Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  “They’d be big orange bull’s eyes.” He strained to help her maintain her balance of the slippery rail, which plunged beneath her as the Huxley cut through the chop. “Can you make it or not?”

  She glanced across the rolling black waves toward the island. She knew that distances like this were always deceptive. It looked like the rugged shore was only a quarter mile away, which meant that it could easily be three times as much. And with the tempestuous sea, the currents, and the undertow, the exertion would be tremendous. Her body was still exhausted from their ordeal. She was already freezing and soaked to the bone. Just balancing on the rail seemed to tax every muscle in her body, but what choice did she have?

  “I can make it,” she said.

  “Then I’ll meet you there.”

  He tried to smile for her benefit.

  She grabbed him by the back of the head and pulled his face to hers. Before she even knew she was going to do it, she kissed him on the mouth. Hard. His eyes widened in surprise. She didn’t give him the opportunity to say anything as she dove from the rail toward the roiling black ocean.

  The almost comical expression on his face was the image in her mind when the sensation of weightlessness rose inside of her and she struck the frigid water as though breaking through the ice on a frozen lake. Her momentum and the ship’s wake turned her head over heels until she could no longer tell which way was up. The pressure tried to compress her lungs. The cold bit into her skin and made her appendages leaden. She kicked with all her strength toward what she hoped was the surface, struggling through water that seemed intent on shoving her back down.

  Her breath staled in her chest.

  She opened her burning eyes and saw only blackness.

  Only blackness.

  She prayed that somewhere above her were the waves and the sky.

  If not, she would never see them again.

  Thirty-Nine

  “You did what?” Reaves snapped, louder than he had intended. All eyes in the room were drawn to him. He offered a placating smile, and again lowered his voice. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I don’t see where I was left with any other option,” Bradley said.

  “No other option than confining them to your stateroom? How was that even an option?” He bit his lip to keep from raising his voice again. When he heard it rumored that Bradley had locked up Bishop and Martin, he hadn’t believed it for second. He could scarcely believe it now, even coming from the horse’s mouth. “What do you think is going to happen to us when we return to Seattle, huh? They’ll cry civil rights violations so fast it’ll make your head spin. And you know what? They’ll have every right to do so. You can’t just go locking people up whenever you damn well feel like it.”

  “What would you rather I do?” Bradley gestured to the paused image on the screen before him. He had skimmed through every one of the security files until he had found the one best representation of what they had come all of this way to find. It was little more than a black silhouette limned with gray, a lithe outline propelling itself up into a darkened stairwell, using its hands on the stairs for leverage. Its face was frozen in time, turned so briefly toward the camera that the gray reflections from its eyes were blurred. There was a glimmer of light on a mouthful of bared teeth. Had Reaves not spent so many years poring over the skeletal remains in The Crypt, he might never have recognized it for what it truly was. “If we had allowed them to contact the outside world, they would have run their mouths off in a second. And then what?”

  “Do you think anyone out there would believe them?”

  “Let’s say someone did. Or even if they didn’t, we’d have the military crawling all over these ships trying to figure out what happened. How long would it take them to figure it out? Next thing you know, our discovery—our Chaco Man—and everything we’ve worked so hard for would be stolen right from our grasp and wind up in some top-secret bunker in the middle of the desert being vivisected to find out if there’s some way to turn its truly amazing mutations into some kind of biological weapon.”

  “And what do you propose we do with it? Say we somehow manage to capture this creature that has already killed dozens of people…what then? Do we take it back to corporate headquarters with us so we can vivisect it and determine if there are ways to capitalize on its ‘truly amazing mutations’ for our own purposes?” Reaves tapped his finger on the image on the screen. “We created this thing, whether deliberately or not, which makes it our responsibility. Its life is our responsibility. All of the deaths are our responsibility. This thing here…” Tap-tap-tap. “This thing was once a living, breathing human being whose life as he knows it no longer exists. Lord only knows what thoughts he thinks now, or if he even thinks at all. And the woman you imprisoned is up there is his goddamned sister. Would you destroy that entire family?”

  “You can drop the self-righteous act. How did you think this was going to play out? Did you think this transformation would just magically happen? That Chaco Man would simply materialize out of thin air? You and I both understood that it needed a human host, that all of our research was designed to isolate whatever organism caused the changes, and bring the two together. From the very start, this project required a sacrifice. And purely by accident, we got exactly what we wanted. Now we need to track this man down and bring him in alive so we can thoroughly study everything about him, or that sacrifice will have been in vain. And who knows? Maybe in the process we’ll find a way to change him back.”

  “This isn’t some stray dog we’re talking about here. This is nature’s perfect killing machine. This is an aberration created solely to prey upon members of its own species. It caused the Anasazi to flee Chaco Canyon. It chased the Champa out of central Vietnam and the Maya out of Guatemala. It drove the early Polynesians from Easter Island and terrorized coastal Japan. And who knows what all else. Do you really believe we’re going to be able to throw a collar on it and take it home?”

  “Listen to yourself, Brendan. We’re so close to realizing our shared dream. Just think, in a matter of hours we’ll be able to see this creation in the flesh, to touch its skin, to look it in the eye and find out what looks back. Pike is on its trail as we speak. Soon enough, he’ll call in with the news we’ve waited our whole lives to hear. Tell me you aren’t every bit as excited as I am.”

  It hurt Reaves to admit to himself that he was. He had just never thought through the logistics. Bradley was right. There was never any other way it could have played out.

  “I want you to release Bishop and Martin,” he whispered. “They’ve already lived through enough. If she doesn’t know already, it’s only a matter of time before she figures out that her brother is dead to her, if not his body. Will you do that for me?”

  Bradley sighed and met his stare with genuine compassion and a kind smile.

  “Give me twenty-four hours to see how things unfold. When all is said and done, we’ll find the right price to buy their silence. I guarantee they’ll walk away from this rich beyond their wildest dreams.”

  “And what if they can’t be bought? We’re talking about a girl’s brother here. Do you really think that if she understands what happened to him, she can be paid off with any amount of money?”

  “Everyone has a price.”

  “What if she doesn’t? What if Bishop doesn’t? What will happen to our research, to us, if word of what happened here leaks out?”

  “That will never happen.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I won’t let it.” Bradley’s voice rose, again summoning the attention of the computer techs who had resumed their tasks. “I refuse to allow anything to derail our project. I will not allow anyone to ruin everything we’ve done.”

  “How can you stop them?”

  “I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

  “What are you saying?” Reaves asked.

  Bradley leaned back in his chair and looked him directly in his eyes. What Reaves saw behind t
hat stare was something he’d never seen there before, something beyond fervor, something cold and insidious.

  Reaves turned away from his old friend and exited the room now occupied by a stranger.

  Forty

  South Pacific Ocean

  48 km East of New Ireland Island, Papua New Guinea

  December 1st

  12:00 a.m. PGT

  Bishop had lost sight of Courtney the moment she struck the water. There hadn’t been time to wait to make sure she surfaced. Not only was he too exposed standing out on the deck by the rail, but the longer he waited to dive in himself, the farther he would be from her when he made it to land. He could only pray that she was a strong enough swimmer to reach the island on her own, a prayer he said for himself, as well.

  The violent waves rose and fell so dramatically that it was impossible to tell how far he had come. He could barely see over the next crest before it fell out from beneath him. The island was a black wall that never seemed to grow any closer, while the lights from the Huxley had faded behind him into the fog without the sound of shouting or spotlights crisscrossing the ocean. His arms had passed beyond mere aching and into a realm of pain beyond anything he had ever experienced. The cold water leeched through his skin and into his bones, where it threatened to lock his joints and shut him down from the inside out. Every wave attempted to pull him under. His chest burned. Even on his best days, this swim would have been a nightmare. Physically depleted as he was, it was suicide. Only the exertion kept him going through sheer force of will and the lone image that spurred him on.

  Courtney.

  Her auburn hair.Her stunning green eyes. When he had thought they were dying inside the wreckage of the Mayr, he had been scared, the only time in his life that he could honestly say that. But it hadn’t been fear for himself. He defied death every day inside the submersible and had long ago accepted the fact that one day it would claim him. He’d been frightened for Courtney. Watching the dwindling oxygen slowly killing her, ushering her into her final sleep, had been like witnessing a star fading from the night sky into oblivion.

  Over the roar of the waves, he heard the bass drum-thumping of the breakers. Lightning turned night to momentary day. At the top of a swell, he glimpsed the island, now close enough he could make out the individual trees ascending the sheer, rocky slope. He reached down deep for whatever reserves he could find and stroked for everything he was worth. He gritted his teeth and pinched his eyes shut against the pain of icicles being driven through his shoulders, of the flames that were stoked in his lungs with every breath, of the coldness he was certain meant the amputation of his fingers and toes.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was upon the rocky crags that thrust upward from the ocean floor like fangs from a lower jaw. Whitened by eons of crusted bird feces, they stood out against the black boulders of the shoreline, now close enough that with each stroke he expected for his hand to brush them. A jagged rock slashed through the meat of his thigh, another through the skin on his belly. Foam crashed around him before exploding up into the air, where the lightning froze it in time. The next swell raised him above the rocks and hurled him against the breakers, knocking the wind out of him. He desperately wrapped his arms around a massive stone that felt like it was coated with glass shards. The thunder of the waves deafening his ears as they tried to beat him against the boulders and wrench him back out to sea, he clung to his salvation until he was able to breathe once more and cautiously began to ascend toward dry land.

  Saturated and shredded, the scrubs they had given him on the Huxley hung from him in tatters. They provided about as much protection from the wind as if he were wearing nothing at all. He barely had enough sensation in his fingertips to comprehend that they were lacerated and bleeding, and barely gripped the ragged edges of the stones he used to pull himself upward. His entire body shook from the combination of exhaustion and from shivering against the wicked cold. Now that he was well above the waves, which voiced their rage at his escape by booming against the shore, he wanted nothing more than to rest for a little while, just long enough to catch his breath and wait for the feeling to return to his appendages, but he knew that if he stopped he would never be able to start again, and forced himself to continue climbing.

  When he finally crested the rise, he collapsed to his chest and vomited seawater onto the spongy, moss-covered ground. The canopy overhead shielded him from the majority of the wind and rain. He looked back out across the ocean and saw only an infinity of angry troughs disappearing into the mist. There was no sign of the Huxley, nor did he see the figure he had hoped to find already at the top of the rock shelf.

  The frozen hand of panic clenched his heart.

  “Courtney?” he called, his voice little more than a croak. He fought to all fours and somehow managed to stagger to his feet. “Courtney!”

  Using the tree trunks for leverage, he shoved through the vines and broad-leaved shrubs, following the shoreline to the south. The crags below him were nearly invisible in the darkness until lightning tore the sky and he stole brief glimpses of the glistening wet rocks and the tempestuous ocean.

  “Courtney!” His voice was swallowed by the storm and the sea. “Courtney!”

  He fell repeatedly, only to drag himself back to his feet and press on. His eyes scoured the coast faster than his mind could keep up. What had once been panic now progressed to sheer terror. He tried to run and only managed to collapse into a thorny desmodium bush.

  “Courtney!”

  He heard something. It sounded like the wail of the wind, yet at the same time distinctly separate from it. He lunged back into motion.

  “Courtney!”

  There was the sound again. He threw himself forward, through the foliage and moss-bearded boughs, through tangles of vines, until he heard the sound clearly. Down and to his right, he saw Courtney clinging to the escarpment. Her face was so pale that when she looked up at him, her lips blue, he feared it had taken too long to find her. He dropped to his stomach and reached down the slick rocks until he was able to grab her right wrist with both hands. She shook as she sobbed. Tears shone on her cheeks, and he saw the combination of desperation and hope in her eyes. Below her, the waves pounded the rocks like sledge hammers. She wouldn’t survive the fall if his grasp slipped.

  “Hold on,” he said. His knees dug into the earth and he hooked his feet onto tree trunks that bit into his skin. He looked directly into her eyes the whole time. “Don’t you dare let go.”

  He strained against her weight as he pulled with all the strength he had left. When he finally dragged her over the ledge, she collapsed into his arms.

  Neither said a word as he cradled her shivering form to his chest and held her as tightly as he could.

  Forty-One

  R/V Aldous Huxley

  Bradley’s eyes widened in astonishment at the words whispered into his ear. He whirled to face the man who stood before him, face sticky with clotting blood from his eyebrows to his collar, nose askew to the left. The entire front of the man’s uniform shirt was streaked and spattered. His eyes kept trying to roll upward into his skull, but he repeatedly blinked them back down. He swayed back and forth and bared teeth rimmed with scarlet as he fought to maintain his balance.

  Bradley had never been so furious with one person in his entire life.

  “What do you mean ‘they escaped’?” he blurted. He rose from his chair and pulled Aronson out into the hallway by his upper arm. “How in the world did they get past you? Where’s Van Horn?”

  “I tried radioing him first.” Aronson’s words were slurred and his lips glimmered with a fresh sheen of blood. “When I didn’t get an answer, I came directly to find you.”

  “No answer? I want you to raise him on that radio right now.”

  Three other seamen stood back from the first. None of them made eye contact with Bradley.

  “Sir, I repeatedly tried to hail him on the transceiver to no avail, sir.”

  “I’ll
find Van horn. You four. Find Bishop and Martin. They have to be on this ship somewhere. They can’t have gotten far. I want a door-to-door search and every nook and cranny explored. Since the Huxley and the Mayr are identical on the inside, you have to assume they know this vessel every bit as well as you do. Now go find them. If they’re not in your charge again in the next half hour, the lot of you will be swimming back home. Now go!”

  The men turned on their heels and hurried down the hallway with the clamor of footsteps. Aronson signaled a plan to the others, who split up at the stairwell.

  Bradley massaged his throbbing temples. Everything was spiraling out of control. He hadn’t come this far only to fail in the twelfth hour.

  He shoved aside the thought of that fool Aronson being suckered by a man who was barely able to stand and a woman who only hours earlier had been nearly catatonic with an IV in her arm. His anger rose, but he choked it back down. This was no time to panic. They had to be hiding around here somewhere and it shouldn’t take too long to find them. Once they did, he could breathe easier and focus on the mission again. He’d be damned if he was going to let anyone ruin this for him. This was his life’s work and no one—no one—was going to ruin it for him, not now that they were so close.

  His hands clenched into fists and he had to force them to relax. Nothing irreversible had happened. This was only a minor inconvenience that would be easily enough rectified. He needed to find Van Horn, who was paid specifically for contingencies like this, and make sure that the situation was quickly handled.

  Last he knew, Van Horn had gone to the submersible hanger to make sure that all of the remains from the island had arrived intact. If he wasn’t still there, then surely he’d told Henri, who must have been elbow-deep in the corpses by now, where he was going. It was always possible that Van Horn was supervising the transport of the bodies they’d already studied to cold storage where he simply couldn’t hear his transceiver over the deafening roar of the engines.