by M. C. Norris
“The attacked without provocation?” Nate asked.
“Not exactly.” The hijacker swiveled his scalped head in Nate’s direction. “The Marine turned the gun on them, and he shot and killed one of them before running off. That’s when everything went south. I was the only one they spared, probably because they saw me as being an enemy to the rest of you guys.”
“They got that right,” Dale said.
“But, it wasn’t before they did all of this to me,” the hijacker whispered, “and they’re not finished. They’ll be coming for the rest of you. They know things, impossible things, things that they shouldn’t know. They know about the vector. He’s the one who they really want.”
“The vector, the vector. Here we go again with that mumbo-jumbo,” Donovan said.
“Yeah, maybe we ought to start with the simple things first,” Dale said, stepping forward, and bending down. “Who the hell are you, and what the happened up there on that plane?”
“My name’s John.”
“John Doe, or John Smith?” Donovan said.
“John Woodard. I was working for the United Nations, in health and disease control. What happened up there on that plane was a terrible accident. It was supposed to be a quick and clean job. We were trying to save lives.”
“I believe you screwed the pooch on that one.”
“What happened up there was not my fault. No one was supposed to get hurt. None of that was part of—”
“Like hell it wasn’t your fault.”
“If it wasn’t your fault, then whose fault was it? Huh, tough guy?”
“Wait a minute,” Nate said. “Let’s hear what he has to say. What do you mean when you say that you were trying to save lives?”
The hijacker breathed deeply, shooing a cloud of haranguing gnats that haloed his skinned head. He closed his eyes slowly, and then reopened them. “Those weren’t U.S. Marshals transporting a prisoner. They were CIA.”
“Who was the monkey on their leash?” Dale asked.
“That would be the vector. We don’t know his identity. All that we do know is that he’s carrying a deadly virus, the likes of which we’ve never seen. Causes—horrible symptoms, bleeding from every orifice of the body, rapid organ shutdown. Authorities discovered him two weeks ago, wandering naked and confused through Zaire in an area known as the Ebola River Valley.”
“What did the CIA want with him?” Nate asked.
“What does the CIA always want with a potential weapon of mass destruction?”
“Hang on a minute, now,” Donovan said, dropping both hands in a chopping gesture. “You trying to tell us—that you’re the friggin’ good guy, here?”
The hijacker’s eyes flicked up to lock on those of Donovan. “We have good reason to believe that the vector—as we’ve been referring to him—is carrying an experimental, weaponized virus.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Nate asked.
“Implants. Evidence of hasty surgical procedures. Implanted technology. I saw the x-rays myself, and I’d never seen anything like what he’s got sewed up inside of him. Two days after quarantine in Zaire, he was nabbed by the CIA. You do the math.”
“Are you a scientist?” Sandy asked.
“Hardly. I’m just a hired specialist. My squad’s orders were to return the vector to U.N. custody in Zaire, dead or alive.”
“Who would’ve spawned a deadly virus like that, and why?” Sandy asked.
“The why part is easy. Who? That’s the mystery. The Americans, Russians, Chinese … we don’t know. All likely candidates, but Zaire has no international enemies, no resources or valuable territory. All they have are people. Lots of people. It was almost as if the vector was dropped into an overpopulated zone for maximal damage.”
“Maybe it was some kind of an experiment,” Dale said. “You know, like a trial run. Someone might’ve been testing out their new killer bug on some poor country, see if it’s catchy or not.”
John the hijacker nodded. “We believe that to be a distinct possibility.”
“Guess this brings us to the million dollar question,” Dale said, licking his lips, and gazing around their camp through anxious eyes. “Where in the hell are we?”
“You just said it,” John said, narrowing his eyes up at Dale. Gnats fizzed around the bloody hole in the center of his face. “Hell. We’ve fallen straight down into Hell.”
CHAPTER SIX
28-D
Hart crashed through dense thickets, ripped down curtains of ensnarled vines. Growling, shambling through reefs of stinging nettles, he flung his numbed arm from side to side like a battle flail. He didn’t care. The pain was making him crazy. They were hurting him on purpose, refusing to produce any more anesthetic. It was their way of punishing him. They wanted him to suffer for disobeying. They meant to break his spirit, to enslave his mind. Turned out, the worms weren’t really his friends after all. Yeah, they’d cared for his wounds, but Hart was beginning to find out that there were some pretty stiff conditions attached to the treatment. They were just using him like a demolition derby car, just like everyone in the film industry had always used him. Whenever something came up that was too risky for their actors, they’d send in the expendable fool, the crash dummy. Taking hits for weaker masters seemed to be his whole lot in life.
He was about to show his new controllers who was really the boss. Dragging his forearm across his lips, he smeared away the slathering of yellow eggs. He was done with this. His mouth was not going to be their stupid nest. He sucked the gobbets from his teeth, and spat the next generation of worms all over the jungle. Balling his hand into a sledgehammer, he smashed his fist down against the bullet hole in his thigh, splattering the gelatinous mass, and the worms beneath it, across his blue jeans. The pain that followed was excruciating. Maybe not the best idea. He collapsed into the nettles, shivering, tears spilling from his eyes, but he refused to scream. Somewhere nearby, he heard someone else scream, but he couldn’t imagine that they were any worse off than him.
It took a few seconds before the agony subsided to a tolerable level, and he was able to rise once again from the briars. The worms were furious with him. They were biting, boring, corkscrewing hot tunnels through his flesh. It was maddening. He wanted to peel back his skin from the underlying muscle, and start picking those little devils out one at a time, crushing them into between his fingernails. However, he knew that there were way too many inside him, probably thousands, and he was stuck with them. He could fight them, but not forever, because it hurt too much. Eventually, they’d break him. The freedom he’d always taken for granted was suddenly boiled down to a single choice that the worms allowed him to make: choose the hard road, or the easy one, to the exact same destination.
There was another scream, followed by a gunshot.
Hart swung his heavy head in the direction of all the commotion. Yes, there were definitely some people needing bit over there. It was starting to become imperative that he sink his teeth into someone, and he didn’t think that it was the influence of the worms. It was his own decision, not theirs, and it seemed like the proper thing to do. He couldn’t imagine why he’d never thought to bite anyone before.
Already, he felt the pain lessening. The little ones were pleased with his new direction in thinking. They were rewarding him for making good choices. Who was in control now? Seemed like he was the boss of them. Worms writhed in his injuries, oozing anesthetic, prepping him just like a miniature film crew for his next stunt. Hart lurched forward. Gel oozed from his wounds. Placing one foot in front of the other, he staggered toward the ruckus.
Shouts echoed through the trees. One voice was shouting, anyway. The other was unintelligible. It might’ve been human, but it sounded more like a bestial groan. Another gunshot cracked the humid air, succeeded by a contemptuous bellow. Hart pushed through a mossy veil, and he saw them.
The man with the revolver was the U.S. Marine who’d done the bad things to Lonny. Someone else had gotten to him fir
st. The Marine squeezed off another shot, and then turned, and ran from the other fellow. His assailant did not appear to be armed, but for some reason he had no fear of the Marine’s weapon. He chased him down, tackled him, and wrestled him to the jungle floor. More shouting, groaning, as the pair thrashed all about in the leaf litter, until the Marine was pinned face-down in the dirt. His assailant bent over him, opened his jaws wide, and sunk his teeth deeply into the Marine’s neck. A garbled scream permeated the jungle, as the Marine’s legs flailed against the ground.
Hart licked his lips, eyes widening. This was fascinating. Someone else had stolen his idea. It was someone just like him. All his life he’d always felt so alone, like the last of some extirpated race wandering an alien world, but right there in the forest clearing was another one. It was another lonely monster just like him.
Lowering himself to his hands and knees, Hart crept through the underbrush, circling around to the combatants’ blind side. Another shriek wrought a fountain of crimson from the Marine’s opened neck. The sound of his fluids spattering in the dry leaves was exhilarating, but Hart was reluctant to interrupt while the other was engaged with his prey. That seemed kind of—rude.
The attacker reared up, as though he’d caught a whiff of danger. He spun around in Hart’s direction, searching the jungle. When their eyes finally met, Hart sucked a sharp breath, and his hands began to tremble. It was him. Hart awed over the glimmering chain still looped between the monster’s wrists. Somehow, he’d managed to make it to shore. The shackled man cocked his head, studying Hart through his blood-drop eyes.
What a rare and beautiful creature.
The Marine scrambled to his feet, blood spouting from his neck. The shackled man whirled back around, ready to pounce, but he decided against furthering the chase, and he just let the man go. Finished, for the time being. He gazed back at Hart, blinking slowly, as the sounds of his prey crashing off into the jungle grew distant. This meeting between two monsters was a far more important matter.
Hart rose from his crouched position. He and the shackled man peered at each other through the screen of foliage, but neither seemed quite ready to approach the other. Hart lowered the frond in front of his face. He pinched a single leaf between his thumb and forefinger, and he plucked it gently from its stem. The shackled man quietly observed. After a moment, he also reached for a nearby bush, and he plucked a leaf of his own. They twirled their leaves between their fingers, just looking at each other.
The shackled man opened his fingers, and he allowed his leaf to flutter to the ground. Hart did the same. One of them must have flinched, because just like that, they were both moving toward one another across the clearing. They began to circle one another, as the distance between them shrank down to almost nothing. It was the final approach in some deadly dance that could end in any number of ways. Would they run together, or would one’s throat soon be dangling from the teeth of the other? His heart throbbed against his ribs, chugging blood through his ears, as a couple of monsters prepared to engage.
Hart could see them. They were all squirming behind the shackled man’s sanguine eyes. The clustered eggs that coating his lips were stained with his victim’s blood. It helped Hart to better understand and appreciate his own condition to look upon his mirror image, and what he saw standing in front of him was perfect.
“What’s your name?” Hart whispered.
Their worms were all gathered behind the portals of their eyes, all pressed against the glass with excitement. The shackled man shuffled his feet, and lowered his chin, as though embarrassed. After a moment, he opened his mouth, and he revealed that he had no tongue left in there. Only a purple nub bristling with black stitches remained. Some sick bastard had cut it out. How awful. Hart would never be able to hear him speak. They would never be able to share their stories or ideas, and that was most unfair. Hart wished that he’d have been somewhere nearby when they’d tried to do that to him. He’d have ripped open their stomachs, and pulled everything out of them. No one was ever going to hurt this guy again.
Hart lifted a trembling hand, and he touched one of the two bullet holes in the shackled man’s torso. The shackled man’s face stretched into a smile. He responded by raising his chained hand, inadvertently lifting the other connected to it like some entangled marionette, and he touched the festering hole in Hart’s shoulder. Worms roiled wetly against Hart’s fingertips. He loved this. They were repairing him. He was already looking better. The worms would fix every ailment that ever threatened the life of Hart’s best friend.
###
27-D
Margot licked her cracked lips, gazing longingly at the cache of beer and sodas heaped near the campfire. She was so thirsty that it hurt. Her head was pounding, burning internally as though acid had slowly begun to displace all of the blood in her veins. She needed a drink so badly. She needed something to eat. However, she knew better than to ask, because they weren’t going to share anything with her.
It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. It’s not like what happened was premeditated. If they’d asked her five seconds before that thing came running at her if she had any desire whatsoever to kill Dr. Kimura, the answer would’ve obviously been no. It was just a knee-jerk reaction. Nobody knows how they’d react in a situation like that. You might think that you’d be all heroic, but you might as easily be mistaken about who you thought you were in a moment of crisis. Margot wasn’t consciously thinking when she pushed Dr. Kimura over her leg. That action was pure instinct. Survival mode. Any one of the others who were looking down their noses at her might’ve done the same thing if they’d been standing in her shoes.
Out here, it was clearly survival of the fittest, and Margot knew that she wasn’t the strongest, the toughest, or the fastest. She didn’t have any super-amazing skills to bring to the table. She was just a girl, so already, she was at a disadvantage. From the get-go, she was probably considered to be the least valuable camp member, the most likely to die, and odds were, the first that the others would’ve thrown under a bus if the going ever got tough. Given those hard truths, who the hell could blame her for trying to outsmart them, and for just trying to stay alive, when she was all alone on Team Margot?
Obviously, they were going to hold her accountable for the doctor’s demise, but they were also the ones who’d voted to starve her to death. Basically, she had nothing to lose by continuing to do whatever it took to stay alive. They already hated her. She was already dead to their little community. They hadn’t physically thrown her out of their camp yet, but when the sun went down tonight, and it started to get cold, were they even going to let her come up to their fire to warm up? Probably not. They’d probably just start yelling at her all over again, and she’d end up having to sleep all alone down on the freezing beach, just like the night before.
Why was she still hanging around here? She didn’t know. They didn’t want her, and it was starting to feel awkward, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go. The smartest thing would be to go look for some new people to take her in, but at this point she was already dying of thirst, and those other jerks had already combed the beach, and had hoarded all of the available food and drink for themselves. She doubted if there was anything left out there.
Whenever she eyed that pile of canned beverages, she could feel her throat tightening up. Over lunch, the others had split three sodas, and they’d shared a bunch of peanuts right in front of her. That was not cool at all. It was mean. She needed a drink just as bad as them, and they didn’t even care if she lived or died. They weren’t leaving her with a whole lot of options. Unless she made a move pretty quickly, it wouldn’t be long before those sodas and beers were all gone, and by then, she’d be half-dead. Yeah, it was now or never.
Dale, and the two new guys were preparing to head out on some sort of a mission to find fresh water in the jungle. She’d never even been introduced to the newcomers. She only watched from afar as they gathered the empty beer and soda cans, and
even made a sort of duffle out of seat cushions and a garbage bag to carry back all the water they that thought they were going to find out there. She doubted they’d find anything. Maybe they would, but once again, they weren’t going to share any with her if they did. That left Donovan, Sandy, and the new girl in camp, all taking turns playing nurse to their two patients. Margot watched as the three guys said their goodbyes, exchanged hugs, and shook hands. Finally, they set off down the beaten trail in the direction of the beach. Margot was beginning to think that they’d never leave. After pampering their spoiled patients for a short while, Sandy and Donovan headed out of camp, probably to gather some more freaking firewood. They just kept gathering more and more and more, when there was already a ridiculous pile of wood sitting there that would’ve lasted them like ten-billion years. Bunch of idiots.
Margot watched as Sandy and Donovan rounded the bend in the trail, and disappeared from sight. Once they were gone, she swiveled around on her butt to stare at the new girl. She was pretty. Not model-pretty, but sexy-pretty, and there was a big difference. She was definitely younger than Margot, maybe seventeen or eighteen, still naïve and impressionable. Margot kept staring at the girl until she noticed. Margot smiled at her, brushing a few loose strands of hair out of her face, and tucking them behind her ear. She knew how to appear friendly. She could be anything that a camera wanted her to be, and she pretended that the girl was a camera that begged her to be approachable, hopeful, and innocent.
“Hi,” Margot said, smiling sweetly.
“Hi,” the girl replied.
“Need any help with anything?”
“Mmm, I think I’ve got it. Thanks.”
Margot rose from the sand, dusting off the backs of her legs, and approached the girl. She could tell that the girl was already feeling uncomfortable. Evidently, they’d been telling her things. “I’m sorry that we didn’t get introduced earlier, but I was afraid they’d all just attack me if I tried to come over to meet you guys. I’m Margot.”