“Nils Van Der Hausen.”
“There was a health worker with that name here during the worst part of the outbreak, but as far as I know, he returned home. It’s not unusual for foreigners to visit these isolated areas. Missionaries and relief workers.” She paused a beat. “We found that on the trail coming in, along with some other items. Synthetic materials only. Just like this. The plant consumes anything organic. But what we can’t figure out is why the victims just let it happen. My hypothesis is that the plant releases a narcotic or some toxic substance that subdues or kills its victims. Then it converts their remains into organic nutrients.”
“A carnivorous plant,” Pierce said. “Like the Venus Flytrap.”
“That’s right. Only instead of catching flies in its leaves, this plant wraps its prey in vines and secretes a digestive enzyme.” She sighed. “It’s not native. No one here has seen anything like it before.”
“How large is the affected area?”
Carter shook her head. “We’re still mapping it, but the epicenter appears to be here, in this village. It wasn’t here a week ago. Whatever it is, it happened fast.”
Something clicked. “This is why you’re out here. The plant. It’s not an Ebola outbreak at all.”
Carter frowned. Evidently Pierce had missed the point of the demonstration. “We were expecting a new outbreak. This is what we found. It’s dangerous. Now, do you really want to stay for another five minutes?”
No, Pierce thought. But he wasn’t ready to give up. “I can help you figure this out. I have resources. Money. I can get you anything you need to fight this.”
Carter sighed. “Dr. Pierce, I don’t know why you think you need my help so badly, but your offer of assistance would have been a lot more meaningful a year ago.”
Cooper tugged at Pierce’s elbow. “We should go.”
“I know about what happened in Ethiopia,” Pierce blurted. “That’s why I want your help. And I might be able to help you with…your problem.”
Even as he said it, Pierce felt a flush of shame. Not only was it a low blow, but he had no way to keep that promise.
Carter regarded him coldly for a moment, anger, curiosity and a strange sort of hope fighting for primacy behind her eyes. “I’ll walk you to the edge of the infestation,” she said in a taut voice. “That’s how long you have to convince me.”
Pierce breathed a sigh of relief and stepped away from the overgrown shack. As before, the vines tried to hold him fast, clinging to his shoes like Velcro. Carter took the lead, setting a quick pace, which Pierce was eager to match. Now that he had her attention, Pierce was faced with the question of how to win her over. He decided to lead with the truth.
As they trekked along the now almost indistinguishable path, Pierce laid it all out. The history of the Herculean Society and its mission, the role of Alexander Diotrephes, the connection to Jack Sigler and his team. He spoke in a low voice, trying to exclude Cooper from the discussion. When his narrative broached the subject of a mad geneticist who had experimented on both Pierce and one of Sigler’s teammates, Carter cut him off.
“I know about that maniac. Get to the point.”
Pierce was grateful to be spared the trip down that particular detour on Memory Lane, though he was a bit surprised by her statement. He vaguely recalled that Carter had once been employed by a subsidiary of Richard Ridley’s Manifold Genetics, but the venom in her statement hinted at a much more personal connection, of which Pierce was unaware.
“Ridley is gone, but there are other people who want the same thing he wanted. To exploit the unique genetic properties of ancient chimera species for selfish and potentially dangerous ends. The short version is that I need someone who can make sense of the science on this. I need a consultant, and you are uniquely qualified. You’ve already got a background in…” He gave a helpless shrug. “Weird science.
“I’m not asking you to give up your work here,” he added. “In fact, the Society can supplement you. Funding. Equipment. Personnel. You name it.”
“In return for what?”
“You come with me. Help me figure out exactly what it is that I’m dealing with.”
Carter stopped and looked back at the dark vine-shrouded forest behind them. “I’ve got a crisis of my own here, Dr. Pierce.”
“Surely your team can spare you for a few days. I can have reinforcements here by tomorrow.”
Pierce thought he had finally worn down her defenses, but after a few seconds she shook her head. “It’s not that simple,” she said, regret audible in her voice. “I need to get back to camp before dark.”
Pierce made no further arguments. She was right, for practical reasons, if no other. Although there was still a hint of daylight in the sky, the air was cooling with the onset of evening, and Pierce knew that he and Cooper would be hard-pressed to get out of the infested zone before dusk. His GPS would show the way, but it wouldn’t protect them against nocturnal predators. But he felt compelled to end the meeting on a positive note.
“I’ll make sure that you get some help out here,” he said. “No strings. And I’ll find out what I can about this Van Der Hausen. Maybe he’s involved in this somehow.”
“Thank you,” Carter said. “Good luck, Dr. Pierce.” She started to turn away, but then abruptly pitched over sideways, sprawling on the ground.
Pierce reached out to help, but discovered that he was rooted in place. Literally. A fresh growth of vine shoots had lashed around his feet, wrapping several inches up his ankles. Though none of the shoots were thicker than a thread, they combined to form a fibrous net that was too strong to rip through. Pierce stared in disbelief as more tendrils uncoiled from the ground cover, shooting out like Silly String. As if guided by some intelligence, the vines sought living flesh.
His living flesh.
He could feel the tickle of leaves and stems under his pants leg, entwining with the weave of his socks.
What the—?
Cooper called out, held fast by the sudden explosion of growth. In a matter of seconds, the vines had crawled up to the man’s knees. He started tearing at the tendrils, and succeeded in ripping up handfuls of vegetation, but a moment later, his cries of alarm became an unrestrained howl of agony. Pierce felt a fresh sting in his eyes and nostrils as more fumes were released into the air, but that was nothing compared to what was happening to Cooper. Despite the darkness, Pierce could see smoke rising from the other man’s fingers, as the acid in the vines began to burn through his flesh.
Reacting more from instinct than rationale, Pierce hacked at the ground around his feet. The machete easily sliced through the stems, sinking into the damp loamy soil underneath, but every chop threw out droplets of acid, and a moment later, Pierce was engulfed in a choking miasma. He felt warm spots blooming on the exposed skin of his hands, arms and face, and even on areas that were covered by his clothes.
But his attack was not in vain. He broke free of the vines and charged over to where Carter was struggling to rise from beneath what looked like a blanket of vine tendrils. Careful to avoid striking her, he stabbed the machete into the ground and began sawing through the stems, cutting an outline around her.
The prickling on his skin grew quickly from a warm glow to an uncomfortable heat, and then to an intensity that made him want to drop the machete and tear his skin off with his bare hands. He gritted his teeth against the pain and kept cutting. With a heave, Carter got her feet under her and pulled free of the vines. Screaming, she fell into his arms. In the dim light, he could see something moving beneath the fabric of her bio-safety suit; the vines had found a way inside.
He tried to reach Cooper, but a new wave of shoots erupted from the ground, snagging his feet. He sliced at the vines but when he tried to draw back for another blow, he discovered that his arm had also been caught, and where the vines touched him, his skin felt like it was on fire. He tried to pull free, but more tendrils snaked out, enveloping him and Carter. The pain soared to a climax, and the
n Pierce’s overloaded nervous system simply shut down, and he felt only numbness.
In some distant corner of his mind, Pierce wondered how much agony and fear it would take to trigger Carter’s kill-switch response, and if he would still be alive when that threshold was finally crossed.
18
Greece
Fiona tapped the phone’s screen to accept the incoming call and thumbed another button to put it in speaker mode. “Hello?”
“Hello? Dr. Gallo, is it you?” came the reply, an unfamiliar voice. English but the accent was strange. Definitely not Kenner.
“Speaking,” Gallo said in a tight, cautious tone.
“Thank heavens. Dr. Gallo, I am in the car behind you. Please don’t be alarmed. I mean you no harm.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Matthew James. I work for Aegis International Services. Dr. Pierce hired me in Gibraltar to look after you.”
Fiona gaped at Gallo, wide-eyed. She was familiar with Aegis, a security consulting firm that provided protection and logistical support for international businessmen and even a few small governments. It was one of the many subsidiary agencies discreetly owned by the Herculean Society, and like the rest, it was an asset that could be readily employed in the pursuit of the Society’s agenda, if the need arose.
The man chasing after them was not an enemy, but a bodyguard.
Gallo’s face transformed in an instant. “Son of a bitch,” she said in a low but angry tone.
“It was not my intention to frighten you,” James went on. “I was only supposed to watch from a distance, but... Please, slow down.”
Gallo looked over at Fiona. “He knew. He knew we wouldn’t stay in the cave, so he hired a babysitter.”
Fiona shrugged, and then nodded to the highway ahead. “Could be worse, right?”
Gallo raised her voice. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”
“Dr. Pierce gave me your number. You can call him and verify, if you like.”
Fiona thought that sounded like a good idea. “Should I?”
Gallo gave a nod.
Fiona ended the call without comment and scrolled through Gallo’s contacts to find the number for Pierce’s satellite phone. As the call went out, she noted that Gallo had slowed the Fox to a reasonably safe highway speed, and the trailing vehicle had backed off. Both were encouraging developments.
The call went to voicemail.
Fiona looked at Gallo again. “Now what?”
Gallo nodded her head toward their bodyguard. “Call him back.”
James picked up on the first ring. “Do you believe me now?”
Gallo ignored the question. “If you’re going to tag along, we’re going to have to set some ground rules.”
“Certainly,” James replied. “Keeping you safe is my first priority, but your—”
James’s voice went to static as an artificial sun rose behind them.
What?
Fiona whipped her head around and caught a glimpse of the expanding ball of flame in the middle of the highway. She could feel heat radiating through the windows. Then the sound of the explosion reverberated through the car, simultaneous with a shock wave that swatted the Fox like an invisible hand, sending it into a spin.
Gallo swore as she fought to regain control. Beside her, Fiona could do nothing more than hang on.
An explosion. James’s car just blew up. James is dead.
Just as Gallo got the Fox back under control, there was another bloom of fire, this one directly in their path and much closer.
The blast tore into the little Volkswagen. The windshield didn’t shatter, but the hood peeled up, momentarily eclipsing Fiona’s view of this new explosion. Then, the bottom dropped out of the world as the explosion lifted the Fox off the road like a balsa wood glider, flipping it end over end. It landed upside down, with a crunch that crumpled the roof and blew out all the windows.
Hanging upside down, Fiona was in full panic mode, desperate to grab onto anything that could restore order to the world. The interior of the car had gone dark. The air was thick with the smell of scorched metal and plastic, gasoline fumes and something else…a strange ammonia smell.
There was a crunching sound—glass being pulverized, metal and fiberglass crushed like an old soda can—as the overturned vehicle tilted forward, borne down by the weight of the engine. Fiona’s center of gravity shifted again.
She heard a low moan from out of the darkness.
“Aunt Gus?” Her own voice was barely audible. She couldn’t seem to draw a breath. The seat belt, which had saved her life, now felt like a saw blade, cutting across her torso. She groped blindly, trying to find the buckle.
A different noise filled her ears now, the loud scream of an engine, with an underlying rhythm, a deep, resonant thumping.
Helicopter.
In a matter of seconds, the noise reached a feverish crescendo. A tempest swirled through the crushed vehicle, blasting Fiona with debris particles. The storm’s intensity abated after a moment, but the helicopter’s noise had grown to deafening proportions. It had landed, somewhere close by.
A light filled the misshapen space where the window had once been, growing brighter as its source moved closer. The silhouette of a hand appeared in front of her face, fingers curling around the door frame. Then with another squeal of tortured metal, the entire door was ripped off its hinges. The whole car shuddered, and Fiona felt a fresh wave of pain as the seatbelt dug into her body.
A face materialized before her. Shrouded in the shadows cast by the flashlight, she could not make out any details, but she immediately recognized the hulking outline.
Vigor Rohn.
“No!” She scrabbled for the seatbelt release again, desperate to get free, knowing that even if she did, there was nowhere to go.
Hard, strong hands closed around her shoulders, immobilizing her. She felt a sharp twinge of pain at the base of her neck, followed by a cold sensation that spread quickly to her extremities. As she descended into a narcotic fog, Rohn laughed.
19
Liberia
Pierce snapped back to consciousness with painful abruptness. Something hard was grinding into his abdomen, pounding his guts like repeated punches, while the rest of his body seemed to be floating in mid-air. He threw out his hands, trying to grab onto something, and in that moment, the acid bath’s all-consuming pain returned with a vengeance and threatened to drag him down again. He clenched his teeth and fought to make sense of what was happening.
In the dim light, he could see the outline of trees moving past, seeming to jump up and down in time with the rhythmic pummeling.
I’m moving. Someone is carrying me.
He turned his head and tried to locate his rescuer, but all he could see was a broad back, clad in a tattered Tyvek bio-safety suit. The sharp object pressing into his innards was the shoulder of his savior. He had been scooped up like a sack of potatoes. He glimpsed something moving at the same level as his head. Another figure, wrapped in an environment suit, was slung over the opposite shoulder.
It was Carter. Which meant that the person carrying them had to be one of the WHO aid workers that had come with her.
A glimmer of hope shone through the pain-induced fog, but it was just as quickly replaced by despair. Cooper was still back there, still caught in the green trap. He wanted to tell his rescuer to stop, to put him down and let him go back, but he knew how futile the gesture would be. His own survival was still at risk.
And yet, the person carrying both him and Carter seemed impervious to the carnivorous plants. Pierce could see the man’s feet moving in and out of view with each step. The vines snaked around his ankles, trying to ensnare him and drag him down, but the man tore through the green tendrils like they were party streamers. Perhaps the suit protected him from the assault, but Pierce recalled how those tiny fibrous threads had so quickly overwhelmed him and Carter. Their rescuer was as strong and relentless as a bull.
The faintest hint of a breeze brought momentary relief from the stinging miasma. Fresh air. He blinked away the tears blurring his vision. He saw trees and dark earth, untouched by the vines.
They were clear of the infested zone.
The man ran on another fifty feet before stopping and easing his burdens to the ground. Pierce rolled away, and began tearing at his clothes. He could still feel the vines on him, clinging to his skin, burning him with acidic secretions, still very much alive and intent on consuming him.
A few feet away, his rescuer was bent over Carter’s unmoving form, similarly stripping off the suit that had failed to protect her. In the dim twilight, Pierce could see long green tentacles moving on the man’s legs, throwing off still more tendrils in a search for nutrient-rich flesh, but the man’s attention was completely focused on helping Carter. He ripped through the suit like wet tissue paper, and then tore the vines away from her face.
Carter’s eyes opened. Though her face was twisted in a mask of agony, she managed a grateful smile. “The others. Help the others.”
Pierce could sense hesitancy in the man’s bunched shoulders, but after a few silent seconds, he got to his feet and turned back toward the vine-shrouded forest. The man was tall, easily six-four, and built like a living colossus. Then Pierce caught a glimpse of the hard visage behind the plastic face-shield, and his heart skipped a beat.
Not possible.
He was looking at a dead man.
The giant met his gaze for an instant, just long enough to register both recognition and surprise, then the man was running again, vanishing into the green hell.
Pierce tried to shake off his paralysis and call out to the man, but he was a fraction of a second too slow, and his cry simply echoed away into oblivion.
“Bishop!”
20
Bishop.
He fought back the rush of memories triggered by hearing his old name, with the same ferocity that drove him through the clinging vines. The fiery chemical burn spreading across his skin helped him sharpen his focus. Pain had a way of doing that for him, and he had not felt such clarity in a very long time.
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