Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  Pike snarled, grabbed him by the bicep, and dragged him out of earshot.

  “Get a hold of yourself. This has always been the road we were headed down. There was never any other way this could happen. So suck it up and let me do the job you pay me to do.” He leaned closer so that their noses nearly touched. Spittle struck Bradley’s chin when Pike spoke. “And if you ever contradict me in front of these people again, I’ll put you down myself. So grow a set in a hurry. We all need to be at the top of our game right now.”

  Bradley could still feel the pressure of Pike’s grip even after he let go and walked back toward the others.

  “Grab only what you can carry,” Pike said. “We’re leaving now.”

  “What about…them?” Bradley gestured toward the life raft in which they had heaped the bodies of Walker and the two seamen. Even with the rain, the flies had found them and a conspicuous number of crabs scuttled between pools in the sand.

  “I’ve got a hunch this thing will be coming back for them. Don’t you think?”

  Not with all of this fresh meat wandering into another of its traps. Bradley didn’t vocalize his thoughts, and instead offered Pike a single nod.

  Far off to the east, beyond where the ocean merged with the sky, the horizon was stained pink. Soon enough, the rising sun would burn off the mist and hopefully the storm clouds as well. He prayed they were right about the creature’s vision and that they would make it safely off the island before darkness fell.

  There was no way they would be able to survive another night.

  Fifty-Four

  Pike led them through the dense forest, conscious of every minuscule detail around him. The rain had slowed to a patter from a sky that must have significantly cleared to allow the occasional slivers of the rising sun’s amber rays to pass through the nearly impenetrable canopy. Droplets and rivulets still fell from where the water had collected in the upper reaches, as though the trees themselves now rained. Monkeys screeched and birds called from out of sight through the mist that crawled through the branches and across the wet loam. As he had hoped, it was finally beginning to dissipate with the coming of day, but as it burned off, the humidity increased tenfold, which made it impossible for their clothes and hair to dry. Even with the increased visibility, the trees and shrubs were packed so tightly together that what few gaps they afforded were strung with vines. None of the others spoke, yet still the sounds of them crashing through the underbrush like a herd of cattle masked the more stealthy noises of the jungle, and the whine of the mosquitoes in his ears threatened to drive him mad.

  For not the first time, he debated just ducking off the path and leaving them to fend for themselves. They were his responsibility, but considering their adversary, they were probably dead men walking regardless.

  They weren’t even half a kilometer to the northeast of the beach when he heard something that made him hold up his fist to signal them all to stop. Even without the ruckus of their passage, he had to concentrate to clearly decipher the sound over their labored breathing. He peered around the six civilians behind him to see Brazelton, who brought up the rear. The expression on his face confirmed that he had heard the sound and understood the implications as well. Pike signaled his intent and ducked off the path. He carefully picked his way through the untamed proliferation, cautious even of the crinkle of wet leaves underfoot. The noise ahead of him grew louder with each slow step. Down the barrel of his pistol, he could see the swarming black dots through the leaves. He tightened his finger on the trigger as he advanced. The buzzing sound of flies called to him from beyond a screen of willows. He breathed shallowly through his mouth to combat the stench of death. Before he even eased through the bushes, he knew exactly what he would find.

  There had to be half a dozen corpses, all stacked like corded wood. Despite the branches that had been broken from the trees to cover them, he could still see portions of their bloated bodies. Swollen faces teeming with flies and ants. Bruised and discolored chests and legs. Their abdomens were distended with intestinal gasses. Livid wounds marred their flesh.

  Pike slowly scoured the surrounding forest along the length of his pistol, expecting something to lunge at him at any moment. Several green birds knifed through the canopy with a startled cry. If this was where the creature had brought the bodies, then how far away could it possibly be?

  One silent step at a time, he crept into the small clearing. The sheer amount of insects crawling on the remains made them appear to move. He glanced down at the sloppy earth and was rewarded with the sight of more footprints like those he had followed from the other side of the island. Burdened by the extra weight of the bodies, they were deeper and more clearly defined. Without taking his eyes from the forest, he knelt and traced their contours with his fingertips. They were bare, size twelve or thirteen. The toes left teardrop impressions like those of the wolves and mountain lions he had tracked on hunting trips with his father growing up. The prints formed a trampled circle around the corpses that Pike followed until he reached a point that he could see the beach, maybe fifty yards down a ravine. He was on the northern end of the heavily wooded horseshoe bay, where the forest grew nearly all the way into the ocean. It would definitely have been possible for someone to emerge from the ocean and slip into the trees without being seen by the naked eye from where they’d built their fire on the beach, but he still should have been able to see a heat signature through the thermal goggles. The tracks led directly to the stones lining the ravine. He walked a complete circle around the festering remains. No other tracks led away into the forest. After hauling the bodies up here, the creature must have returned to the beach, but why?

  Pike tried to construct a mental timeframe. How had this thing had the time to attack them on the beach, abscond with the dead, and then drag them all up here? The only possible way was if it had swum from one side of the beach to the other at a high rate of speed and been strong enough to carry the corpses over its shoulders while it ran up the gulley.

  The prospect of that kind of physical prowess was terrifying. It would have easily taken two highly skilled men to accomplish that task so quickly.

  None of them would be leaving this island alive.

  If the thing had doubled back to the beach, it could be sneaking up behind his party at this very moment while he was distracted by the bodies. He hurried back in the direction from which he had come without any of his previous caution, certain that the screams and gunshots would erupt at any second. He was surprised when he burst through the foliage to find the group still standing right where he had left them.

  Their stalker could easily have crept up behind them by now and butchered them all as efficiently as it had demonstrated it could mere minutes ago on the beach.

  So why hadn’t it?

  Was it possible that Tyler Martin’s eyesight had been altered so dramatically that he could only see well enough to hunt at night like the scientists believed? Pike hadn’t been prepared to buy that explanation without proof, for such speculation could cost them their lives if they were wrong, but was that exactly what they had now? Proof that as long as the sun was up they would be safe from attack? If this was really the case, then they needed to take full advantage of every second of daylight to distance themselves from the creature, despite the fact that he didn’t know where it was.

  He thought about the tracks leading back to the ocean’s edge.

  Where could it possibly have gone?

  Pike caught Brazelton’s attention and confirmed what he had found with a nod. Brazelton lowered his brows in confusion as he followed the same line of logic that Pike had.

  “What’s out there?” Bradley asked.

  “Nothing,” Pike said. He turned back to the north and the trek ahead. “Nothing at all.”

  If they were going to capitalize on this opportunity, then he was going to have to drive them as hard and as fast as he could, regardless of the noise and their condition and the terrain.

  “Move out!�
�� he called back over his shoulder. “We’re wasting daylight.”

  Fifty-Five

  Bishop looked back over his shoulder at Courtney. She hadn’t said a word since they left the spring where they’d found the partially-consumed bodies of the men from their ship. And the scales. He knew what she was thinking. He’d seen the skin condition growing on her brother’s face and chest as well, but he couldn’t begin to fathom how she felt. Bishop had never been close to his parent and he didn’t have any siblings. He had seen plenty of men die during his years in the Navy, some of them in gruesome and horrible ways, but he’d never really been more than superficial friends with any of them. Their passing had affected him, just not in the soul-deep kind of way that Courtney must have been feeling. He wanted to reach out to her and yet give her the privacy that she needed to grieve at the same time. There was still the chance that they’d misinterpreted what they’d seen and that her brother was still out there somewhere. Surely there was something supportive he could say, but if she was barely clinging to a thread of hope, he could easily sever it with even the best of intentions. So he continued to forge their path through the wilderness, watching the trees for any sign of pursuit, while he could think about nothing other than the pain and sorrow on her face.

  He heard the trickling sound of running water ahead and shoved through the bushes to find a small creek. Its narrow banks overflowed with runoff from the steep slope of the caldera. From somewhere uphill and through the trees came the sound of a series of waterfalls. There was a slim gap between the branches overhead, granting him his first true glimpse of the sun in as long as he could remember. He almost wept at the sight. After days trapped in darkness and the horrors of the previous night, he had thought he might never see it again. Tiny raindrops fell as little more than a damp mist. He stepped down into the shallow stream, spread his arms out to either side, and leaned his head back to feel the warmth caress his skin. The frigid water soothed his aching feet and the seemingly millions of small cuts on his soles.

  Courtney splashed into the creek beside him and moaned in relief. Her feet were so badly lacerated that when he looked down he could see the blood diffusing into the water. As much as they needed to hurry, thirty more seconds in the blessed water wouldn’t kill them.

  He held out his hand to her. She took it as she stared up into the sky.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

  She nodded and a tear slid down her cheek.

  “You know it’s possible those scales could have come from some kind of fish or lizard.”

  “In a geothermal spring with a temperature of more than a hundred degrees?”

  “It doesn’t mean they came from your brother. For all we know—”

  “It’s okay.” She squeezed his hand. A green parrot with a red face squawked and took to wing through the canopy. “I love my brother. If he’s still alive, and if there’s any way he can be saved, I’ll find it.”

  Bishop turned and looked into her eyes. In them he saw not hopelessness, but resolve. He pulled her closer and kissed her, softly, tentatively. She leaned into him with such urgency that they both nearly slipped on the smooth rocks.

  He was not going to allow anything to happen to her. They were going to get off of this godforsaken island and—

  The ground shuddered. From somewhere above him, he heard the loud crack of a boulder breaking free and crashing into the forest.

  He pulled her out of the water as the earth once again stilled and the rumbling sound ceased. The stream flowed momentarily higher before resuming its former level. Leaves fluttered down from the trees like green butterflies.

  “Aftershock?” he said.

  “Not this long after the fact.” She pointed up through the trees toward where wisps of smoke drifted into the sky over the forested rim of the caldera. “We’re in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the most notoriously unstable geological region on the planet. If the tectonic plates in the Kilinailau Ridge are still shifting like they were when we were there, anything could happen.”

  “One more reason to get the hell off this rock.”

  She pulled him to her this time and kissed him. When she finally broke away, she leaned her forehead on his chin.

  “I can’t leave,” she whispered. “Not while there’s a chance Ty might still be out here.”

  He nodded and kissed her hairline.

  “I understand,” he said. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  Of course, when the opportunity finally arrived, he’d drag her off this island kicking and screaming if he had to.

  She smiled and held him for a moment longer before she turned back toward the forest and the journey ahead. Bishop took her by the hand and reluctantly guided her out of the sun and into the shadows again.

  Fifty-Six

  Reaves had no idea how long they’d been walking or how far they had traveled. The fugue that had settled over him had finally begun to lift, leaving in its stead a deep-seated desperation that made him feel like crawling out of his own skin. He needed to get off this island. The urge was so overwhelming that it was all he could do to keep from shoving the others aside and sprinting through the jungle. He kept imaging the cavern under Casa Rinconada and the buried temple in Vietnam, and all of the bones scattered on the floor. Was there already such a place in this hell and would some anthropologist in the distant future be poring over his gnawed skeletal remains? What had happened to Tyler Martin now felt real in a way that it never had before. He had undergone the same metamorphosis that had transformed the creatures that had driven entire societies from their homes and to migrations that had ultimately led to their demise. Entire societies! And the Anasazi, Champa, and Maya weren’t peace-loving agricultural societies ill-prepared to defend themselves against such a threat. They were warring, often merciless, tribes whose ferocity should have all but guaranteed their survival. If they had fallen, what hope was there for the seven of them stumbling through the jungle?

  As an evolutionary anthropologist, he had to find the objective balance between science and God to explain the changes that caused the rise and fall of civilizations, that led to the physiological and sociological alterations, and the physical differences that mere geographical origin couldn’t explain. He now had to wonder if both conspired against them. There were plenty of examples of relatively sudden evolutionary shifts, of random mutations that had altered the future of entire species. Birds had evolved from their extinct dinosaur forebears thanks to the rise of feathers from scales. Homo sapiens branched from homo erectus, which had died off shortly thereafter. Were they now standing at the precipice of another dramatic evolutionary leap? Was this the event that would spell humanity’s extinction and spawn a new species to take its place, or was this simply a random event without cosmic design, set into motion by two separate organisms that were never meant to come into contact with one another? Or was this a punishment unleashed by God to cleanse the planet of the scourge of mankind like the tsunami that killed so many in Oceania and the earthquake that decimated Haiti? Was the reign of homo sapiens finally coming to an end?

  Had he played an integral role in the extinction of his own species?

  Maybe for now this was an isolated event confined to this island, but if he didn’t return to Seattle, someone else would find his research and pick up right where he left off. It was too enticing for anyone who understood the significance to pass up.

  Worse still, if someone could crack the genetic code of the bacterium that caused the changes, what monstrous aberrations could they create?

  He glanced over at Bradley.

  What had he intended to do with the knowledge once that power was his to wield?

  This had all been one giant mistake. The focus of his entire life had been a mistake. There were just some things that man was simply never meant to learn.

  At least their theory about the creature’s nocturnal habits had thus far been correct. Or had it? Maybe their stalker had set another trap somewhere
ahead of them and even now they were walking obliviously into it. Best case scenario, all they were doing was distancing themselves from it, but would that be enough? Their only hope was to evacuate the island before nightfall. With the sheer number of geothermal formations on the island continuously producing hydrogen sulfide, this was the ideal habitat for the creature to survive indefinitely. Again he had to wonder if such a coincidence wasn’t the work of some omnipotent hand.

  They could only pray that there was a radio at the mission they could use to call for evacuation. If not, then it was only a matter of time before the monster that was Tyler Martin found them. With every hard-earned yard forged through the jungle, they were merely creating a path that would lead it straight to them.

  A gap opened in the forest to the west. The tranquil Pacific stretched clear to the horizon. Golden sunlight sparkled like diamonds on the aquamarine waves. Cotton ball-clouds drifted through the seamless blue sky. He wished the sun’s ascent would stall, stranding it above them for as long as possible.

  The ground rumbled beneath his feet again. He leaned against the nearest tree for balance and turned to the east. High above the rim of the volcano, smoke merged into a bank of storm clouds that seemed to be building in height, rising into the stratosphere like a great fist preparing to smite them.

  “Just ride it out,” Pike said.

  Birds shrieked from swirling flocks overhead before dropping back to their roosts in the canopy, from which they’d been unceremoniously rousted by the quake.

  The waves to the west grew choppy and boomed against the rocky shore like cannon fire.

  “That one was bigger than the last,” Libby Parsons whispered. “They’re growing in frequency and intensity. Every time the tectonic plates shift, they create massive amounts of energy. All of these little discharges…”