by Greig Beck
A lesser agent would have been momentarily distracted and perhaps have missed the almost imperceptible sound of the flattened steel pin of a stun grenade being removed.
The man stood to throw the explosive. At the same time, the woman also stood and fired twice in quick succession. The man took two shots to the forehead and hit the ground at roughly the same time as the grenade. The woman dived behind a couch, crushed her eyes shut and held her hands over her ears. Stun grenades were designed for maximum disorientation and had little shrapnel; however, they could destroy eardrums or maim if they landed close by.
The small black cylinder exploded with an ear-shattering whump and a flash that would have seared the woman’s retinas for days. The impact wave blew out all the windows, and the pyrotechnic metal oxidant set fire to the rug and most of the furniture.
The woman stood, her ears still ringing even though they’d been covered. She crossed to the table where the missile schematics lay, stuffed them under her robes, then ran to the kitchen and retrieved her bag. She looked down at the black gun she still gripped; the hand that held it was as steady as a rock. In the meat between her thumb and forefinger was a small tattoo – a blue Star of David.
She quickly wiped the weapon and threw it onto the burning rug, then spoke to the dead man. ‘And there will always be thousands more like us waiting for you.’
She pulled on her gloves and slid the glasses back onto her nose. She pressed a small stud at the side of one lens and spoke softly. ‘Blue Star requesting immediate extraction.’
The emotionless voice spoke into her ear again: ‘Extraction authorised.’ And then: ‘Be advised, Blue Star, Arcadian conscious.’
She almost stumbled as her body, already awash with adrenaline, kicked up another gear. Awake, she thought. At last.
She drew in a long breath, calming her urge to rush. She bent slightly at the knees and waist before she pulled open the door. Once again, an old woman suffering from the heat shuffled down a winding street in the city of Beirut.
*
Adira Senesh couldn’t take her eyes from the figure on the bed. She found it hard to associate the mucus-covered thing staining the sheets with the strong, handsome HAWC soldier she had known. Alex Hunter had been – was – like no human being she had ever seen or probably ever would again. Adira’s jaw clenched and she felt her anger rise at fate’s cruel joke. She had told Alex she would take him horse riding along the shore of the Sea of Galilee; to stand on the purple cliffs of the Golan Heights. She had wanted to show him her Israel. Now he was here and yet he wasn’t. It wasn’t fair.
Together, they had faced horror and death, and he had saved her life. In turn she had stopped the Americans from cutting him into a thousand pieces for study. She drew in a deep breath. The man she knew was buried in there somewhere. She was sure of it.
She became aware of the scientist next to her talking.
‘Although we’d kept the specimen at extremely low temperatures, the bacterium was still active in his system – just slowed to a point of near inactivity.’
‘The specimen,’ she echoed, feeling her rage increasing further.
Weisz nodded, unaware of her reaction, and continued. ‘And then a week ago it inexplicably resumed its vigorous progress. We don’t know what triggered it, but it didn’t leave us with many options. Nothing has worked against its aggressive progress to date. In my opinion, this thing is straight from Hell. You’ve seen what it can do to flesh? We extracted and cultivated some of the bacteria immediately on the specimen’s arrival at the facility, then injected it directly into several chimpanzees. In twenty-four hours, they were liquid – muscle, hair, even bone. We had to incinerate the remains in an industrial furnace, as the residue was still active and aggressively infectious.’
Weisz nodded towards the bed. ‘With the bacterium active again, it would have been the same with this specimen. Within twenty-four to forty-eight hours we would have had nothing left to work with. So we immediately brought the body temperature back up to sixty degrees, just below room temperature, and increased the dosage for the Arcadian treatment that was brought in with him. We have no idea how his body metabolises the chemical compounds, as they’ve proved fatal to every other subject they’ve been administered to. But ever since, his body has been squeezing out the denatured Hades bacterium.’
Weisz looked like he was about to touch the man’s face, but instead let his gloved fingers hover just above the slimy flesh. ‘The microorganism is now fully degraded; the tertiary and secondary structures, the bonding interactions, are all fully disrupted. Seems the treatment, and the specimen’s unique metabolism, are the only systems that can mount a defence to overwhelm the invaders.’ He shrugged. ‘If only we knew how they do it.’ He straightened. ‘Every now and then he wakes, yells a few garbled sentences, then lapses back into unconsciousness.’
Adira pushed past the scientist and leaned slightly towards the figure on the bed. When she saw the leather and canvas cuff restraints on his hands and feet, she felt her heart rate start to lift. Anger bloomed in her belly and her lips compressed in displeasure.
Weisz chortled, probably interpreting her expression as disgust at the smell or the man’s physical appearance. ‘Go ahead, it’s safe to be close. Just won’t be very pleasant until the body’s finished excreting the microorganism’s protein shell. The suit I’m wearing is regulation for this level, not specifically for protection from this oily, oversized goyim.’ He smiled and used his pen to prod Alex’s body through a clean section of the sheet. ‘I, personally, have taken several slices from the subject and I can guarantee there is no viable infectious agent remaining.’
Adira felt a charge go through her body. It was the same feeling she had before she killed an enemy agent. She steeled herself, closing her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, she turned to face the scientist, using all her will to keep her voice even. She failed, her voice increasing in intensity on each word. ‘You are anatomising? Who authorised this?’
The force of her voice and gaze seemed to make Weisz suddenly unsure of himself.
‘Uh, the general, General Shavit. He authorised the increase in temperature on the basis that the subject was useless to us in a nexus between life and death – too alive to dissect, too dead to consciously assist us in our testing. We hoped the raised temperature and dosage would retrieve him to a state we could work with. And it worked.’
Adira felt her mouth go dry. ‘You are not working with him. You are working on him!’
The scientist stepped back as her glare turned volcanic. He must have realised she was no simple functionary sent by the ministry. Adira moved closer to the scientist, not sure what she was intending to do to him. Before she could act, the figure on the bed reached out and grabbed her around the wrist. The thick straps of the heavy leather restraints hung from his wrist like tattered streamers.
Adira grunted, first from shock, then from pain. Alex still hadn’t opened his eyes, but he hadn’t reached out blindly; he’d seemed to know where she was. She gritted her teeth at the excruciating pain as his grip compressed the bones in her forearm.
Weisz dropped his clipboard and moved to a panel of buttons on the wall, obviously intending to call in security.
‘Stay where you are!’ Adira’s voice froze his hand in midair.
Weisz stood rigid for a few seconds, before edging towards the door.
Adira groaned as Alex dragged her towards the bed. ‘Alex, do you know me? Do you know who I am?’ She brought her other hand around to try to dislodge his fingers, but she might as well have been working on steel. ‘Alex, please.’
His eyes opened and she saw spidery red and black veins ringing the once grey-green pupils.
‘It’s coming!’ he shouted and his grip tightened even more. ‘She’s scared. She needs me! I need to go.’
He released her wrist and sat up, the restraint on his other arm parting like paper. Blobs of dark jelly slid from his face and torso. He coughed, sp
raying more black mucus onto the bed. He slowly brought a hand up to the side of his head and groaned deeply. ‘It hurts.’ He looked at her, and his eyes seemed to register recognition for the first time. ‘You.’
The first dart took him in the shoulder, the second directly over the heart. The following four went in anywhere the security detail could hit. His hands dropped, and he looked down at the darts piercing his body in confusion before he slumped back on the bed.
Adira screamed in horror and leaped at Alex to pull one of the hypodermic darts from his chest. Before she could grab another, she was seized from behind – one hand on her arm, one on her hair – and pulled roughly backwards. In her volatile frame of mind, it was a mistake – she reacted violently, spinning quickly to strike the first man under the chin with the flat of her hand. His head shot back on his bull-like neck and he fell backwards like a plank of wood.
She brought the other hand around to use the back of her fist on the next man. He dropped the handcuffs he was carrying and staggered backwards, but not before her other hand had shot out to chop into his windpipe, crushing it. He went down on his knees, his tongue protruding, and clawed at his neck, making a gagging sound as his remaining air ran out.
She turned to the other two men, her legs planted in a fighter’s stance, hands up and ready. They held their position, looked from Adira to Alex, then back to her. Her furious gaze burned into them, its meaning clear – back off. They shrugged and edged out of the room, dragging their incapacitated colleagues with them.
Adira heard the door lock, and her shoulders slumped. Now what?
She walked to a metal sink in the corner of the room and wet a cloth she found there. She returned to sit on the edge of the bed and gently bathed more of the dark, oily substance from Alex’s face, smiling as the clear skin shone through.
‘Welcome back, my Arcadian.’
SIX
‘Young lady’s name is Amanda Jordan – big Brad Jordan’s wife. I know him – he’s a good fella.’ Officer Markenson nodded towards the woman on the hospital bed. ‘She’s busted up pretty bad. But the real problem seems to be more inside her head. The doc says she’s catatonic, won’t say a word, and I don’t think she’s even blinked once since we pulled her off the slope.’
Markenson waved his hand in front of the woman’s face, then made a throwing motion at her staring eyes. She didn’t flinch.
‘Stop that.’ Chief Logan frowned at his officer, then looked at the cuts, abrasions and plaster cast on the young woman’s arm, before turning back to Markenson. ‘Whatta we know? Where’s her husband now?’
Markenson shrugged. ‘Still up there. Looks like they decided to trek to the top of the mountain – we think the weather gave them an early taste of winter, and I guess they either got caught in an avalanche or had a fall. Or maybe they had an argument that turned ugly – there was blood on one of her gloves.’
Chief Logan grunted. ‘Can’t rule anything out until we find him, or she speaks. What about her effects – anything?’
‘The blood traces on her glove are being analysed now. We know from Brad Jordan’s driver’s licence that he is type A. Medical Examiner’s office is gonna give me a call when they’re done. There was also a camera around her neck – case was busted, but we think the memory chip inside can still be read. Johnson was going to try and download it back at base.’ Markenson shrugged again. ‘And that’s about it, Chief.’
Logan stepped back from the bed. ‘Okay, give Harley a heads-up – we might need his dogs for a ground search.’ Logan frowned. ‘Not even winter yet – way too early for people to start falling off the mountain. Call me if something interesting turns up on the camera or with the blood trace.’
‘You got it, Chief . . . And Chief . . .?’
Logan paused.
Markenson waved his hand in front of the woman’s blank face again. ‘It’s goddamn freaky though, ain’t it?’
Logan rolled his eyes. ‘Just have the ME and Johnson send me the information ASAP.’
*
Arriving at the station, Chief Logan eased in behind his desk, making room for a stomach that had seen way too much fast food and cold beer. He pulled the bagel from its bag and laid it gently on the brown paper, then took the lid from his coffee and savoured the aroma for a few seconds. He sighed contentedly: his morning ritual – bagel, coffee and the newspaper; a small pool of calm in a sea of chaos. He was in early this morning, even with his stop-off at the hospital, planning to coordinate several searches and investigative cases that ranged from the trivial to the bizarre. That was in addition to slogging through his usual mountain of paperwork. He lifted the bagel and took a bite, then unfolded the stiff newspaper – and stopped chewing.
‘Oh fuck, no.’
He closed his eyes briefly and swallowed the dry lump of dough. He opened them and looked at the headline again – he’d read it right the first time: Lion on the Loose – Two Missing.
The story, from an unnamed source, mentioned the Wilson girl and Brad Jordan in the first paragraph. Then it had some wonderfully sarcastic quotes from Jason Van Hortenson about his damned missing Lakenvelder cows, and if that wasn’t enough, the type was all crowded around a grainy photograph of Amanda Jordan sitting up zombie-like in bed. The picture caption: Big cat got her tongue?
Logan’s first thought was to track down whoever had breached the hospital’s security to take the photograph, but then he realised that it didn’t matter – the information was in the open and already travelling like a shockwave out from the town.
You read a headline that says Joe Citizen Missing on the Mountain, you shrug and move to the sports page. But you see Lion on the Loose, and Joe Citizen Missing and you’re damn well gonna read the whole story . . . and then tell all your friends, who’ll tell all their friends.
Logan looked at his bagel, but his appetite had deserted him.
As if on cue, the phone rang. He sucked in a long breath and said to the phone without lifting the receiver, ‘Good morning, Mayor; what kept you?’
This was going to get ugly.
He lifted the handset. ‘Good morning, Mayor . . .’
*
Logan threw the report onto his already overcrowded desk and sat down heavily, swivelling his chair to face his computer. He flipped the folder open with one hand and used the other to open his email. Immediately, his inbox filled with messages. His eyes moved from the report to the messages and then back again as he tried to manage the two things at once. He felt a sense of pressure and urgency . . . and the morning was still young.
After the call from the mayor, he’d been straight on to Markenson, taking a big bite out of him for not keeping him in the loop about the lion’s escape. Now he was in a race to read the facts report, knowing full well he’d already promised the mayor he’d have things under control in twenty-four hours. And pigs might fly. He snorted and shook his head; the damned mayor had been better briefed than he was. He made a note on his pad – Never talk to the mayor. He’d make sure that was on his list of items for the next departmental briefing.
He read the email messages with quick darting eyes, deleting most as he went, until he came to the last two. One was from the Asheville Medical Examiner, and the other was from Johnson, with attachments. The man had managed to extract the Jordan woman’s photographs from the busted camera.
‘Good man,’ Logan said over his cold coffee.
There were fifty-five shots – Logan pasted them up on his screen in rows and moved quickly through the timeline of Brad and Amanda’s last hours together. There was the smiling couple loading the car, stopping for a sandwich and soda on the way to the mountain, with several shots of the side of Brad’s huge jug-eared head as he was driving. Logan flipped through them quickly – there was no sign of any tension, both the young man and woman looked happy and relaxed with each other.
He slowed his review – they had arrived. A shot of Brad pointing up at the Black Dome peak. If nothing else, it gave Logan a pl
ace to start, and he should at least be able to identify the path they took.
He stopped at a surprising view out over the other mountains. It was a good shot, and they were high up. White specks told him that the snow had been falling quite heavily. He played around with the image for a while – enlarging, removing shading and brightness, focusing in on certain quadrants. It didn’t do any good; he couldn’t determine where they were. He’d spent plenty of time up on the mountain and he didn’t know anywhere at that height that was so opened up from the trees. Basically, there just shouldn’t have been a view like the one in the photograph.
‘Must’ve found a new spot,’ he said to the screen.
He tagged the image, moved it to the side of his screen, and stopped again at the next shot – a block of carved stone. The next image was the same, just at a slightly different angle. He shook his head; the symbols meant nothing to him. He tagged the shots and continued.
The next shot made the chief frown and lean forward – there was something on a pathway at the edge of the cliff. He didn’t recognise the path or what he was seeing. Was it a figure? Didn’t look right. He couldn’t work out the scale as there were no trees, and it was hard to make out the content as the snow looked heavier in this shot. It also didn’t help that Brad’s parka was obscuring half the shot; looked like Amanda had been standing behind him.
Logan finished his coffee while staring at the image, and grimaced at the cold metallic taste. He shrugged and dropped the cup into his wastebasket, moved the photo to the side and went on. The first shot reappeared – so, that was it.
He took down some notes: Climb towards Dome? New lookout and new path opened up on mountainside – high (6000+ feet) – possible slip? Stone artifact – valuable? Fight because it was valuable? Figure on pathway – man, bear, tree, unknown?
He looked at his notes – not much to go on. Better than nothing, he thought, and reached back to the keyboard to open the message from the ME. His brow furrowed as he read the clinical diagnostic results of the blood analysis from Amanda Jordan’s glove.