“Two came after me,” Mary Anne said. “I spent most of yesterday afternoon hiding in the lake, breathing through a reed. They make a lot of noise when they walk.”
“So . . . you must have found Angie’s body.”
“No, but I found where she’d been. The bonewalkers ate her when they couldn’t find me.”
“Damn,” Ferox sighed.
Dep stood at their side, easily gazing over their heads and sniffing the air. He kept his paw on Ferox’s shoulder for balance. Running came easily to him. It was just a matter of letting his lack of balance propel him forward. Standing was tricky, since he was so top-heavy and could only stand on the balls and toes of his feet.
It had begun to snow at the Varco Valley Gas Station, and the flakes fell on the smouldering ruins of Ishmael’s favourite log cabin. The road was empty for miles, or Dep wouldn’t have stayed so close.
“Why isn’t he down-cycling?” Mary Anne asked.
“He did down-cycle, when I did,” Ferox said. “Then he up-cycled again twenty minutes later.”
“How long ago was that?”
Dep had been stuck in that form for at least a day and a half. “I think he’s broken,” Ferox said. “Like I used to be.”
“You think he’s stuck half-and-half?” Mary Anne asked, visibly horrified. “Good God, if this is his half-way point . . .”
Ferox could only shrug. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
“Or wait until Foster returns.”
Ferox nodded. “Yeah, except we can’t stay here and wait for her. The bonewalkers are still out there, somewhere. We’ll never get a moment’s peace.”
“Well . . .” Mary Anne looked down at herself, then at Dep. “We can’t exactly shop for new real estate looking like this, can we?”
“No,” Ferox admitted. “But maybe I can.” She tossed her thumb over her shoulder, indicating her work in progress. “Angie had told us to take a truck, pick everyone up, and get out of here. We got as far as the Station and got out to look for you and Shuffle and Helen, but then Helen ran off. Next thing I know, we’re attacked by bonewalkers.”
“And you lost track of my husband,” Mary Anne said.
Ferox nodded sadly. “After they set fire to the hut in the Hollow, Shuffle ran. His animal half hates fire. He panicked and bolted. As for Helen . . . I have no idea where she’s gone. Dep’s been going around watering every rock and tree—”
“I know,” Mary Anne said, tapping her nose.
“And now that you’re here,” Ferox said, “maybe Helen and Shuffle will follow suit. Except . . . Jay must have known we’d try to escape Varco Lake.” She pointed to the truck. “I don’t know what he’s done, but the engine won’t start. The battery seems to work, but there were a bunch of loose things, a couple of lines that are cut . . . Dep’s been trying to explain to me what I need to do but . . . Well, look at him. It’ll take him years before he can learn how to pronounce English again. I don’t suppose you know something about car maintenance.”
“Nope. Ask me about microbiology,” Mary Anne said. “That’s starting to come back.”
“That’s both thrilling and useless.”
“Yes, and no.”
Mary Anne produced the box which had contained the six or seven doses Dr. Burton had created. One of the syringes was empty. “I think he meant for us to use these against the bonewalkers.”
Ferox was cautiously optimistic. “Yeah, but how do we jab them, if they’re covered in bone armour?”
“You worry about that. I’ll worry about finding some way of making more of this.”
“I wouldn’t recommend going back to the lab,” Ferox said. “The place is crawling with bonewalkers. Dep went up there to see if he could find Dr. Gil, or even Mr. Haberman, but he couldn’t get farther than the garage. Grabbing tools was a big enough risk. They’re armed with cycle lockers and spiral serum.”
“They’re missing too? Gil and Haberman?”
“We don’t know,” Ferox said. “If they’re here . . . well . . . maybe Haberman can hide in the woods as well as we can. But Gil? Not a chance. If he’s alive, Jay’s probably got him.” She dumped her dirty hands to her hips. “I think Jay wants him alive. Gil is the key to the bonewalkers. He created them.”
Mary Anne didn’t look as surprised as Ferox had expected.
“He was trying to create a cure for himself,” Ferox explained. “He’s a carrier, not a true lycanthrope, but there were complications. He thought if he could cure himself, maybe he would cure his MS too. But before he’d perfected the treatment, Jay stole his research.”
“The same way he copied Foster’s research,” Mary Anne said. “And the imperfect treatment created bonewalkers.”
“Gil thinks Jay has someone piecing together research from Foster, from Gil, even from Dr. Grey.”
“That research was destroyed,” Mary Anne said.
“Do we know that for sure?”
“Shit,” Mary Anne said.
Dep perked up, ears swivelling toward some sound coming up from the south-east. The road was shiny and black but it was clear. It bent south around a forest hill. Boughs bent dangerously over the road, heavy with the snow that had accumulated on the last of the autumn leaves. Ferox couldn’t hear, see, or smell any approaching vehicles, but she could trust Dep and Mary Anne’s superior, inhuman senses.
“Go,” Ferox said. “Both of you. Maybe I can flag down some help.”
They didn’t need to be told twice. Mary Anne went one way, and Dep the other. Ferox returned to the truck, and while she waited for the intruder, she peered under the truck for the lost screwdriver. Her mind was elsewhere, running combat simulations to devise different ways of catching and decapitating a bonewalker, using only the tools Dep had brought down from the garage. When she heard the engine noise at last, she stepped onto the side of the road, ready to flag down whoever was coming. If it was a logging truck, she could beg for help, or at least have the driver radio for roadside assistance. If it was a car, there was a chance she could use the driver’s cell phone. If it was a bonewalker, she had backup.
The vehicle came speeding around the hill toward the station. It was a black truck like the one Ferox was trying to fix. There had been a few left near the garage in the custody of the bonewalkers, so Ferox began to back away. The torched station and log cabin offered little in the way of shelter. The truck’s engine was screaming with the effort of racing uphill. To her horror, the truck sped up, as if the driver had recognized Ferox as a target. She retreated across the station’s parking lot, casting hurried glances over her shoulder. She stopped, turned, and stood her ground, a wrench in one hand and a Philips screwdriver in the other.
The truck turned into the station, bounding over a wheel stop. The driver’s side door opened even as the brakes squealed, the wheels turned, and the truck shook as if it was going to flip onto its side. The door flung open wide, and a burly figured jumped out, head down.
“Ferox!” It was a woman’s voice.
“Oh, my God,” Ferox said. She threw down the tools. “You’re—”
Bridget crushed Ferox in her arms. She was sobbing.
“Bridget! Are you all right?”
Bridget didn’t answer. She smoothed down Ferox’s hair without letting her go.
“It’s okay, Bridget,” Ferox said. “It’s all right. Dep and Mary Anne are here too. We’re all right.”
Bridget gulped air and let Ferox go. She mashed the ball of her hand against her eyes, angrily shoving her tears to either side. She sniffed and groaned. “You’re the last people I thought I’d ever see again, in the last place I’d ever think to look.”
“We thought you were in Ontario on a case!”
“We were. We are. But we have to move fast. Do you have Gil with you?” Ferox shook her head. Before she could give more news, Bridget asked, “What about Dr. Grey?”
“Missing,” Ferox said. “After the fire he ran off and we haven’t seen h
im since.”
Mary Anne quietly returned, but kept a safe distance. She trusted Bridget no more than she trusted Ishmael.
“And Helen?”
Ferox shook her head. “We can’t find her. She’s had non-stop false starts for the last week, and I think she had her last one two days ago. She went like Ishmael. No wendigo.”
“Track her scent,” Bridget said to Mary Anne.
Ferox’s eyes widened as she shook her head. “She doesn’t have a scent. Not one I can detect.”
“Me neither,” Mary Anne said.
“And Dep?” Bridget asked. “What about Dep? Where’s he?”
“There’s a problem with Dep,” Mary Anne said. “A bigger problem than I have.”
Dep himself emerged from behind the bushes. Bridget’s eyes tracked him as he stood up, and up, and up. Reluctantly, he padded forward, sometimes losing his balance when he stepped on a stone or a chipped bit of paving.
“That’s . . . a very big problem,” Bridget said.
“Only one of a few problems we’ve got,” Ferox said. “We have to move. This place is crawling with these . . . Lost Ones-ish.”
“The bony ones?” Bridget said. “I saw them up at the main house.”
“Bonewalkers,” Ferox said. “Jay is behind them. And Gil created them.”
Bridget’s eyes fluttered closed.
“There’s a lot more,” Ferox said, with a sigh. “He told me everything. About the cure, about Jay, about the bonewalkers, about Foster’s stolen research . . .”
“Ah, Gil,” Bridget groaned.
“Oh,” Ferox added, “and someone set fire to the Hollow and started a forest fire to flush us out, our truck won’t start, and your windows aren’t tinted dark enough so we can’t take your truck either. I think that’s everything. Tell me you have better news.”
“No,” Bridget whined. “We’re trapped in the open. We had to evacuate Halo County. That place was loaded with bonewalkers, too. Like, bonewalker ground zero. Except these ones were caught on camera . . . Along with me and the Padre, in full fur. Holly too.”
Mary Anne’s mouth fell open. “On camera?”
“What about Ishmael, is he okay?” Ferox asked.
Bridget uttered a bitter laugh. “No.”
“Because of this?” Mary Anne asked.
Bridget took the box from her. “What’s this?”
“The cure,” Mary Anne said. “For us. For the bonewalkers.”
Ferox nodded. “Gil used it on Ishmael before you took him into quarantine. And if Ishmael’s becoming human . . .”
Bridget was brightening. “Holy shit. This is it? This is the real deal?”
“Gil’s tried it on himself, too,” Ferox said. “I don’t think he’d do that unless he was extremely confident, especially after he created the bonewalkers.”
“Come on,” Bridget announced. She struck off toward her truck. “We’ve got to get this to Foster, pronto.”
“Where are we going?” Ferox asked.
“Back to Ontario.”
“With Dep? And Mary Anne?” She jogged to catch up.
“I have an idea how we can move him,” Bridget said. “With Mary Anne’s help, we can hide him pretty easily. We just need to upgrade our transportation, and I know where to find what we need.”
“But what about the cameras? And what about Shuffle and Helen?”
“They can handle themselves,” Bridget said. “But this . . .” She shook the box of syringes. “This is what sixty thousand people need, right now, before they turn on one another.”
“Wait!” Mary Anne said. “We need to make more of that, before you start doling it out. And if you’ve got Foster with you, all the better. Give us the tools, give us the time, and maybe we can make more of it. Gil left a copy of his research inside that box, but we’ll need a lab and some materials.”
“But we can’t go back to the lab,” Ferox said, pointing in the direction of the main house.
“There’s another,” Mary Anne said.
Bridget frowned curiously then her brow smoothed. “The bunker.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“ . . . IN THE REFR . . .”
“OKAY, NO, TRY the other one?”
A buzzing sound, winding up, dying down.
“No, what we really need is . . .”
“NO, LEAVE THE lights off.”
I’m in a re-enactment of RoboCop.
“Yeah, to save fuel. Okay.”
I’m being rebooted.
Ishmael had no feeling in any extremity.
He was tired, and he had a tube stuck down his throat.
“HIT THE FAN,” she said. “Masks on.”
“Let’s do this,” Bridget replied.
Then there was no sound except for people breathing.
“Oh, come on, you son of a bitch,” Bridget said. “Snap out of it and do what you’re supposed to do. Come on.”
Silence again.
He felt a tingling sensation in his chest. He wondered if that was a good sign.
Of course it’s a good sign. It means you’re not dead yet.
“Anything?” Foster asked.
“Nothing,” Bridget replied.
“Heart rate steady. Blood pressure steady,” Mary Anne said, from the other side.
“Great, now wake him up,” Foster said.
But I am awake.
The silence dragged on for so long that he went back to sleep.
Foster’s voice startled him awake. “We’ll have to—”
“Little blip on the heart rate monitor,” Mary Anne said.
They waited, breathing on him. He still had the tube jammed down his throat. He wanted to tongue it out of his mouth, but his tongue wasn’t responding either.
“Anything?” Foster asked.
“Nothing,” Mary Anne answered.
“Nothing,” Bridget echoed.
“We’ll have to go back,” Foster said. “We’ve got some of Grey’s original research now, we can use it—”
“We all agreed that would be a bad thing,” Mary Anne said.
“We’re running out of options,” Foster declared. “And time.”
More silence. More breathing.
Voices were muddled. They were going away. Leaving him behind to sleep.
“No, I don’t know what’ll happen in the end,” Foster said, in the distance. “Yes, there’s a chance that he might go wendigo. Yes, there’s a chance it might not take at all. But damn it. Damn it, I cannot let this man die. He—”
The tirade broke off suddenly.
“For everything he did back there,” Foster said, “we fix this. Because the only other choice we have is to put him back in the water. That’s the only decent way to let him go.”
After a while, Bridget spoke again. “At least he won’t feel it.”
Yes I will! Hey! Yes, I will. I’m here. I’m here, damn it! I’m still in here!
They left and closed a door behind them.
HE RECOGNIZED THE whirring sound now.
It was Gil’s centrifuge. It made a clatter because it was ever so slightly off balance.
We’re at Varco Lake. How the hell did I end up back at Varco Lake?
The centrifuge rattled to a stop.
Silence.
A microscope slide clicked under metal clamps.
Silence.
A woman coughed. He couldn’t tell who it was.
Silence.
A door opened, but it didn’t sound like Gil’s wheelchair accessible door, he figured. Where’s Gil?
“You got one?” Mary Anne asked.
“Yeah. No idea if it’s going to work or not though.”
“You made it?”
“No,” Foster answered. “Buckle found some copper wire and an old car battery in somebody’s garage. Dep’s the one who found the railway tie.”
Dep made it. Thank God. What shape is he in? How’d he turn out? How’s Ferox?
“You think it’ll work?” Mary Anne aske
d.
“He did a quick demo. It’s strong enough to pick up filings,” Foster said. “So hopefully it’ll be strong enough for this.”
“If there even is a GPS tag or whatever . . .”
Someone pinched the skin of his inner arm. Drugs lured him deep into sleep.
“AND? ANY NEWS from Elmbury?” Bridget asked.
A man replied, but he couldn’t make out what was said.
“No, I get that,” Bridget said.
He heard the man’s voice again.
“I know!” Bridget said. “I know what damage the flood did, but what choice did we have? Listen, given a choice between losing your home and being eaten by a contagious monster, which would you pick? Huh?”
The man asked a question.
“Yes, I do understand,” Bridget said. “Believe me—nobody else here understands what you’re going through better than me. But you need to give us more time. We’re doing everything with what we’ve got. You just keep us updated, all right? And I’ll check the perimeter after sunset.”
The man’s angry voice rose and fell, still too far off to be heard clearly.
“Yes, I know they all had families . . . but at least they came from all over the world, and in small doses. That should slow down the investigation.”
Another question.
“No, damn it! Stop asking. I already told you why. We’ll leave as soon as we can.”
He felt Bridget’s breath blow across his face.
Another question.
A soothing touch brushed hair from his brow.
“No, no change. But at least he’s alive.”
A CLAMOUR OF voices woke him, most of them he recognized, one he couldn’t place.
“Are you sure?” Bridget asked. “When?”
Helix: Plague of Ghouls Page 38