“It’ll be fun. Now let’s get Rickie out of the water.” Jake turned calling out as he did. “Rickie come on . . .” Jake stopped cold as he looked out into the ocean. “Oh shit. Rickie! Hurry!”
“Oh my God, Jake!” Cal backed up, seeing a wall of water seemingly chasing in toward them. “Rickie!”
“Dudes!” Rickie called out as he swam his hardest looking behind him with each moving stroke. “Dudes! Surf’s up!”
“Cal.”
“Yeah.”
“Run.” Jake grabbed Cal’s hand, hoping that with his help they could run further inland and beat the wave that charged in their way. They thought wrong. Over his shoulder and in his ears, Jake knew it had arrived. With fast moving legs, he released Cal’s hand, reached out his arm, grabbed hold of her by the waist, and whipped her into him. Jake wrapped his arms tightly around her bringing Cal to his chest as the giant wave not only crashed into the beach, but thunderously over Cal and Jake. It smacked into them with such a force it lifted them up into its watery hand and carried them at top speed further and further inland. And as the wave smacked with its final fury somewhere just into the edge of the trees, it threw Cal and Jake forward as it pulled back, causing the ground to vibrate again.
They rolled, still wrapped together, through the muddy land as if the momentum of the wave still carried them. And when they stopped moving, mud covered, wet and breathing heavily, Cal and Jake laughed.
Jake reached his hand up to Cal’s face wiping away the mud, looking at her as she lay on top of him. “Fun, huh?”
“Yeah.” Cal smiled.
Jake kissed her. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Jake, I’m fine.”
“So am I.” Rickie whined out. “Like if anyone cares.” Not two feet from them, like Rambo, Rickie lifted from the mud. “Washed in from the ocean like that army broad’s head. But, like, no one cares.” Rickie rubbed the mud from his eyes. “Thank you.”
They couldn’t help it. They tried not to laugh, but they did as they watched Rickie, so child like, stomp off in a hissy fit back towards the bungalows.
Caldwell Research Center - Los Angeles, CA
June 4th - 10:10 a.m.
“Again,” Greg ordered, still standing in the same place as he had been for over a half an hour. Only this time more people had joined him, all eyes trying to find where it came from. He listened to the scream, short and painful. “All right. Take out all building and structure monitors.”
Barb did, and she played it back again.
“It’s outside. All right,” Greg said. “Let’s do process of elimination. Take out one at a time. One monitor at a time and play back.”
“Here’s less the beach monitors.” Barb pressed the tape, the scream ensued. “Not on the beach. Less section forty off the bungalows.” Another play of the tape, another scream. “Less section twenty, near the center . . .” Barb played the tape, the scream happened again. “Now . . .”: Barb’s fingers clicked. “Less area seventeen near the cavern.” She pressed play. Nothing.
“It’s there.” Greg clenched his fist in excitement. “All right, shut down everything but seventeen. Can you run it through to the big screen?”
“Yes.” Barb leaned to Lyle and together they worked together for a minute or so. “Ready.”
“Everyone watch seventeen. Play it.” Greg watched. He heard the scream but saw nothing. “The microphone picked something up there. Zoom in.”
Acting like it was a waste of time and probably just Paul chasing Lou, or Reed getting hurt, Barb zoomed in. “All right.”
The scream. Then Aldo called out. “There!.”
“What?” Greg spun to him.
“You have to watch and you can’t blink,” Aldo explained. “Watch it.”
Barb played it again.
“Did you see it?” Aldo asked.
“No.” Greg shook his head.
Aldo moved closer to Barb. “How slow can you play back this feed?”
“Slow I guess.” Barb shrugged, looked to Lyle and rolled her eyes. “Shall I?”
“Yes,” Greg nodded. “Do it.” He folded his arms and promised himself, burning eyes or not, he would not blink. And he watched. The sound of everything was so deep it was monstrous. But with the deep hissing sound came something else, a total blackness of the screen. It was during the blink of blackness that the scream called out. And then the screen showed the woods, just before the gurgle. But this time, they monitored closely and it was like everyone in the room saw the same thing at the same time. Those who were seated stood up. The room went silent.
“Oh my God.” Barb pointed. “Is that a . . .”
“I believe so,” Greg answered.
“Christ!” Aldo gasped. “What in the hell?”
“I don’t know.” Greg shook his head. “But we have to find out.” He spun and began to walk from the room. “Lyle, get me exact coordinates of that spot. Pull a live feed again and see.” He moved to the door.
“Greg,” Dr. Jefferson called out. “Where are you going?”
Greg stopped before going out. He pointed to the screen. “There’s only one way to find out if that is what we think it is.” He opened the door. “I have to call Stan. Get them out there.”
After his dramatic exit, all eyes, confused and horrified, turned back to look at the screen.
I-S.E. Thirteen - The Island
June 4th - 11:15 a.m.
“All and all.” Jake lathered up his face as he stood before the sink in a towel, getting ready to shave. “I think it’s much easier.”
“How do you figure?” Cal asked, laying on the bed in her robe, hair wet, watching Jake shave. “I totally disagree. Nothing happened up to this point in the first experiment.”
“Bullshit, Cal.” Jake argued and pulled out his razor. “Stop and think about it. Let’s see, uh . . . you were strangled, fell in a ditch, and, let’s not forget, you died. I shot Griff. And let’s not forget about what happened to Rickie.” Jake looked at her with a ‘so there’ look.
“That’s nothing. The three things that happened to me were really not the experiment’s fault now were they?”
“In a sense.”
“I really disagree, Jake.” Cal sat up and reached for the night stand. She opened up a drawer and pulled out a notebook. “Let’s compare.”
“Let’s.”
“First experiment up to this point. They mentally went after four of us. Me with Jessie. Fr. Dan with his past. Griff with his past. Jennifer with that . . .” Cal giggled. “Transmitter in her ear to make her think she heard voices.”
Jake laughed. “Now that was funny.”
“Yeah. But aside from what happened to me and Rickie, and personally I went through a lot, nothing else happened that the experiment caused or the elements, for that matter. Let’s look at this one.”
“Let’s.”
Cal looked up from her notebook and she laid back down. “Just to rattle. The yacht. The shark. Mentally abusing poor Reed.” She waited until Jake stopped laughing. “Yeah, that one will go down as a memorable moment for us. They’ve been doing something to Paul, because the once mild mannered mechanic is now a full-fledged Indian, loin cloth and all.” Cal smiled. “The drug. The incident. And the four prisoners they released. They got me. You got them. And Rickie got one. The wild boar attacks. The Jake zombies.”
Jake looked quickly at her.
“Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”
“All right. You’re right. More has happened. It just doesn’t seem like it though.” Jake pulled on his cheek and ran the razor down. “Does it?”
“Yes, sort of. But you know what’s really exciting, Jake?”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing really big happened. I mean big until halfway mark last experiment. Then not only were we hit with the elements, we had the wolves and the Stasis. So, what’s today?” She raised her eyebrow.
Jake grinned. �
�Halfway mark.”
“Exactly. So, if they follow a pattern, things should start to cook. Elements . . .”
“Tidal waves, the volcano that’s gonna blow.” Jake nodded and rinsed his razor. “Let’s not forget the stasis.”
“I wonder what else they’ll get us with. Has to be an animal of some sort on the island.” Cal tapped her fingers on the bed in thought. “I hope it’s something good because we really came prepared and the Stasis is just going to be boring.”
“I agree. I was thinking along the lines of maybe cheetahs or lions. You know, like they hit us with the wolves, they’ll hit us with a tropical killer.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah.”
Cal smiled. “Jake, take off that towel.”
“What?” Jake laughed the word.
“You have a really great body. Let me watch you shave nude.”
“Cal, what the fuck. I’m not your personal pin up boy.”
“Yeah you are. Jake? I took the liberty of covering the camera.”
“Cal.” Jake looked to see her laying on her side winking. “Are all pregnant women as sexually focused as you?”
“I believe so. I think it’s the hormones.”
“Well, get them under control, Cal. You’re with child.”
Cal laughed and plopped onto her back. “So what?” She tossed her hands up.
“I, for one, will not be a part of making our child neurotic.”
“Jake, he won’t be able to help it with you raising him. And how will having sex make this child neurotic?”
“He’ll know.” Jake nodded. “He’ll sense it. And what kind of complex is that child going to have growing up and knowing that he made his mother into a nymphomaniac?”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
Cal had to laugh again. “You know what I think, Jake?”
“What do you think?” Jake rinsed his face.
“I think it’s not the child that will have the complex, I think it’s you. You were Mr. High and Mighty, raised a proper Catholic all your life, and you have the Virgin Mary complex.”
“I have the what?” Jake stood in the bathroom door.
“The Virgin Mary complex. Beat into your head by the nuns about the Virgin Mary. And because of that you feel that all pregnant women are a symbol of purity and should be treated in a pristine manner, not to be touched for fear of shattering that image.” Cal held in her laugh, trying to be so serious as she watched a dumbfounded Jake. “Yep. And I think in some warped way you snapped back to those Catholic school days, and when you see a pregnant woman, you associate that with the Virgin Mary.”
“Oh, Cal.”
“No. Don’t ‘Oh Cal’ me. I have news for you, Jake. I am far from the Virgin Mary. And don’t kid yourself into thinking she was all that virginal either.” Cal nodded. “Bet me Joseph did her when she was carrying Jesus. They just lied and said they didn’t for storyline purposes anyhow. You know, to make them look good.”
“Oh . . . my . . . God.”
“What?”
“I cannot believe you just rambled something so blasphemous like that.”
Cal snickered “Truth hurts.”
“You think that’s why I don’t touch you?”
“Yeah.”
Jake neared her. “Let me let you in on a secret little lady.” He sat on the bed by her feet. “The reason I am so apprehensive about touching you has nothing to do with my mental complex. It has to do with my egotistical complex. As hard as it is for you to believe, Cal, I am just a man. And if I don’t train you now, and ration you, at the rate you’re going, there may be nothing left of me when things get really . . . for lack of a better word . . . tight.”
Cal propped herself up on her elbows with a quirky smile. “I cannot believe what I’m hearing. My God, I’m crushed. You, not a man? Jake, you’ve shattered my image of you. Or, are you as you called it the other day, spontaneously exaggerating for humorous purposes?”
“Yep.”
“Jake, I’m impressed.”
“Now. If I thought it . . . . would I . . .” Jake grabbed her ankle and pushed gently on it causing her leg to bend and her robe to part slightly exposing her knee. “Would I admit it?”
“Never.”
“Never.” Jake shook his head. “And if I had that blasphemous Virgin Mary complex, as you called it, would I be thinking about doing . . . this?” Jake brought his lips to her knee and slid them slightly to her inner thigh.
“I don’t believe you would. No,” Cal said softly.
“Should I be thinking of doing . . .” He slid his lips lower. “This.”
“Absolutely.” Cal plopped back down on the bed feeling Jake’s lips tease and softly kiss her leg. He moved them slowly up her thigh in a gentle biting kiss. Lowering his head more, opening her robe further, then stopping too soon and too far from where he should have.
A knock at the door brought about a pause in Jake’s seduction. “Fuck.” Jake’s head sprang up. “Cal, is this not an isolation experiment?”
“Yes.”
“Why are we never isolated?”
“Ignore them.”
Jake huffed, tried to regain his Jake-style romantic composure, and lowered his lips again.
More knocking occurred, this time harder, this time four or five steady knocks.
“Jake.”
“No.” Jake stood up. “I’ll get rid of them.” He moved toward the door and turned back to Cal. “And mark this down in that little notebook. At a time and place in our lives when we should be totally indulging in arousing and sexually fulfilling behavior, we get nothing but interrupted. I swear to God, we’ve made love five times these past three months without interruptions.” Jake cringed when the knocking continued.
“Jake.”
‘What.”
“Get the door.” Cal closed her robe.
“I am. I . . .”
“Jake.” Stan’s voice called out. “I know you guys are in there. Please. Open up.”
Jake paused in his reach for the knob. With a slightly open mouth and a little confusion, he peered over his shoulder to Cal who sat up quickly on the bed. “Is that?”
Cal nodded.
Jake opened the door. “Well, if it isn’t Laurel and Hardy. Isn’t this against the rules?”
As soon as the door opened wide enough, Stan seized his opportunity, and he and Ollie rushed into the room. Stan shut the door. “We don’t want anyone to see us.”
“Okay.” Jake put his hands on his hips. “What’s up?”
Stan looked to Ollie then to Jake. “Do you mind getting dressed and coming with us? There’s a problem.”
Jake looked confused. “What do you mean problem?”
“It’s hard to explain. Could you just come with us?” Stan asked.
There was hesitation, and Jake looked to Cal as if for an answer, even though he really wasn’t. “All right. Give me a second to change.”
With a sigh of relief, Stan glanced at Ollie.
^^^^
They had taken a Caldwell jeep just to the edge of the woods and walked from there. Stan and Ollie led the way, Cal stayed close to Jake as they walked through the wooded area Cal and Jake knew well.
When they saw the first dead bird, they didn’t think much about it. Nor did they even glance twice at the second one. But an eerie feeling swept over Jake and Cal when the further into the woods they walked, the more dead birds they saw, laying there, looking odd, almost as if encased in their own vomit. Many of them looked like they just fell from the sky.
Stan heard the sniff come from Jake. “Wait. It gets worse.”
Jake kept a stony face even as he watched Stan and Ollie place on face masks. They handed one to Cal. She took it. They handed one to Jake. He shook his head to it.
A very small hill with a fallen tree is what they stepped over. And the second their feet hit the down-side of the hill, a flock of birds flew upward, loud and flapping, so many they were
like a black cloud.
Cal shielded her head as they seemed to squawk and dive at her as they flew away. The curtain of fine feathered friends opened and expose another blackness, a tarp laying on the ground.
Stan approached it. “Shoo.” He kicked at the three or four birds that pecked at the tarp. Many holes were in the tarp from the determination of the birds. “Ready.” Stan spoke through his mask to Jake who stood at the end of the tarp.
Jake nodded. Stan lifted the tarp. The sight, the smell, immediately caused Jake to blink once, clench his facial muscles, huff out a short grunt of nausea, and clear his throat. But he kept his eyes on it. The sight that Stan and Ollie had led him through the woods to see.
Regurgitated meat was the first descriptive thought that came to Jake’s mind. A long pile of a thick, pink, red and white mush of a substance. Sticky. Runny. Flies buzzed about it, and the flap of the tarp was the dinner bell calling for the birds who flocked to return. At first it was undeterminable what it was. Then, just before Stan re-covered it to keep the birds off, Jake saw the tell tale signs, buried within the mess, that gave away what lay there. Had it not been for the remainder of what looked like a little finger, a small portion of the intestines, a bit of an ear and an eye, Jake would have never known it to be a person. Before he could say anything, he spun around to the sound of Cal throwing up. He rushed over to her while she stood by a tree. “Cal?”
Cal held her hand up as she bent over.
“Babe, you okay?” Jake laid his hand on her back.
Cal stood up and wiped the back of her hand over her mouth holding it there. She coughed, getting that sickness from her. “God, Jake.”
Jake looked back to Stan and Ollie. “Was that one of us?”
“Yes.” Ollie stepped forward.
“Who?” Jake asked, holding onto Cal’s arm.
Nervously, Stan moved to him. “We hate to be so secretive, Jake, but if you give us ten minutes, that’s all we need. We need you to come with us again.” Stan moved forward past Jake, and Ollie followed.
Jake, leading Cal, turned to the tarp again, completely covered with birds, and he followed Stan and Ollie through the woods.
Amoeba (The Experiments) Page 56