by Bear Grylls
It was black, putrid and stringy.
A deadly viral soup.
The air roared in Jaeger’s ears like an express train steaming down a long, dark tunnel. What must it be like to live with that virus? he wondered.
Dying, but with no idea what was killing you.
Your brain a fried mush of fever and rage.
Your organs dissolving inside your skin.
Jaeger shuddered. This place was evil.
‘You okay, kid?’ Raff queried, via the radio.
Jaeger nodded darkly, then signalled the way ahead.They pressed onwards.
The monkeys and the humans on this cursed island were close cousins, their shared lineage stretching back countless millennia. Now they would have to fight to the death. Yet a much older life force – a primeval one – was stalking both of them.
It was tiny and invisible, but far more powerful than them all.
80
Donal Brice peered through the bars into the nearest cage. He scratched his beard nervously. A big, lumbering lump of a guy, he’d only recently got the job at Washington Dulles airport’s quarantine house, and he still wasn’t entirely certain how the whole darned system worked.
As the new guy, he’d landed more than his share of night shifts. He figured that was fair enough, and in truth he was glad of the work. It hadn’t been easy finding this job. Painfully unsure of himself, Brice tended to cover up his insecurities with bursts of booming, deafening laughter.
It didn’t tend to go down too well at job interviews – especially as he tended to laugh at all the wrong things. In short, he was glad to have a job at the monkey house, and he was determined to do well.
But Brice figured that what he saw before him now was not good news. One of the monkeys looked real sick. Crook.
It was nearing the end of his shift, and he’d entered the monkey house to administer their early-morning feed. His last duty before clocking off and heading home.
The recently arrived animals were making a horrendous racket, banging on the wire mesh, leaping around their cages and screaming: we’re hungry.
But not this little guy.
Brice sank to his haunches and studied the vervet monkey closely. It was crouched at the rear of the cage, its arms wrapped around itself, an odd, glazed expression on its otherwise cute features. The poor little critter’s nose was running. No doubt about it, this guy wasn’t well.
Brice racked his brains to remember the procedure for when they had a sick animal. That individual was to be removed from the main facility and placed in isolation, to prevent the illness from spreading.
Brice was a hopeless lover of animals. He still lived with his parents, and they had all kinds of pets at home. He felt strangely ambivalent about the nature of his work here. He liked being close to the monkeys, that was for sure, but he didn’t much like the fact that they were here for medical testing.
He sloped off to the storeroom and grabbed the kit required for moving a sick animal. It consisted of a long pole with a syringe attached to one end. He charged the syringe, returned to the cage, poked the stick inside and, as gently as he could, stuck the monkey with the needle.
It was too sick even to react much. He pushed the lever at his end, and the shot of drugs was injected into the animal. A minute or so later, Brice was able to unlatch the cage – which had the exporter’s name, Katavi Reserve Primates, stamped across it – and reach inside to retrieve the unconscious animal.
He carried it to the isolation unit. He’d pulled on a pair of surgical gloves in order to move the primate, but he wasn’t using any extra protection, and certainly not the suits and masks piled in one corner of the storeroom. No sickness had yet been reported in the monkey house, so there was no reason to do so.
He laid the comatose animal in an isolation cage and was about to close the door when he remembered something one of the friendlier workers had told him. If an animal was sick, you could usually smell it on its breath.
He wondered if he should give it a try. Maybe he could earn some brownie points with his boss that way. Remembering how his colleague had said to do it, he leant into the cage and used his hand to waft the monkey’s breath across his nostrils, inhaling deeply a couple of times. But there was nothing distinctive that he could detect, above the faint smell of stale urine and food in the cage.
Shrugging, he shut and bolted the door, and glanced at his watch. He was a few minutes overdue his shift changeover. And in truth, Brice was in a hurry. Today was Saturday – the big day at the Awesome Con comic convention in downtown. He’d forked out some serious money for tickets to the ‘Geekend’, and to get access to the Power Rangers 4-Pack VIP event.
He had to hurry.
An hour later, he’d made it to the Walter E. Washington Convention Centre, having done a quick stopover at home to change out of his work clothes and grab his costume. His parents had objected that he had to be tired after his night shift, but he’d promised them he’d get some proper rest that evening.
He parked up and headed inside, the roar of the massive air-conditioning units adding a reassuring baseline hum to the chatter and laughter that filled the cavernous convention centre’s interior. Already it was buzzing.
He made a beeline for the breakfast hall. He was starving. Once fed and watered, he headed into a changing booth, emerging minutes later as a . . . superhero.
Kids flocked to the Hulk. They pressed close, wanting to have their photo taken with their all-powerful comic idol – especially as the Hulk seemed to be far more smiley and fun in the flesh than he ever appeared in the movies.
Donal Brice – aka the Hulk – would spend the weekend doing what he loved most: laughing his booming, heroic laugh in a place where everyone seemed to like it, and no one ever held it against him. He’d spend the day laughing and breathing, and breathing and laughing, as the vast air-conditioning system recycled his exhalations . . .
Mixing them with those of ten thousand other unsuspecting human souls.
81
‘We maybe got something,’ Harry Peterson, the director of the CIA’s Division of Asymmetric Threat Analysis – DATA – announced via the IntelCom link.
‘Tell me,’ Kammler commanded.
His voice sounded oddly echoing. He was sitting in a room carved out of one of the many caves situated close to the BV222 – his beloved warplane. The surroundings were spartan, but remarkably well equipped for somewhere positioned within immense rock walls deep beneath Burning Angels mountain.
It was both an impregnable fortress and a technologically sophisticated nerve centre. The perfect kind of place to sit out what was coming.
‘Okay, so a guy named Chucks Bello sent an email,’ Peterson explained. ‘DATA picked it up using keywords based on name-check combinations. There’s more than one Chucks Bello active on the internet, but this one grabbed our attention. There are several districts in the Nairobi slums. One – Mathare – lit up with this Chucks Bello’s comms.’
‘Which means?’ Kammler demanded impatiently.
‘We’re ninety-nine per cent certain this is your guy. Chucks Bello sent an email to one Julius Mburu, who runs something called the Mburu Foundation. It’s a social-action kind of charity that works in the Mathare slum. With kids. A lot of them are orphans. I’ll forward you the email. We’re sure this is your guy.’
‘So d’you have a fix? A location?’
‘We do. The email was generated from a commercial address: [email protected]. There is an Amani Beach Retreat approximately four hundred miles south of Nairobi. It’s a high-end, exclusive resort set on the Indian Ocean.’
‘Great. Forward me the comms chain. And keep digging. I want to be absolutely one hundred per cent certain this is our guy.’
‘Understood, sir.’
Kammler cut the IntelCom link. He punched the words ‘Amani Beach Resort’ into the Google search engine, then clicked on the website. It showed images of a pristine white crescent of sand, washed with stunn
ing turquoise waters. A glimmering, crystal-clear swimming pool situated on the very fringes of the beach, complete with a discreet bar service and shaded sunloungers. Locals in traditional-looking batique dress serving fine food to the elegant foreign guests.
No slum kid ever went to a place like this.
If the kid was at Amani Beach, someone must have taken him there. It could only be Jaeger and his group, and they could only have done so for one reason: to hide him. And if they were shielding him, maybe they had realised the impossible hope that a penniless kid from the African slums might offer humankind.
Kammler checked his email. He clicked on the message from Peterson, running his eye down Simon Chucks Bello’s email.
This Dale guy gave me maganji. Spending money – like real maganji. Like, Jules man, I’m gonna pay you back. All I owe you. And you know what I’ll do next, man? I’m gonna hire a jumbo jet with a casino and a swimming pool and dancing girls from all over – London, Paris, Brazil and Russia and China and Planet Mars and even America; yeah – Miss USA by the busload – and you’ll all be invited ’cause you’re my brothers and we’ll zoom above the city dropping empty beer bottles ’n’ stuff so that everyone will know what a cool party we’re having, and behind that jumbo we’ll drag a banner announcing: MOTO’S JUMBO BIRTHDAY PARTY – BY INVITATION ONLY!
Mburu had replied:
Yeah, well you don’t even know your own age, Moto, so how will you know when it’s your birthday? Plus where’s all the dough gonna come from? You need a lot of maganji to hire a jumbo. Just take it easy and lie low and do as the mzungu tells you. Plenty of time for partying when all this is over.
Clearly ‘Moto’ was the kid’s nickname. And clearly he was being treated well by his mzungu benefactors, mzungu being a word that Kammler knew well. In fact, the kid was being treated so nicely that he was even planning a birthday party.
Oh no, Moto, I don’t think so. Today it’s my time to party.
Kammler punched in Steve Jones’s ID on his IntelCom link with furious fingers. After a few short rings Jones answered.
‘Listen, I have a location,’ Kammler hissed. ‘I need you to get there with your team and eliminate the threat. You’ll have Reaper overhead if you need backup. But it’s one slum kid and whoever is guarding him. It should be – forgive the pun – child’s play.’
‘Got it. Send me the details. We’re on our way.’
Kammler typed a short email providing a link to the resort, then sent it to Jones. Next, he googled the word ‘Amani’. It turned out to be Swahili for ‘peace’. He smiled his thin smile.
Not for much longer.
That peace – it was about to be ripped asunder.
82
Jaeger shoulder-barged the last of the doors with all of the force of his cumulative rage. It was coursing through his veins like burning acid.
He stopped for an instant, the cumbersome space suit snagging on the door frame, and then he was through, his torch beam sweeping the darkened interior, his weapon doing likewise. The light reflected off shelves of gleaming scientific equipment, most of which Jaeger couldn’t begin to recognise.
The lab was deserted.
Not a soul anywhere.
Just as they’d discovered with the rest of the complex.
No guard force. No boffins. All he and his team had used their guns on were the disease-ravaged monkeys.
Finding this place so deserted was utterly eerie; chilling. And Jaeger felt cruelly cheated. Against all odds they’d found Kammler’s lair. But Kammler – and his people – had flown the nest before justice and retribution could be visited upon them.
But mostly Jaeger felt tortured by the emptiness – the lack of life – where it hit him most personally: there was no sign of Ruth and Luke anywhere.
He stepped forward, and the last man in closed the door behind him. It was a precaution to prevent contamination spreading from one room to another.
As the door clicked shut, Jaeger heard a sharp, deafening hiss. It had come from just above the door frame, and it had sounded like a truck letting off its air brakes. Like a compressed-air explosion.
At the same instant he felt a wave of tiny pinpricks pierce his skin. His head and neck seemed fine, protected as they were by the thick rubber of the FM54 mask, and the tough filter unit seemed to have shielded his back.
But his legs and arms were on fire.
He glanced down at his suit. The tiny puncture holes were clearly visible. He’d been hit by some kind of booby-trapped device, which had pierced the fabric of the Trellchem. He had to presume the rest of the team were likewise hit.
‘Tape up!’ he screamed. ‘Tape up vents! Every man help the other!’
In a flurry of near-panic, he turned to Raff and began ripping off lengths of gaffer tape to seal up the tiny holes torn in the big Maori’s suit. Once he was finished, Raff did the same for him.
Jaeger had kept monitoring his suit pressure the entire time. It had remained positive – the filter pack automatically blowing in clean air, which would have kept flowing out through the tears in the fabric. That outward pressure should have kept any contamination at bay.
‘Sitrep,’ Jaeger demanded.
One by one his team reported in. All their suits were compromised, but they had been resealed effectively. Positive air pressure seemed to have been maintained by all, thanks to their powered-air units.
But still Jaeger could feel a tingling sensation where whatever it was that had been blasted through his suit had cut into his skin. He didn’t doubt that it was time to get out of there. They had to head back to the wet decon line at the beach and do a damage inspection.
He was just about to issue the order when the utterly unexpected happened.
There was a faint hum, and the electric power came to life in the complex, bathing the lab in blinding halogen light. At one end of the room a giant flat-screen terminal flickered into life, and a figure appeared on what had to be some kind of live link.
It was unmistakable.
Hank Kammler.
‘Gentlemen, leaving so soon?’ His voice echoed around the laboratory, as he spread his arms in an expansive gesture. ‘Welcome . . . welcome to my world. Before you do anything rash, let me explain. That was a compressed air bomb. It fired tiny glass pellets. No explosives. You will feel a slight tingling on your skin. That is where the pellets cut into you. The human skin is a great barrier to infection: one of the best. But not when it is punctured.
‘The lack of any explosives means the agent – the dry virus – remained unharmed and viable. As the glass entered your skin – driven in there by four-hundred-bar pressure – it carried the inert agent with it. In short, you have all been infected, and I don’t think I need to tell you with what type of pathogen.’
Kammler laughed. ‘Congratulations. You are some of my first victims. Now, I’d like you to fully appreciate your delicious predicament. You might decide it best to remain trapped on this island. You see, if you go out into the world, you will be mass murderers. You are infected. Already, you are plague bombs. So you might argue that you have no option but to stay and die, and to that end you will find the premises well stocked with food.
‘Of course, the Gottvirus has already been released,’ Kammler continued. ‘Or should I say unleashed. Even now it is making its way into the four corners of the world. So alternatively, you can help me. The more carriers the merrier, as it were. You can opt to go out into the world and help spread the virus. The choice is yours. But just for a moment, make yourselves comfortable while I tell you a story.’
Wherever Kammler was speaking from, he was seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. ‘Once upon a time, two SS scientists found a frozen corpse. She was perfectly preserved, even down to her long golden hair. My father, SS General Hans Kammler, gave her a name, that of an ancient Nordic god: Var, the Beloved. Var was the five-thousand-year-old ancestor of the Aryan people. Sadly, she had fallen ill before she died. She had been infected by a myste
ry pathogen.
‘At the Deutsche Ahnenerbe, in Berlin, they unfroze her and began to clean her up, in an effort to make her presentable to the Führer. But the corpse started to collapse from the inside out. Her organs – liver, kidneys, lungs – seemed to have rotted and died, even as the outer being still lived. Her brain had been transformed into a mush; a soup. In short, she had been something close to a zombie as she’d stumbled into the icy crevasse and perished.
‘The men tasked to make her perfect – a perfect Aryan ancestor – didn’t know what to do. Then one, an archaeologist and pseudo-scientist called Herman Wirth, tripped while carrying out his work. He reached out to save himself, but in doing so he cut both himself and his Deutsche Ahnenerbe colleague – a myth-hunter called Otto Rahn – with a small glass inspection slide. No one thought too much about it, until both men sickened and died.’
Kammler raised his eyes to his long-distance audience, and a terrible darkness seemed to have filled them. ‘They died voiding thick, black, putrid blood from every orifice, and with terrible, zombified expressions on their features. No one needed to carry out a post-mortem to know what had happened. A five-thousand-year-old killer disease had survived, deep-frozen in the Arctic ice, and now it had come back to life. Var had claimed her first victims.
‘The Führer named this pathogen the Gottvirus, because nothing like it had ever been seen. It was clearly the mother of all viruses. That was in 1943. The Führer’s people spent the next two years perfecting the Gottvirus, fully intending to use it to repel the Allied hordes. In that, sadly, they failed. Time was against us . . . But not any more. Now, today, as I speak to you, time is very much on our side.’
Kammler smiled. ‘So, gentlemen – and one lady, I believe – now you know exactly how you are going to die. And you know what choice you have before you. Stay on that island and die quietly, or help spread my gift – my virus – to the world. You see, you British never understood: you cannot defeat the Reich. The Aryan. It has taken seven decades, but we are back. And we have survived to conquer. Jedem das Seine, my friends. Everyone gets what they deserve.’