Scott Sigler

by Ancestor

  “This is not good,” Rhumkorrf said. “We’re going to have to increase the nutrient intake and set up shifts to check each IV on the hour.”

  “Doctor Rhumkorrf,” Jian said, “this has gone far enough. We have to kill the cows, today. Right now!”

  “That’s enough.” Rhumkorrf’s voice boomed through the confined upper-deck lab. “Jian, you’ve never been stable to begin with, and now? Well, your meds are clearly not working. I’ve had it with your paranoid rants!”

  “Oh, blow it out your ass,” Tim said. Was this guy for real? The evidence of pending disaster sat on the table right in front of him. “Don’t be a fuck-tard, bro. Open your damn eyes! We need to kill these mutant freaks, and right now.”

  Rhumkorrf’s small face wrinkled with fury. “I will not stand by while you two … pussies ruin this. We’ve been working for this for years! And we’re almost there.”

  “Please,” Jian said. “Doctor Rhumkorrf, you must listen. We have to—”

  Rhumkorrf stamped his foot on the rubberized floor, cutting off her words. “Jian, get out! I won’t hear any more of this! Get out of my lab! Get out of this plane entirely! You’re fired! Get out, get out getout!”

  Tim and Jian looked at each other, then back at Rhumkorrf.

  “Get out, I say! Get out now!” He pointed his finger to the ladder, anger radiating from his body.

  Jian descended.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t a good time to get schnockered, but that’s exactly what Tim was going to do. He pulled the flask out of his pocket, unscrewed the top and took a long drink. Ah, the power of scotch.

  A hand hit his and the flask flew across the lab, trailing scotch as it went. A blur of motion, then a stinging sensation on his right cheek.

  Rhumkorrf had slapped him. He stood nose to nose with Tim, his comb-over sticking up in a hundred different directions, eyes wide and unblinking behind the heavy black glasses.

  “Feely, did you forget what I said about your career?”

  “Screw my career,” Tim said. “I just want to get off this island alive.”

  “I can’t believe you’re buying into Jian’s paranoid delusions.”

  At that moment, Tim Feely lost it. He pushed Rhumkorrf hard in his chest. The smaller man stumbled back and fell, turning as he did to land on his hands and knees. He started scrambling to his feet, but Tim jumped on his back. They struggled, then Tim got his hands on Rhumkorrf’s head, turned it so it faced the big screen.

  “Look at it, bro, look at it! It tried to eat its way out of the womb. The only one here with delusions is you! What’s going to happen when they’re born? What are we going to feed them?”

  Tim never saw the elbow. He rolled back, jaw radiating pain, split lower lip spilling blood down his chin.

  Panting and shaking, Rhumkorrf stood and looked down. “We can feed them the cattle from the other farms. And we’ll have Danté bring out more food. This is science, Feely, and we have to make it work. I wish I had Erika, but I don’t. I have you. Now, you get your ass downstairs and start doubling the nutrient supplement. I will not lose another fetus, not when we’re so close.”

  Tim stared for a second before he realized something disturbing. He was afraid of Claus Rhumkorrf. The wee German was right—Tim was a pussy.

  Tim stood, face burning with embarrassment, then cautiously slipped past Rhumkorrf and scurried down the aft ladder.

  Rhumkorrf had always been obsessed, but this? This was a different level altogether. Anyone could see the danger. Rhumkorrf had to see it as well, had to, but still thought he could put those creatures in the new cages. The goddamn things were going to be bigger than lions.

  Tim walked down the center aisle toward his lab. As he did, he passed each and every cow, staring at each and every massively swollen belly.

  NOVEMBER 30: THE CALL

  Implantation +21 Days

  JIAN SHUFFLED DOWN the hall, small steps making for a slow pace, her hands furiously spinning a Dr Pepper bottle top-over-bottom-overtop. She entered her room, shut the door behind her and locked it. She then moved to the dresser. She didn’t slide it, but instead picked the whole thing up. Grunting slightly from the effort, she set the dresser against the door. She looked at the big four-poster bed. She slid behind it and shoved. Wooden feet squealed against the polished stone floor. The bed wedged nicely against the dresser.

  Jian sat at her computer desk and called up the program she’d written two days earlier. There was nothing else she could do. Rhumkorrf wouldn’t listen. Not to her, not to Tim. Colding wouldn’t do anything. There was no longer any choice.

  She entered some commands. The program flashed up a window with the words READY TO INITIATE CONTACT SEQUENCE.

  She hit enter.

  IN THE SECURITY control room, Andy Crosthwaite was sitting hunched down behind the security monitor. His big bag o’ porn sat close by, the brown paper worn down to an almost tissue-paper thickness from its many travels. But Andy wasn’t looking at the latest Juggs or Gallery. He was halfway through Hot Midnight. No one was more shocked than he that old Gun could write a hellacious fucking book, and that Andy might actually dig some cheesy vampire romance crap. But it wasn’t just mushy romance; Gun had thrown in more fuck scenes than a Skinimax after-hours flick.

  Andy didn’t want anyone to see him reading the book, especially Magnus, who always had his nose in Shakespeare this or Shakespeare that. Andy hadn’t read much Shakespeare, but he knew damn well the old English dude didn’t write about killer vampire stableboys with glittering ruby schlongs. That bit was just genius, Gunther old boy … gen-ee-us.

  A long beep brought his attention to the main monitor. A command-line window popped up. The window listed two lines.

  JAMMER SHUTDOWN ACTIVATED

  JAMMER SHUTDOWN COMPLETE

  “What the fuck?”

  He shuffled together the pages of Gunther’s novel, set them on top of the big bag o’ porn, then scooted up to the keyboard. He called up the main security menu and clicked the jammer icon, launching the control window. Sure enough, the jammer’s status said disabled. He hit the enable button.

  ACCESS DENIED

  Andy felt a sinking feeling in his chest.

  The log monitor scrolled again, this time with the messages:

  TRANSMITTER ACTIVATED

  PHONE NETWORK ACTIVATED … DIALING …

  Andy turned to the camera monitor and started flashing through the channels. C-5 cockpit: empty. C-5 lab: Rhumkorrf working at a lab table, but not near a computer. C-5’s veterinary bay: Tim in stall four, attending to a cow, also nowhere near a computer. Magnus’s room: empty. Colding’s room: he was asleep in his bed. Jian’s room …

  What was with all the furniture pushed up against the door? And she … she was sitting at her wacky computer desk.

  “Oh, fuck a duck.”

  The log line scrolled again.

  VOICE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. CALLER ID: USAMRIID

  “Oh, motherfucker!” Andy grabbed the phone and dialed the extension for Magnus’s room. As it rang, he punched a button on the console, activating the secure satellite uplink monitor.

  VOICE OVER IP SIGNAL DETECTED. WOULD YOU LIKE TO MONITOR THE AUDIO? YES/NO

  He clicked yes to listen in. He called up the transmitter control window and clicked disconnect, knowing what he’d see.

  ACCESS DENIED

  Magnus still didn’t answer.

  “Oh, unholy duck fuckers.” Andy turned up the sound on the monitors.

  A CHEERFUL VOICE answered on the seventh ring. “USAMRIID, how can I help you?” The voice sounded tinny coming from the computer’s small speakers.

  “I want Paul Fischer.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am?”

  “I need Paul Fischer. Zhe shi hen jin ji.”

  “Ma’am, I—”

  “Fischer! I must talk to Fischer about problems with our transgenic experiment. If you take the time to screen this call, I will be dead before someone can answer.”
>
  There was a brief pause. “Hold on one moment, ma’am.”

  Jian stared at the computer screen but wasn’t really looking at it. All her eyes could see was a ghostly vision of the needle-toothed fetus snapping at the fiber-optic camera.

  MAGNUS BUTTONED HIS pants, zipped his fly, then walked out of his bathroom to the desk phone that had rung nonstop for over a minute.

  “This is Magnus.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Andy screamed so loud Magnus flinched and held the receiver away from his ear.

  “Stop yelling,” Magnus said. “I was taking a shit.”

  “So is Jian, all over us. I think she connected to Manitoba, and from there she’s calling Fischer!”

  Magnus reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a Beretta 96. “Can you shut down our transmitter?”

  “I can’t! She locked me out somehow, turned off the jammer, too. I can’t bring it back online.”

  Magnus pinched the phone between his shoulder and ear, checked the eleven-round magazine—full. “Is she talking to him now?”

  “I think she’s on hold.”

  “Where is everyone? Where is Colding?”

  A brief pause: “He’s sleeping. Rhumkorrf and Tim are in the C-5. Sara and her crew are doing maintenance there. I think Gunther’s out for a snowmobile ride. Don’t know where Clayton is, maybe he’s with Gunther.”

  Magnus thought for a second, then reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a second Beretta. “Listen to me, Andy. Take a ninety-six out of the security room rack. Get rid of it, make sure it won’t be found, and make sure there’s a blank space in the rack.”

  “Got it.”

  Magnus slid the extra Beretta in the back of his pants, then walked into the hall.

  “ARE YOU STILL there, ma’am?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll connect you now, please hold.”

  The phone sound changed a little, carried a touch of static, then a man’s voice answered.

  “This is Colonel Paul Fischer.”

  “This is Doctor Liu Jian Dan. Listen carefully.”

  She heard a hiss of excitement just before he spoke. “Jian Dan … listen, we’ve been look—”

  “Shut up!” Her patience was gone. Time was almost up. Too much stress. They would be there soon, the rats, the spiders, the mishmash monsters with the teeth and claws. “You shut up and you listen! They are too big.”

  “What’s too big?”

  “It is! The code is wrong, I don’t know why I made what I did, but it will kill us all.”

  “Doctor, please calm down—”

  Her door shook in its frame, five big slams. So loud! Jian screamed and stepped away from the computer. Her hands grabbed big tufts of her uneven black hair. The door rattled again, vibrating with each repetitive, powerful blow.

  “Ma’am? Doctor?” Fischer’s voice came from the speakers, small and faraway, drowned out by the pounding and by Jian’s screams.

  MAGNUS GAVE UP knocking and just punched the door, a straight right with all his weight behind it. The wood cracked with the sound of a gunshot. A white, jagged split appeared in the thick brown door. He reared back and hit it again, even harder, and his fist went through. Blood smears streaked the splintery hole. He took a quick look at his fist—the skin had split over his knuckles. A two-inch splinter jutted from between his index and middle finger. Blood ran down his hand.

  Magnus pulled out the splinter, tossed it aside, then reached into the hole and tore free a thick, head-sized piece of door.

  He stepped forward and looked into Jian’s room.

  IT HAD BEEN too much for her strained mind. The violent pounding on the door eroded her sanity to the last pebble of rational thought. When Magnus looked in, Jian didn’t see a human face at all—she saw a wide black head with smiling, evil eyes and long teeth dripping with saliva.

  The mishmash face of her dreams.

  Doctor Liu Jian Dan screamed for the last time.

  Magnus calmly aimed his Beretta through the hole and fired. The bullet smashed into Jian’s temple, just above the left eye. It punched through bone and tumbled through her brain, ripping out the back of her skull in a cloud of pink and red. Gelatinous globs splattered against the wall.

  The shot knocked her back a step, froze that last scream in her throat. Chunks of bone and brain hanging from the back of her ravaged head, Liu Jian Dan managed to take one small step forward, regained her balance for just a second, then fell face-first onto the floor.

  NOVEMBER 30: FAILURE

  Implantation +21 Days

  COLDING SAT UP in his bed, blinking away the sleep. Had he heard a gunshot, or dreamed it? An instinctive alarm rang somewhere in his subconscious.

  “Jian.”

  He threw the covers aside and sprinted into the hall, headed for her room.

  COLDING FOUND HER door half open. He tried to push it open farther, but something blocked it. A dresser, he saw as he slid into the room … slid in, and saw the body.

  He brushed past Magnus and Andy. Jian lay on the floor in a still-widening pool of blood. Her left hand was clenched into a fist, strands of her black hair still sticking out from between her fingers. Her right hand held a Beretta 96. He didn’t need to check for a pulse—the fist-sized hole in the back of her head said it all.

  “She must have snuck into the security area,” Andy said. “Stupid Clayton and that code.”

  “She was a smart woman,” Magnus said. “Even if we had a real code, she probably would have figured it out.”

  Colding knelt next to the body of his friend. The woman he was supposed to protect. Not just because it was his job, but because Jian had needed someone to protect her, to help her cope with life.

  And he’d failed her.

  Just like he’d failed Clarissa.

  He should have gotten Jian off the island days ago. She needed help, real help, she needed to be away from the stress that messed her up so bad even if the meds were perfect. But no, he’d ignored her needs, because of the fucking project. Because of hope for millions.

  Colding looked up at Andy. “What happened?”

  “I saw her on a routine video sweep,” Andy said. “She had the Beretta, she was babbling something in that ching-chang-chong talk.”

  Magnus made a tsk-tsk-tsk sound, almost a bad impression of someone expressing sympathy. It made Colding want to rip out the man’s tongue.

  “Andy called me and I rushed here, but the door was blocked,” Magnus said. “I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t speak English. I couldn’t get inside in time to stop her.” He held up a still-bleeding hand, as if his blood was inarguable evidence of his efforts to save Jian.

  And yet even with the brains of his company’s prized genius dripping down the walls, Magnus Paglione didn’t show a shred of emotion. Colding remembered his suspicions about Erika Hoel, how Danté wouldn’t say anything about her.

  He remembered how he’d left Erika with Magnus.

  But Erika had tried to destroy everything, she’d been in collusion with Fischer. Jian hadn’t done anything like that. Unless … unless she’d made good on her desire to contact the outside world.

  Colding looked around the room, searching for a phone, a walkie-talkie, even two tin cans connected with strings. But he saw nothing. There was no way to call out, Danté had made sure of that. No way except for the secure connection to Manitoba, and that was locked up tight.

  Then his eyes settled on the computer. Somehow, Jian had figured out how to use the computer to call for help. He looked at the blood splatters on the back wall, some droplets still trickling slowly down. He then looked at the hole in the door. Jian had been facing that hole when she died.

  She hadn’t killed herself at all.

  “Such a tragedy,” Magnus said. “She tried suicide so many times, and finally pulled it off.”

  Andy reached down and pulled the pistol from Jian’s hand. “So what do we do now?”

  I kill you murder
ing fuckers, that’s what we do now. The thought roared in Colding’s head with million-decibel volume. He fought for control. Without a weapon he had no chance against either Magnus or Andy. Despite the rage, the hatred, the undeniable need to do something, he had to stay calm. Stay smart. Get Sara, Rhumkorrf and the others off the island. Once Sara was safe, then he could think about justice. He had to play along, buy some time.

  “We can’t tell the others she’s dead,” Colding said. “They’ll lose confidence, and it could compromise the project.”

  Magnus looked down at him. A small smile toyed at the edge of his mouth. “So what are you saying, Bubbah, that we tell them she’s just taking a nap?”

  “Something like that. We tell them she’s had a nervous breakdown. Everyone knows how stress messes with her. We’ll tell them she needs a few days off. By then, hopefully, the ancestors will be delivered and we’ll have our live animals.”

  Andy shook his head. “What about the gunshot?”

  Colding gestured to the empty room. “You see anyone else coming to see what happened?”

  “Colding’s right,” Magnus said. “We’ll board up the door, say we had to break in to reach her when she flipped out. We’ll lock up her room. No one gets in but Colding, because he’s the only one she really trusted. Work for you, Bubbah?”

  Colding nodded, feeling the extra burst of guilt brought on by Magnus’s words.

  “Good,” Magnus said. “Colding, hurry up and bury her before anyone gets back.”

  Colding stood up. “Are you joking?”

  “We can’t leave the body here stinking up the place,” Magnus said. “And I’m not putting her in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer where Clayton can stumble into it. If you’d been better at your job, she’d still be alive, so this is your mess. Do it. Now.”

  Colding thought for a moment, still fighting to control the rage. All that mattered now was getting Sara off the island. He had to do whatever it took to make that happen.