The Variant Effect

by G. Wells Taylor

  A long list of reports popped up from the day. Typical numerical designations told of reports on squad activities. A captain always sent a report to Bezo company physicians when death or disfigurement occurred inside the squad or among those 'treated.'

  Three quarters of the way down the list the titles were reversed black lettering against hot red security highlights. Then a name stood out: 'Manfield' by a report number. Hyde clicked the link but a security screen popped up. No surprise. The warning said an A-Level clearance was required to access the file. He dimly remembered whispers about the Manfield Building Outbreak-100 percent communicability. A captain treated his whole squad. That was Spiko... But there was more to the story. Brass said it was still classified.

  And it was all so many painkillers ago...

  He wondered if the Old Man, Midhurst, had A-Level clearance. It was unlikely, considering his open hostility toward Bezo back in the day.

  Hyde closed the window and returned to the search results. There was a long list of locked reports after the Manfield entry that suggested Spiko and Ang had a long association. POOs had linked to the files too. Was it possible Ang was treating Spiko after?

  A coincidence is a conspiracy for the weak-minded. Only facts could make the difference. Dr. Ang checked in on you, too.

  "Are you involved, Hyde?" he whispered without humor, his levity unable to quell his growing fear about...

  He closed the search window and opened the Metro area telephone directory to type in a name. The window flashed and produced a telephone number and address. Glowing lines on an accompanying map showed the Parkerville street.

  InfectionÖconnection-links.

  "You ordering pizza?" Borland's voice came from the Horton's side door.

  CHAPTER 52

  Hyde glanced over at Borland and sputtered a curse before swinging back to close the phone directory window on the flat-screen.

  "You can't just walk in here!" he snarled.

  "I'm not inÖ" Borland pointed where his boots hooked the step outside. "I just brought the kids back and I couldn't tell if you were in here." He squinted. You old freak. "It's so dark." He was feeling warm in the face from a few jolts he'd taken from his flask before opening the door.

  "What is it?" Hyde struggled to turn his wheelchair, got it hung up on the equipment that protruded from the wall. "Do you need more attention?"

  Borland looked past the old goblin at the monitor. When Hyde shut the one window another had popped up with an autopsy video feed. "Who's cutting the shopkeeper?"

  Hyde looked at the flat-screen, then spat: "Mao..." He reached out to close the window, but changed his mind, swung his attention back to his hands, started picking at his left palm. "What do you want?"

  "Hard to believe we're back to this..." Borland said, taking the long way to what he wanted to say. He noticed that Hyde's wrists and forearms were covered in some kind of dark purple protective material.

  "Not when you realize that history is full of instances where people refuse to learn from history," Hyde ratcheted the words out.

  "I just mean..." Borland cleared his throat. "It's been so long since the day-and here we are."

  "What do you want?" Hyde rolled aggressively toward him and stopped a couple feet away.

  "Learning from history-okay," Borland snarled and drove an index finger into his own chest. He noticed that the old cripple's legs were covered in the sample purple material. "A bit gets through to me. I can't help it. I know you don't think it's true, but I do learn."

  "Get to the point," Hyde snapped.

  "We can't work like this," Borland growled, waving a hand back and forth between them. "Like we didn't before."

  "What are you talking about?" Hyde tilted his head back enough for light to slip under his hood and illuminate his raw cheekbones.

  "You and some of the other captains were turning your noses up at me because you hated the fact that a mess like Borland could produce results!" Borland glowered. "And even getting skinned wasn't what turned you against me."

  "Get out, Borland." Hyde's scarred face slid from under an arc of shadow.

  "You were too good a captain. Too realistic. You knew what we were up against." Borland bared his teeth. "You hate me because you lost your daughter." Borland felt pressure in his throat push up behind his face like it was swelling. "And you lost her because of me. Because you got turned into that..." He gestured at Hyde's covered form with a bandaged hand. "Because of me."

  Hyde closed his jaws with an audible snap, hooked his wheels with his skinless fingers and rolled over to the gory image on the flat-screen.

  "Who put the old man down?" Borland asked Hyde's back.

  "The amygdaloidal region of the brain was destroyed in the female Biter that attacked your team and Mr. Stanford." Hyde croaked as he picked at his palm. "Dr. Cavalle paled at the prospect of euthanizing the shopkeeper so Aggie introduced a BZ-2 overdose to his cell." Hyde's focus shifted to the operation. "She went in after and strapped the body to the table. Flattop and Hazard covered her."

  "Aggie," Borland said, remembering Flattop as the big black ex-marine. "She's something else."

  "Borland, if you are through giving me your POO's evaluation, I do not have time to waste on nostalgia." Hyde's voice quivered with repressed rage. "It has been an unpleasant experience working with you again. There is no old squad glow. Now get out!"

  "But I gotta report..." Borland started, feeling his own anger boil up. His temples still throbbed with his hangover and here he was trying to help and getting kicked in the face again.

  You'll never win against him.

  "Accidental gunfire..." Hyde finished for him. "You found the likely hotlink to the Biter lair, but no confirmation. One of your team and Spiko has gone missing. Typical Borland mission: lots of loose ends."

  "It's more than that, you old..." Borland wanted to rage but held it back. The muscles in his thigh cramped around the wound he'd picked up in the gully. He pressed a fist against it and bit down on the pain. Got to get a tetanus shot.

  "Report to Aggie, then. She will forward relevant information to me. I will not work with you!" Hyde swung his wheelchair toward him; the action pulled the hem of his hood back to the crown of his skull. His face exposed, Borland was saved from none of the skinned man's injuries. Blood vessels glistened, the bare muscle on his jaws flexed monstrously and his eyes rolled in their sockets. Without brows or features, the face was capable of a single naked expression of hate. "Just get out! I'm too busy for your drama."

  "Look, we were professionals once... can't you just..." Borland sputtered.

  "Professionals! What is it, Captain Borland?" Hyde snarled. "Is there not enough ice for your drinks? Are you having trouble turning your bag-suit visor into a bong?"

  "Ah, the hell with you then!" Borland roared, turning in the narrow doorway. His jacket caught on something and ripped. "Then nothing!" He stepped out on the pavement beside the Horton. The noise of baggies prepping transports had covered his outburst.

  We're worse than Biters!

  "Nothing?" Hyde shook his head and rolled after Borland until he filled the doorframe. He took a deep breath. His lungs rasped wearily. He tipped his head back and noisily swallowed spit before he said: "When will you understand that there are no pledges or promises that will win you forgiveness? If you are headed to an early death and damnation from drink and guilt, you deserve it." Hyde's laugh was a harsh sound. "For the young men and women you took to their deaths if not for what you did to my daughter-my life." He corrected, quickly.

  Borland snarled and stormed away from the Horton, his anger overcoming the many pains and discomforts that dragged at him. He threw one more snarling look back at Hyde, still framed by the Horton's side door, and he spat a curse.

  Swinging around, Borland plowed into Mao. The idiot was still wearing his medical shield-suit, and was walking blank-faced away from the holding cells. Looked like he was going to puke...

  The med-tech muttered some
thing and kept going.

  Borland wanted to rip him a new one, but a voice interrupted.

  "Joe!" Beachboy called to him from over by the transports.

  CHAPTER 53

  "I mean, Captain," Beachboy corrected, and then: "Metro PD found Scott Morrison's car."

  Borland stopped and frowned.

  Beachboy and Dancer were in their bag-suits. Face-shields and hoods hung from fastenings on their belts opposite holstered pistols. The bagged-girl's pretty features were drawn tight around her focused thoughts. She was watching Mao cross the pavement past the Horton to where the sedan was parked by the SUV.

  "The other side of Metro, a police cruiser pulled it over. A couple crackheads boosted it." Beachboy looked at Dancer. The woman's eyes flashed at the younger man and then drifted back to the parking area.

  Borland nodded.

  "They said the keys were in the ignition-found it parked four days ago, a block away from the Demarco furrier building," Beachboy said and smiled. "After the uniform cuffed them, he saw there was a sheet of cardboard covering the driver's seat. Under it he found blood, lots of it caked on the vinyl and pooled on the floor."

  "Jesus. Across Metro?" Borland grasped the development, met Beachboy's eye. "Brass ziplocked the car thieves?"

  "Yep," Beachboy said, "The arresting officers too."

  "Damn," Borland started and then walked toward Aggie and Cavalle where they conferred by the transports. The makeshift command center's flat-screens glowed in the shadows of the hulking vehicles. Colonel Hazen was there too, looking grim in his combat uniform. Cavalle was in a sweat-soaked squad jumper. She must have just climbed out of her stifling medical shield-suit.

  Sheriff Marley was there, wearing an anxious look.

  "They found Morrison's car?" Borland asked. Beachboy and Dancer were a step behind him.

  "I'm just viewing the report." Cavalle looked up from her e-reader.

  "Lots of blood," Aggie said. "Morrison presented in his car."

  "And drove from Parkerville?" Borland shook his head.

  "No, he drove to Metro, presented when he got there," Aggie explained. "Then self-ritualized before he figured out how to open the car door."

  "That possible?" Borland glared at Cavalle, who shrugged and tapped the touch-screen on her e-reader. Thumbnail images appeared on the screen showing the inside of Morrison's car from various angles. Borland poked a finger at the driver's seat.

  "That's not right," Aggie whispered.

  Borland grumbled. The driver's seat was smeared and stained with blood. There was dried blood on the 'console' between the bucket seats and on the steering wheel-some on the dash, but that was it. Borland shrank the image and started jabbing at thumbnails, cursing at the different images as they opened.

  "Damn it!" he said finally. "You see that, Aggie?"

  "Yeah," she agreed. "Nothing."

  "What's that mean, Captain?" Dancer asked from over Borland's shoulder.

  "No blood spray," Aggie sighed. "Self-ritualizing is messy."

  "Think the thieves cleaned it up?" Cavalle leaned toward the monitor.

  "That car wasn't cleaned," Borland rasped.

  "It's like he was sitting in it," Dancer said.

  "Internal hemorrhage?" Cavalle used her fingers to orient the 3-D image on the e-reader. "I don't remember that from the literature."

  "Never saw that either," Borland growled. "And we saw everything."

  "They're tracing the car thieves' activities and ziplocking anything or anyone they came in contact with." Aggie stared him in the eye. "Brass said there's no sign that anyone else presented."

  "Any news from Mofo or Spiko?" Borland asked bleakly. He'd given a quick report about the disappearances to Aggie after checking in with Lazlo's team and bringing Beachboy, Lilith and Zombie back to prepare for deployment.

  "Spiko shut his vid-com link down as soon as Lazlo dropped him off with his baggies. And we have this." Aggie tapped a corner of the flat-screen.

  A fly-out window appeared.

  "Yes, ma'am?" Wizard's pretty face glowed from the low light inside T-2.

  "Wizard, replay Mofo's vid-com link." Aggie stepped back so Borland and the others could see the flat-screen. "Cue it back to a minute before it shuts down."

  A fly-out window appeared, then enlarged to fill most of the flat-screen.

  The vid-com picked up the side of Mofo's face from its right ear-clip vantage point. He was moving quickly. Leaves whipped by him and struck his shoulders with audible slapping sounds. There was a pounding thud at each heavy footfall.

  He turned to glance occasionally to his right where the ravine dropped into shadow. He growled unintelligibly.

  Then he stopped.

  "Hey!" Mofo shouted, and the vid-com caught someone in green moving through the undergrowth away from him. The vid-com camera glanced down, the audio gave harsh metallic sliding noises and Mofo's hand came up into view with his gun.

  "Hold it there!" he ordered. The vid-com caught someone facing away from Mofo dressed in green, wearing a hunter's cap with the flaps down. There were gloves on the raised hands.

  "Okay," Mofo looked back in the direction he had come. The landscape had dropped gradually and there was no sign of Beachboy.

  Mofo swung back to the man in green who was just turning toward him, but the vid-com link was blocked by the angle of Mofo's face.

  "Oh," said Mofo, his voice softening. "Hello." Then a hand came up and fiddled with his vid-com link. "Sorry about the gun," he continued. "I didn't know..."

  And the link went dead.

  "That's it?" Borland grumbled.

  "What do you think?" Aggie gave him a steady look.

  "Almost sounded like he knew the guy," Borland said, and then described his own glimpse of Mofo and a little man with a little dog.

  "No dog in the video," Beachboy said.

  "Looked like the same guy," Borland said. "But I didn't see his face then either."

  "What kind of dog was it?" the Sheriff asked.

  Borland stared blankly, his mind shifting back to the... "Curly hair. Was brown, with a long tail. Thing would fit in my hand." Then he looked at the flat-screen and tapped it. Wizard's fly-out window appeared.

  "Wizard, can you get us a freeze-frame of that little guy in Mofo's video?"

  The image of Wizard looked down, and the video behind her window started to replay before she disappeared, then the images jumped ahead and stopped on the man's back. His hands were raised. The fingers in the black gloves were spread like claws.

  "That ring a bell, Sheriff?" Borland asked and then cursed when the Sheriff slowly shook his head.

  "No. Can only see a bit of the cheek." He squeezed his lower lip. "But we can print a hard copy of that picture, and get a shot of a dog similar to what you saw to circulate in the neighborhood. It's probably not the first time he walked his dog there."

  Aggie interjected, "That's good, Sheriff Marley, and that's a program I want you to handle in the background." She gestured to the bagged-boys and girls who were starting to congregate around the tables. They stood there anxious, excited and terrified, handling shotguns or shield-suit visors.

  "For now, Mofo's missing in action. So is Spiko." She lowered her eyes. "Priority one is locking down the Biter hotlink. We've studied Lazlo's vid-com uploads and that sewer is the hotlink to the lair."

  "Well, good then." Borland was tempted to say something heroic like "lock and load" but Hyde's tongue-lashing still ached in him.

  "I agree, good," Aggie chuckled darkly. "But look at it." She turned to the flat-screen. "Wizard, give me the schematic of the storm sewer and drainage system under the base."

  "Yes, ma'am," came Wizard's voice. The screen flickered and a diagram of Parkerville appeared.

  "Ah, Jesus!" Borland groaned.

  CHAPTER 54

  The streets and buildings of Parkerville, the military base and airport were shown in orange lines against a black background. Halfway down the map and to the
west, Lazlo's position at the sewer opening was marked in blazing red. The orange lines faded at Aggie's touch and a set of harsh green lines appeared that ran in a long lazy loop north from Lazlo's position, under the airport, hangers and the squad's location in the warehouse before a long arm shot out to the east toward the runways. At intervals, smaller branches spread out from the main tunnels. A regular line of them drained rainwater out to the west and a collector ditch along the highway. Others fed back to two large circular collection cisterns before draining into the loop where it flowed southward into the ravine.

  "It's right under us," Borland said, studying the map. Then he stabbed at a large rectangular shape that sat in the center of the main loop. "What's that?"

  Aggie tapped the touch-screen twice and white text appeared.

  Colonel Hazen spoke up: "Underground storage areas. The army hasn't used them since the base was fully operational. Machine parts and gear under those three hangers." He nodded and gestured at the screen until Aggie dragged a finger over the map. Purple shapes appeared that linked the rectangle to the sewer system.

  "That's just for ventilation." Hazen shrugged. "Sheet metal ducts no bigger than 18 inches across."

  "Still big enough. Goddamn," Borland said, as he followed the ventilation shafts eastward. "The road goes north-south through a tunnel under the main runway." He tapped the dim orange line on the street-grid. "More storage areas under there," he growled, looking around. "Hyde's going to want to see this."

  "He's already watching," Dr. Cavalle explained and tapped an icon at the bottom of the screen-a stylized Variant Squad badge with ID number.

  Borland grunted. Phantom of the opera now...

  "How big are those sewers?" he asked.

  "Specs say they're five feet in diameter. Concrete in the main tunnels." Hazen pointed at the loop. "They shrink down to four and three foot corrugated steel on the branches that drain into the cisterns. Others close down to a foot in diameter and empty into the drainage ditches along the highway. The cisterns are circular concrete and measure eight feet high by 25 feet in diameter."