by David Coy
What had happened to them, she wondered? To Bailey Hall and Phil Lynch and Mary Pope? What influence had they had on the way things are?
The wasps were interesting to the biologist, but they were also frightening. They were a perfect biological weapon as Bailey had described them—conceptually clever, and Rachel knew from her own experience how devastatingly effective parasitic wasps could be. She was sure she had seen the species described in the notebook—finger-sized, iridescent wraiths hovering or zipping through Verde’s jungle—but they seemed to pose no threat to humans. It was fascinating to her that the Verdians had learned how to condition them to parasitize one species or another, selectively. The way they did it was brutal, and the fact that they had planned on releasing them on the human population was horrible, but the idea wasn’t without its fascination.
She pondered these things while John read. It occupied her mind and kept her from thinking about what Jacob had planned for them. But every so often the loathsome image of him would materialize and block out all other thoughts, and she would groan inside. He was waiting for her, and she would become paralyzed with fear. She wished she could disappear, just vanish like a puff of smoke. She wanted to become a gnat and fly out of this cage. They were going to die. If not die, then change to something unrecognizable—something hideous and inhuman.
Her life had been good, she decided with finality. She had achieved some goals for herself, worked hard and enjoyed what she did. What else was there for her? There had been lovers and fun and now, though she’d never live to see her, a child. And there was John. She looked at him reading Bailey Hall’s notebook, his brow tight with thought and wonder, and the sight made her glad. He was so curious about things. She loved that about him.
“So what happened to them?” he asked. “I wonder what happened to these people.”
They lived, she thought. They lived until they died.
John handed the notebook back to Rachel, and she laid it gently aside. John scooted over and put his head on her lap. The warmth of her thigh was comforting.
He seemed suddenly so childlike to her—quiet and innocent with a child’s thoughts. She remembered when she first saw him, all virile and confident and talky, strutting around, telling her of this great biological find in the jungle. She smiled at the memory and stroked his face.
“This is bad,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s bad.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really. I’m just trying not to think about it.”
John wasn’t that fortunate. He felt his heart beginning to pound in his chest, partly out of fear, mostly out of anger. He wanted to beat something, hit something. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Rachel saw the angst. “Tell me again about your family,” she said, trying to keep his mind off what was coming.
“Brazilian father of mixed descent who thought he was part German but didn’t know for sure. He worked as an assembler on a single contract with Yertz Aerospace in Sao Paulo his entire life. My mother was Brazilian, too. She claimed to be part Indian, you know, like the guy in the notebook there, some jungle dweller, but nobody believed her much. It was a family joke to tease her about shooting monkeys for dinner. She was tall and strong. She didn’t look like those old pictures I’ve seen of those extinct Indian people at all.” He smiled. “She was good to us and did her best, I suppose. Raising two wild-assed sons isn’t the easiest thing in the world, I guess. She died when I was twenty.” He paused. “Tell me about yours again.”
“Me? I don’t have a family. I was hatched. Hatched from under a rock, remember? That’s why I like bugs so much.”
“Come on,” he teased. “Tell me about your crazy sister.”
“She was not crazy,” she said emphatically.
“You said she was.”
“Well, she just had her own way of looking at things. She was an independent thinker is all.”
“Crazy.”
“All right, she was crazy.”
“Go on,” he prodded. God, he loved her voice. It was the sound of Heaven itself. He didn’t care what she said. He just wanted to hear its perfect sound.
“Hazel was a designer.”
“That part I know,” he teased. “Of what?”
“Okay, she designed . . . stuff . . . ”
“What stuff? Tell me again,” he insisted.
“You would have liked my sister,” she said.
“We discussed that, too.”
“She had a nice butt.”
“Not as nice as yours.”
“Well, that’s true.”
He rubbed his hand along her leg, feeling its strength. He reached up; and when he touched her breast and found her nipple, it hardened under his gentle pinch. She moaned softly. He pulled her head down and kissed her.
“Let’s make love,” he whispered.
“Here? They can see in,” she whispered back.
“I don’t care. I want you right now.”
“I’m not sure,” she said, but she was. She knew they wouldn’t get another chance. They stood up and stripped out of their clothes. They moved behind a pile of ancient clothing to a spot partially hidden from the cell’s door. He watched her supple movements as she sprawled on the smooth, clean surface. The sight of her limbs moving made him dizzy. Her thick hair fell and framed her lovely face and her mouth and legs parted in unison. Her eyes were fixed on his in dreamy anticipation.
He slipped one arm under her head to cradle it and clasped her neck with the other as he mounted her. He breathed into her mouth as he kissed her. There was a moment of excited, nearly frantic adjustment as they shifted and struggled for perfect contact. Her legs slid up his legs and high up over his back, and he pushed. When their union was complete, they each gasped breath-moistened air and breathed it back through a wet kiss. He caught her scent, a sweet, fragrant musk that rose around them in a cloud of sexual warmth. She felt the thick muscles in his back and legs and hips as he worked. She wanted to stay joined like that forever.
He held her there and pumped in a strong and rhythmic motion that slowly gained tempo. He started to sweat, and she felt the slickness along his torso and on the inside of her legs where they pressed against his flanks. Their kissing became more ardent, reckless, wet and loud. He pumped and pumped, and she matched his thrusting as much as she could or just pressed up with her pelvis and let his movements do it all.
She chuckled thickly into this mouth from the sheer joy of it, and he bit her lips and sucked in response. She could feel sweat running down her sides and her hands and arms slid over his back as if oiled.
She felt her body begin to tingle and tickle from a spot between her legs, and the feeling radiated outward, uncontrollably. She gasped and groaned in ecstasy and watched his head go back, the veins and tendons in his neck stretch tight and his body turn to wet stone. From deep inside him came the sound made when two bodies become one—a deep guttural grunt that racked his strong frame with spasm after spasm.
* * *
Donna plucked the pupae from the transport’s vent and examined it in a beam of reddish sunlight. She could see the immature organism inside it, lighter in color, pressed firmly against the brown covering, seemingly crammed into it. It was large but nothing too remarkable for Verde’s Revenge.
“What is it?” Paul asked.
“Who knows? Some kind of larvae. This place is filled with things like this,” she said and tossed it down. “The fact that they’re raining from the canopy is odd though.” She mooshed it with her boots, and then ground it into the soft dirt. All she could think about was getting Rachel and John back.
“You have to help me,” she said to Paul.
“No. You’ll have to help me,” he smiled. “I know where they are.”
“How do we do it? Tell me.”
“You’re very direct, aren’t you?”
“Yeah? So?” she said puzzled.
“So we’ll take the direct approach,” he
said.
* * *
They lay with sweat-slickened arms and legs entwined, the scent of their coupling adrift on the chamber’s still air like a warm fog. Rachel brushed a wet strand of hair from his forehead. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?” he asked, almost breathlessly.
“For loving me.”
“That’s easy.”
“I remember when I first saw you,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Yes. All macho and cocky . . . ”
“That’s me.”
“All cute and everything . . . ”
“That’s me.”
“And dumb . . . ”
“You’re confusing me with someone else, obviously.” She pressed her lips against his brow. He pressed back gently with his head and smiled.
“We’d better get dressed,” he said with a sigh and started to get up. As he turned, he saw the slovenly guard standing at the barred door, watching them with a leer. The sight of him made John tense up with anger.
“What?” Rachel asked.
“It’s our voyeuristic friend . . . What’s your problem, asshole!”
“Just enjoying the show,” the man said glibly and sucked his teeth, “well, what there was of it.”
“Go away, creep,” Rachel said.
“You should be nicer to me,” the man said.
“No,” Rachel said. “I don’t have to.”
John stood up naked, and staring right back at the man, put his clothes back on. When he was done, he handed Rachel her clothes and used his body as a barrier from the guard’s dirty sight. When he turned around to look again, the bastard had slipped away.
“Snake," Rachel said.
“Rodent,” John said.
“Cockroach.”
“Piss ant. ”
* * *
They sat down against the wall, close, arms tangled, waiting. Rachel’s mind started to race with fear, and she pressed her head against John’s shoulder. His scent swept the fear away like a breeze for a moment.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Me, too,” he replied.
“I guess they don’t like you to eat before surgery,” she said. It was meant as a stupid comment; an attempt at dark humor. What it did was drive home the appalling reality by saying it—like a spear, by the act of being thrown, pierces a heart
Rachel’s face contorted with fear, and she clung to John so tightly with her strong hands, he nearly winced. “I’m scared. I’m so scared,” she said. “Help me. Help me.”
“Sh . . . ” he said. “Sh . . . ”
“They’re gonna . . . they’re gonna . . . Oh, God . . . ”
Words lost meaning to her, and she whimpered and squirmed against him, her feet and hands working uncontrollably. Screams rose up from deep inside her, only to be stifled by a wad of John’s cotton clothing clenched between her teeth. He put his arm around her and held her as tightly as he could. When he looked down at her, her eyes were clamped tight to block the universe out. He was sure the stress would catapult her into the abyss of a seizure. He held her tight, uselessly staring straight ahead, waiting for the seizure to carry her away to some stormy sanctuary, if only for a few moments.
“Ain’t that a sight,” the guard’s voice said. John looked over at the bastard and was tempted to charge the door. At the sound of his ugly voice, Rachel retreated further.
“What do you want?” John asked.
The guard sucked his teeth. “Time to move along down the road,” he said. “Time for your surprise.” He put his key in the door, and it buzzed open. He came through followed by two other guards and a tall, blond man in a lab coat.
The guards flanked them and the lab-coated man slipped between and crouched in front of John and Rachel. In his hands was a small metal case with a handle.
“My name is Gerome Ehrlich,” he said. “I’ll be performing your alterations.”
“Alterations?” John said. “That’s a laugh.”
“You won’t be laughing for long,” the guard said. Ehrlich looked over his shoulder and shot the guard a look.
“You should consider yourselves very lucky,” Ehrlich said.
“Go away!” Rachel said without looking at him. “Go away!”
“You should consider yourselves lucky,” he said again, ignoring her, “because you’ll live for a long, long time.” He started to open the metal case. Inside it were two large syringes filled with clear liquid. He opened a foil-wrapped swab. “This is just a sedative,” he said. “It will make things much easier for you. Give me your arm,” he said to Rachel.
Erhlich’s hand reached out and pulled at her wrist. Rachel stiffened and pulled tighter against John, but her arm finally came away from his shoulder, stiff and resistant. Ehrlich rubbed an area just below her elbow with the swab. The smell of alcohol drifted on the air. Ehrlich reached for the syringe. John sat motionless until the urge to act, like steam in a boiler, reached an explosive level. He slapped the syringe out of Erhlich’s hand and punched at his face at the same time. The blow glanced off. The three guards were on him instantly, forcing him down on his face with his arms behind his back.
“Let go!” he yelled. “Get off me!”
“Hold him there!” Ehrlich barked.
Rachel cowered against the wall with her legs drawn up. Erhlich reached for her arm again. This time, she let him take it. It drifted light as a feather toward the second syringe.
“What are you going to do?” she asked like a child. “What are you going to do to me?”
The needle touched her arm. Erhlich hesitated and looked in her eyes. “Change you,” he said. “Just a little change for the better.”
“But, why?” she whimpered.
Erhlich thought about it. “To make you immortal,” he said. “I promise it won’t hurt.”
“Promise?”
Erhlich grinned. “Yes . . . ”
Before the needle could pierce her flesh, Rachel grabbed his arm and bent it away. Erhlich lost his balance and fell sideways in slow motion.
“Somebody grab this bitch!” he yelled.
The dirty guard, twice her size, threw his weight on Rachel and wrapped his arm around her neck. His sweat-slickened arm went under her chin like something wet and alive, and she could smell his terrible odor.
She struggled for a moment then was still. Ehrlich came at her again with the syringe. “No,” he said. “You don’t want it, so you can’t have it. No sedative. Take them to the lab. Restrain them and drag them by the hair if you have to. I’m tired of this shit.” He tossed the syringe in the box, snatched it up and stormed out.
“Give me a hard time,” the slovenly guard said to Rachel, “and I’ll beat you senseless. That’s my kind of drug.”
The other guards laughed.
* * *
“There're two ways in,” Paul was saying, “one through corridor A and one through B. They both lead to the lab.”
“So which one?” Donna asked.
“You decide,” he said.
“B.”
“B it is. Ready?”
“Sure,” she said with a note of sarcasm. “I’m always ready to storm the gates.”
* * *
He adjusted her loosely-tied bonds. “How’s that?” he asked. “Can you get out of them?”
“I’ll have to wiggle a little, but I can do it.”
“You look just like a real prisoner,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll give me a medal for bagging the infamous Donna Applegate. Let’s go,” he said and slid the transport’s door open. The jungle’s air rushed in at them, wet and angry like the breath of some hot beast.
The first wasp raced straight at Donna’s head, making her duck away from it.
“Aaah! Shoo!” she said. Paul took a swipe at it. The wasp dodged the blow and hovered at a safe distance. “Go away!” she said to it.
Suddenly the air around them was filled with the sound of buzzing wings. Awash in the scent of ancien
t prey, a hundred wasps buzzed close to exposed skin, testing the air. As Paul swiped at them, the wasps moved away from the arm as if pushed back by some invisible shield.
“Jesus!” Donna cried.
“I don’t like this!” Paul said, waving at the air. “We’d better get back inside!”
Then, as quickly as they’d come, the wasps were gone, the sound of their wings lost in the deep green foliage.
“What the hell was that?” Paul asked, lost in astonishment.
“I have no idea,” Donna replied. “Guess they didn’t like us.”
* * *
There were tables, operating tables in the room. Rachel could see them. They were long and wide and shiny, but too big. They were the kind of tables on which you might operate on a horse. Above them hung tangles of the Verdian tools like dark hands and fingers, turning and coiling at the end of vine-like arms. One of them opened and closed long and sinister fingers rhythmically.
It has waited for me, this place. It has waited an eternity for me.
Rachel closed her eyes and felt herself tremble. She let herself be guided, eyes closed, into the nightmare. She blocked out its images, but the thing slid around that feeble barrier and assaulted her other senses. With the scent of antiseptic and odd, faint sounds from the strange machinery, its coils tightened around her soul. It was too much. She heard herself whimper, and a few steps later, her legs turned to putty and refused to carry her. They lifted her up under her arms and dragged her the rest of the way.
* * *
She opened her eyes to see Erhlich standing next to the operating table, his dull white coat smeared with dark stains. In his hand was that large syringe. He held it up, propping his elbow in his hand with his head cocked, waiting, slightly perturbed, like some pissy demon. Two assistants busied themselves behind him. She detected a splat of the color blue in her peripheral vision, but she refused to look directly at it. The blue robe could only mean Jacob. She forced herself to look, but all she saw was an empty blue robe hanging on a hook. But he was there somewhere. She could smell him.
