by Lou Paduano
Her hand shook and the gun fell between them. “Please, Ben. I can’t—”
“Neither can I!” he shouted over the crack of lightning splitting the sky. “I won’t!”
“Ben…”
“We can do this, Ruth. We can reach the others and figure this out.”
She fell away, collapsing against the earth. Ben grabbed for her, though her body was too heavy, too exhausted to assist in the effort. Not that she wanted to anymore.
“Please, Ruth, let me save you. I have to—”
“She doubts you can.”
Ben spun around, sidearm cocked and leveled on the new voice echoing around them. Across the treeline, stepping into full view, stood a short, lithe figure all in black. He wore a dark fedora and thick round lenses, blocking his eyes from view. His smile, however, widened with each step into the clearing.
“I do as well.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You can’t be serious.”
Lincoln’s words echoed in Morgan’s thoughts. Clevinger’s pronouncement, the secret that the forest had not existed one week earlier, staggered the pair. His words gave Morgan pause. To him it was the truth, but to her—due to her medical background, a place that demanded to be grounded in humanity—everything screamed in contradiction. She fought his truth to the core of her being.
She couldn’t though. “You have a better explanation?”
They inched toward the front of the store. The pounding rain muffled their voices from the frantic doctor unable to sit still. Lincoln winced as his arms crossed his chest. “A better explanation than the people of Bellbrook turning into trees? Give me a minute and I can think of a dozen.”
Morgan waited, drawing a glare from the tired soldier. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“That makes me feel better, at least.”
“I think he’s on the level though,” she added. “About this, anyway.”
Something bothered her, however. For as long as they had been with Clevinger, for as long as they had been forced to listen to his rambling, every revelation had been held back, arriving slow like a steady stream. The most important question of all remained. How had a signal like that come to be? Who could put something like that together, out of sight from an overbearing government with non-stop regulations to stymie that type of research in the first place?
Morgan almost didn’t want the answer. She sure as hell knew Lincoln wanted nothing to do with it either. He struggled with the work in that regard. Because of his reticence, his inability to see the broader picture when it came to the science behind the crimes they investigated, most at the DSA believed him to be nothing but a mindless thug—an ex-soldier demanding a target without remorse or conscience.
He was anything but. Morgan noticed in the way he’d reached out to Ruth earlier, in the concern he shared with her in questioning Clevinger. Time and time again in their relationship the most humanity, the most loyalty came from his silence. Always present, always willing to be there, no matter the cost.
“What’s the play?” Lincoln leaned on the support beam near a display of high-definition monitors. Sweat puddled along his crew cut and down his neck. “Hope Ruth and the newb find the nutso behind this?”
“Lincoln?” Morgan stepped closer and waved her hand in front of his eyes.
“What? What is it?”
“You tell me,” she said. “When did it start?”
“When did what—?”
“The fever,” Morgan snapped, unwilling to waste time. “You’re sweating.”
“I was shot.”
“Yeah, and the meds should be helping.” She grabbed her bag. “Knock off the macho bull and be straight with me.”
“It’s nothing,” Lincoln said, his bloodshot eyes unsteady. “This isn’t going to help anybody.”
“You don’t know that,” Morgan said. “If Ben and Ruth can find the signal—”
“They have to,” Clevinger declared. Both turned to meet his manic gaze. He staggered along the center aisle of the shop, knocking over boxes of goods never to be purchased. “This… this isn’t the first town.”
“What?” Lincoln asked.
“Spring Hill, Kansas,” Clevinger continued. “Six months ago. It’s gone now. Forgotten. Just like we will be.”
“How?” Morgan’s question was strained. She reached for more, trying to make sense. How could it have happened before and no one knew? How could a town disappear without even one news story or one headline, let alone hundreds, about an event of that magnitude? How did something like that happen and become lost to the world?
Clevinger ran his hands over his face. Sweat dripped like rain from his fingertips. “It was an accident the first time.” His head tilted to the side, and a sad smile formed on his face. “I barely escaped with my life. But this?
“I don’t know how he found me. I thought I had taken the necessary precautions. I should have smashed the device. I burned his notes, but I couldn’t destroy it. He found me. He took the prototype and activated the signal.”
Clevinger staggered toward her, his skin white as a ghost. “You have to stop him. This is all my fault, but I can’t, I’m not… You have to be the one.”
“Morgan,” Lincoln called. He raised his sidearm. “Back up.”
“No, Lincoln,” Morgan said. “We have to help him!”
“You can’t,” Clevinger said. “Not me. Not any of them. DNA is malleable, but only to a point. A change like this? They may as well be bodies in a mass grave.”
Morgan shook her head, unwilling to accept his conclusion. Seven thousand people gone just like that? “No. Doctor, surely you’re—”
“I watched it happen to Spring Hill,” Clevinger raged. Spit flew with his words, and his hands clenched like claws as he continued to approach them. “It’s my fault. I opened the door. I thought… I hoped I was helping. I thought I was creating something to save people—to save the future. That’s what he told me it would be. Now it’s too late. I can feel it inside. The anger. The lack of control. And then the emptiness. I won’t let it happen. Not to me.”
“Howard,” Morgan pleaded. “Don’t do this. It doesn’t have to end like this. Please, Howard—”
Clevinger screamed, curling over in complete and total agony. His fingers dug into his skin, and peeled layers back like the rind of an orange in an effort to end the pain. His eyes widened and he launched at the agents. His bloodcurdling scream echoed around the store, and Morgan tripped backward, running into a waiting Lincoln MacKenzie.
“Down, Morgan! Now!”
“No!”
Three shots rang out and hit their mark. All three slammed into Clevinger’s chest. The first did little, the man’s eyes lost to white. The second staggered him, and the third caused him to fall. His descent knocked aside twin displays and sent boxes scattering across the aisles.
Morgan sat, shattered and shocked. “Why? Why the hell did you do that?”
Lincoln tucked his sidearm away. “You know why.”
She hated the fact that she did. Life mattered; it was what she stood for, her ultimate mandate—even in someone as dubious as Clevinger, someone who in the throes of death admitted to being the cause of so much pain and destruction in the small town of Bellbrook. Tears slipped down her cheeks and she wiped them away. Time for grief, time for regret, would come later. Ruth and Ben needed them. Morgan crawled over to the fresh corpse. She rummaged through the various pockets of his labcoat.
“What are you doing?”
“You heard him,” she said, continuing her search.
“I wish I hadn’t.”
“Me too.” She stood. A set of keys dangled from her hand.
“What’s this?”
She clicked the alarm and heard a beep ring out. After helping Lincoln to the parking lot, she hit the button again and a sedan at the front of a nearby row lit up. She held the keys out to him.
“He
re.”
“Where are—?”
“Head east, away from the forest. The signal should cut out at the city limits.” His eyes wavered over the keys and her directions. She stopped, following his gaze. “Lincoln? Can you drive?”
“I’m good,” he said, clutching the keys tight. Her questioning look remained and he pushed past it. “I’ve got this.”
“When you’re out of the zone call it in.” She opened the door to the sedan. “We need to contain this as quickly as possible.”
“What are you going to do?” He caught her arm before she shifted for another parked car. “Hey.”
“Lincoln—”
“You can’t go in there.”
She ignored him, testing the lock of the next car. Finding it wouldn’t open, she moved on to the next. She had success on the third attempt. The door was unlocked and the keys remained in the ignition. Jumping inside, Morgan turned the key and the engine clicked over, roaring even louder than the thunder overhead.
Lincoln slammed a hand on the hood, leaning in the window. “Morgan, this is crazy.”
“Crazy is what we do today.”
“You have no idea—”
“I know,” Morgan said. She stared down the road at the forest looming in the distance. The great forest and the danger within begged for her to turn away, to race in the other direction and never look back. Ruth and Ben were there, however, leaving no real choice in the matter. “But I have to try.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The wheel jerked under his grip. Lincoln struggled to keep the sluggish sedan straight as sweat poured into his eyes. His arm ached, the pain medication all but worn off.
He shouldn’t have left. The team needed him. Ruth needed him. Running off with Ben of all people, the greenest agent he’d ever served with, was a fool move no experienced team leader would have made.
He should have been the one with her.
Lincoln blinked hard, the lights flickering overhead. The interstate curved and the thrumming of the rumble strip eased him back to the center of the lane. Peeling away from the main drag, the sedan circled left, winding a long ramp around a cliff at the edge of town. For Lincoln, the world spun. The last twelve hours were a blur of pain and confusion. Hell, the last month had been the same—the team continuing to tailspin from the loss of Grissom.
Lincoln knew more than he cared to admit about the subject. When he had lost his charge in the Secret Service, when the bottom had dropped out and he’d realized how little his existence mattered despite his dedication, the muted soldier fell hard.
Most days he was still falling.
Lincoln slammed on the brake. The road ended, gravel giving way to a small bluff overlooking the city of Bellbrook. He clicked the lights off and opened the door. His heart raced, his arteries threatening to burst through his neck. He took shallow breaths—too many, too quickly. His legs gave way and he collapsed along the side of the car.
How did it happen? When did the signal take hold of his body? Was it the gunshot wound? Could it have been as simple as an open wound in an infection zone? Or was it more than that? Did it relate to their time spent in Bellbrook or possibly his own anxieties over the situation?
He closed his eyes, hands locking them shut. Beyond the car, a deer raced off into the night. Lincoln wanted to join it. Panic. Emotional outbursts. They were symptoms of a larger disease. So was a fever, and his forehead burned at the touch.
“I’m infected,” he muttered, trying to come to grips with his situation. His hands squeezed against his temples and he screamed in pain. Every fear, every terror held from childhood flew from him. “I’m infected!”
Multiple tours overseas had done little to prepare him for the eventual end. All his time in the military, his days in the service of his country, taught him was to kill, how to take a life—the soldier over the man. The weapon over the hero. Howard Clevinger was merely the latest in a long line of victims at the other end of his Glock. Lincoln was nothing more than a killer.
I’ve earned this end.
He burned with fever. The world spun and his head pounded. He fought the pain, stared at his agony through the rain threatening to wash him from the cliffside. The thrumming in his head brought his terror home. The point of no return. The team relayed the store clerk’s final moments before going stark-raving mad on them, and he witnessed Clevinger’s first hand. Both had heard a noise, a godforsaken sound threatening to blow out their eardrums.
Now he heard it as well.
The sound rang out under the crashing thunder and the pouring rain. The ringing started to chime louder.
“Beth… One…”
Lincoln blinked. The noise wasn’t random. It wasn’t a signal or a sound.
It was a voice.
“Beth… One to… Ac…”
Lincoln’s chest heaved and he raced around the car. Climbing the short cliff, hoping to get altitude, he clutched tight to his radio. The comm unit chirped at his side. The sound offered him peace compared to the panic of only moments earlier.
The meds were working. The pain was subsiding. The sound was not the end. It was a lifeline, the crackling sound of a miracle in the form of Zac Modine’s voice.
“Bethesda One to Team Actual. This is Bethesda One, do you copy?”
Lincoln laughed. At the top of the hill, the WELCOME TO BELLBROOK sign beside him, Lincoln wiped away his terror and his fate with a booming laugh.
“Lincoln?”
He tapped the radio to confirm. “Damn good to hear your voice, Modine.”
“Thank God. Lincoln, we’ve been trying to contact you for over an hour.”
“Been busy,” the exhausted agent replied. Taillights flashed in the distance—Morgan’s ride into the forest. She hauled ass but still had a way to go to reach the rest of the team. He should have been the one, not Morgan.
“Listen, Modine…”
“Lincoln, there isn’t—”
“Modine,” Lincoln snapped through the line. “I’ve been shot and people might be turning into trees.”
“What? Lincoln, are you okay?”
“Yeah, that’s a fair question to ask, but there’s no time. We need containment. There’s a possible contagion here and we don’t have time to—”
“Exactly,” Zac said.
Lincoln pulled the radio close. “What?”
“You have to get out. Right now. This very second. We’re getting interference, so the signal is still in place, but if you’re out of range of it then keep moving and don’t look back.”
“Can’t.”
“This isn’t a joke, Lincoln.”
“I’m aware,” Lincoln said. “The team is still inside the limits.”
Headlights rushed from the east. They were miles out, but barreled toward Bellbrook. Above the approaching caravan, twin lights in the sky burned brighter.
“How much time?”
“We’re tracking inbound on your position, Lincoln. You—”
“I can see that, Modine. How much time do they have?”
“Lincoln,” Metcalf said through the line. Her voice was calm and collected, stone cold against the raging storm. “You have fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen… That’s not enough—”
“Fifteen minutes,” she repeated, no emotion entering into the equation. “Then all hell breaks loose.”
Their discussion continued, lost to the background. The headlights of Morgan’s sedan slipped into the looming forest that hadn’t existed a week ago. The last member of Lincoln’s team disappeared from view.
Fifteen minutes to save them. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was the man from the road. Ben squinted through thick drops of rain at the black silhouette looming closer with each step.
The man’s skin was rosy, at least what little Ben could see due to the black suit and hat covering him. The glasses didn’t hel
p. Instead of sharpening his features, they obscured his eyes. The lenses were opaque, not clear, though in the pale light there appeared to be a dim glow rising behind the round spectacles.
At his back, Ruth howled. She was curled into a ball, hands clenched tight to the gaping wound along her right leg. The pain was too much for her. Hell, it was too much for him to handle at this point, but there was no one left to stand for him, no one left to save the day.
If such a thing was even possible.
“Not another step!” Ben shouted across the clearing, the Ruger cool against his stinging cuts.
The figure continued to smile, the only feature Ben wished he couldn’t view in the darkness surrounding the growing forest. Branches stretched in a large canopy to block the rain.
The man inched closer, hands at his side. One was opened and unarmed. The other, however, carried a small pen-shaped device with a glowing red light at the end and a dial along the side. His thumb hovered over the ominous button.
“Don’t,” Ben demanded. He leveled his sidearm on the stranger. “Stay where you are.”
“Ben!” Ruth yelled, her eyes blank. “Ben, it hurts!”
He refused to turn away from the man in the clearing. “I know, Ruth. I need you to hang on though. Do you hear me?”
“I can’t… Ben—”
“You have to, Ruth.”
The man took another step forward. “You can make this stop.”
“Who the hell are you?” Ben spat at the short, slender shadow of a man.
“Not someone to be questioned like a common thug.” His words held razors behind them, each sharp and carefully displayed for Ben. The man in the suit stopped, sticking to the deep gloom created from the canopy above.
“Tough,” Ben replied. “I’m holding the weapon.”
“Are you now?” the man said. He depressed the red light slightly.
Ruth’s agony increased. Her howling split the sky even more than the storm. The sound drove daggers through Ben’s ears. Her pain was excruciating.
“That’s enough,” Ben said. The shadow’s thumb held tight to the red light. Ben lowered his gun. “I said that’s enough!”
