Thrilled to Death

by James Byron Huggins

  “You don’t seem too emotionally upset over the possible fate of this hunting party, Dixon.” Chaney was casual. Curious.

  Dixon stared at him in sullen silence for a moment. “Mr. Chaney, I am always upset when I lose an operative. But it is my job to send men on missions, and to their death, if the mission requires. Long ago I became inured to the hardships of this job. If I seem insensitive, then it’s because I probably am. You can only see so many men sent to their death before you begin to develop a very thick skin. And if you can’t do that, then you eventually become an alcoholic or a drug abuser or insane.” He waited a moment. “I believe you understand what I’m talking about.”

  Silence.

  Chaney rose. He nodded as he extended his hand. “I appreciate your time, Mr. Dixon,” he said curtly.

  “Whatever I can do, Marshal. And, if you don’t mind me asking, how is the investigation coming along? I’m still rather confused why they gave it to the Marshals Service and not our own people.”

  Chaney smiled slightly. “Well, you know what they say,” he answered, “don’t ask the fox to guard the chicken coop.” He walked toward the door. “Nice meeting you, Dixon. I’m sure we’ll talk some more.”

  “So where are you off to next?” Dixon leaned back, cradling his head with his hands, utterly relaxed. He was a man who recovered quickly and completely; Chaney surmised he could conceal just as easily.

  “I’m going to have a little conversation with Dr. Hamilton,” he answered. “Gonna have a little skull session with him.”

  “Did you say Dr. Hamilton?”

  Pausing, Chaney studied the face. “Yeah.”

  “But I thought you knew.”

  Chaney took a step back toward the desk that would have seemed overtly threatening if he had not stopped a good ten feet away. “Thought I knew what?”

  “Dr. Hamilton isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Well, he’s gone to Alaska. He’s at the last research station. I believe he said he’d be out of touch for at least a week. If not longer.”

  Chaney could tell from the all-too-obvious consternation and concern in Dixon’s expression that, in that moment and that moment alone, the CIA man had seriously overplayed his hand. Because he was actually trying to appear helpful.

  It was a strange and uncanny moment as they stood torch in hand outside the cleft, staring silently into gloom cast by giant granite slabs sliced from the mountain during the Ice Age.

  Hunter bent, studying the ground, and saw the tracks of a host of animals from bear to wolverine to squirrel. Obviously, nature knew that this was the only way from this side of the cliff to the other. And if the animals, who were wiser, relied upon it, he was certain they would be forced to use it as well. Especially with the burden of carrying the professor, because they couldn’t haul him in his diminished condition up that almost sheer face.

  If Riley had not been so viciously slain they might have rigged something, and Hunter even now carried the rope across his chest, but he wasn’t skilled enough to negotiate that climb. Also, he had failed to obtain the chocks and levers necessary for anchoring himself to the wall.

  The torches burned brightly and Hunter knew they would burn for another thirty minutes before the twigs were exhausted. Hopefully, by then, they should be safe.

  “I say we just make a run for it, “Taylor rumbled. “Just start running and go through it like hell, not stoppin’ for nothing. Then when we get to the other side we rig a satchel of C-4 to a trip wire and let it come after us.” He glanced behind them. “Let’s see the mother follow that.”

  In a smooth motion of solid purpose, Takakura slung the MP-5 onto his back and unsheathed the katana. It was a solemn moment—the long curved blade, razor-sharp and at least a quarter-inch thick, glistening in the afternoon light. Then he inserted the black-lacquer scabbard into his belt, medieval-style, holding the sword loosely in his right hand. After a moment he looked down at Hunter, who had watched without expression.

  “Only a blade can injure it,” Takakura intoned. “We have learned this much. Its skin is impervious to bullets, unless they are traveling at sufficient velocity.”

  “Like 4,000 feet per second,” said Bobbi Jo.

  “Yes,” he continued. “Perhaps the uranium slugs which Taylor is using can injure it. We will see. But for this I prefer the sword. If it comes to us inside the dark, and if fire fails to deter it, then we will be fighting face-to-face. In this, a sword can be superior to a rifle.”

  Hunter lowered his head. It was amazing to him, all at once, how much a man could consider in a single moment in time. He saw his life, what he had lived for, all he had learned, his hopes, his unfulfilled dreams, his sorrows. It seemed that all his skill, his knowledge, his understanding and wisdom had brought him to this place in time.

  And he still didn’t know what they faced, still didn’t know how to destroy it. He only knew that he had overcome in the past simply because he had never surrendered to the pain, though he had bled with it.

  Feeling a wrong kind of tired, he raised his head. He turned toward Bobbi Jo, smiled slightly, but she only looked sad. He glanced at the professor, sleeping, and nodded to himself.

  It was time.

  A tough man with a gentle heart ...

  Slowly, hiding any hint of the fear he felt, he stood and expelled a hard breath, staring at the cleft.

  “Let’s assume the worst,” he said. “It’s waiting for us in there. Assume also that it’s not afraid of fire. Which it probably isn’t. How, exactly, are we going to respond as a unit to an attack inside an enclosed space?”

  “With any means possible,” said Takakura.

  “We blow the hell out of it,” Taylor added.

  “No.” Hunter walked forward a pace and knelt, trying to feel what was there. He didn’t expect success, and he wasn’t disappointed. After a moment, knowing he was wasting time, he walked slowly back.

  “Here’s my plan,” he began. “I’m gonna climb high, about twenty feet, and make my way through the higher tier of the crevice while you guys carry the professor through the passage. I’ll lead, and if I sight it, I’ll hit it with the rifle. It won’t hurt it, but you’ll know what to do. Retreat and blow the crevice behind you and then hold the position outside.” He looked at Bobbi Jo. “If anything comes out or over that opening that isn’t me ... kill it.”

  She asked, “What will you be doing if we retreat?”

  Hunter slung the Marlin on his back, began to free-climb the broken ridges that bordered the crevice.

  “Probably fighting for my life,” he said.

  He gained a foothold and lifted himself with the strength of his legs to save his arms. “The main thing is to get you guys out of there before it can run you down, which it’ll do quick since you’re carrying the professor.”

  “Hunter—” She stepped forward.

  He paused, looked down. Winked.

  “Hey,” he smiled, “you just make sure you don’t miss that chopper.”

  ***

  Wearing attire appropriate to the landscape—khaki pants, a khaki shirt and a wide-brimmed fedora—Dr. Arthur Hamilton de-boarded a Ranger helicopter and loped, head low, from the landing pad, holding a black briefcase tightly under an arm.

  Behind him a small entourage carried baggage, equipment, his parka and their own belongings.

  At the edge of the pad, beyond the reach of the slowly rotating rotors and the dying whine of the engines, Colonel Maddox stood holding his hat to his head. “Nice to see you, Dr. Hamilton!” he yelled above the whir of the chopper. Then: “I can’t say I’m surprised, though! I’m amazed you didn’t come earlier!”

  Hamilton nodded curtly and kept moving as Maddox fell in beside him. “We’ve done everything you ordered, Doctor! I don’t know exactly why you wanted the equipment removed, but we flew it ou
t this morning on a chopper!”

  “Good!” Hamilton responded as they were finally out of the chopper’s annoying range. “Did you follow all of my instructions to the letter, Colonel?”

  Maddox nodded. “Right to the letter, Doctor. We shipped it by Sea Stallion to the installation in Los Angeles. Even the pilot doesn’t know what he’s flying.”

  “Good.” Hamilton moved for an oversized steel door and in moments was at a sub-basement two levels below the visible facility. He inserted his chin into a small cup as a scanner read the blood vessels of his left eye, and then a steel vault opened, allowing entrance.

  He was greeted by a tall woman—black-haired, thin pale face with two crescent moons of dark skin sagging beneath her eyes. She smiled as he neared and Hamilton raised his eyes to a glass tube suspended in the middle of the laboratory.

  The tube, as large as a sarcophagus, floated in an electromagnetic field. It touched neither the floor nor ceiling and was filled with a liquid that allowed small air bubbles to rise to the top where they disappeared in a lace of reflective mesh. Green light cascaded down over the figure in a halo; it was an aura of holiness.

  Hamilton smiled, almost reverent.

  For within that liquid, equally suspended, was a thing such as the world had never seen and never imagined. Its head hung in death, hair all but gone to ten thousand years of ice, but its body preserved, almost fossilized by the intense pressure and cold of a glacier melted by an oil fire that had decimated Alaska’s North Ridge.

  Magnificent, terrifying, and godlike, the humanoid shape floated alone in its own dead space. Its chest was enormous, huge cords locked into the sternum like unbreakable iron cables stretching out to connect with Herculean shoulders. Its arms—heavy and thick and overly developed— ended in large powerful hands tipped with black curving claws. And its legs were equally dynamic; the legs of a hunter, of a creature that could run for days or even weeks without rest or respite only to ferociously attack and feast, and run again, leaping, climbing, attacking and attacking. Though dropped forward in death, its face was surprisingly visible on an imposing mound of neck muscle. The brow was broad and low beneath withered white hair, its nose broad also and flattened with wide nostrils. And its wide mouth, uncannily open in death, revealed fangs as long and deep-set as a tiger’s. Then the primitive face ended with a square, solid chin with knotted muscles set deeply in the hinges and high in the cheeks to indicate a uniquely formidable countenance. It was the image of what Homo sapiens might have been if he had possessed the strength of a dinosaur, the mind of a man and the terrifying aspect of a tiger.

  Hamilton gazed upward in awe.

  “Surely ... the purest of all beings.” He stepped forward softly. “Surely it ruled the world like a god.”

  Consumed by the sight, Hamilton lowered his head, a faint smile on his lips. His voice was hushed. “And so, my dear friend Emma, have you managed to finish analysis of the sequencing?”

  Dr. Emma Strait, holding a clipboard to her chest, took a slow step to stand beside him. “It was as you suspected, Doctor,” she said in a low voice. “Its protein levels were clearly regulated by a long version of the genes that control dopamine and serotonin. But we also found something we hadn’t expected.”

  Hamilton gazed expectantly. “Yes?”

  “It’s rather complicated, and unexpected, and we don’t even understand it ourselves yet.” Nervously she glanced at the suspended dead form. “There are variations—some severe—in the regulatory regions for the transporter genes. We haven’t mapped the entire genome, but the reconstruction we’ve managed to produce allows us a hint at its makeup. The D2 Dopamine receptor gene is at least thirty times as large as modern Homo sapiens. Apparently a product of heredity. Or a mixture of heredity and environment. So you were correct in surmising that extraordinarily oversized genes regulating emotional and intellectual control faculties had been severely metamorphosed by some unknown outside influence. Possible diet, climate. It’s unknown. Quite possibly we will never know unless ... it’s captured.”

  “Something we are hard at work on, I assure you,” Hamilton answered. He turned back to the mummified giant. “Yes, it is as I assumed. Its genetic coding prohibited the manufacture of those very chemicals which give modern man control, consciousness, morality, and mercy. A creature that lived forcefully for itself and nothing else. A creature that by its genetic structure was incapable of caring for anything but its own self-serving goals. And look what it became. The strongest of its kind. The strongest of our kind.”

  Dr. Strait took a breath. “The ... triggers ... you could call them that ... which buffer the genes are fantastically rapid in response – fifty to a hundred times more rapid than normal human DNA. We’ve concluded that they allowed receptors to relay impulse, reaction to hunger or threat or anger, to activate adrenaline and other proteins which in turn gave it a spectacular propensity for violence.” She glanced again at the corpse, as if glad it were dead and entombed. “Something it was quite capable of even without the proteins. But its genomes made it basically a creature that moved on any impulse – any impulse at all, regardless of consequences. I don’t think it was capable of understanding the concept of consequences, actually. According to the specs that we’ve mapped so far, all its physical attributes from cardiovascular fitness to strength ratio were at least thirty times that of Homo sapiens. And an ocular check revealed that its powers to discern color and see movement were approximately five times greater than that of modern man. It may have even possessed a type of telescopic vision, like an eagle.”

  Hamilton shook his head in unconcealed admiration. “And don’t you see the beauty of that? Even without the mutations which eliminated serotonin and dopamine from its system, chemicals which were in some way compensated for by other unknown segments of the DNA strand to prevent compromised cerebral capacities, it was the most perfect predator of all time. As I assumed. And ...,” He hesitated, “was my other assumption correct as well?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “The immunity segment of the strand, and remember that we haven’t finished mapping it, split in quadrilateral pairs. Its mutation somehow allowed it to heal up almost instantly from wounds or disease. Its lymphatic system, which we were lucky enough to stumble upon by mistake, indicates a set of reflectors and transmitting genes that far surpass anything we have ever seen – even in sharks. It was, for all practical purposes, immune to any invading bacteria or viral agent. The genes that we tested on the computer matrix revealed that its lymphocytes and white cells suffered no delay at all in identifying an invading molecule. Even something so small as the single molecule of a virus. It’s really ... quite fantastic. I’ve never seen anything like it. None of us have.”

  “Nor have I,” Hamilton breathed. “And now we can begin to isolate the specific genes which buffer that incredibly robust immune system. Isolate them, and bring them into the present day. Within a few years, those selected for the glory will know what it knew. A life span of hundreds of years. Immeasurable strength. A hardiness that has been so jealously claimed by a forgotten age. Soon we will have the same fearlessness at the approach of old age or disease or frailty. We shall be untouched by sickness or feebleness, and laugh as all those around us are ravaged by time. Yes ... that was my dream: immortality.”

  Nothing was said for a moment. Then: “Dr. Hamilton,” she began, “the search team ... they made contact with the facility an hour ago.”

  Hamilton’s suddenly darkened presence was chilling. He turned to her slowly. “What did you just say, Emma?”

  She took a deep breath, bracing. “The search team is still alive, Doctor.”

  “That is impossible,” he scoffed. “They have been alone in the forest for almost four days, battling the creature. No one could survive such a conflict.”

  “They radioed in, Doctor. They’re still alive, somehow. They survived, and they’re being picked up by helicopte
r within the hour.”

  “It seems my young protégé, Luther, disappointed me. Hmmph. Well ...nevertheless. Until I see them alive before my eyes, I will not believe it.” Hamilton barked a short laugh. “Luther, the young fool, was impetuous and paid for his arrogance. The matrix had not even been tested when he injected himself with the serum alone and unsupervised. He should have died, but he did not, and became what he has become. I consider his transformation ... a blessing, of sorts.”

  “Will we try and help him if we capture him?”

  Hamilton seemed astounded. “Help who, Doctor?” He waited to no reply. “Help Luther? That is truly amusing. No, we will not help Luther, Emma, because Luther no longer exists. Except, perhaps, in some dim half-dream within the creature’s mind. Luther is gone forever. Only his body remains. Transformed. Mutated into the mightiest, the fiercest and most predatory beast to ever walk the face of the earth. And in this diluted canard age of evolution, where the true beasts have fallen to fire and ice, and expendable man is the reigning species, he will enjoy his feast.”

  Dr. Strait’s face tightened. “Then what will the creature do?”

  “It will do as it has done,” Hamilton answered calmly. “It will come for the rest of the serum, for Luther used an inadequate amount for complete replication. There are other genomes which it must absorb to perfectly mirror this indestructible coding. This much, I am certain, he remembers. Though I am sure that, in shape and form and ferocity, it is almost the equal of this magnificent ancestor, and may even retain some of its memories.”

  “Memories, Doctor?”

  “Yes, of course.” Hamilton smiled. “Memory is encoded in DNA, just as the manufacturing for particular proteins that decide a propensity for violence or pleasure. There are clearly areas of the DNA strand—imperfectly decipherable to us as of yet—that grant such a faculty. And as Luther’s body and mind are overwhelmed, so too I believe are his memories disappearing under the onslaught of the memories of another time, another race.”