Helix: Plague of Ghouls

by Pat Flewwelling

  He wondered what kind of animal she turned into when the mood was upon her. She reminded him so much of the legendary Sister Whitehair. Air churned, and Two-Trees tugged down his sleeve over his wrist to hide the goose bumps, and he rubbed at his ticklish nose.

  “So what do we do about him?” Two-Trees asked.

  “He is at the table,” the Padre muttered.

  Two-Trees made a hand sign, begging him to keep quiet. It was bad enough that the Padre bore such a striking resemblance to the missing girl. There was no telling who might also recognize his voice.

  “He’ll stay at the hotel,” Ishmael said, “same with the rest of us—after we’ve finished buying him some clothes and other basic necessities.”

  Two-Trees didn’t like that idea either.

  Ishmael’s knife grated against his plate when he sawed through a day-old bagel. “The man hasn’t seen civilization in six years, and Wyrd wouldn’t sell him any other clothes.”

  “He could have started anywhere else but here,” Two-Trees said. “Like Vancouver, for example, or Halifax. Hell, even Winnipeg.”

  Bridget gave him a dour look. “He’s here now, and there’s not much we can do about it.”

  “We’ll head back to the hotel as soon as he has clothes,” Ishmael said, “and he’ll get clothes as soon as we leave here, and we’ll leave here as soon as we’re finished talking business. Until then, can we all stop talking like we’re about to get caught?” Ishmael had six empty packets of cream cheese on his plate. “You’re Dr. Two-Trees, forensic anthropologist. Bridget’s your assistant, and the Padre’s her husband, temporarily unemployed and bored out of his mind.”

  The Padre agreed, using some rather un-Catholic language.

  “Holly’s your intern,” Ishmael said, “and I’m her Italian boy-toy along for the ride.”

  “I like that,” Holly said, with a tiny smile.

  “See? All of us here for business purposes,” Ishmael said. “So let’s talk business, instead of looking like we’re aiding and abetting.”

  Two-Trees sipped the coffee Bridget had bought for him. The coffee was cold, but it had just the right amount of sugar and milk.

  “So what have we got so far?” Ishmael asked.

  While four shape-shifters ate their breakfasts in relative silence—Ishmael devoured his with hardly a breath between bites—Two-Trees told them everything he could: about the bodies, about the scene of the crime, about the facial reconstruction project he was on, and about the jungle punk suspects that had been interrogated the night before. By the time he got to the part about the pharmacy thief, they’d all run out of breakfast and excuses for sticking around. The café was painfully quiet. Even the people at the computers near the back of the store had begun to type more slowly and as silently as possible.

  Two-Trees leaned in. “We need to talk about this someplace else.”

  “I agree,” Ishmael said. “People are talking about you.”

  “Me?”

  “They recognize you.”

  “Well shit.”

  Ishmael said, “They’re connecting you with the murders at Pritchard Park.”

  Two-Trees shrugged and pointed with his chin at the Padre. “Well, better me than—”

  Ishmael made eye contact that time. So did the Padre. Two-Trees’ bowels shrivelled.

  “The hotel,” Two-Trees said. “Since we’re all checked in there anyhow. Did they tell you about the bed bugs yet?”

  “That could be a problem,” Bridget said.

  There was always a slim chance that blood-sucking vermin could transfer lycanthropic viral material into healthy human beings, but a single case of such an infection had yet to be documented. No one would know about a cross-infection for up to six months, assuming the unsuspecting victim survived the initial infection, and by then, they could be half-way around the world.

  “We’re probably fine. Listen, what if just you and Bridget went back to the hotel?” Ishmael suggested. “Go over the specifics, come up with a game plan. Bridget will be a helluva lot more help to you than the three of us will be.”

  “Don’t sell yourself so short,” Bridget muttered. “You were field ops for how long?”

  “No, Bridget . . . Listen. There’s another reason why I need to stay hands-off during this investigation. I . . . I’m . . . compromised,” Ishmael said, as if he wasn’t sure that he’d used the right word.

  “Then pull yourself together,” Bridget growled.

  “I’m pretty sure it was environmental,” Holly said. Bridget looked skeptical. “At the Howard Johnson, the one downtown,” Holly added. “You must have felt it, too.”

  “Stress,” Bridget said, dismissing it quickly. “Deal with it. Face it, take it, use it to hone your mind until the danger’s over.”

  Holly shook her head, thin blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders. She swept it back. “No, it’s more than stress. You, me, Ishmael. Padre especially. We all had the same reaction at that hotel.”

  “I thought it was the noise,” the Padre said. Two-Trees gave him a warning look, pleading for silence. The Padre casually flipped him the bird. “It was pretty damned crowded in there.”

  Holly shook her head again, and very subtly touched her nose.

  “Really,” the Padre asked.

  “Well, that gives us a lead,” Bridget said.

  Two-Trees raised his hand a little. “Confused.”

  “It’s not something I care to explain in public,” Bridget said. “I’ll tell you back at the hotel. But it’s definitely something we have to keep in mind when we lay out a strategy.”

  “I’d like to see the body,” Holly interrupted. “There’s something I want to look for.” She sat forward suddenly. “Maybe a blood sample. Any chance we can find a medical supply depot? I could cobble together—”

  Ishmael suddenly took her hand and gave it a squeeze. He didn’t look at her. Holly looked like she’d been chastised. He kissed her hand. She smiled sadly.

  “I’ll see what I can do about getting you some samples, or photos maybe,” Two-Trees said. “But I think you know what we need most of all.”

  “A nose,” Bridget said, under her breath.

  Two-Trees nodded. “Yep. There are some things we do know. We know the location of at least one crime scene. We know that there were animal tracks on and around that scene. The downside is, it’s been raining, so we may have already lost a trail. But if the gods are with us, maybe we can confirm whether or not there has been any recent, uh, Wyrd activity in the area. So, any luck with Harvey?”

  “No, he’s still not talking to us,” Bridget replied. “Ishmael has one back up idea, but first I need to know exactly what your plan is.”

  “If you’re thinking it, the answer’s no,” the Padre said. His lips were tight.

  There’s no way this man can walk around town without being mistaken for Sydney Mission.

  “It’s fine. I seriously doubt you’d pass,” Bridget said, with a good-humoured sneer.

  “He could,” Ishmael and Holly said together, and the Padre shot them a smouldering look that made hairs stand up on Two-Trees’ forearms. He’d seen that look before, the day he and Bridget tossed the Padre naked into the back of the modified Wyrd truck.

  “He won’t ‘pass’,” the Padre said, smiling.

  Yep. That was the look. He’d crouched in the cage, he’d shuddered, his eyebrows dropped, his eyes locked with Two-Trees’, and he’d grinned. Growling, the madman had said, “I see you . . .”

  Ishmael leaned closer to the Padre. “Your teeth are showing,” Ishmael whispered.

  The Padre tucked away his humourless smile, and after a long, tense moment, he averted his eyes and nodded, deferring to the larger man pinning him in the corner.

  What if he goes crazy again? Pritchard Park all over. At least back then, cell phone cameras weren’t as common as house keys.

  “You’ll be all right,” Ishmael said. “We’ll get through this quickly, and we’ll go home.”
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  “I know,” the Padre whispered back.

  “Start thinking how you can use this experience in your counselling sessions,” Ishmael said.

  The Padre’s eyes lightened, partly because they were wider, partly because Ishmael no longer cast a shadow over them. He nodded hesitantly. “You’re right.” He took a breath. “You’re right.” He ran his hands down his pant legs. “Get me a notepad while we’re out?”

  “Sure,” Ishmael said. “I’ll do one better.” He leaned to the side in order to extricate his wallet from a back pocket. Inside was a well-used corporate credit card issued to BDA Design and Consultation.

  The Padre cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I was thinking pen and paper, but if you want to buy me a whole computer, I won’t complain. After all, I did promise Ferox that I’d google her while I was out.”

  Ishmael winked and turned to the rest of the table with a burst of goodwill. “Are we done here?” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

  “We’ll meet back at the hotel,” Bridget said. “My room. Two hours?”

  “Maximum,” Ishmael agreed. “See you soon.” He shook Two-Trees’ hand. He gently prodded Holly into standing up and leaving. Once the three of them had gotten up and left, Two-Trees moved and sat where Ishmael had been, so he could face Bridget. He waited until she’d finished her coffee.

  “Is there something else you want to tell me?” Two-Trees asked.

  Bridget blew a long, lippy sigh and huddled over her mild coffee. “God, where do I start.”

  “With Holly. What’s her special case?”

  “Shit, that’s right. I owe you fifty bucks.”

  “A true lycanthrope, picked up by accident?”

  “Apparently so. You’d think Foster would have told me there’d been a mistake,” Bridget said. “Holly’s a good fighter, and loyal as hell, so Padre tells me. He said Holly wanted to stay in quarantine to keep Foster safe while she worked on that cure. But you’d think Foster would have said something . . .”

  Two-Trees wasn’t convinced. “You remember bringing her in?”

  “No, but it probably wasn’t our case. Jay brought in what, nearly fifty people on his own? Half a dozen other Wyrd agents had their own captures. Hell, even Gil Burton has one kill/capture/quarantine under his belt.”

  “That one doesn’t count. Eva Foster was already in quarantine when the Padre infected her.”

  “The point is, she was someone else’s capture.”

  “Look, Bridge, I’ve got one thing going for me.” He tapped his temple. “I never forget a face that’s been on the kill/capture/quarantine list. And hers I don’t know. We had photos of every target, whether they were on Grey’s patient list or not, whether they were our k/c/q’s, or assigned to Jay, or to Angie Burley, or whoever. Holly’s face was not on that list. So where’d she come from?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’LL WALK YOU up to the ’ouse,” Dep said. “It’s not safe for you to go alone.”

  Ferox shrugged off his touch.

  “I said, I was sorry!” Dep pleaded. “You know how dis works, better than me.”

  Her left eye was nearly swollen shut.

  “A lot is foggy in my head, still, I know dat—” He rushed to keep up with her. His feet were bigger than they used to be, and he had a hard time walking over terrain he’d been trampling for weeks. She had no such problem, and considering she was now nearly a foot shorter than he was, surefootedness was her only advantage. “My arm was not where I t’ought it was.” He took two jogging steps to catch up again. “I didn’t mean it. Please, Dani. I need to show you one thing.” He kept his hands off, but he moved like he desperately wanted to catch her by the arm and turn her around. He kept his distance. He curled his creaking hands into fists, then unfolded them and put them in his pockets instead. He was already into another false start. She could see it in the quivering of his eyes. “I . . . I . . . I . . . I’ve been . . .” Words were hard to form in his mouth.

  Suddenly he was exhausted. With a hand sign, he begged her to stay and wait with him. His false starts were nothing like Helen’s. Helen had fully recovered from the previous evening; no vestigial fangs, no stretched ears, no seizures, and practically no memory of the night before, or anything else, for that matter. Dep, on the other hand, only seemed to be marching toward a final form, with each false start leaving him a little less human each time. And me, not changing with him.

  What had Ferox worried was the shape he was changing into. His shoulders were widening, his waist was shrinking, he could barely straighten his legs, and he had a worrisome stoop. Even the way he held his arms had changed.

  He was starting to stand like Vengeance.

  For a time, he stood on the bank of the Nakii River, grimacing, jerking his head around, baring the teeth of one side of his mouth, cranking his neck to one side or the other, flexing his arms, and all the while, making disturbing, single-note noises, like a stuttering video track.

  It took forever for him to come out of it. She sat watching water flow under a crust of ice.

  “I didnnnnnnn’t meannnn—”

  “I know,” Ferox said. Her voice was miserable. She wanted to cry, but she was too tired. The worst case scenario meant that Dep would turn into a werewolf-eating furred-zombie thing with antlers and a dislocating jaw. The best case scenario meant that Dep was turning into Vengeance. Regardless of his potential future state, Dep was turning into a monster, period, exclamation point. And despite his oaths of innocence, she’d seen the look in his eye before he let his arm swing.

  “I need to . . .” He was heaving for breath. There was a tic under his right eye, but the worst seemed to be over. He had fur across his cheekbones.

  “I need to show you,” he insisted.

  It was brown fur, sparse but already wolfish. There was nothing feline in his face. Nothing vulpine, either, despite all the things they’d done together during quarantine.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “There’s something . . .” he said, trying very hard to pronounce all his troublesome “th”s. “I need to show you.” He gave up trying. “Something dat Bridget has ’elped me wit’ ever since we got here.” He extended his hand for her to take.

  He had claws, and his fingers wouldn’t straighten.

  “Something dat I need,” Dep said.

  “I don’t like what you’re becoming, Dep,” Ferox said. “I know you . . .” She gritted her teeth. “I know you can’t help it, but I look at you, and I see—”

  “My brother,” Dep said.

  Ferox tilted her head. “You still remember him.”

  “Please,” he said, offering her his hand again.

  “Fine. Whatever. Show me.” She crossed her arms. She could still remember what it felt like to carry a therianthrope on her back—mid-change—and the last thing she wanted to do was hold Dep’s hand while it changed. There was a lot to be said about sympathetic changes. Bones breaking and the sound of ripping leathery water-bags didn’t sound nearly so grotesque when you were the one making the noises; pain and adrenaline tended to distract from the sound effects. But when he changed, she didn’t, leaving her to suffer all the gag-inducing sounds that came from his body. “But tell me where you’re taking me.”

  “To the garage,” Dep said.

  “Dep, no! We can’t! You know the rules.”

  Dep shrugged. “I don’t think dey still apply.”

  “You’re not supposed to be anywhere near the main house or the other buildings when you’re at risk of up-cycling. And here you are up-cycling, like, every three minutes!”

  “But you’re not up-cycling, too. So, I’m not catching.”

  He had a point, but Wyrd agents also had a habit of shooting first and asking questions later.

  “I’ll take you dere. I’ll show you. Den, you go back to the main ’ouse, and be safe for a while. From me.” He shrugged one shoulder and smiled lazily. “But don’t stay away too long, okay?”

  Ordinarily, i
t took an hour to walk between the Hollow and the main house. That morning, it took almost two and a half. Dep had three more seizures on the way, losing a little more humanity each time. At that rate, he’d have his first full cycle by nightfall, she thought.

  I should be with him for that. If he hits me hard enough, or if I’m scared enough, maybe it’ll trigger a change off-cycle, and I can defend myself properly. She wiped dew from her nose. Her eyes prickled, threatening to tear up. And if he tries to kill and eat me?

  They chatted about things they remembered and missed about quarantine. He talked about how she still made his dreams a beautiful place to be, even though she was almost always human now. They talked about things they’d expected when leaving quarantine—everything from a hero’s welcome to medical experimentation to gangland-style execution, and how they’d been sorely disappointed by the boredom and uncertainty that met them instead.

  They theorized about what Angie might have been doing out in the woods so well dressed with a man of such an unknown voice or smell. Dep agreed with her: there was no coincidence between Angie’s midnight meeting and the division of Ishmael’s Pack.

  And after each of Dep’s false starts, he’d stop and take an inventory of what else he’d lost. If he missed some observation, she’d point it out to him. By the time they were in sight of the garage, Dep had to untie his hair from its ponytail to let it hide his cupped and triangular ears which, for now, lay flush against the sides of his head, instead of swivelling out like satellite dishes.

  At the first sight of people moving between the main house and the garage, Ferox stopped Dep. She knelt and rolled up the cuffs of his pant legs. She hoped this would disguise how short the pants were on him now. His legs were hairy, but in the way that most men’s legs were hairy. In a couple of hours, that hair would be replaced by fur, she figured. As it was, his calf muscles had lengthened, as had his ankles, and his heels wouldn’t reach the ground.

  “Maybe we should wait until after your next false start.” She checked her watch.

  He took her hands, gently. His eyes had changed, too. Now they were copper-coloured, with flecks of jade, and she couldn’t help but stare at them.