Stephen gave Fitch a dark frown before he looked back at Dan. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He cleared the screen a second time and began typing new instructions. “Let’s redefine the guidelines to show the human race now that Sil is among us.” The screen flickered and a world map came up, smaller to accommodate the expanded area, and covered with lush green. The counter reappeared at the top right, set at 1,995.00 “This program will run in increments of one month; therefore, when the counter says 1,995.06, you will be looking at June 1995.” He hit the enter key and a tiny red dot appeared in Los Angeles. “Here are the new parameters: It’s 1995, and the predator makes its first contact with the indigenous species and reproduces, bearing one male offspring. The offspring matures in six months—a more than generous estimate given how fast Sil matured—and successfully impregnates thirty indigenous females.”
Stephen’s gaze flicked to the team as he began running the program; they all watched the computer screen with growing horror. His own palms felt damp and cold. “We don’t know for sure, but given that the mother is still a slower-growing species, we’ll assume the gestation period is two weeks. To keep the program parameters simple enough for us to visually consider, we will also surmise that the indigenous mother will expire upon giving birth. Realistically, the predator female probably won’t die after reproducing, and may even proceed to another breeding cycle. We don’t know.” He took a deep breath and ran the back of his hand across his clammy forehead before continuing. “For argument’s sake, we’ll speculate that the rate of offspring will be fifty-fifty—half male, half female. At the present time we must conclude that the alien species exists in this environment with no natural predators. Thus each generation will be able to proceed at this rate of procreation.”
For the first time the computer gave a warning sound—bleep!—and the single red spot instantly appeared in places around the globe.
“What happened?” Press demanded. “I figured it would be fast, but—”
“The predator has established itself in every place an air link is available,” Stephen announced. “The miracle of flying.”
Suddenly the world map exploded in red splotches, like someone had stood over it and let loose with an atomizer of scarlet paint. From the centers of the established spots to the most remote areas around the globe, the red began to spread. Larger cities swelled and ebbed, swelled and ebbed, then the red swept across Africa with barely a pause.
“Oh, my God,” whispered Laura. “This is terrifying.”
The counter spun to 2,002.4—April, about seven years in the future. The red splotches were everywhere—from virtually uninhabited Antarctica to the broiling center of the Australian outback. The Pacific Islands were quickly obliterated, and the green resistance in Japan was hardly more than a pulse. As island after island yielded, the red splotches grew into a wave that spread across China and beyond.
Behind Stephen, Fitch gave a strangled cough. “This is preposterous,” he choked out. “Pure speculation—”
“Shut up,” Press said in a steely voice. “I don’t think we want to hear you right now.”
“It’s like an epidemiological map of a viral infection,” Laura murmured.
“A what?” Press asked.
“A foreign organism,” Laura explained, “entering a system and taking it over completely.”
“As in an intergalactic virus,” Stephen said softly.
“More like a retrovirus.” Laura’s eyes were wide as she stared at the screen. “One that changes faster than the host organism can defend against it.”
Dreading the outcome, Stephen watched with the rest of the group as the red closed in on the remaining major cities. Holdouts of green disappeared, each with a nasty, metallic bleep! from the computer. For some unknown reason, as the remainder of the world was engulfed in red, the last of the green held tight in Finland and actually expanded a little; then it, too, was overwhelmed. With a final, stretched-out alarm noise that reminded Stephen of a flat-lining heart monitor, the global map showed only red.
Silence filled the room, then Dan pointed hesitantly at the screen. “Where are we?”
“We’re the green,” Laura said as gently as she could.
Dan stared at the others, his face full of terror. “There is no green.”
Press responded, but Stephen saw that he couldn’t meet the empath’s eyes as he said the bleak words.
“That’s the point, Dan. There is no we.”
25
Sil was closer to Santa Monica, but the familiarity she’d expected wasn’t there. Viewing the Pacific Coast Highway as a pedestrian gave her a totally different perspective, detail magnified a thousandfold. The highway was beautiful, lush and sunny, with wide, clean streets that seemed the antithesis of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Traffic was abundant, but not the bumper-to-bumper mass that allowed pedestrians to amble into the street at will. People here waited on the corners for the traffic lights to change from red to green before they tried to cross, and it wasn’t a fraction as crowded as Sil was used to.
About a quarter block in front of Sil, a young boy who reminded her of the kid in the train station zipped along on a skateboard. She watched him as she walked, interested in the skateboard and the way he worked at learning to control it. It was evident that he wasn’t an expert—yet—but he was certainly enthusiastic in his efforts as he twirled and stopped, then did a chopping hop-jump that looked like he was leaping over something invisible before landing on the skateboard again. Coming to the corner, Sil saw him glance at the red light facing him in exasperation, then at the vehicles moving along the roadway. Too impatient to wait, the boy gave a sturdy double push with his right leg and launched himself into the street. Halfway across, the front wheel of the skateboard dropped into a rut and the skateboard flew out from under him. He pitched forward, his arms pinwheeling for balance, then gave a cry of surprise as an oncoming truck, a white Toyota 4-Runner speeding along at fifteen MPH over the posted limit, slammed on its brakes.
The driver’s face went white as the brakes locked and the 4-Runner slewed sideways. Sil watched the boy trip and fall to his knees, then saw too late that the truck was swerving right for her. She screamed and threw her arms up instinctively as it jumped the curb and struck her, and was amazed when the ground and the trees switched places. The impact knocked her into the air and backward a good twenty paces.
The sound of shattering glass filled her ears as she landed, giving her a quick, disconnected memory of her escape from the compound. Dazed, she struggled unsuccessfully to sit upright amid a thousand sharp-edged pieces of glass, the remains of a glass-walled bus stop at the side of the road. The backs of her arms and legs stung from dozens of glass cuts and she couldn’t get her mind to focus, couldn’t find the right commands to bring her to her feet. Her vision was blurred and disjointed, but she recognized the kid on the skateboard as he began yelling something at the driver of the truck, who promptly leaped from the cab and took off down the street at a full run. He left the truck where it had stopped, door open with the engine stalled.
People were running toward her from every direction and Sil knew she should get up and leave before they got to her and started asking questions. But something was wrong with her shoulder, and when she looked she found a ragged gash running from the center of her collarbone straight across to her arm. Pinkish-white shards of bone glimmered deep within the wound and that side of her body was drenched with blood. Seeing the injury was a sort of nerve trigger, and Sil was unprepared and unable to block the agony that blasted through her arm and across her chest. She tried again to rise but blackness took her suddenly, sweeping her down and into painless unconsciousness.
“This is an emergency,” John Carey told the cellular operator as he swung his ’66 Mustang to the curb. “I’m at Santa Monica and Wilshire. A woman just got hit by a truck. I think she’ll need an ambulance. And you can tell the cops that the guy driving the truck ran off and left it in the street, so it’
s probably stolen.” He hit the power button on the phone and shoved it under the driver’s seat as he shut the engine off and yanked the parking brake into place. Besides the boy on the skateboard, he was the first to reach the woman’s side. The way she was sprawled on the glass at the side of the road made her look like one of those crash-test dummies the car manufacturers were big on using to show the public the perils of not using seat belts. Heart pounding, he fumbled at her wrist until he found a pulse, strong and steady despite the blood that soaked her skin and nylon jacket from neck to belly. One of her shoulders looked terribly twisted beneath the fabric and she had cuts everywhere from the broken glass. He didn’t know what to do next—try to stop the bleeding? Most of it seemed to have already stopped. He wasn’t a paramedic, but he remembered that she shouldn’t be moved, and none of the people gawking around him and the woman could offer any advice.
In the end, they simply stood by the unconscious woman and waited for the ambulance.
“The patient’s name?”
Standing at the admitting station of Santa Monica Hospital and Medical Center, John Carey gave the emergency admissions nurse a blank look. He wanted to ask her if she understood English or was just plain crazy. Instead, he repeated himself—for the third time. “I have no idea. She’s a hit-and-run victim. I just happened to see it.”
The white-uniformed woman glanced at him sharply, as if she didn’t believe him. Pinned to her top pocket was a name tag that said M. MADBAR. She was dark-skinned and exotic looking, like a Persian dancer out of Arabian Nights; she was also very cranky. “I can’t admit her without some sort of insurance information,” she snapped. “If you can’t assist me in completing these forms, she’ll be treated in the ER and then transported to County-USC Medical Center as an indigent.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” John said with an exasperated glare at the young nurse, “how many times do I have to tell you I don’t know? Here—just put it on my credit card. I’ll straighten it out with her when she’s in shape to fill out your stupid forms herself.”
“Fine.” Nurse Madbar snatched John’s Visa card from his fingers so sharply that she pinched him. “If you’d have given me this to begin with, we’d be finished by now.”
John started to remind her that the patient was a total stranger, then gave up. Sitting there and pointedly ignoring him as she hammered at her computer keyboard, Nurse Madbar was just another robot starting up the red tape.
Sil came to stretched out on a hospital gurney. The shredded nylon jacket was gone and a hospital gown, still folded in a neat rectangle, had been draped across her rib cage below her bared breasts. Most of the blood had been cleaned away and a young, dark-haired doctor with dusky skin swabbed carefully at the gaping wound on her shoulder. A harried-looking nurse set a tray with surgical tools, sutures and bandages on a cart at the doctor’s right and accepted the syringe of blood he held out. “Get a lab workup and type on this right away,” he ordered. “We’ll need X rays, an orthopedic surgeon, operating room and anesthesiologist. I can’t fix this here—the damage is too extensive. She’s going to need surgery to set this shoulder properly.” The triage nurse nodded, whipping the privacy curtain around the cubicle before ducking out with the blood sample.
Sil blinked and tried to push up on her elbows, groaning at the pain that shot through her. “Now, don’t move,” the doctor told her firmly. “You were hit by a motor vehicle, a truck, and the ambulance brought you here. I’m Dr. Shah. We’ve finally got all the bleeding under control and we don’t want it to start again. It looks like we’re going to have to send you to surgery. You’ll need—hey! Wait—don’t get up! Stop it!”
Sil ignored the white-coated doctor and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the gurney. Her arm and shoulder throbbed terribly, so much so that it was difficult to think about anything else. There were other things going on, things she must do and others she must avoid, and her mind was too foggy to pull it all together right now. She did know, however, that she mustn’t stay here, in this place of needles and medical people so much like the complex at which she was nearly killed only a few days ago. She had to leave before it was too late, before the people from the compound traced her whereabouts. To be in sharp enough shape to do that, she had to take care of the problem with her shoulder.
She turned her head until she could see the flesh of her shoulder and the sizable tear in the meat and muscle that Dr. Shah had temporarily closed with large butterfly clamps. When she moved even a fraction of an inch, Sil could feel the jagged ends of the bones grinding against each other. She focused on the skin, muscle and bone, really concentrated, walling out the pain, the monotonous harping of the doctor, the constantly yammering PA system and the strident noises from the rest of the emergency room, blocking them from her consciousness until she heard nothing but the essence of her own body. For a few moments her view of her surroundings faded, replaced by a more fundamental, moving panorama of blood, skin and bone rearranging itself, repairing damage that to Sil seemed only a temporary, albeit painful, inconvenience. When her vision cleared again, the butterfly clamps had popped off and all her miserable wounds were gone, her thoughts were lucid once more, and Dr. Shah’s prattle had ceased. Now he was staring at her with an expression of utter disbelief.
“Y-y-your shoulder,” he stuttered. “It w-w-was . . .” His eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded. “Airborne hallucinogens? Some kind of practical joke? I’ll bet Cooper from ICU put you up to this.” He reached for Sil’s arm but she pulled out of reach. “You tell him I’ll have his ass on a platter—”
“Dr. Shah!” A different triage nurse poked her head through a slit in the privacy curtain. Her gaze swept and dismissed Sil. “Are you available? We just got a child in with third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body—some kind of stove explosion. Can you—”
“Coming,” Dr. Shah barked. He spun on his heel and started to stalk out, then paused halfway out of the cubicle, his olive-skinned face seething. “Be sure and tell Cooper I didn’t think this was funny and I’ll be in touch with the hospital administrator regarding this matter.” Then, with a snap of the plasticized curtain, he was gone.
Cooper? Sil didn’t know anybody by that name but she was grateful for someone else to take the heat. It only took a few seconds to shake out the hospital gown and slip it on; a hard tug all the way around and it could barely be distinguished from a cutoff T-shirt. A quick glance outside the curtain and Sil scooted out of the ER via the first door she found and kept going; if anyone noticed that the ripped hospital gown didn’t exactly go with the black miniskirt, they didn’t say anything.
At the end of the hallway, a handsome man saw her coming toward him and jumped to his feet, hurrying to meet her. “Are you all right?” he asked urgently. She let him enfold her hand in his larger one as he began walking with her to the exit. His eyes were a remarkable light blue and full of sincerity. Ginger-colored curls fell over his forehead. “I was sure you were badly hurt.”
“I’m okay,” Sil said. He started to let go of her hand, but she entwined her fingers around his and smiled shyly. “What’s your name?”
“John,” he answered, looking bewildered. “John Carey. I can’t believe—I mean, I saw you, all the blood and everything. It must be a miracle or something.”
Sil smiled wider. “Yes,” she agreed with a nod. “A miracle. But I’m okay now. Can we go?”
“You’re well enough?” he asked anxiously. “The doctor said you can leave already?”
“Oh yes,” Sil answered. “He said I’m completely healed.”
26
“I haven’t found anything that looks relevant,” Laura said. Still at the team’s makeshift headquarters in Stephen Arden’s room at the Biltmore Hotel, she’d been linked to the computer network of the Los Angeles Police Department for more than an hour. “Lots of murders, but none that fit what we know or anticipate about Sil’s behavior.”
Slumped on the
chair next to the writing desk across the room, Press snorted. He ran his hands through his dark hair, then stood and walked to the window. “You’re not going to, either,” he said. “I’ve never known a cop who was current with his reports. They hate paperwork, and they’re almost always at least two or three days behind.”
“I can’t believe that,” Fitch commented. “That’s not the way you catch a criminal or cross-reference evidence.” The scientist folded his arms. “You watch too much television.”
“Don’t be a moron.” Press didn’t bother to turn around. “The only time they keep up to date is when they’re tracking a serial killer who’s in full swing. There’s nothing in Sil’s three victims to tie them together. Yet.”
Laura sat back. “I think Press is right, Dr. Fitch. The computers are a dead end.”
“What do you mean, yet?” Dan asked.
“Reproducing problems aside, he means if we don’t get her off the streets right away, sooner or later one of the police departments is going to get its reports punched in and start comparing victims,” Stephen replied, joining the conversation. “Software that routinely checks the crime-scene statistics and figures is commonplace among all but the smallest venues. The commanding officer at the Central Area Station in downtown L.A. is already suspicious about the connection between the murder at the ID and the guy in Hollywood Hills. It’s no secret Robbie Llywelyn was at the club before he died, and the Central Area commander is asking questions we’re not prepared to answer. Seeing the army troops everywhere doesn’t help matters.”
The phone rang and Fitch reached for it as Press went over to stand by Laura. He peered at the computer screen. “Don’t give up hope, though. We’re still tracking the credit cards, plus there’s an APB out based on the videotape.”
Laura eyed him doubtfully. “That’s not much help.”
Species Page 14
