What Happened To Lori - The Complete Epic (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective Book 9)

by J. A. Konrath

  “A group of humans? Or a group of cattle?”

  The Watcher smiled, an ugly thing. “You have retained your sense of humor. That is admirable. Would you like some steak or not?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Do you believe your defiance is noble? It is not. You had a chance for steak, and refused for no reason. Your loss.”

  The steak floated back into the wall, and Lori filled her lungs with the aroma before it disappeared.

  “Would you like to see your baby?”

 

  “Why are you being kind?”

  “If you believe it is because I want something, you are correct. Let us have a look at the little one.”

  The scalpel did its thing, and a 3D picture of Lori’s baby appeared before her eyes.

  “A boy. Strong. Like his father.”

  Lori recognized the implied threat, but seeing her son, looking so real she could practically touch him, occupied the now.

 

  “Are you aware that an unborn child can feel the stress of its mother?”

 

  “But it feels more than that. When a mother is happy, the child is happy. I know just the thing to make both of you happy.”

  “Letting us go?”

  “Even better.”

  The Watcher raised the laser scalpel, and Lori stared as it filled with yellow liquid.

  All thoughts of the steak vanished.

  All thoughts of Fabler and Grim vanished.

  All thoughts of her baby vanished.

 

  “I can sense your excitement. When was the last time you had Elixir, Lori? Do you remember how it made you feel?”

 

  “The Elixir is not physically addictive. No withdrawal. No side-effects. But it almost led to the death of my species. One of many near extinctions.”

  The Watcher glanced at a red light on the wall. Lori remained fixated on the Elixir.

  “Once my people got a taste of this, it is all they wanted. They no longer had the will to work, or eat, or sleep, or procreate. The Elixir was all they desired. Ninety-seven percent of my species died, grinning like fools. This is the reason I look so much different than you. If we did not evolve, we would have perished in our own happiness.”

  Lori understood completely.

 

  “I need your help with a problem, Lori. If you help me, I will give you Elixir every day. When your baby is born, he will be born completely happy. Neither of you will ever know pain again. You will not even know slight discomfort. I will make sure you are hydrated and fed, of course. And that you get enough exercise, so your muscles do not atrophy. You can live a long, healthy life, in total euphoria.”

 
 

  Lori’s brain curled up in a fetal position trying to resolve the problem.

 
 

  “You appear conflicted. Perhaps a taste to remind you what this feels like.”

 

  The Watcher approached with the laser scalpel, and gave her an injection in the arm.

  First came a feeling of full body relaxation.

  Then Lori’s mind erupted with emotion. Positive emotion. Joy and contentment and self-fulfillment and relief and awe and every happy thought you could think of happening all at once.

  Then pleasure hit. Every cell, ecstatic. Like the energy of her soul merged with the universe.

  But as soon as it peaked, the feeling began to fade. Lori felt normal less than ten seconds after the crescendo, experiencing deep regret it ended so soon.

  “I envy you. I have not had the Elixir in a very long time. My people enjoy it in moderation. I dole it out carefully. But my responsibilities forbid me from partaking. Tell me, what is it like?”

  “It feels like… love.”

  “A cocktail of phenethylamine, 5-hydroxytryptamine, and oxytocin. I vaguely remember that.”

  “It feels like love. Like you are warm and protected and surrounded by people who care about you.”

  The Watcher didn’t respond. If he felt wistful, Lori didn’t care.

 

  “What do you want?”

  “Your husband is being… difficult.”

 

  “My… husband?”

  “Mr. Fabler is proving himself quite the obstacle. I need you to convince him to surrender.”

 
 

  “If I help you, you’ll hurt him.”

  The Watcher made a grunting sound.

 

  “If you help me, I promise you no harm will come to your husband. I just want to protect my people.”

  Lori eyed the Elixir. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “I could come up with better lies. I could promise you freedom. I could promise everyone here freedom. That is not going to happen. But sparing his life, and giving you Elixir, is reasonable compensation for your cooperation. Or, if you would prefer, I could make threats rather than promises. Remapping your intestines so they link to your mouth. Removing seven layers of the skin covering your body, to permanently expose the nerve endings. Tearing your child from your uterus and pulling off his arms and legs while you watch. But I would rather use the carrot than the stick.”

  “As much of the Elixir as I want?”

  “As long as you remain healthy. That is the deal.”

  Lori licked her lips. “Give me another dose and take me to him.”

  GRIM ○ 2:12+pm

  When Grim touched the wall in the purple-light room, it became translucent, revealing the primordial jungle outside, giant light posts reaching up past the tropical trees into the black sky.

  He searched for his buddy, Sinatra. No giant ground sloths. No animals at all.

 

  In the hallway he’d jogged in from, sounds of footfalls.

 
 

  Grim pressed the severed arm up against the window—

  —and nothing happened.

 
 

  Grim ran his finger over the slimy, rippled bump.

  The window didn’t open.

  To his right, the noise of approaching guards became louder.

 

  He rubbed the gland up to down.

  Down to up.

  Side to side.

  Small circles.

 
 

  A tringle pattern. A star shape.

 
 

  Grim squeezed the severed arm at the elbow, trying to squeeze more whatever into the gland. A tiny dot of moisture appeared, just as the guards entered the corridor.

  Grim rubbed the viscous liquid—

  —and a large hole grew in the window, widening to his height.

  The smell assaulted him; thick tropical heat and moist oxygen and a zoo-like stench of the monkey house and big cat house and reptile house all combined. So different than the old refrigerator/disinfected hospital smell of the corridors.

  Without hesitating, Grim ran outside into the jungle, the overhead light causing momentary blindness, and then something darted out of the treeline and paused, staring, as Grim skidded onto his ass.
/>   A four-legged animal. Big, maybe four times Grim’s mass. Hidden by shadows, except for red eyes.

  Grim crabwalked backward fast as he could, as the thing loped up to him. The creature had the oversized canine teeth of its prehistoric namesake, but it had green reptilian scales instead of feline fur.

 

  The lizard, in obvious anticipation of an easy meal, opened its giant maw and came at Grim fast. Grim rolled sideways and heard the snap of the jaws slamming shut inches from his left hip.

 

  He brought his legs up, ready to kick out, which probably wouldn’t have done much more than feed himself to the monster, but luck intervened and the thing darted inside the compound, darting after one of the guards.

  His armor crunched like a big peanut shell, and the proto-croc shook its saber-toothed head and cut the guard in two halves.

  Well, not quite halves. They remained connected by a slimy rope of intestines.

  Grim felt his stomach competing with his ass on which would evacuate first, but before any bodily fluids erupted, he sensed motion behind him, and jerked his head to see something else scurrying out of the jungle.

 

  No. A lizard, but different. Larger than the other one, over four meters long, with a thick tail that swayed back and forth, knocking over brush and rocks. Black scales, gold eyes, and a bell-shaped fin coming up out of the spine like a giant sail.

 

  For half a second, Grim felt like a kid again. Most people mistook Dimetrodon for a dinosaur, but it actually belonged to a group of mammal-like reptiles called Synapsids.

  And then the creature charged at him, and Grim lost all childlike sense of wonder and screamed falsetto.

  Dimetrodon opened up a mouth the size of a city garbage can, and Grim realized he still held the severed arm and in a super-stupid reflex action threw it to the lizard’s left in the hope it would fetch.

  The creature followed the arc of the severed arm as it landed in a copse of trees—

  —and then ran after it.

  Grim began to laugh at his crazy luck, but the laughter died in his throat when something positively enormous snatched up Dimetrodon and shook it in ridiculously massive jaws, drenching the jungle with a sprinkler of blood.

  From the right, two more of the proto-crocs, beelining for the window hole.

  From the left…

 

  A snake. A really big snake, its head bigger than Grim’s upper body.

  It coiled out of the underbrush, revealing about twenty meters of snake, and Grim managed to get to his feet and run right—

  —into a blood waterfall from the chewing on Dimetrodon, and then did a ninety degree turn—

 

  Big, with black fur, and oversized teeth that protruded from either side of its mouth.

  And behind the wolf, four more of its pack.

 

  Grim took a quick glance at the compound, saw something incomprehensible duck inside, and then ran away from the wolves, into the jungle, and came to a quick stop before he ran into a long spike.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Grim backed the hell away, jumped over some kind of centipede-thing the width of a tree trunk, covered his head as a swarm of giant, demonic, vampire bats swooped down, flying through the blood rain, and then squatted down in a bush and stared up at the thing chowing down on Dimetrodon.

 
 
 

  A bat dove at Grim, who almost ducked in time, but lost a handful of hair when its pink, mottled claws swiped at his head. Grim touched the injury, saw blood on his fingers.

 
 

  The growling dire wolf pack had surrounded the Titanoboa and Grim jogged past, heading for the compound—

  —just as a wide-eyed grey frantically rubbed his gland, closing the hole in the window.

  Grim pounded on the plastiform wall, then turned to face the horrors surrounding him, wondering which creature would be the first to attack, unable to escape as black claws and grey fur enveloped him.

  FABLER ○ 2:18+pm

  Coming to a stop, Fabler quickly opened the driver side door of the Jeep and scooped up one of the grey’s dropped weapons, handing it over to Jake and then hitting the gas again.

  The doctor set down the shotgun and began to rub the antimatter weapon in a way that could only be described as fondling.

  “This is beautiful. Feel the lines. So smooth. No seams, no screws, no manufacturing marks.”

  “Don’t fingerbang it. Figure out how it works.”

  “I don’t have an engineering degree, Fabler.”

  “What do you have degrees in?”

  “Math. Physics. Ancient history. Physical therapy. I’m forgetting a few. Does this look organic to you?”

  Fabler didn’t look. His focus remained on the half a dozen greys still firing at him. The antimatter pods were spaced out, which made them easier to dodge, but playing chicken with the high-tech weaponry had begun to wear him down. One false move, and he’d—

  Fabler’s vision filled with the weapon Jake shoved in his face, and he hit the brakes on impulse and the Jeep swerved hard to the left, skidding on two wheels, almost tipping over.

  It stuttered to a stop and stalled, and Fabler shoved the gun away.

  “Dammit, Jake. You can’t do that when I’m driving.”

  “Organic. The trigger feels spongy, almost like live tissue.”

  Fabler tried to start the Jeep.

  It didn’t turn over.

 

  He did a quick 360 scan, to see if they were being shot at, and noticed that some new players had entered the game. Ones he hadn’t seen before.

 

  “Gorgonops? No. Polonosuchus? No. I think that’s Ophiacodon.”

  “They look like alligators with long legs.”

  “They’re the ancestors of reptiles, as well as dinosaurs.”

  “They’re running.”

  “That’s what the long legs are for, Fabler.”

  “I meant they should be confused like we are. Mixing up left and right and forward and backward.”

  “Fish swim and insects fly immediately after hatching. Lizards and mammals can walk almost immediately after being born. NASA brought spiders and bees into space, and they made webs and honeycombs in zero gravity. Animals are whizzes at adapting. The Ophiacodon don’t seem to be friendly with the greys.”

  That put it lightly. Fabler watched as two of the creatures tore a grey to pieces.

 

  “And what’s that thing?”

  “Dracohors.”

  “Looks like a dinosaur.”

  “Dracohors are a clade of dinosauriform archosaurs. That one approximates the skeletal structure of a Carnotaurus. I didn’t expect the malachite color with the gamboge streaks, though.”

 

  “You learned all of this from your physical therapy degree?”

  “I’m also a paleontologist.”

 

  Fabler tried the engine a
gain.

  “Sounds flooded.”

  “No shit. Your buddy the carnosaur is getting close. Figure out the grey gun.”

  “I don’t think I can fire it. There are receptors on the stock. It may work biochemically.”

  “So use your biochemistry degree.”

  “I don’t have a biochemistry degree.” Jake stared at him. “Is that sarcasm? I’m bad at detecting sarcasm.”

  The Carnotaurus sprinted at them, and that thing could really move. Hard to judge speed, but its size grew appreciably with every long stride. Fifteen, maybe ten seconds before it got to the Jeep. Fabler hopped out of the vehicle and hurried to the tailgate, reaching inside for the M9.

  “That’s a flamethrower.”

  Fabler saw no reason to respond. He strapped the frame pack of the M9 to his back, trying to adjust the weight so it didn’t crack his spine in half. The gun, which had the heft and feel of a supersoaker, connected to the tank via a tube. Fabler found two safety switches, flipped them both, and then pressed a valve while pulling the trigger, squirting out some jellied gasoline.

 

  “You know how to work that thing?”

  Fabler found another valve, which clicked like an ignition. But he didn’t see a spark.

  “Got a light?”

  “I don’t smoke. Cigarettes contain seventy-two recognized carcinogens.”

  “In the future, just yes or no.”

  “No. You’d better hurry. That Carnotaurus is getting close.”

  Fabler dug into a backpack zipper, finding a pack of waterproof matches.

  “Really close. My heartrate is getting high. I’m going to have another episode. If you live, you’re going to need to choke me out again.”

  Fabler struck a match, tossed it into the air, and hit it with the fuel stream just as the dinosaur charged at him, stretching open its fang-filled mouth.

  It ate napalm. A lot of it.

  Fabler stood his ground, forcing the creature to back up, and then eventually run off.

 
 
 

  “There’s a flock of Phorusrhacids coming up on your right.”

  Fabler turned right, saw nothing.

  “Sorry. Your left. Coming in fast.” His voice went up an octave. “Terror birds coming in fast.”