The Kielder Experiment (Book 2): The Alaska Strain

by Fernfield, Rebecca

“I knew it! As soon as I saw that damned box at the airfield, I knew it.” He grits his teeth whilst exhaling, an angry frown directed at Marta. “I was just stupid enough to think that perhaps you were working on a cure! Imagine that, Marta. I thought you wanted to help Max!”

  “Oh, come on!” she blurts, then under her breath but loud enough for him to hear, “The lies we tell ourselves!” She pauses then continues with her gaze directed at him. “Well, a cure isn’t out of the question. Obviously, there are serious, ethical-.”

  “Ethical!”

  “... ethical considerations, Peter, as regards what state Max will be in once ‘cured’. The effects of the virus have been dramatic to say the least, and it may be the decision of the board that Max should remain ... as he is.”

  “Disgraceful!”

  “Pish!” Marta’s lips thin and her eyes focus on her teacup. Peter takes advantage of the chink in her armour.

  “Surely, Marta, it is your moral obligation!”

  Marta laughs, her gaze once again fixed to his, her eyes merciless. “Morality, Peter, is more honourable in its absence than in its observance where bio-technology is concerned. What we’re working towards will revolutionise the field, advancing its application far beyond what we ever imagined was possible.”

  Peter tries a different tac. “The projects were meant to cure disease, Marta.”

  “No, it never was.”

  “Yes!” he insists. “The projects that Max was working on were both ethical. He would never agree to his work being used to this end, Marta. Never!”

  “Well, he shouldn’t have allowed himself to get bitten then, should he!”

  Marta’s frown is petulant, her eyes unflickering steel and Peter realises in that moment that he is staring into the eyes of a bone fide psychopath, and one with absolute determination not to let anything get in the way of her success. Considering for a single second that Marta was interested in working on a cure for Max’s condition was beyond naïve, and mortification slides over him like a pall, and rises as anger.

  “You should have blown that place to smithereens, Marta!”

  “Why on earth-”

  “At the very least castrated the males and sterilised the females. It could have been done; there is a substance that when administered orally renders the recipient sterile, at least it does with females from what I know. Tests haven’t been carried out on males though we have evidence that the Nigerian government are using it on a particular section of their female population as part of a sterilisation programme.”

  Marta frowns. “On humans!”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “That equates to genocide, and you call me ruthless.”

  “I haven’t said that you were ruthless.”

  “Not during this conversation, no, but in the past ...”

  Ignoring her petulance, he says, “We have to stop the spread of this ‘disease’ Marta! Max ... we need to find a cure for Max, and Laura, and Lois and all the others.”

  “There aren’t that many left.”

  “In Kielder?”

  “Yes, in Kielder. Once the population was established, there really wasn’t much in the way of sustenance in the ... compound, and they turned on each other.”

  Peter’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “So ... they ate each other?”

  “Precisely. We have a core nucleus, only the most powerful and healthy remain. Perfect for us to work with.”

  “Work with?”

  “Yes, the aim of the project is to develop the strongest specimens. We intend to implant the micro-chips in-vitro, although now that we have lost Katarina, a replacement will have to be found.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “How else are we meant to continue with the programme? Thankfully, I do have contacts with a number of other colleagues.”

  “No! The breeding programme; you cannot be serious!”

  “You’re beginning to sound like a more annoying version of John McEnroe, Peter. Of course, I’m serious! You don’t think for a second that your renumeration and re-location package would have been so generous otherwise, do you?”

  “But-”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you thought that your overly-generous salary wouldn’t entail working on some – how shall I put it? – controversial projects? If you believe that, then you are only lying to yourself.”

  “I shall only work on the project I have been contracted to!”

  “Read the small print, Peter. We have the right to change the subject to be tested ad nauseum.”

  “No! I won’t do it.”

  “Seriously, Peter, you are forgetting quite who you are dealing with. Apart from arousing the anger and retribution of Titan Blane, Mister Corbeur, and the numerous partners waiting on our product, do you really want to go back to testing stool samples ... for the remainder of your career?”

  Peter remembers the squeeze on his knee as Dalton Blake had threatened him, but rallies against Marta. “Well, something will come up.”

  “Really? Who do you think it was that secured you that post in the first place?”

  “Are you telling me that you had anything to do with me getting that job, Marta?” Peter sneers; she really is an egomaniac.

  “No, but I will tell you that it was me who made sure you didn’t get anything better.”

  Her smirk cuts through his bravado and a tremble takes hold of his fingers.

  Their eyes lock.

  “Remember Earlham Institute?”

  He nods, remembering the rejected application form.

  “And what about Roslin?”

  “Yes,” he hisses remembering the smarting mortification he’d felt when he’d opened the email rejecting his application; he’d thought the interview had gone so well.

  Marta reels off a list of prestigious jobs that he’d applied for after leaving Kielder, and then the lesser roles he’d been rejected for. Sickness swirls in his belly. “That was you?” His voice is hoarse.

  Her smirk broadens. “Yes! Do you see now, just how much you need this job? No one, and I mean no one, will employ you again if you leave here now. I will make sure of that. You’ll struggle to get a job stacking shelves at Tescos, never mind another lab job sampling gorilla shit, if I so choose. And there is always the prospect of finding that cure for Max ... presuming you are still here to carry out the research, of course.”

  Peter’s resolve to challenge Marta, and demand to be taken off the island immediately, dissolves.

  “Now, I need to know exactly when the specimen we shipped over ovulates so that we can arrange a mating with the alpha.”

  Peter can’t help a poke. “When you retrieve him from the forest?”

  Her glare is icy and she ignores his jibe. “I expect that information on my desk by morning. Have I made myself perfectly clear, Doctor Marston?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Good, now finish your coffee and I will take you on that tour of the facility as promised.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Crisp sunlight filters in through the glass panels of the lodge’s entrance doors as Carmel mops the floor. Cut from trees logged on the island more than thirty years ago the wood shines like warm honey, and the space has a glow that she is proud to have helped restore; she has plans for the other rooms in the lodge, and the cabins in the grounds, over the winter months.

  Above the entrance, the pelt of a grey wolf is stretched out across the boards. Her efforts at cleaning it had created dust clouds that had made her cough and sneeze, and George laugh; the ugly thing was as stiff as a board, and the nails with which it was pinned to the wood, rusty and impossible to remove. The walls are hung with a mixture of tribal rugs collected by George on his travels during his younger days, and photographs showing images of hunters. They stand in groups, or alone, but all wear khaki jackets, and huge grins. Dead bears or deer lay at their feet. A much older photograph, faded with time, shows George squatting beside a row of wolves laid out along the ground, all s
hot, he had told her, by himself. The story went that when he had bought the island with his first wife, it had been infested with wolves. At first, their presence hadn’t bothered him, but when a pack had started to pay the property more attention than was healthy, and his boy, only a toddler then, had been dragged off one morning by a female, he had to take action. The pelt on the wall was the very one that had attacked his child he had told Carmel with pride. A picture of the boy, now a grown man, shows him with rifle in hand, and a wolf at his feet, and hangs beside his father’s.

  The story had sent shivers down her spine, and each time she left the lodge to walk along the beach, she would keep to the water’s edge and away from the forest that seemed to want to swallow the land. When she had agreed to move to Alaska after a brief on-line romance, her friends had begged her not to go, and her mother had been heart-broken, but Carmel had trusted that George was a good man, packed her bags and left on the flight from Bangkok with no intention of returning. George had turned out to be a good man. He wasn’t perfect, but he had been true to his promise and they had been married, and she now had a home to call her own, and a share in the business.

  In the past week though, since the first wolf’s howl had been heard, she had seen a different side to George. He seemed to be on edge, wearing a permanent frown, and nit-picking at the smallest thing. On two occasions he had made her cry, and she wondered if the honeymoon period was over and this was how their life would be from now on. Any questions about how wolves had returned to the island were met with a stare of incomprehension and denial that anything had been heard, and Carmel had begun to think that perhaps she was only dreaming the noise, given that it had woken her in the night.

  After the first howl had broken into her sleep, she had told George. He had become angry and told her not to be stupid, then seeing the tears well in her eyes had softened and told her that it must have been a dream. ‘You’ll see,’ he had said, ‘it’s just a dream, honey. Now, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.’ He had placed a large hand on the back of her head and planted a soft kiss with fat lips on her forehead. A wave of irritation at the memory; George is a good husband, and even tells her that he loves her, but he treats her like a doll that he is too scared to play with in case it gets broken. ‘Go along, now,’ he’d said with a hug of her shoulder. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. I bet tonight you won’t hear a thing’. But she had, and that was the day that the man, Chris Miller, had taken a boat loaded with supplies, and a tent, and then disappeared.

  George had been edgy the following day, but it wasn’t until he heard the howling for himself that his temper had really begun to fray, and he had taken to cleaning his large collection of guns, and walking along the beach paying particular attention to the trees. She’d heard him arguing too, on the telephone, and also with Michel the bush pilot who was working for the lodge this year as a general handyman. He too seemed on edge, and Carmel’s nerves had also become stretched. The arrival of more guests had helped take her mind off the men’s irritability, but had only served to make George’s temper worse.

  The lodge phone vibrates on the desk used as a reception area, and she retrieves it, hopeful that it will be a prospective guest asking for details about the lodge in readiness for next year’s season. The envelope icon sits on the screen; a text message. She searches for George, then decides that she will read the message instead, hoping that he will realise how much effort she is making to improve her English reading skills; she wants to be a help to the business, not a hindrance.

  The text is from Sam Brewster, the blonde woman who went out hunting this morning with three other guests. Carmel had immediately warmed to Sam, who treated her as an equal, unlike her lustful husband who had appraised Carmel’s figure with his eyes on their first meeting, then patted her bottom as he’d followed her up the stairs. She hadn’t wanted to make a fuss, George needed happy guests, ones that would spread the word about the lodge, and perhaps come back again, but his touch had instantly sent her back to the tourist bars in Phuket that she had worked in for too, too many years. Was that it? Could he see who she really was? She was working so hard to be a respectable wife! She clicks on the message, and reads it with difficulty, sounding out each syllable, struggling to translate the alphabet to her native Thai

  An hour later, with only a garbled understanding of the message, unable to find George, and with growing unease, she replaces the phone on the desk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Accompanied by Kendrick and his rifle, Peter stands across from Marta in the laboratory assigned to him. Between them is a table, and on the table, the metal box. Kendrick holds the key. The door of a large and reinforced holding cage is open. The room is suffused with a medical taint of chemicals with undertones of a sulphuric and shitty odour.

  “The first female proved to be infertile. We had to retrieve another one, but we’ve made sure this time it is a proven dam. We’ve managed to tag the majority of the remaining specimens at Kielder.”

  “You should have exterminated them, or, at the very least made them infertile.”

  Marta throws him a scowl. “As you know, Doctor Marston, making them infertile is the opposite of what we need. Laura’s progeny will be a new species, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth before—a human hybrid. The perfect apex predator.”

  “The perfect apex predator, and you’ve brought them here, to Alaska?”

  “We chose this location because it is surrounded by water – you know that they hate water - which means if we do have a security breach, then the weres are trapped on the island.”

  “And we’re trapped with them.”

  “Well, yes, but we have security protocols, devised by Kendrick,” she flashes him a deprecating smile, “in place for such an eventuality.”

  “It sounds like you’ve had experience, Marston.”

  “One of Marta’s breaches.”

  She bridles and flashes Peter a scowl. “We’ve learned excellent lessons from that ... security issue.”

  “Are you referring to Kielder, Doctor Steward.”

  “Yes, Marston,” she snips.

  He quickly averts his gaze, making no eye contact with Kendrick; the look on Marta’s face is enough to tell him he’s overstepped the mark.

  “As you know, Kendrick, Kielder was where we made the discovery, and carried out our first efforts at ‘containing’ the creatures. It was a trying time.”

  Peter bites his bottom lip, describing the carnage that took place at Kielder, and the annihilation of its inhabitants as a ‘trying time’, is the most grotesque understatement he has ever heard.

  Peter can’t help prodding. “And you say you’ve overcome the security issues? What about the girl who escaped last week?”

  “Our protocols ensured that she was retrieved before any damage was done.”

  “But that’s not true.” Peter pushes again, remembering Rachel’s story. “She wasn’t captured before harm was done.”

  Marta’s brow furrows. “Kendrick and his team retrieved the female before she had a chance to kill or infect anyone. I would call that a success.”

  “True, Marta, but unfortunately, she wasn’t captured before she was seen and her presence videoed, and that video sent to an investigative journalist in England.” Marta’s eyes widen as Peter continues. “Rachel Bonds, the young woman that also survived the plane crash, is here to find out what happened to her friend, a British celebrity who sent her the video of the werewolf tracking him before he disappeared.”

  Marta’s frown deepens to a scowl, and her grip tightens on the corner of the desk as she leans against it. Peter puts out an arm to steady her; she bats it away.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  He jerks his hand back as though burned. “Forgive me! For a moment I thought you were going to faint.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! This woman, the investigative journalist, where is she now?”

  “At the lodge, still determ
ined to discover exactly what was in the metal box you shipped out here. She’s not convinced it’s the dog that Kendrick and his team fobbed it off as being.”

  Marta throws a glance to Kendrick.

  “But she is convinced that the lodge’s owner is importing wolves illegally, for the hunters.”

  A smile creeps onto Marta’s face. “Is she now, then that is useful.”

  “But she was asking some rather searching questions about Titan Blane. It was stamped all across the box. Luckily, she had no internet access at the time, but now she’s at the lodge ...”

  “It will only be a matter of time before she starts digging again. We can’t let this get out. If she uploads that video it could spell serious trouble for the project; our sponsors expect absolute secrecy. I expect you to deal with this Kendrick.”

  The man’s face hardens, but he nods then leaves the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Pulling her hair back into a tight ponytail with a tie found beside the bed in her room, Rachel takes a moment to peer outside the window. The sun’s brightness reflects from the waves that lap at the cove. Two small boats sit halfway up the beach, but only one has an outboard motor, and both look weatherworn. Further along, past the wooden steps that lead from the lodge’s veranda to the beach, sits a rack of kayaks and a neglected black clap-board shed with gaps between the wooden slats, and sides that lean to the right. The place looks similar to the fuzzy images on the lodge’s website, but those showed buildings far less shabby.

  Condensation trickles down the window, and she wipes her hand across the glass, picking up a trail of black mould on her skin. Spattered on the glass it is thicker along the edges and fills the corners, and the taint of mildew pervades the muggy air in the bedroom. Her pillow has a distinct yellowish tinge that she suspects is sweat from numerous guests, and from the bathroom a nastier odour, seeps. Altogether, the wilderness lodge carries an air of dilapidation that was a surprise after the welcoming warmth of the entrance hall and the lounge she had first been ushered into.