Falling Prey

by M. C. Norris

  Nate heard a sound escape his throat, as Dr. Bendu dropped the corner of the razor blade onto Margot’s sternum, and neatly flayed her belly open to the naval in one decisive stroke. Knots of gray intestines bulged through the hot, new fissure. He stepped back, smiling patiently, arms folded around his chest, until her screams waned into a low mewling around the wadded rag.

  “What really happened to Captain Briggs and his crew will forever remain a mystery back there, on the other side, but here in Briggstown we have the rest of the tale.” Bendu tossed the scalpel into the basin, and lifted his precious journal from a nearby shelf. He clutched the thing to his chest, closed his eyes, and inhaled whatever aroma the old book still exuded. “They came here, obviously, in the company of a vector. Now, this is important because it may provide us with the starting point of a timeline in a series of similar events, of which you and I are all too familiar.”

  As Dr. Bendu leafed through the hoary volume of notes, Nate’s gaze drifted over to meet the tearful eyes of Margot. In a glance she seemed to plead to him, to beseech him to intervene. Only fringes of her hair remained in a bloody fray above her ears. The balance of perhaps her finest attribute was just a red dome, rising from her brow like an otherworldly polyp. Nate had to look away, or he was going to be sick.

  “Briggs writes that he dined on the eve of November sixth, the night before the fateful voyage, with one Captain David Morehouse of the British registered Dei Gratia. It was at that last supper that Captain Morehouse mentioned an ongoing manhunt around the distribution reservoir of the Old Croton Aqueduct, wherein authorities hoped to apprehend a scoundrel attempting to poison the water supply of New York City with what was believed at the time to be cholera.” Dr. Bendu slammed the book shut with force enough to make Margot’s exposed innards jiggle. “Fast-forward around twenty days, and the claims proved quite accurate, as a stowaway was discovered in the hold of the Mary Celeste who showed all the signs and symptoms of that deadly malady, which was the most feared disease of the nineteenth century. To save the lives of his wife and daughter, no doubt, Captain Briggs and his crew decided to abandon ship. They took only the navigational equipment and a small supply of rations aboard the yawl as they attempted to make their escape.”

  Dr. Bendu placed a hand on Margot’s shoulder, allowing his pearly claws to drag up her throat as he passed behind her, and made his way to another shelf. From this alcove hacked into the volcanic pumice wall, he removed a large, wooden compass. He smiled fondly at the instrument, brushing dust from its glass covering, before returning it to its place. “They did not make it, Nate. Know why?”

  Nate shook his head, and swallowed dryly.

  Dr. Bendu seemed to find his lack of insight amusing. He allowed a nasal chuckle, while drifting toward the far end of his workbench. Before him rested a cylinder of polished metal, fluted with neon green tubes not unlike bubble levels, or miniature sight glasses. From the endcap protruded a pair of crooked wires with tabbed ends, like an insect’s antennae. “They didn’t make it because the vector leapt over the bulwarks, and swam after them. Captain Brigg’s last memory from the world he left behind were the hands of the vector slamming down on the yawl’s transom, followed by a blinding flash of green light.”

  Nate’s eyes widened. In Dawn’s final moments, that’s all she could talk about, a flash of greenish light just before the plane came apart in the sky. He’d evidently been too engrossed in the hijacking to notice whatever phenomenon had made such a marked impression on his wife, but he recalled that in her opinion, the flash held profound significance.

  “Vectors. What are they? Let’s look at the evidence, Nate. They are people, yes? They are people carrying some sort of a deadly disease, as well as a highly-advanced, technological implant.” Dr. Bendu lifted the strange contraption from the workbench, and held it out for Nate to see. “There have been many vectors sent through space and time, each carrying one or more types of implants, and each was delivered to a heavily populated location. Africa, Japan, France, Italy, and New York City. All of these places have been targeted more than once with diseases that you’ve not yet heard of, all bioengineered specifically against the human animal. AIDS, SARS, swine flu, bird flu, cholera … and Ebola, Nate, thank you very much. All of these diseases were painstakingly designed, tested, aimed and fired at the heart of humanity. We are under attack, Nate! Starting to get it, now? We’ve been under attack for more than a hundred years. Our governments know about it, but they have no clue as to how to stop it. That’s where we come in.

  “After more than a century of reverse engineering scrap implants here in Briggstown, we finally have in our hands a semi-functional device. This particular implant was recovered by a team of U.S. Navy SEALS after a commercial airliner carrying a vector had to be shot down just off the American east coast in nineteen ninety-six. The event caused quite an international flap, and a subsequent cover-up, as you can well imagine, but the TWA Flight 800 tragedy did provide Briggstown with a team of formidable warriors, a stock of modern weapons, and most especially—this.”

  Dr. Bendu cradled the implant in his arms, as though it were the infant messiah. He lovingly fawned at the device for a spell, before stepping softly across the laboratory to present the thing to Nate, clutching it protectively to his bosom. “We’ve learned so much from this particular artifact, yes. We determined that each implant is equipped with a heart monitor,” Dr. Bendu said, gently strumming the protruding wires, “and three separate relays with programmable timers. After many years of painstaking research, we’ve discovered how to activate them. This is where it gets interesting.”

  Nate watched Dr. Bendu slink around the back of the room. Margot thrashed her head to keep an eye on him, as he passed behind her. Standing directly behind her, in her only blind spot, he peered suddenly over her scalped head in a demented game of peek-a-boo. He placed a clawed hand atop her skull, and drummed his polished fingertips upon the bone.

  Click-click-click-click. Click-click-click-click.

  “The first relay beams the vectors through time and space to their highly-populated target location. After an exposure time of approximately two weeks, the second relay is activated, beaming the vectors—along with everyone and everything within twenty meters—back in time to the Garden of Eden, which is obviously a geographical location that is deemed un-survivable by whomever or what-ever is bent on our destruction. Once the heart monitor detects a dead vector, the third and final relay is then activated, beaming the technology back—we must presume—to wherever it originally came from.”

  Letting his claws slide down her skull with a terrible scrape, Dr. Bendu edged around the examination table to Margot’s side. He patted the strange cylinder lovingly, still cradling it in his arms as he might a child of monumental destiny. “Why?” He turned to Nate. “That is the question. Is it not? Why would anybody do this to humankind?”

  Nate shrugged, and gave a halfhearted nod.

  “Come on. Take a guess. We’re all scientists here.” Dr. Bendu grinned at Margot, and nodded.

  “If all you’ve said is true,” Nate replied, clearing his throat, “then it would seem obvious that someone out there is trying to wipe us all out.”

  “No shit.” Dr. Bendu bent an antennae with a single claw, and let it spring to waggle to and fro. “Is that the best you can do as my lab assistant, or do I need to start accepting applications?”

  “Well, the only reason an enemy would have to wipe out an extant population of a single intelligent species would be for the purpose of eventual colonization.”

  “Very good. That’s the alien theory, but there’s no reason to presume an extraterrestrial threat. There is another. Try again.”

  Nate felt panicked under the deranged scrutiny of the so-called doctor, whose salacious grin belied any real hope that he wanted Nate to succeed. In fact, he sensed that Dr. Bendu wanted him to fail. If he wasn’t deemed intelligent enough to make the cut as his own version of Igor, then a slot would prob
ably open for him on Margot’s examination table. “People,” Nate said. “People from the future.”

  “Why? Why? Why would people from the future attack the past?”

  “You have to imagine a situation in which resources have become so limited, the population has grown to a size a thousand-times the world’s carrying capacity, when societies have completely unraveled, when the streams and the air have become so polluted that they’re toxic, when anarchy rules … in a desperate situation like that, it’s not like the ruling body can just go out and start culling the population at hand. There are too many, and the damage is already done.”

  “Yessss,” Dr. Bendu said, eyes widening.

  “But, if the technology was available, in hopes of making for a brighter future for humankind, you could send someone back to cull the population before it ever got out of control.”

  “Yes!” Dr. Bendu shouted, smacking his clawed hand down onto Margot’s thigh. He whisked it away, extended an accusatory finger at Nate, and began marching toward him across the room. “You are right, exactly! That is what I believe is happening. This is a war, Nate. It’s a war between the ages. Our own children, Nate—our own children’s-children’s-children—have gone back in time to assassinate their own ancestors, knowing full well that a great many of them will be erased from existence as a result. That seems a big risk they are taking, yes? However, we must presume that their circumstances have become so dire that the risk of slashing their own population by a wide margin is worth it. Just imagine that, Nate.”

  “I did.”

  “Yes, well … welcome to Briggstown, anyway. I guess you’ll make a fine addition to my laboratory.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Bendu.”

  “Think nothing of it.” He turned, and strode back over to Margot’s side, strumming the antennae like a wandering minstrel with some ill-conceived, musical instrument. “This brings us to our mission, here in Briggstown. The same mission embraced a century ago by our loving founder and benefactor, Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs. I love that name. I could say it all day long. The mission, Nate, is to quit lying down and taking it. We will launch the first counterstrike in our war between the ages, and let our great-grandchildren know that we are not an expendable populace of vermin to be exterminated at their desire. We’ve received their messages loud and clear, and tomorrow, we’re sending one back!”

  Dr. Bendu extended his arms, and dropped the device straight down onto Margot’s bulging guts. Working his arms in to the elbows, he ignored her chilling screams as he thrust the strange canister up under her sternum, seating the device somewhere between her lungs. He cranked his head around in Nate’s direction. “Needle and thread, please?”

  Nate stumbled over his own feet in an effort to hastily reach the workbench. There, he spotted a spool of dingy fiber, and what looked like a hooked talon. He seized these articles, and brought them over to Dr. Bendu’s side.

  “You may stitch her up if you don’t mind, Mr. Nate. I must prepare her injection.” Dr. Bendu withdrew his arms from Margot’s glistening viscera, and wiped his hands on the chaps of his loins. The pair of antennae were still sticking up from the open wound, and waggling in the air. “You see, we have deadly diseases here, too, just like anywhere else, and tomorrow, we’re going to send a prehistoric cocktail of diseased blood into the future. On that device, the third relay was damaged. It thinks that the vector is still alive. Well, tomorrow we’re simply going to short-out her heart monitor, and send Miss Margot here on a fantastic voyage through space and time. Does that sound like fun?” Dr. Bendu grinned at Margot, hitching his eyebrows.

  Margot emitted a feeble bleat.

  “Oh! Thank you for reminding me, Miss Margot. I’d hate for you to go zooming off into the future only to die of a silly infection within a day or two.” Dr. Bendu scooped handfuls of dirty anesthetic from the basin, and slopped it into the wound. Particles of dirt and leaves clung to her intestines. “That’s better.”

  “Dr. Bendu!” A shout peeled from outside, down on the plaza.

  “What now?” Dr. Bendu tramped up to the windowsill, and glared down at whoever was yelling. “What do you want? I’m involved in science.”

  “Nurseworms!” the voice shouted. “We’ve got nurseworms in Briggstown!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  21-F

  He decided not to sleep. He tended the fire, and remained awake all through the night until the Bad Faces were filing out into the pre-dawn gloom. The night had passed quickly. Peanut’s mind was overactive with the imaginings of a deranged future in Briggstown, where his daily trials of blood and fire would be rewarded nightly with Tara Riley, his jungle princess. These dramatic dreams kept a luster in his eyes all through the night, until dawn’s silver edge found him emotionally spent and bedraggled, staring down into the coals through puffy, red-rimmed eyes.

  Briggstown was at last revealed to him when they left the barracks. Contained within the looming walls that rimmed a vast crater was in fact a fishing village built around the shores of a mountain lake. Already, the fishermen’s canoes plied the still waters as they paddled out to check their trotlines and traps. The dwellings and stores were excavations in the crater rim, where an ancient network of lava tubes served as connective tunnels between caverns chipped right into the pumice stone, stacked one upon another in the sheer walls of porous stone, with the uppermost being accessible only by ladders. Here and there, recovered relics from a faraway world sprawled out of context where they’d been left like abstract sculptures open to interpretation. Automobiles, partial and whole, were parked in the shadows of building remnants. The corner of an apartment complex, a prison cell, and a Red Cross medical tent provided portentous snapshots into those final moments before vectors and their captors fell together from Eden’s skies. It was haunting, in a way. Every scrap had been recovered, and carried back up the mountain to be painstakingly reassembled on Briggstown’s flagstone shores. Peanut understood the importance of preserving those moments, and they’d done a fine job in doing so. One day, he hoped to see the tail end of their airliner reassembled, every seat locked back into its proper place, to serve as a memorial for every life lost affected in that terrible instant when half a commercial airplane had slipped between moments.

  Peanut inhaled a bouquet of baking bread, smoldering wood, and the greenish aroma of algae coming off of the lake. For the very first time since he’d swam to Eden’s shores, he felt a sense of sanctuary. Briggstown felt like it might be a place that he could call home. He hoped that Tara would eventually feel the same way, because this was it. This was where they were going to stay. They’d start a family of their own here, and watch their children frolic along the shores of a private mountain lake. God, he wished Alex could’ve made it this far with him. He was the only thing missing, the only thing preventing his new life in Briggstown from being perfect. However, there was a thought, and Peanut didn’t dare think it too loudly, that perhaps everything happens the way it does for a reason. There was only one Tara Riley, after all.

  They passed through the rolling gates single-file, and they marched in silence into the jungle, in the direction of the sea. Following a narrow footpath that looked to have been used for over a century, they wound through the forest in a steady descent that took them behind a waterfall. The cascading tonnage produced a deafening roar, as water was hammered into mist against the rocks, half a mile below. Life was heard more often than seen, crashing off through the trees with an expressed fear of man that was evidently learned, because it could not have been instinctual.

  By the time dawn’s rays gilded the eastern horizon, they’d reached an overlooking outcrop with a commanding view of what had so recently been a long strip of sandy beach. That pale hem between worlds was gone, drowned beneath a hungry sea that had swollen over the barrier reef to crash into the jungle’s edge. Saw-toothed monsters rolled between waves. The sea thrust in and out of the forest, smashing itself to foam against the trunks of palms. The play of ele
ctricity within the thunderheads to the west was something ominous to behold. Quite a storm was brewing.

  “Do you think the herd will come through today?” Peanut asked Gavin, or whoever might be listening, but no one replied. His eyes wandered through the knot of warriors, taking a mental inventory of bows, hatchets, spears and modern firearms. Every man on the outcrop was armed with at least one weapon. “How am I supposed to help you guys hunt when nobody even gave me a weapon?”

  “How’s that our responsibility?” Gavin replied, without turning his head. “You think somebody gave me my weapons? Think somebody gave him his?”

  “You guys took my pocketknife. I can’t even sharpen a stick.”

  “Why’d you let us take it?” Gavin glared over his shoulder. “What kind of a warrior lets himself be manhandled like a little bitch? You want a weapon in your hand so that you’ll be ready when it’s time to be tested, but what you don’t realize is that you’ve already been tested, and you failed. You’re being tested right now.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Course you don’t, because you’re not a warrior. That was obvious from the minute you stepped into the yard.”

  Peanut felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He felt his Tara fantasy being swept suddenly away. “What do mean I’m not a warrior?”

  “Look at us, punk, then look at you,” T-Lo said. “Who the hell you think you are, thinking you one of us? Shit’s embarrassing. We’re warriors, kid. Don’t you see that? Warriors. You don’t decide to become that shit. You either is, or you ain’t. Me and my boys was warriors before we ever got here. Gangsters, son. Soldiers of the street. We all got brought straight here from a jail cell when they threw a vector in the tank with us. You know what I’m saying? Straight from a cell to Hell. Gavin and his boys? You don’t even want to know, son. Navy SEALS, all of them. Warriors, son. We’re the realest. It’s all we know. You just a little punk-ass buster trying to get it where you don’t fit in.”