I’m about to get sappy again. Forgive me, okay?”

  “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

  Renee’s fingers clenched tighter around Dom’s. “My dad left us when I was a kid. Not man enough to stick around, I guess. I wished I had a father like you.”

  Dom’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes, unable to meet Renee’s gaze. She was all of thirty years old, but technically young enough to be his daughter. He’d never realized that he’d become a father figure to her, and the knowledge opened a hole in his heart, flooding him with emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I failed you, Renee.”

  He half expected her to scold him again, or to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. Anything would have been better than the silence that followed.

  Her eyes stared at nothing. Vacant.

  Renee’s fingers fell limp from his hand. He picked up her wrist and placed his ear above her mouth.

  No pulse.

  No breath.

  With two fingers, Dom closed Renee’s eyes.

  The rest of the crew stared, frozen. The tension in the air crept into Dom’s shoulders. His muscles quivered, and he closed his fingers so tightly around Renee’s wrist that they ached.

>   Not another one. Lost to the Skulls. Lost to the Oni Agent.

  Renee was dead because he’d pushed her too hard, relied on her too much.

  She’d taken the hit meant for him.

  She’d thought of him as a father.

  He couldn’t become a sniveling mess. He was supposed to be a soldier, a leader. A fighter. Strong as a boulder against the wind.

  But this wind blew with ice and sand. It was wearing him down. The Hunters had lost so many. And now they’d lost Renee.

  The ripples of her death spread in the pilothouse. Meredith trudged over to Dom and slumped beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder. Glenn wrapped his huge arms around Jenna, who buried her face into his chest. Andris stared blankly out the window, mumbling some prayer in Latvian and staring at the stars. Terrence punched his fist against the wheel, cursing under his breath even as a tear rolled down his cheek. Miguel rubbed his hand over his prosthetic, his eyes clenched tight as if he could will the tears not to flow.

  Dom looked around, watching his team fall apart. Their numbers were depleted. The government had turned its back on them. Their families and friends had perished in the Oni Agent outbreak.

  And still they chugged deeper into the Congo, closer to the place where he prayed and hoped they would find answers.

  If they didn’t find what they were looking for in Bikoro, if Renee had died for nothing, Dom wasn’t sure he could go on fighting.

  -29-

  Meredith leaned against Dom and tightened her arm around his shoulder. He sat like a statue. His eyes stared straight ahead at some point only he could see.

  The Hunters had witnessed death. Too much of it. Meredith had only just become a Hunter herself, and she hadn’t known Renee long. But the apocalypse had a funny way of bringing people closer together. Never had she imagined trusting so many people with her life in so short a time.

  But now, watching the grief-stricken faces, the wracking sobs, pounding fists, and muttered curses and prayers, she felt like a stranger. Seeing the Hunters fall apart made her realize that although she was nominally a member of their ranks, she wasn’t really one of them. Meredith felt strangely alone and unnerved, as if she’d walked into the wrong room at a funeral home and intruded on someone else’s grief.

  Waves lapped against the hull of the ferry. The ship rocked, and the broken windows around the pilothouse let in the songs of the jungle. Rustling branches. Territorial howling of primates—or were those Imps? Birds calling into the darkness. And the faraway hunting cry of a pack of Skulls.

  Another shrill sound broke through the pilothouse. Meredith jumped to her feet, her heart thumping wildly. Dom’s focus turned to her, and he pressed a finger to his earpiece. The others quieted, each listening to the words coming through their comm links, sharing expressions of disbelief.

  “Alpha, this is the Huntress,” Chao’s voice crackled over their comm links. “You’re not going to believe who we’ve got on the line.”

  “Did y’all miss me something fierce?” Frank said in an affected Texan accent.

  Silence met his remark. This should've been a moment for celebration. Frank had returned from the unknown, and apparently he had survived with his sense of humor intact.

  Dom let out a slow sigh. “Frank. Good to hear from you.”

  “Dom, you don’t sound—” Frank’s joking tone vanished. “Good God, Captain, did something happen? Something did happen, didn’t it?”

  “It’s Renee.”

  The line went silent. Static sizzled over the comm link for a moment.

  A new voice picked up. “Dom, come again? What’s wrong with Renee?” Lauren said.

  “She’s gone,” Dom said.

  “Passed out again? What’s her pulse rate?”

  “Lauren, she’s gone.”

  “She...did she turn?”

  “No, no. She’s not a Skull. She’s just dead.”

  Another beat of silence. Meredith waited, wishing there was something she could do. Something she could say. But again she was reminded of how she was still an outsider. These people had served beside each other in secrecy for years while she sat behind a desk. All that time, she’d been sending the Hunters on covert missions without even knowing their names.

  “I'm so sorry to hear that,” Lauren said, her voice shaky. “If she passed that quickly, it would’ve been impossible for you to get her to the ship on time. Even if you had, there’s likely nothing we could’ve done to make a difference.”

  Dom nodded as if the doctor could see him. The others seemed to accept Lauren’s assurances, either because they wanted to or they truly believed them. But Meredith saw the doubt in Dom’s eyes.

  Dom didn’t believe in impossibilities. He made the impossible happen. And worse yet, Lauren had mentioned there was “likely” nothing she could have done. That added bit of probability would leave a festering wound in Dom’s psyche for weeks, maybe months.

  But to Dom’s credit, he stood and paced to the chart table. He set his smartwatch on the table, and it projected a map onto the surface showing the East Coast of the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and the coast of Africa.

  “Frank, I’m glad to hear your voice,” he said. “Thought we lost you, too. How did you find us? And more importantly, how do we get you back?”

  “Long story short, I rescued a little girl, pretended to be her dad to get onto Kent Island, and then found those midshipmen we saved from Annapolis. They still had that radio you gave ’em. Oh, and I met Shepherd here, too. They said they’d help get me to the Huntress. We’re not quite sure how to get a chopper all the way to Africa. You wouldn’t happen to have one on hand, would you?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do. We’ve got a Coastie Huey they were nice enough to leave behind when we evicted them out of the Huntress.”

  “How in the hell...you know what? No. I won’t ask. Tell me later. Send me your coordinates, and I’ll work with Shepherd and the gang to see if I can get my ass over there.”

  Dom looked at Renee and touched the screen of his watch. The map vanished. “Make it fast, Frank. We’re hurting without our personal airline again. Chao, send Frank those coordinates.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Chao’s voice rang out over the comm link. He went on, his tone somber. “We’ve got more news for you.”

  Meredith’s heart sank.

  “What is it?” Dom asked, locking eyes with Meredith as if she would know.

  “I wanted to give you all a heads up,” Lauren answered. “I spoke with Navid about the Imps you saw. With Kara’s help, we sifted through the research literature. From what we know—and despite what we initially thought about Mad Cow disease—transmission of prions between different species is actually rather difficult and uncommon.”

  “But the Oni Agent itself is what’s spreading, not prions, right?” Meredith asked, unable to keep from speaking up.

  “Right. Since the Oni Agent is both the contagion and the prion factory, it might be able to jump between species more easily than previously studied prion diseases.”

  “Apes and primates can become Skulls then?” Meredith asked.

  “That’s our best guess.”

  Meredith scratched the bandage over her ear. “What about other animals?”

  “We don’t know how the calcification aspect of the Oni Agent might work in other animals, but we think the prions should only affect mammals. Still, from primates to wild dogs, there are about four hundred different mammalian species.”

  “Moral of the story,” Miguel said, “we got to watch our asses better.”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Lauren said.

  “Understood. How about updates on the Phoenix Compound?” Dom asked.

  “Navid designed a delivery system that theoretically gets it past the blood-brain barrier. Divya and Sean are testing it now.”

  “Good. Anything else to report?”

  A chorus of “No, Captain” rang out over the line.

  The brief communi
cation ended. Meredith took comfort in hearing of Frank’s return, but the cloud Renee’s death had cast still hung heavy over the Hunters. The promise of being one step closer to a real cure did little to buoy their moods against the threat of hundreds of species of creatures turned Skull. All around, the Hunters shared glum looks—Dom included.

  The glow of the sun spread like a distant wave breaking over gray clouds and the verdant canopy of the jungle. Already Meredith could feel the heat of the unrelenting sun burn through the windows and onto her skin.

  Dom crouched near Renee. He put a hand on her shoulder as he stared at Glenn and Jenna. “Prepare her for a burial at sea.”

  The duo nodded. Jenna disappeared into a storage closet and returned with a plastic tarp. Glenn helped her wrap Renee’s body in it.

  “How long until Bikoro?” Meredith asked Terrence.

  The man studied the charts lying on the rust-pocked table near him and peered through the cracked glass over several gauges. “At this rate, we’ve got anywhere from three days to a week or more depending on the conditions of the river.”

  “Why, you got a hot date with the chief?” Miguel asked.

  “Yeah, this is such a romantic cruise.” Meredith forced a grin. It seemed humor was Miguel’s best tool to deal with crises. But it wasn’t enough right now. No laughter, no smiles from the others. Bruises and scars covered their skin, but it wasn’t the physical injuries that worried her.

  Dark thoughts could be as infectious as any plague, and emotions could fester like an untreated wound. After a week trapped on this boat, she doubted any of them would be in good shape to take on whatever awaited the Hunters in Bikoro.

  ***

  Soldiers’ boots crunched over the gravel road outside the empty diner where Frank sat. He handed the radio to Rachel, and she stowed it in her pack. Beside her was Rory. Leigh sat sullenly next to Frank, and Shepherd was in civilian clothes on a chair at the end of the booth. Shepherd, it seemed, was determined to keep a low profile, biding his time. General Kinsey had accused him of some pretty damning stuff, and Shepherd was keeping his head down until the general pardoned him or declared him dead.