Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  Pike lost their trail for hundreds of yards at a time, but now that he had assumed their mindset, picking it back up again had become second-nature. He could read their exhaustion in their footprints, in the occasional drop of blood on a leaf or smeared handprint on a trunk saved from the rain, where one of them had paused to catch his breath. Were he the predator, these signs would have spurred him into a frenzy. Unless, of course, he was the kind of ghoul that reveled in the hunt more than the kill.

  The former was a monster; the latter terrifying in its unpredictability.

  All three men carried their Tasers, leaving their other hands free for a quick grab at the Baretta M9A1s holstered under their opposite arms. The Taser delivered enough voltage to drop an enraged steroid-head on angel dust at twenty feet, but there was no point in taking any chances. A couple bullets through a pair of shattered patellae would definitely end an engagement. And Lord only knew exactly what they were dealing with here. For all any of them knew, with the extra time on the island to familiarize itself with the jungle, their pursuit could be silently closing in at this very moment.

  “You realize they’re all already dead,” Walker said from behind him.

  “Yes,” Pike said after a moment’s deliberation.

  “What does that mean we’re walking into? Why don’t we just get the hell out of here now, while we still can?”

  “Because we have a job to do, soldier.”

  “Soldier?” Walker chuckled. “I haven’t been a soldier since I was discharged a decade ago. I only signed on for this job because of the money, and, let’s face it, the fact that we maybe work six months out of the year and never really see any action.”

  “All we’re doing now is hiking through the forest on a tropical island.” Pike’s patience was wearing thin. “I wouldn’t classify this as action.”

  “What are you talking about? How many corpses have we come across? And most of them have been gutted like fish! You know as well as I do that eventually we’re going to run into whatever was capable of doing that. And then what?”

  “We light it up like the Fourth of July,” Brazelton said.

  “What do you propose we do with it then? Drag it across the island to the ship? Am I the only one that remembers what those things are capable of, what their skeletons look like? Their freaking teeth?”

  “If a bunch of primitives and natives could take them down with sticks and stones, imagine how we’ll fare with Lightning and Thunder,” Brazelton said, lifting each weapon in turn.

  “Fat lot of good either did Montgomery and—”

  Pike rounded on him and got into his face, so close that when he spoke, spittle struck Walker’s lips.

  “Then tuck tail right now. Head back the way we came. I dare you. When you come across Montgomery and Pearson, pass along my regards.”

  Walker drew a breath to protest, but said nothing. He averted his eyes. Pike waited for several beats while the red drained from his cheeks before whirling and striking off down the trail toward where their path crossed a thin stream at the bottom of a fifty-foot waterfall that materialized from the ceiling of mist. He sloshed through the runoff and scrabbled up a steep rise of scree. At the crest of the hill, he stopped and tilted his nose to the breeze.

  The scent wasn’t fresh, but it was recent enough to linger.

  He broke into a jog and slalomed through the trees, crashing through the wet shrubs and leaping over tented and buttressed roots. When another smell joined the first, he slowed and picked his way silently through the foliage until he reached a small clearing at the foot of a sheer carbonate embankment, at the base of which was a lip that shielded a small cave. In its mouth were the charcoaled remnants of a fire only partially consumed. The burnt flare beside it meant that the survivors were down to just the flare gun with two cartridges at the most. While the residua of campfire on the wind had been what initially caught his attention, it was the other smell that drew his eye to the rear, smoke-blackened wall where the buzzing flies voiced their displeasure at the interruption of their meal.

  The body was propped against the rocks like a carelessly discarded doll. Bloated black flies crawled through her bangs, which were crusted into dreadlocks by her blood. They concealed her face, where the buzzing of the hidden insects made a sound like snoring, as though they had caught the woman mid-siesta. Her shirt was torn to reveal her black bra, beneath which the open maw of her abdomen seethed with green-eyed flies. Pike waved them away and found what he expected. The bowels had been excised, leaving the rotting viscera to settle into the void. Her ripped khakis were crisp with dried mud and smears from where her intestines had been uncoiled onto her lap.

  Pike grabbed a fistful of her bangs and raised her head.

  “Get a picture.”

  Brazelton crouched in front of her and snapped a digital image to forward to the Huxley for identification purposes, if one could even be made. Her lips were swollen and split, he front teeth chipped, her nose broken, and both closed eyes black from bruising. It looked like her face had been repeatedly slammed into the rock wall before she was hurled down to the ground.

  “It’s just playing with them,” Walker said. He kicked ashes from the fire, stepped back out into the rain, and leaned his head back to allow it to wash over his face.

  Brazelton lifted the woman’s left arm and shook it. The joints in her elbow and wrist were stiff. He glanced back over his shoulder at Walker before he turned back and spoke to Pike in a whisper.

  “We still have solid rigor.”

  “I noticed as soon as I tilted her head back.”

  “You know what that means.”

  Pike nodded. “She can’t have been dead for more than twelve hours.”

  “Which means that if it stalked the remaining two survivors for any significant length of time—”

  “It has to know a shortcut across the island to have been able to sneak around behind us to pick off Montgomery and Pearson.”

  “And if it does, it could be moving to intercept us on the path ahead of us right now while we’re skirting the coastline.”

  “Or if it didn’t go after the other two survivors right away, they could still be alive somewhere down the path.”

  “Using them as bait? That implies a tremendous amount of intelligence and cunning. If that were the case, it would have had to know that eventually rescuers would be dispatched to the site of the shipwreck and that we would find and follow the tracks from the beach.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That scenario suggests that it herded the survivors to the far side of the island—”

  “It’s toying with them.”

  “—in order to lure us as far away from the ship as possible.”Brazelton paused. “But why? To isolate us? It did manage to split up our group so it could take down Montgomery and Pearson.”

  “Maybe.” Pike walked back out into the night. The trail left by the two remaining was clearly evident; that of their stalker, much less so. “Or perhaps, if it’s as smart as we suspect, it had another motive in mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  Pike pictured the bodies floating in the hold of theMayr.

  “Maybe it wants to lure the rescue vessel and all aboard to this side of the island.”

  From this vantage point, they could barely see the ocean through the fog and the trees. And the lights on the deck of the Huxley as it cruised around the southwestern fringe of the island.

  Thirty-Two

  R/V Aldous Huxley

  Courtney watched the videos from the Mayr’s digital security system in abject horror. None of them spoke as Barnes played one corrupted file after another. There were scenes of bedlam in the hallways, men and women she knew colliding as they fought their way out of their rooms, into the throngs, and toward the stairwells. Shoving, stomping, and trampling one another in their panic. Fighting against the tilting decks that threw them alternately against one wall and then back across the corridor against the other. Friends crumpled on
the floor, screaming in pain and terror as they grasped visibly broken ankles and wrists. Spatters of blood on the walls as though the entire ship had been converted into an impromptu Jackson Pollock gallery with the entirety of the Mayr as his canvas. And in each and every file, a shadowed figure darted at the periphery, never clearly visible, always just at the edge of sight with eyes that reflected the dim glare like those of a dog caught briefly in headlights. As though it knew where the cameras were mounted and deftly avoided them. All the while the horizontal bars jumped and shivered up and down the screen in a pathetic effort to hide the chaos.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. While watching each file, she strained her eyes to pick out her brother’s face, to recognize his silhouette or gait, to find him in the midst of a nightmare. Never once did she see him. Not on the limited salvageable footage from the 02 Deck where the infirmary was located. Not on the 01 Deck where both of their cabins were. Not on the main level where the people flocked toward the stern and then back like so many mice unable to escape a maze.

  They watched until there was no longer action to watch. The only movement was the bodies sprawled on the floor or piled in the stairwells and exits as the rising water flooded over the deck and carried them in whichever direction it chose, as though these men and women with whom she’d worked shoulder-to-shoulder, with whom she’d dined and watched movies in the lounge, were little more than driftwood.

  Until at last, when they reached the final dozen rescued files, the shadow partially revealed itself.

  “My God,” Bradley whispered next to her. His face had blanched. Maybe the spark in his eyes had waned, but it never left. The flickering static flashed on his features. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

  Bishop’s hand found hers. She squeezed it tightly, as if to let go would send her plummeting into the surreal world on the screen before her.

  “What the hell is that?” Barnes asked.

  On the monitor, the bodies continued to slide up and down the corridor at the mercy of the floodwaters that sloshed from one side of the hall to the other, splashing up the walls as though trying to lap at the blood spatters. An inhuman vision stalked in their midst, like Charon wading through a shin-deep River Styx to find the dead souls to ferry to Hades. It clung to the walls under the cameras, a mere shadow stretched across the water, until it had no choice other than to expose itself. It ducked out into the frame, each time keeping its back to the recording as it grabbed the bodies one by one, by an arm, a leg, or by their clothing, and dragged them toward the stairwell, where it threw them down the first flight to the landing. Its silhouette was limned with a shimmering glow like molten silver that almost made it appear entirely separate from the carnage around it. Never completely in focus, it moved with serpentine grace, an entity composed of muscle and sinew that seemed to flow more like the water around it than like a man. Movements so fast and fluid that each time the footage jumped, it was nowhere near where it had been a second prior. She caught fleeting glimpses of smooth, reflective skin, of the spikes that poked through its back from the base of its skull down to between its shoulder blades, of its hunched posture that was almost reptilian in the way its legs stayed flexed, its torso lowered to the ground, its center of gravity transferred forward along with arms that were held almost defensively in front of its face. Not with fists, but with splayed fingers curled into claws. All of this was revealed in rapid bursts of activity that never displayed every detail at once, but rather forced her mind to assemble the whole from the pieces.

  They were the same eyes with the same hollow, predatory stare that had watched her through the lowered biohazard shield. Eyes that had scoured her body as though she were a slab of meat, that had left her feeling tainted by the hunger behind them. Eyes she would never forget as long as she lived.

  “The next one, if you please,” Bradley said, his voice the whisper of a man recovering from a punch to the gut.

  “I think…” Barnes started. “I think I’ve seen enough.”

  “Please.”

  Barnes double-clicked the next file, then turned away from the screen.

  Through the worst static yet, Courtney saw the biohazard insignia on the blood-smeared Plexiglas divider, and beyond it a single human outline she knew to be her own. Another shape stood on the near side with its back to the camera, moving laterally in motions made twitchy by the horizontal distortion. Two bodies were crumpled at its feet against the barrier.

  A flash of memory.

  “Let us in!” a man shouts. His eyes are all whites, his dark hair matted to the right where a wound drips blood down his forehead and temple. She recognizes him now. Shaun Wrightson, the Chief Steward. “Hurry! For the love of God!”

  “I can’t!” She unconsciously recedes from the barrier toward where Bishop still struggles to regain consciousness. “It only opens from the outside!”

  “Please!” There’s another man with him, little more than a boy. He pounds the glass with both fists, leaving bloody smears. She’s only met this Able Seaman nicknamed Walleye for his bulging orbits in passing. A laceration bisects his pale face from his left eyebrow, across his nose, and to his chin. “You can’t leave us out—!”

  A third shadow rises behind them.

  An arc of fluid spatters the Plexiglas.

  She steps backward so quickly that her heel snags on something and she topples to the floor.

  More and more blood splashes against the barrier. Hands paw at the slick surface seeking purchase they’ll never find. Bodies are slammed against it, smearing the blood until she can barely see through it. Their shrill cries, infused with so much pain, are abruptly silenced. First one, then the other.

  She sobs and kicks at the floor to push herself all the way up against the rear wall. Tucking her legs to her chest, she tries not to look at the dark form on the other side of the streaked barricade. It paces back and forth as if seeking a weakness by which to smash its way in, before eventually fading out of sight into the crimson fog.

  Shaking and trembling, she screams for help at the top of her lungs. Screams her throat raw. Screams until there’s nothing left of her voice.

  She watches as the red glare darkens the drying blood. Her mind becomes sluggish and her body grows cold and numb from the onset of shock.

  Courtney’s shoulders shook as she started to cry.

  On the screen, the shadowed man whirled and sprinted out of sight, leaving her digital doppelganger curled into a ball and sobbing on the floor, where Bishop was only now struggling to rise from the standing water.

  Bradley turned and looked past her to where Van Horn hovered. She hadn’t heard him return after being called out to attend to radio communications from the island. Something passed between the two men. Van Horn nodded.

  “Mr. Barnes,” Van Horn said. “You’re dismissed.”

  Barnes nodded, stood, and was out of the room like a shot without making eye contact with any of them. Bradley assumed his place at the controls and began clicking through the remaining files. Each showed an empty hallway on the main deck, filling with rising water, or one of the upper decks, the floor smeared with so much blood it looked like crude oil sloppily spread by a mop. All except for one recording, which captured the stairwell leading down to the hold, where body upon body were piled. Before their eyes, the mound grew smaller. The corpses disappeared down into the hold where the lens couldn’t follow.

  Courtney had no idea what she was supposed to say or do. Her world no longer made any kind of sense. Was any of this real, or was she still trapped in the lab on the Mayr, waiting for her final breaths to still in her chest?

  “You need to call the authorities,” Bishop said. “This wasn’t just a shipwreck.”

  “Every emergency agency in Oceania from China to Australia is already occupied by the aftermath of the tsunami. They already have tens of thousands of bodies of their own to sift through.”

  “This is different,” Courtney said. “This wasn’t a natural disaster. The peo
ple on our ship were murdered.”

  “Call the Coast Guard. They have jurisdiction even in international waters—”

  “Mr. Van Horn,” Bradley interrupted. “Would you please see Mr. Bishop and Dr. Martin to their accommodations and make sure they are properly attended.”

  “Yes, sir,” Van Horn said. He rested a hand on each of their shoulders.

  “Wait a minute,” Courtney snapped. “You can’t force us to do anything.”

  “You knew about whatever that is on the ship all along, didn’t you?” Bishop said. “You aren’t surprised in the slightest.”

  “Mr. Bishop,” Van Horn said. “If you would kindly come with us…”

  Three seamen appeared in the doorway. In a matter of seconds, they took up position to either side of Courtney and Bishop.

  “What was that thing?” Bishop asked. “You’re responsible for it, aren’t you? That’s why you were so interested in the accident in the lab. You knew exactly what it was. There was something in that chimney, something we brought on board in the bioreactor. That wasn’t just something in that footage, was it? It was someone.”

  “Let go of me!” Courtney shouted. Two of the men grasped her beneath her armpits and lifted her from her chair. Her heels dragged the floor as she was manhandled into the corridor. Bishop’s words echoed in her mind.

  That wasn’t just something in that footage, was it? It was someone.

  Oh, God.

  She felt like she was falling into a deep well. Her legs gave out, and her hearing became tinny. The world around her darkened.

  From a great distance, she heard Bishop shouting.

  “Please, God,” she whispered. “Not Ty…”

  Thirty-Three