by Martin Rose
She stood at the door and stared at the wallpaper. A stain in the rug. Things that needed to be done and taken care of . . . until at last she looked at Owen.
“Have you decided yet?”
Owen nodded. She thought his eyes deepened a shade into a somber palette, infused with saturnine weight. His face young, heartbreakingly young for his wizening eyes.
“I’m going to go through with it,” he said slowly.
“Why?” she whispered. “Bone marrow transplants are unpleasant. He needs more than that.”
He shifted his feet as one does when buying time for an uncomfortable answer. Several chairs lined the small accounting room, a desk with papers spread over it, but neither could sit or relax. They were abuzz with nervous tension, not because of the company they kept—they were waiting for Jamie.
“Gratitude,” he said simply.
Impatiently, she tapped her feet. Vitus was knocked out in the other room, and she told him so, but she feared to leave him there for long.
“Don’t worry,” Owen sighed. “I don’t think it will be long at all.”
He was right.
Jamie burst into the room, breathing heavy. The weight of middle age softened him and lent a latent innocence to his baby face completely absent in Vitus’s. What Niko found repulsive about him was the personality underlying his sympathetic features; his need for control and bureaucracy repelled her. She could not bring herself to disguise her disdain, thinking it was men like this who would have left people like her mother in a Lazar House to die.
Left people like Vitus to die.
And hadn’t he, in his own way? Abandoned his brother to a life he had shared responsibility in creating, and then gone about his own without a worry in the world?
She waited as Jamie took a seat behind the desk as though he owned the place, a man used to being deferred to on the basis of his high clearance level alone. He might not be CIA, but whatever his standing was within the various branches of military, it was enough to sway influence on levels she didn’t care to think about. His smallest actions breathed entitlement.
When he was finally settled, he looked up and took his glasses off to set them aside on the desk.
“Debrief me, please,” he motioned to Owen, tonelessly.
Owen’s mouth turned into a bitter line, and he began with his return to the compound as Vitus recovered at the funeral home. He spoke of the shop, abandoned and dusty with age; the ventilation shaft, the dead bodies of the poisoned children. He found Jessica’s body in the fray, recognizing it only by the wedding ring on her hand. She had been reduced to bones after the maggots were done with her.
“The ring?” Jamie asked, curious.
“I returned it to Vitus.”
“Ah,” he said, and gestured for Owen to continue.
He picked up as though he had not been interrupted. He had expected to do no more than make sure there were no survivors, and if there had been he would have assisted them. With no one left alive, he weighed his options and decided fire would be the best way to destroy any sign of their presence. While determining the best way to do this, he stumbled across a body, upsetting a host of flies that had been seething within it. Yet, this event was not unique to this singular disturbed body. Every corpse exploded with flies crawling and teeming beneath the flesh.
Ordinarily, flies would not have bothered him to such an extent; the whole thing struck him as silly, but—
“It was the way they moved,” he explained, becoming animated with the fear of the moment. “They took form, one by one, they amassed themselves together, moving in concert. They displayed sentient intelligence and coordinated movement. I locked myself in a room and shoved a blanket beneath the door. The few flies that managed to follow me in I killed, but I was terrified to leave. I had no doubt in my mind that if the entity wanted to, it could form itself into a human.”
“Do you believe it desired to kill you?”
He paused before answering. “At the time, I was convinced it could only be malignant, but in retrospect, I wonder if I had not been so overwhelmed by the fear and isolation, I would have thought differently. I couldn’t say now for sure, no.”
“But it’s possible it may have been attempting to communicate?”
“It may have had that capability, but I didn’t dare wait around to find out. I waited until I heard their buzzing fade, and even then I was reluctant to leave. I believed it was capable of setting a trap, and when it had been some time and still no sound, I left and kept to the shadows. I wanted to rethink my strategy and make sure I could eliminate the flies before I left.”
Jamie nodded and Owen continued, recounting events until the moment he heard the clanking metal steps approaching down the hall, to the cellar room door where he hid in shadow, until low and behold, a knight in shining armor appeared.
“Sort of,” Owen amended.
“He took the armor?” Jamie asked, incredulous.
“You did notice it was missing, right?” Niko said acidly, and he ignored the tone while she rolled her eyes. “What did you expect him to leave in? A suit and tie? Armor’s not a bad idea when all you’ve been reduced to is a skeleton.”
“I did not expect it, is all. It seems like . . .”
“Overkill?” Owen asked. He had been silent during Niko’s brief comment, and expressionless despite Jamie’s reaction, his retelling largely objective and likewise emotionless. Now, he allowed himself a vehement observation:
“I think you underestimate what it does to a man to look down at himself and discover everything that makes him human has been taken away. I do not know how he manages to keep his sanity.”
Jamie sighed, displeased with this lapse in formality. He motioned to him to continue where he left off, and Owen did, without a change in expression. He described the events like a newscaster reading off a teleprompter. The fire in the basement, the escape through the ventilation shaft.
“Then we drove back here,” he said without elaboration. “And that’s where we stand now.”
“I see,” Jamie said only.
“I thought you were bringing back the cure?” Niko prompted. “Vitus is laid out right now, I thought I’d have it before I had to put him out.”
Jamie waived a hand, exasperated. “He’s been dead ten years, he can wait five more minutes.”
Jamie dismissed her, and Niko swallowed back a curse. She did not like the way he waved away Vitus’s fate, as though it were no more to him than a traffic weather report, his skeletal discomfort of no more concern than a rift in an ocean. He turned from her and stared hard at Owen.
“Well,” he said, and his tone had changed, turned abrupt. “Amos, have you made your decision?”
Amos? Niko thought.
The words hung in the air, heavy.
It occurred to Niko that the words they spoke were laden with veiled meanings; that, in fact, all of the words they had spoken were suspect, a language designed so only Owen and Jamie would decipher it, leaving her to guess at what secrets they were exchanging under her nose.
Her hands clenched at her sides; the sensation of duplicity, of having missed something in their words, overwhelmed her.
Owen breathed out. “I’m ready.”
“You willingly choose this? You insist upon this course? Think hard. I . . . I beg you to reconsider.”
Jamie’s last word broke, and in the silence, Owen made a fist and looked away.
“Do it.”
Jamie’s head sank.
His hand lifted from the desk; she thought perhaps he brought a pen up, but the object in his hand was a .45 of black steel and he shot it once, flame bursting from the end as his wrist snapped back and then all was still. She tasted lead on her lips. Her ears rang from the sound but she didn’t move an inch, not even to jump; it had all happened so fast, she stood there, playing back the scene in her mind, waiting for her brain to catch up with her eyes.
Owen did not fall. He didn’t rock back with the bullet, the
way she thought they did in movies when people got shot. It sliced through him as easily as throwing a dart into a board in a sleazy bar, and he looked down at himself. A surgical hole in his black shirt. He touched it with a trembling hand, and then his mouth opened a little, his breath came in fast, unable to catch it. His blood-red finger curled into a loose fist.
He fell then, unable to support himself. Niko felt the wall meet her back, unaware that she had been retreating, ears ringing through a deep freeze. Their voices dwindling to a radio broadcast from a distant planet.
“Aren’t you even going to ask why?” Owen whispered. Blood colored his lips and sprayed from his mouth as he spoke.
Jamie rose from the desk but did not move from behind it. He watched Owen, waiting for him to go on or die first. He did not speak but adjusted his tie.
“Because he’s a better father than you ever were,” Owen spat.
Niko thought people who were shot died fast. And while Owen didn’t take his time, he didn’t leave right away, either. His eyes dimmed and his face froze into a tragedy mask with the lips drawn back from his bloody teeth and gums as he strained to breathe. His hands clutched at his chest where the bullet had passed through before stopping in the wall behind him.
“I gave you everything,” Jamie whispered as he stared at him. His voice broke at the last, a single tremor of emotion that betrayed everything he imprisoned behind his corrupt, bureaucratic facade, a man who traded away his integrity for advancement in his career in a desperate gamble to fix the mistakes of his past, to fix the brother he had destroyed, to be a better father to the son who did not love him. He had the look of man who could not grasp why everything he touches leaves a stain that no effort of science or good intention could wash away.
“You were but a child when you insisted that I put you to service. I broke rules for you. I bent a thousand laws and burned more red tape than you’ll ever know over ethics and moral codes to set up your infiltration into Jessica’s cult. You convinced your own mother that I should feed you to the wolves! You rejected schooling, you rejected all the playthings and luxuries that any seven-year-old would have given anything for. At thirteen you were uncontrollable. At fifteen, when I refused you, you would not eat, you went on a hunger strike, you forced me to relent and give you a place in the military no sane man would sacrifice his child, his son to. Everything you asked for—I gave it and more! And still, for all this, I will always be second place in your heart to Vitus.”
Owen coughed, a bubble of blood emerging from his lips, his eyes glassy, rolling in their sockets. Through his labored breath, he smiled.
“You didn’t even make it to second place,” he heaved out with effort.
Jamie sent a fist to the surface of the desk. Wood buckled beneath it as he shoved stacks of papers and books to the floor in a rage, newspapers and forms fluttering to the ground, his face flushing red with an inarticulate cry of frustration and despair.
“Why?” Jamie whispered. “You would not let me rest until I gave you what you wanted. You wanted this! You chose this, against my every plea, against all my arguments! I signed your death warrant at your insistence, and it’s not enough for your love, is it, son? What does it take to earn that place in your heart that my brother so effortlessly occupies? He killed his wife and child. Without me, he’d be nothing! What does it take?”
Owen grinned, red gums, teeth stark white against the blood. He opened his mouth to answer, to give Jamie the definitive reason he sought, a whistling inhale of breath as he prepared to speak . . . and then his arms fell away from his chest and his breathing stopped with his heart. His eyes were still alight, processing the last of the oxygen that was keeping his brain alive. Then, slowly, that too faded, and all that remained was the warmth of his body. What he struggled to say in his last moments remained unsaid.
Niko did not scream. She did not cry. She wanted it all to go back, to pull out the bullet and reverse the damage like a tape in rewind, but it wasn’t a movie. Her swallow of panic made an audible click in her throat, and in an instant, she thought of their conversation when she had first come in—
Have you decided yet?
I’m going to go through with it.
Why?
Gratitude.
She gasped. She did not realize she was crying until she felt the tears. Salt burning on her skin. It had never been about surgery, about bone marrow transplants.
“Take him,” Jamie said wearily. “Take him to Vitus. One of our people will show you what to do with him.”
“What?” she hissed. “What am I supposed to do with a murdered body, you fuck?”
His look darkened, and she watched his hand on the .45. It did not move, but she had no doubt as he pursed his lips and stared at her that he entertained the possibility of making it two dead people instead of one.
“You’re supposed to use it to cure Vitus,” he said quietly. “The maggots were key. A happy accident. I should have thought of it. The one thing we hadn’t thought of that could skeletonize him, deprive him of his infected tissue. That put Vitus in phase one and resolved our first problem for iatrogenic infection. Our second problem was identifying the genesis of infection in his body. It can spread through blood and skin, but Virus X doesn’t breed in the brain tissue. It breeds in the marrow.”
Niko’s jaw dropped.
“No blood, no Virus . . .”
“Everything has to be replaced. A complete restoration.”
“That can’t be possible.”
He laughed without mirth; stared down at his gun.
“We’ve done some trial runs since Vitus came back with the maggots. The problem is the bone marrow, you see. Blood cells come from bone marrow. The virus is bone-deep, Niko. We can change his skin, his muscle, his tissue . . . but his bone marrow can only come from a donor who matches his genetic typing. A blood relation.”
Her breath caught in her mouth as she stared at Owen’s crumpled figure on the floor.
“Why’d you let him do it?” she gasped. “You’re related to him, too!”
“He wanted it! You think I didn’t beg and plead with him every day? Damn you, Vitus,” he hissed, slamming a fist against the table. “Amos—Owen—had it in his head ever since that funeral, when he watched Vitus’s wife and child buried. He wanted to be just like him, wanted to save him. Wanted to replace the son Vitus lost.”
“You could have been a donor instead.”
“As much as it pains me to say it, Amos was a soldier in his heart. He could be replaced. But if I offered myself . . . who do you think was going to be left behind who would be smart enough to undo the damage? To clean the mess? To bring the genius of science to bear on the undead corpse that is my brother? Who, with what knowledge, was going to be able to pick up the pieces? Hm?”
“You didn’t kill your son for Vitus. You killed him because you couldn’t stand that he loved Vitus more than you. You wouldn’t suffer it.”
Jamie licked his lips and looked away.
“Go now,” he urged, waving the gun to get her moving. “Wait with Vitus. The team will be in with what you need and they’ll do the dirty work. Get him ready, Niko. Don’t let my son’s death be in vain.”
A team of scientists and doctors encased in hazmat suits waited for her at the door. A phone rang and Jamie turned away with the receiver at his ear, speaking in hushed tones. Papers scattered on his makeshift desk. She made out her own damning recruitment form and beneath that, a shuffled paper with a presidential seal over an envelope and scrawled signatures, one signed with the name Echo Inspector and the other Todd Adamson. Then she was swept her away with the scientists and doctors, who gingerly danced around Vitus’s skeleton as though a puff of air from his direction had the power to infect them all.
She laid out Owen on a gurney beside him. She had met Owen when he first arrived with Vitus, carrying him into the funeral home wrapped inside a blanket. She had not known him enough to truly mourn him; she grieved for different reasons. S
he grieved for what Vitus had to wake up to.
*
And now, I was awake.
I stared at her as though I did not recognize her. I heard the words but could not seem to comprehend them. My flesh was alive and stinging with the aftermath of our sex, a musk lingered in the air. Sweat branded the small of my back in a trickle. I was alive and in love with every new sensation inside this flesh, and alternately disgusted, sickened and horrified by everything I heard.
“Owen was Amos. Amos was Jamie’s,” I whispered. My voice came out strangled. “Jamie’s son.”
Niko did not answer. I did not expect her to. I reeled in the moment, more isolated and alone than I had ever been before, even when I had been pre-deceased.
I held a hand to my forehead to stop the deluge of memories, but there could be no stopping it. I remembered the nephew in greater clarity—Jamie so proud over the phone, describing his newborn son from the hospital; the boy playing at my feet when I visited and my brother and I argued over Sarajevo and the old gray fox. The boy, always in the periphery, fading into the background. The boy with his head bent over his homework and his report cards. The boy, artfully invisible and studying espionage and war games at a fever pitch.
I pictured his birth certificate, the name writ bold: AMOS OWEN ADAMSON.
Fuck. In front of me all along.
But that was not quite the whole story, was it? Jamie pulled the trigger for any number of reasons corrupt and personal; but Amos gave up his life.
The second the thought manifested blood rushed out of my face.
“My boy,” I gasped, and Niko reached out to steady me. “He knew. He had a choice, and he let it happen.”
I could not process the event, as hard as I tried. It spoke volumes of devotion, of love, of the infinite size of Amos’s heart. And he’d given it all to me, and why? Out of misplaced loyalty for a father? For me?