Instinct

by Jeremy Robinson

  “Lucy,” Weston said as he motioned to King. “This is King and . . .” He motioned to Sara.

  Sara sat still like a nervous rabbit, her heart beating wildly.

  “Pawn,” King answered. “She’s Pawn.”

  “Chess pieces,” Weston said, nodding. “How original. And here I thought you just had an enormous ego.”

  “Have that, too,” King said, though his confidence was more an act now than ever.

  “King and Pawn,” Weston said, “this is my great-great-granddaughter Lucy. She is the most favored of all my children. My Neanderthal princess. The next generation of Nguoi Rung.” He shook the hair on her head. Weston pulled away though Lucy seemed to want more.

  Neanderthal? Sara’s mind flashed to her earlier conversation with King. Plasticity. Genetic assimilation. Lucy seemed the likely product of both theories, but Weston had called her his granddaughter. A blood relation.

  If Lucy is half human, Sara thought, what does her mother look like? She had seen the fossil remains of more than a handful of Neanderthals and Lucy looked more primitive. Thicker. Stronger. More predatory. Reconstructions of Neanderthals looked hunched and hairy, but overall not too dissimilar from modern man. Save for the keen eyes and language skills, Weston’s granddaughter was a brute.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “How many . . . grandchildren do you have here?”

  “Last time we counted, fifteen hundred.” Weston rubbed his chin. “But that was three years ago. With the birth rate, taking into account the high infant mortality rate, we’re probably close to two thousand now.”

  “Two thousand.” Sara was astonished, but managed one more question. “From how many sets of parents?”

  “Thirty Neanderthal mothers. One human father.”

  Sara fought the urge to place her hand over her mouth. Weston was the father of an entirely new species of primate—neither human nor Neanderthal. Hybrids, she thought.

  Weston turned to Lucy. “I have an important task for you.”

  She brightened and clapped her hands.

  Weston motioned to King. “Take him to a room. Watch over him and do not let him leave. But do not harm him . . .” He looked at King, a twinkle of menace hidden beneath the intelligence in his eyes. “. . . yet.”

  Lucy hopped over to King.

  “Stay away from me—” King grunted as he was flipped over. She took him by the waist of his pants and picked him up as though he were a briefcase. Then she was off, carrying him through the caves, hooting all the way.

  Sara watched in renewed fear. In the hands of this child, King was helpless.

  FORTY-ONE

  Washington, D.C.

  COLLEGE SEEMED LIKE a distant memory, with its late nights, early mornings, and copious amounts of caffeine to battle the extreme weariness that resulted. Today, Duncan felt like he’d returned to a more hellish version of college where failing a surprise exam resulted in death, as it had for several of his staff confined within the historic walls of the White House.

  In each and every case, the implanted cardioverters had done their job, shocking the healthy hearts back to beating again. But the look of fear in the eyes of those who had succumbed to the weaponized disease broke his heart. They weren’t soldiers. They were secretaries, cleaning staff, and chefs. Senators, congressmen, and aides. He doubted many of them would have joined the White House staff or chosen to serve their country if they perceived any risk of death.

  Those who had fallen to Brugada only to be revived could be distinguished by the pallor of their skin, or wideness of their eyes. Those who had not yet fallen viewed those who had with a suspicious eye. Tension filled the halls, threatening to turn the people trapped inside the White House against each other.

  The only group that had yet to fall at the hands of Brugada was the one most prepared for its effect. The Secret Service hadn’t suffered a man down. Domenick Boucher, too, had not tasted the temporary sting of Brugada, but his entry into the Oval Office was greeted as though he were Death himself, scythe in hand. He stepped inside the room, closed the door gently behind him, and leaned against it.

  The man looked pale. In fact, he looked paler than the men and women who had risen from the dead.

  Duncan sat up straight despite his fatigue. “Did it get you?”

  “Not me.”

  “Who?”

  Boucher sat on one of the two couches. “Beatrice Unzen. Age sixty-nine. At a downtown CVS.”

  “Here in D.C.?”

  Boucher nodded. “She survived, which is how Brugada was able to be determined. We’ve managed to keep the doctors silent, primarily because, as far as they know, this is an isolated case.”

  “But . . .”

  “It’s not. There have been six deaths in the D.C. area. All healthy adults. Cause of death: unknown.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “Seems Brentwood’s driver forgot to mention he stopped at a conve nience store for some scratch tickets. Security tapes show him sneezing while perusing the store, touching every damn Twinkie and Slim Jim he passed.”

  Duncan rubbed his temples.

  “I’ve had analysts counting the number of visitors to the store since the driver’s visit. At last check they were up to one hundred and thirty-one. Most can’t be identified because the images are grainy and they paid in cash.”

  “Where does this leave us?”

  “Honestly?”

  Duncan nodded.

  “We’re screwed.” Boucher sighed. “Our only saving grace at this point is that the press hasn’t put two and two together. They know about Brugada, but the cases appear to be innocuous among the average number of deaths seen in this city on a daily basis, so that no one has yet to notice. All eyes, thankfully, are still focused squarely on this office. With the White House locked down and the president apparently at risk of death, a few stiffs in the streets of D.C. aren’t raising any eyebrows.

  “But when the body count rises; when some smart young reporter digging for a new angle figures things out . . . well, Brugada will be just one of many worries.”

  Duncan nodded. They were facing a pandemic that spread, and killed, quickly with no respect for the healthy. He knew what such news would do to the nation. To the world. Many people would die at the hands of violence long before the Brugada seized their hearts. “How are my travel plans coming?”

  “Everything has been arranged,” Boucher said. “I recommend waiting until the last possible moment before leaving the White House.”

  Duncan stood. “I’ll need to record something. Address the nation. No one can know I’ve left. If . . . when . . . word gets out, the world will want to hear from me. And they’ll want to know I’m still here.”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  Boucher stood and opened the door for Duncan. The president stopped next to him and spoke in a whisper. “Update the team.”

  REVOLUTION

  FORTY-TWO

  Annamite Mountains—Vietnam

  AS DARKNESS CLOSED in around her, Sara wondered how Weston could see his way. Had his vision changed? Did he have senses like hers that allowed him to navigate in the dark? She tried to pay attention to her twisted senses, but they seemed to be nullified by the tight, echoing cave.

  A gentle hiss, like a receding wave on a sandy beach, slid through the cave as Weston held his hand against the rock wall. He knew the cave well, but with a captive in tow, didn’t want to risk losing his balance on one of the random outcrops where he often stubbed a toe.

  The steady white noise of Weston’s hand on the wall gave Sara something to focus on. Over the years, white noise had become her ally. It drowned out the sounds of the city, the pops of a house expanding and contracting with weather changes, and allowed her to sleep. Like a filter, it weeded out the noise and muffled the deluge of sensory overflow drowning her synapses. Her nerves calmed. She took a deep breath through her nose, but regretted it right away. His body odor s
truck her like a kick to the head. She stifled a gag, but before her nose was free of the scent, she picked up on another odor mingled with Weston’s. Something fresh. She moved farther to the side, hoping to walk outside of Weston’s odorous wake. She sniffed again.

  Weston’s odor, now barely perceptible, faded as a new smell filled her nose . . . like ionized air after a thunderstorm. Sweet, clean, and refreshing. The air grew cooler and the tunnel grade rose and fell as they moved forward.

  Sara tried to focus on the invigorating air, but couldn’t help wondering what Weston had planned. He said there was something she needed to see. As a scientist, he believed she would understand what he was doing. Why it was so important. He had her pegged wrong, of course; she would do whatever it took to get the cure for Brugada back to the modern world, even if it meant exposing his tribe’s existence. Spock had it right—the needs of the many did outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. Who, at the moment, was Weston.

  A sudden jolt struck Sara’s left leg as she stubbed her foot hard against a rock jutting out from the wall. She stumbled, shouting in pain. She began to topple over, but was yanked up hard.

  Weston’s stench returned, now coupled with the vulgar odor of his breath up close. “Walk behind me. Wouldn’t want you twisting an ankle, now, would we?”

  Without reply, Sara continued behind Weston, breathing once again through her mouth and trying her best to ignore the throb of pain in her stubbed toe.

  It seemed they had hiked a mile in the darkness, but it could have been a few hundred feet. Time and all sense of the world ceased to exist in the absolute subterranean gloom. What she did know was that they were headed toward the core of some mountain.

  Or maybe not.

  Faint light filtered into the tunnel from a source too far ahead to see clearly. Perhaps the size of a dime, the tunnel exit gleamed blue and green. The jungle? Had they passed through the mountain?

  As they continued forward the light grew steadily brighter. She could see Weston now, his near-naked form loping in front of her, cast in green and blue. The walls of the cave emerged from the darkness. Sara was surprised to see that the rough natural cave had become a buffed, squared-out tunnel. She’d noticed the smooth footing earlier, but assumed it was a well-worn path through the caverns. But this wasn’t a natural cave. This was carved into the earth. A massive undertaking and marvel of engineering.

  She took the tunnel for a modern mine shaft at first, believing the Vietnamese must have worked these mountains before the war and abandoned them when the region went to hell. Then she saw the symbols on the wall. They meant nothing to her, but they spoke of something ancient, something older than a mine shaft.

  As the tunnel captured her attention she forgot about Weston and his intentions. She focused on the walls. The smooth surface sparkled with blue and green light. Quartz, she thought, reflecting the light ahead.

  Weston stopped, and she ran into him. The tickle of his hairy back on her face snapped her to reality and sent a twist of nausea through her core.

  He turned to her. “Sit.”

  She complied. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she ran, but with King’s fate uncertain and the rest of the Chess Team missing, she didn’t want to press her luck.

  Not yet.

  Weston moved to the tunnel wall and pushed. A slab of stone slid in and then to the side. A five-foot-tall, three-foot-wide hole opened up. Weston stepped inside and disappeared into the dark.

  When he didn’t immediately return, Sara considered escape. But where could she go? Back the way they came wasn’t an option. She would run into a village of Neanderthals. Or break her leg in the darkness. And forward . . . who knew what awaited her there? Maybe something worse? She bit her lip in frustration. King would go, she thought. Think like Delta. It would be better to go out trying—fighting—than to not try at all.

  It wasn’t exactly an official motto, but she could picture any member of the Chess Team saying the words. It was enough to spur her into action. Sara pushed to her feet and ran toward the light. She willed her feet to take shorter, faster strides. A sense of freedom filled her muscles and she covered the distance in twenty seconds. Just feet from the tunnel exit, she found herself squinting from the brightness of the shimmering aqua light.

  Then she was free of the tunnel, facing the horrific reality of her situation.

  Weston calmly walked up next to her and stopped. He had a knife in his hand and a gun holstered on his hip. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Without another word he grabbed her wrist firmly and yanked her toward him so their faces were only inches apart. Only Sara’s bound hands on his chest kept them that way.

  Weston grinned and glanced down. The tip of the knife poked her belly, threatening to slice through shirt and flesh all at once. Then, with a quick jerk, Weston lashed out with the knife.

  A sickening tear sounded out as Sara screamed.

  FORTY-THREE

  KNIGHT CONTINUED THROUGH the tunnel, his path dimly lit by the glowing bandanna laden with the phosphorescent algae. Despite his instincts telling him to turn back, that traveling deeper into the mountain was a bad idea, he pushed forward, driven by a desire to see where the tunnel led. That, and the tunnel had been blessedly free of savage ape-women. The smooth layer of dust on the floor gave him comfort as well. The tunnel hadn’t been used for some time. Whatever was down here was no use to beasts, and that made it a welcome place for what they no doubt saw as a small Korean snack.

  He did his best to tread lightly, hiding his footprints in the dust, but his injured and splinted leg, which clicked and echoed in the tunnel with every footfall, made stealth rather tricky. But he held on to hope. He’d escaped the necropolis without confrontation and, unless this tunnel was a dead end, felt confident he would make it back to the jungle.

  When the tunnel leveled out, his hope grew. When a breeze tickled his nose, his hope soared. The clack, clack, clack of his bone splint sped up as he limped forward like a sprinting gimp.

  Then the tunnel opened up and he froze.

  Another chamber lay before him, but it was nothing like the necropolis. The floor dropped away, six feet down. The ceiling was eight feet above him and the space appeared to be a baseball-diamond-sized square. A staircase carved into the stone floor descended into a maze straight out of Greek mythology. But this wasn’t Greece and there was no Minotaur at the center of the labyrinth. Instead there was a large crystal, taller than Knight, rising out of the floor like some kind of Egyptian obelisk. The crystal held his gaze. Light radiated from inside the polished monolithic object and filled the space. Then the light shifted, shimmering like the aurora borealis. As the glow moved about the space, he noticed twin streams of dusty radiance that appeared brighter than the glow coming from the crystal. Knight followed the light’s path back to the source—two holes in the far wall. But the holes were partially covered by circular hatches.

  Rising from the base of each wooden shade was a thin rope that attached to the ceiling through a series of stone loops. The lines ended above the entrance and hung down, weighted by two stones tied to the ends. The heavy stones kept the hatches slightly open and allowed the sliver of light into the chamber . . . a sliver of light that became amplified by the crystal at the center of the hewn-out space.

  Knight squinted at the hanging ropes, then glanced back at the crystal. The whole contraption appeared to be a primitive light switch. “Can’t be.”

  But it was. Knight pulled the cords down and, once in motion, the weight of the stones pulled them to the floor. The hatches sprang open, allowing the daylight beyond to pour in, where it struck the crystal, refracted, split, and dispersed around the room as shimmering colors.

  Details leaped out. The labyrinth was much more than a simple maze. The one-foot-thick stone walls were covered, front and back, by Somi’s proto-Chinese. Each symbol took up a four-inch-square space in a grid that was perfectly measured and even. It looked like an ancient Vietnam War Memorial, wrapped around and
throughout the room instead of a straight line. Knight descended the staircase and entered the maze.

  He imagined that with time he might even be able to figure out what some of the symbols meant. If this really was the precursor language to Chinese, then the four percent Chinese that is pictorial might actually be found on these walls. And if that was true, he might be able to figure out more symbol meanings based on their surrounding context. But that would take years. With no understanding of the language, Knight made his way toward the center of the maze. He was tempted to climb on top of the maze and cheat his way through, but his memory of the view from above served him well. He reached the center, and the massive crystal, in just a few minutes.

  As his gaze was drawn by the crystal he failed to notice the debris surrounding it, and tripped. He’d normally have turned the fall into a graceful leap followed by a roll and bounce back to his feet, but his bound ankle caused him to fall like a drunk squirrel. He landed facedown but softened the impact with his hands. Exhaustion claimed him as he lay there, annoyed by his clumsiness. He kept his eyes closed, listening to his breathing. It rattled.

  No, not his breathing. Something else.

  Knight opened his eyes. The top corner page of a red-ringed notepad fluttered with each of his breaths. He launched up into a sitting position. The notebook sat open with a pen dropped casually upon it. A slim coat of dust covered both. They’d been discarded long ago, but they belonged to modern man. Someone had been here before him. Someone knew about this place. The question on Knight’s mind was: Did that person survive?

  The area surrounding the notepad was covered in rubbings made from the maze walls. Smudges of charcoal filled large sheets of drawing paper. They littered the floor. Knight saw the now-empty sketchpad resting against a nearby wall. Whoever had been here spent a substantial time studying the language, but did they finish?