The Naturalist (The Naturalist Series Book 1)

by Andrew Mayne

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “Because I’m bleeding,” I reply nonsensically.

  “Should I give you artificial blood?” She holds up a packet.

  “Can you . . . can you . . . tap a vein?”

  “Yes. Probably.”

  I’m so tired I don’t even feel like answering.

  “Theo! Stay with me!” She slaps my face again.

  “So . . . violent.”

  Things begin to darken around the edges of my vision. I feel a sharp pain in my arm, then gradually focus.

  Jillian has a bag of artificial blood suspended from a door handle above our heads. The end is poked into my arm.

  “Like this?” she asks.

  “Yes. Am I still leaking?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She wraps a bandage around the needle in my arm, fixing it in place.

  “Joe?” I ask.

  “He’s been gone for a few minutes. I think help is on the way.”

  I wish I could believe that was true. I have a feeling we’re a long way from anybody coming to our rescue. It makes no sense that he would just walk away from us.

  I try to scoot myself upright but can barely move. I fall back on the side wall and try to catch my breath.

  Jillian hovers over me, checking my bandages, then making sure the wounded cop is still okay.

  She freezes and looks up as she leans over me.

  I’m about to ask her, “What is it?” but then I hear the sound of heavy footsteps walking toward the back of the ambulance.

  Through the shattered glass we can see the passing of a shadow.

  A horrible screeching sound fills the air as Joe starts up some kind of mechanical device. The ambulance is filled with noise as he uses a metal saw to cut away at the doors.

  Jillian spins around and sprawls out over my body to shield me.

  “Check the cop for a gun,” I whisper through pained breaths.

  She reaches around me and starts to feel for his holster.

  “I can’t find . . .”

  The words freeze in her mouth as the upper back door falls to the ground.

  Past her shoulder, I see the mountain of man that’s Joe.

  A huge hand reaches inside and grabs Jillian by the ankle.

  “Theo!” she says as she’s yanked away.

  I try to take her hands and hold on to her, but she’s out of my reach before I can even move.

  She clings to the door frame, trying not to be taken. Joe is too strong. He pulls her free, then drags her away out of sight.

  He took her.

  He took her first.

  He knows I’m in here, barely alive, unable to do anything.

  This is how he makes me suffer.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  VIGILANT

  She’s gone.

  I try to get up. The world begins to move around me, my legs give way, and I fall back down, landing on Bryant.

  He makes a groaning sound.

  He needs help. Hell, I need help.

  I attempt to get on my hands and knees to crawl but find my arms aren’t strong enough to support me.

  He took Jillian. And the worst part about it is she didn’t even scream. She knew I was too injured to do anything.

  I’ve lost so much blood. I’m still leaking out.

  I’m allowed to give up.

  It’s okay to throw up my hands and say I did the best I could.

  I can’t save her.

  I couldn’t save Juniper.

  I deserve to die.

  When Joe comes for me, I won’t protest.

  I can’t go on knowing I lay helpless as he carried Jillian away.

  Can’t go on . . .

  I realize that I truly have nothing to live for if I let him kill her.

  My hand falls on a pile of vials.

  Dextroamphetamine sulfate.

  Speed.

  I dealt with more than one speed freak as a paramedic. It took several cops to hold them down. Even then that wasn’t enough. Their brains didn’t know they weren’t supposed to keep going.

  Weren’t supposed to keep going . . .

  Ultimately, their bodies paid a price. Cardiac arrest or worse.

  But what could be worse than this?

  The blood bag hovering over my head gives me an idea. More accurately, it’s a suicide plan. But it might give me a few more minutes . . .

  I find a syringe and inject the bag with the amphetamine.

  I dig through the cabinets and find epinephrine, adrenaline, and add that, too.

  I use way too much.

  You wouldn’t use this much on a racehorse, not unless you hated the animal and wanted his heart to explode on the last lap.

  But that’s exactly what I want.

  My body is already forfeit.

  I’m going to die one way or another tonight. It might as well be fighting.

  I use a bandage wrap to strap the blood supply to my chest and move the needle to an artery on my thigh, inches from where I was shot.

  I try to push into my skin, but I’m too weak. I feel like I’m slipping back into a dream.

  “THEO!”

  I don’t know if that was Jillian screaming or some voice in the back of my mind. Either way, it makes all the difference in the world. I find the artery, and the needle goes in . . .

  I’m already beginning to feel tingly. Waves of electric ants start marching across my skin.

  My breathing picks up. My heart starts beating faster.

  HOLY SHIT.

  I’M ON FIRE.

  My head feels like one of those novelty-store plasma balls.

  In a moment of clarity, I grab some syringes from the floor, fill them with different concoctions, then shove them into jacket pockets.

  There’s a lot of my blood on the floor. I strap two more pints to my chest and tape a small pump to my side. They won’t kick in until my blood pressure drops even farther. For good measure I inject them both with adrenaline.

  This is some next-level Lance Armstrong bionic shit going on.

  I’m stronger now—I don’t just stand up, I bounce to my feet.

  I step out of the ambulance feeling like I’m made of pure energy. I run toward where I last saw Jillian.

  I’m moving fast. Subconsciously I’m aware of the fact that my left leg is dragging because of the puncture wound, but the stimulants keep the nerves firing, and the muscle fibers do what I ask them, all their overrides having been shut down.

  The Nazis used to pump their soldiers full of shit like this to turn them into super soldiers. They paid a heavy price for it physically, but it’s not like Nazi physicians had the best intentions to begin with.

  A moment ago I was despondent, ready to let Joe end me. Now . . . fuck that. I’m a GODDAMN LOCOMOTIVE READY TO TEAR THROUGH HIM.

  Some part of me is saying that this is the drugs talking.

  FUCK THAT NOISE.

  I’M GOING TO RIP HIM TO PIECES.

  Way to go, hotshot. Now think for a moment. Maybe you should pick up that shotgun by Glenn’s body? He might have one or two rounds left.

  I grab it and jog into the woods. There’s a break in the trees he probably took her through.

  I check the chamber. One shell left.

  MAKE IT COUNT.

  I run down the hill and jump the last few yards.

  My leg buckles, but I keep going.

  He wants me to chase after him. He saw me wounded in the ambulance and wanted to see what I was made of. Would I let him drag my girl off? Or would I find the strength to be a fucking man?

  I stomp through the bushes, using the shotgun barrel to swat away branches.

  I reach a small clearing.

  A large shape is standing at the other end. Jillian is kneeling on the ground, blood trickling from her lip and a bruise around her left eye. Joe has one hand around her throat and another with his claws ready to puncture her jugular.

  He looks my way. Silent, yet f
ull of rage.

  I contemplate trying to take a shot but notice how the barrel is shaking in my hands.

  I’m too high to aim straight.

  I’d be just as likely to shoot her as him—and he has body armor.

  I toss the shotgun to the ground.

  Fast, really fucking fast, Joe shoves Jillian to the side and sprints toward me.

  He wants to show how fast he is. He wants me to see that he’s really some animal spirit in possession of a man’s body.

  He wants me to die knowing that he’s not just a depraved whack job.

  He wants me to believe he is a demigod.

  For a fraction of a second, I believe him. I think no man his size should be able to move that fast. I think that no human could react that quickly.

  Then I remember that I’m a scientist.

  AND I JUST INJECTED MY BODY WITH A LOT OF POWERFUL SHIT THAT’S GOING TO KILL ME.

  BUT FOR ONE BRIEF MOMENT . . . I’M A DEMON-POWERED SOLDIER OF VENGEANCE.

  And I have a fistful of syringes he doesn’t know about.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  ADAPTATION

  I had a friend who was a marine biologist who tagged great white sharks. I asked her how the hell she did that.

  First, she explained, you get a long pole and stick your tranquilizer on the end. Then you chum the water and get the shark really close to the boat. When the shark is chomping down on the chunks of fish, you stab it. After it goes limp, you keep it stationary in the water using a special hammock. Someone counts out the minutes left on the dosage and you go about your work.

  The real problem, she said, wasn’t the great white sharks.

  It’s what happened after the thing was immobilized and lying helpless in the water harness.

  You had to protect the shark from dolphins.

  The clever little bastards didn’t waste any opportunity to strike at the sharks. They’d come flying out of nowhere and ram their noses into the great white’s gill slits, trying to fuck it up.

  I can’t blame them.

  The researchers had to watch their backs and make sure there wasn’t an eight-hundred-pound torpedo aimed at their patient.

  Sharks have been swimming around in the ocean for more than four hundred million years—dolphins less than a tenth of that time. Yet, in that short period, dolphins adapted to become their fiercest enemy.

  While dolphins have blunt baby teeth compared to a great white, they have one advantage a shark doesn’t—their brains. Dolphins are incredible improvisers.

  Sharks have millions of years of preprogrammed strategies. Dolphins have cheat codes.

  I’m not a fighter, despite Gus’s best efforts. But neither is Joe. He’s a killer. He’s a great white shark on two feet, and like a shark, he uses the same strategy over and over again. He preys on the frightened and the weak and the vulnerable. I have to think like a dolphin.

  Joe bears down on me, and I drop to my knees. His arms swing out over my head, slicing the air with his claws. Moving too fast to stop himself, his right leg kicks into my shoulder, and he stumbles.

  I roll to the side.

  Before I can gather myself, Joe has already spun around.

  Goddamn, he’s fast.

  Four scimitars come at me. I duck my head and feel them slice into my back. I’m high, so it’s not painful so much as a curious sensation of being carved open.

  I shoot my arm out with a syringe and aim for his calf. I loaded enough sedative in the syringe to stop the heart of a grizzly.

  The needle goes into the leather. I start to squeeze the injector, but Joe jerks his leg and the tip snaps in half.

  FUCK!

  This is the last time he’ll let me get this close.

  I use the distraction to jump back and out of his reach for a second.

  I hold another syringe in front of me with my left hand.

  He pauses for a moment and watches me. I can’t see anything behind his mask, but I can tell he’s assessing me.

  I have to try a new tactic.

  I need to do something his victims have never done.

  “Bad night, Joe?”

  I know his only response is to attack, so I leap to the side as soon as I finish the sentence.

  Joe lunges at where I was standing, swiping the air and exposing his left deltoid. I launch myself at him and cling to his arm like a monkey on a tree trunk.

  Before the needle goes in, Joe’s claws go into my shoulder, and he stabs me.

  A geyser of blood shoots into his mask.

  Fuck. He hit my artery.

  The blood keeps gushing.

  I fall off him and land hard on my back.

  Joe stands over me. Triumphant. He swatted me away like King Kong.

  My blood is still spurting out, spitting into the air and pooling around my head.

  He just watches.

  This is his thing, wounding someone and waiting for them to bleed out.

  This is how he gets his jollies.

  I’m so full of shit my brain is too wired to know that it’s not getting any more blood.

  The fountain turns into a trickle, then stops.

  My heart should go next.

  My last image will be the man who murdered me.

  The man about to kill Jillian.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  THROMBOSIS

  Joe looms over me, taking quiet satisfaction in my death, letting me ooze out like a stuck pig.

  I lie here helpless, staring up at the sequoia of a man, waiting for my vision to fade and the ferryman to take me across the river Styx.

  Still waiting . . .

  And waiting . . .

  Shit, dying takes a while.

  Has time slowed down?

  I’m experiencing my death remotely, like my Marvel Comics Watcher, who is there for the end of things.

  Is death like the event horizon of a black hole, where you fall forever?

  I know it’s subjective and all, but shit, I should really be dead now.

  It doesn’t matter how many drugs are in my system—once you bleed out like that from an arterial wound, it’s a matter of physics. You should be dead.

  But I’m still alive. Or at least aware.

  Joe starts to kneel down. I can hear him inhaling under his mask. He senses something.

  “Theo . . . ,” moans Jillian.

  She’s a crumpled rag at the edge of the clearing.

  Joe’s head turns to face the sound she made.

  Then it hits me.

  Joe didn’t strike an artery.

  He sliced into a blood bag.

  I’m sure I got punctured, too, but that geyser wasn’t my blood.

  My pressure is dropping, to be sure . . . which also means that any moment now—

  BUZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

  My little blood pump kicks to life. Joe whips his neck around to look at me.

  I continue to play dead.

  The pump sounds a lot like a pager.

  He leans over me, trying to identify the source of the vibration.

  I.

  Don’t.

  Fucking.

  Breathe.

  Joe slides his right glove off and holds it in his left. His massive hand pats me down on the side.

  I spot his thick, pink neck under his mask. It’s his soft spot. His gill slits.

  Like an opportunistic dolphin, I slam the syringe I’m clenching into his neck.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!” he bellows.

  “Made you break character, asshole.”

  His fist pounds into my face, pulverizing my nose.

  Joe starts to put the claws back on, then leans backward on his heels. He stands upright and wobbles.

  I roll away and pull myself to my knees. Now I feel wobbly.

  Joe stumbles to the side, then stops himself. He gets the glove all the way on, then lumbers toward me.

  Weak, but slightly more coordinated than him, I shift to my side. He passes, then collapses like a drunk.

/>   My bad leg gives way, and I fall to my knees, then hit the dirt face-first.

  Blood runs down my neck and into my mouth. I can’t see Joe.

  I can’t see shit.

  I think I’m crashing.

  A hand grabs me by my upper arm and pulls me upright.

  I try to swing a fist at my attacker but can’t tell where they are.

  “Theo!” Jillian yells.

  Shit. I almost hit her.

  I stop resisting and let her drag me over to a log and sit me upright.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, squatting in front of me.

  There’s blood running down her face from where Joe knocked her out. “Are you?” I ask.

  “Better than you. Hold on.” She limps over to where I dropped the shotgun and picks it up. “Stay with me.”

  She sits down and cradles my head in her lap with one hand and keeps the other on the shotgun facing Joe’s unconscious body.

  I start to drift off.

  “Theo!” She slaps me awake. “Ambulance is on the way. Stay with me.”

  I look over and see Joe’s body is still there. I try to do the math and warn her that if he’s not dead, he’ll be up any minute now. We need to think like dolphins.

  I fall into a daze before I can say anything.

  I think I’m dreaming.

  BOOM!

  I bolt awake and look for Joe’s body—it’s gone.

  “Jillian!”

  “It’s okay,” she says.

  “He’s gone!”

  “To hell, Theo. He’s gone to hell.”

  Then I see it—Joe’s corpse sprawled against a tree. His mask is ripped away, and there’s a bloody pulp where his face should be.

  I don’t know if he was coming or going, but she dropped the son of a bitch.

  I like this woman.

  They’re carrying me away.

  Red and blue lights wash over the trees.

  EMTs pull at my clothes, detaching the tubes.

  I expect the face of the paramedic to be my own.

  But it’s not.

  I don’t even think I’m here.

  I decide I’m not.

  I’m back at that campus pizza parlor with my students. Juniper is looking at me. She leans in, our fingers almost touching on the bench between us.

  She has Jillian’s face.

  This time I don’t pull away. I move closer and cover her delicate hand with mine.

  She smiles.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS