Silence.
“Come on, open up,” he said more urgently. “We got to get away from the monsters, okay?”
Again, nothing.
A claw burst through the kitchenette door. The bony fist tore away a piece of wood, and a head appeared through the hole, saliva roping off the monster’s bared teeth.
Frank didn’t bother asking the girl to open the door a third time. Instead, he reared back, ready to finish what the Skulls had started. He slammed his shoulder against the closet door. Pain rocketed through him as the door gave way. Peeling away a few jagged splinters, he peered inside.
Something crashed against his skull and sent him sprawling.
“What the—”
He twisted, shielding his face with his hands as his unseen attacker struck again. Sharp pain lit up his arm as a piece of wood stabbed through his flesh.
“Christ!” Frank rolled away and then stood, fists up like a boxer.
But instead of a monster licking its lips in preparation for its next meal, he saw the little girl from the window wielding a broken piece of the door, ready to swing.
“I’m a human!” Frank said, holding his hands out in a supplicating gesture. “Look, I’m healthy. I’m not one of those monsters!”
The girl seemed to consider this, lowering her weapon for a moment. She couldn’t be over nine or ten, Frank realized. Dark stains marred the front of her hooded sweatshirt.
“But you’re a stranger,” she said. “Daddy always said—”
A loud howl echoed down the hallway along with the sound of more splintering wood.
“We need to go!” Frank yelled.
He wrapped an arm around the skinny girl’s waist and dragged her into the hall. She struggled in his grip, scratching at his arms and yelling. Behind them, the Skulls freed themselves from their temporary prison. Their footsteps pounded down the hall as Frank ran through the lobby and burst out of the front door.
He let the girl drop to her feet but kept a firm grasp on her wrist with his left hand. With his other hand, he dug into his pocket for the helicopter keys. He matched the first chopper, a Robinson R44, with its key. The door opened with a satisfying clunk. He slid into the pilot’s seat and hoisted the girl up after him. After closing the door, he started the ignition and was greeted by the growling of the engines.
The Skulls barreled out into the night, searching the tarmac for their escaped prey. It didn’t take long for the sound of the chopper’s blades to attract them.
“I’m not supposed to go places with strangers!” the girl yelled, pounding on the door.
“Introductions later,” Frank shouted. “Escaping now!”
The girl started crying. “We can’t leave them! Where’s my mom and dad? Where’s Erica?”
Frank couldn’t tell whether hysteria and shock had eclipsed her undoubtedly horrific memories or if she truly didn’t know yet. “I’m sorry, but they...weren’t there. You were all alone.”
His fingers curled around the cyclic and collective as the first Skull reached the chopper. It banged its fists against the door. Its open mouth slid over the glass, leaving a trail of sticky saliva.
“No!” the girl yelled. She tugged harder on the door handle. “They were there! We have to go back!”
Frank pulled on the collective, and the chopper lifted, hopping over the grass as the Skulls threw themselves at the bird. More screams rent the air. The other Skulls from across the airport were eager to join the party, and apparently they’d invited the Skulls from the neighboring woods, too.
The girl sobbed as the chopper climbed unsteadily. The three beasts from the office still clung to it, throwing the craft’s balance off. If he tried to take off too quickly, he risked a sudden change in pitch that could grind the chopper blades into the tarmac. He jockeyed with the controls, trying to shake the monsters as the girl’s sobs became frantic screams.
“Stop!” Frank yelled. “I need focus here.”
The chopper bucked wildly, its skids bouncing against the tarmac as one of the Skulls rammed its head against the glass protecting the cockpit. If the kid didn’t stop crying soon, she was going to pass out. And if Frank didn’t have some quiet in the cockpit, he was going to wreck this bird.
“What’s your name?” Frank said, his voice short.
“Huh?” the girl managed through a wracking sob.
“Your name. What is it?”
She sniffed. “Leigh.”
“Okay, Leigh,” Frank said. “I need your help. I want to make it out of this alive. You want to live, too, right?”
Sniffling, she bobbed her head, looking up at him through tangles of blond hair. The Skull clinging to her side door continued battering the fuselage.
“I want you to do something scary. When I tell you to, I need you to open the door.”
“I can’t! There’s a monster outside!”
“Do it hard. We’re going to fling him off, okay?”
Her bottom lip quivered, but she nodded again.
“Okay, Leigh. You and I can do this together. Say it with me. We can do this.”
“We can do this,” she echoed.
The horde of Skulls was only a dozen yards away now. Soon they’d be on the chopper, throwing their bodies at it in a deluge of bone-covered limbs and demonic horns. There would be no chance of escape then.
“Now get ready,” Frank said, his knuckles turning white as he grasped the cyclic. “One, two, three, now!”
He jerked the chopper to the left. For half a second, Leigh seemed frozen by fear, her thin fingers wrapped around the door handle. But she let out a high-pitched yell and threw the door open, knocking the Skull backward. Between Frank’s maneuver and the door crashing into the Skull’s chest, the monster lost its grip and fell. Frank twisted the cyclic hard again to shake off a second Skull.
He took them higher. One last Skull still rocked the craft, holding on with one hand as it beat the glass with another. Frank shook the chopper to the left, then the right, putting it into a slight spin. The Skull flailed. Its claws scratched uselessly across the cockpit as it lost purchase and fell. The waves of Skulls beneath them crashed together, trampling the fallen Skull and filling in the void where the chopper had been only moments ago. The only things pursuing them into the sky now were the monsters’ frustrated hunting cries.
“We did it,” Leigh said, though no hint of joy or victory tinged her words. She stared at the flight training school office. “We did it.”
The school grew smaller as they flew away, and distance concealed the gruesome nightmares of everything that had taken place there. He could guess what she was feeling in that moment. They’d both lost their families at that forsaken airport. It didn’t matter how—an unfortunate accident or the Oni Agent.
All that mattered was the gaping holes left in his soul and hers that would never be filled.
-26-
Lauren opened the hatch, grateful to be returning to the lab. Taking care of dying patients and consulting with Dom on first aid for the Hunters had proved more than a minor distraction from research on the Phoenix Compound, and she was eager to get back to work.
In the lab, Kara, Navid, and Sean were staring at a computer monitor. Kara turned as Lauren approached. At first, she wore a smile on her scarred face, which Lauren found strange given the failure of their previous experiment. That smile soon faded.
“Are you okay?” Kara asked.
Lauren’s brows pinched together for a moment. She must’ve looked as frazzled and exhausted as she felt. “I’m fine.”
“And the Hunters?” Sean asked.
“Renee suffered a concussion. The others are all okay.”
She didn’t want to go into more details until she found out what Dom decided to do about Renee’s treatment. Instead, she focused on what she could help with now—the work on the Phoenix Compound. The computer monitor showed a couple of molecular formulas she didn’t recognize.
Lauren pointed at the screen and asked, “Wha
t’s going on here?”
Kara gestured to Navid. “He figured out why the Phoenix Compound failed.”
That explained Kara’s earlier smile. Lauren was ready to rejoice in any victory, no matter how small, but she had to maintain a healthy level of skepticism. “What’s your hypothesis?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Navid said. “The compound itself is probably as effective as the simulations predicted against the prions. We just missed something obvious.”
Lauren almost asked him why he thought that, but an idea burned through the fog of exhaustion and distraction steadily growing inside her. “The blood-brain barrier. That’s it. How could I have forgotten?”
“Exactly. That has to be it,” Navid said with enough confidence Lauren would’ve mistaken him for a scientist with twice the experience and age. “The brain-on-a-chip model replicates all the physiological phenomena, including the barrier that separates blood from extracellular fluid flowing into the central nervous system.”
“Navid told me that’s the body’s way of preventing drugs, pathogens, and other foreign substances from getting to the brain,” Kara added.
Lauren nodded. “That’s right. The blood-brain barrier has made it notoriously difficult for the development of drugs and therapies that target neurological disease. It shouldn’t have been a surprise we ran into a problem there. Question is, how do we fix it?”
When she saw Navid, Kara, and Sean beaming, she knew they already had an answer.
“This is what I was doing my PhD work on,” Navid said. “Drug delivery to the brain. I made nanoparticles that used cell uptake mechanisms to transport molecules across the barrier.” Navid’s grin twisted into a frown. “The only problem is I used synthetic polymers to create the nanoparticles. It worked great, but we don’t have the equipment or supplies on the ship.”
“But we might have an alternative,” Sean said.
Kara bobbed her head. “We searched through some of the medical research papers we have access to.”
“And?” Lauren asked.
“We found something,” Navid said. “Bovine serum albumin.”
“That protein is common enough. I think we have a hefty supply on the ship,” Lauren said. “But what will you do with it?”
Navid motioned to the computer screen and then to an assortment of tubes and beakers set up inside the biosafety cabinet. “With a little bit of engineering, I think I can coat the Phoenix Compound with albumin.”
“I see,” Lauren said, nodding. Albumin was commonly referred to as a “drug taxi” because of its ability to help difficult-to-deliver drugs find their targets within the human body. She understood exactly what he had planned now. “So you’re going to use albumin as an invisibility cloak to deliver the Phoenix Compound.”
“Exactly!” Navid said, snapping with his good hand.
“It’s like the hobbits sneaking into Mordor!” Sean exclaimed. “Dropping the ring into Mount Doom to stop the spread of the evil Oni Agent!”
Lauren refrained from rolling her eyes and settled for letting out a slight chuckle. “You can call it whatever you like as long as it works.”
The trio nodded, already settling back into their stations at the microscopes, computers, and cramped lab bench. Never in her life had Lauren thought she would be in charge of a ship-based lab with a young woman who had barely started college, a graduate student whose PhD work had been cut short, and an epidemiologist with an undying love of Lord of the Rings—all working together to stop an apocalyptic biological weapon. She would’ve laughed had the situation not been so dire. But as she watched them engrossed in their experiments, she couldn’t help but feel a trickle of pride. Science—the pursuit of truth, chasing knowledge for the good of humanity—had a way of bringing people together.
Dom might fight in the field, but she knew the real war was happening in this lab.
***
Masses of trees on the rolling, distant jungle slopes blotted out a clear view of the horizon, but the deep, star-studded black of night was giving way to softer shades of purple and blue. The promise of daylight and a new morning normally inspired a glimmer of hope in Meredith.
But today was a stark exception.
Meredith took a long sip from her canteen. Water trickled into her dry throat, but it wasn’t enough to quench her thirst. She settled into a seat near Terrence and replaced the depleted magazines on her tac vest. Dom was scouring through the team’s first aid kits with Glenn. She didn’t envy his position. Renee’s life was more or less in his hands, and she could practically see the tension in the air between the Hunters in the pilothouse. Dom handed Renee a few pills, which she swallowed with evident effort. Once she’d choked them down, they had whispered back and forth, their words lost to the thrum of the diesel engine.
Meredith’s stomach twisted as she watched him pull out a syringe. Glenn gave him a knowing nod and helped hold Renee’s arm steady as Dom inserted the needle into her flesh. He depressed the plunger, said something else in a low voice to Renee, and then handed the used syringe to Glenn.
Dom stood, leaving Glenn to watch over Renee, and he trudged toward Meredith, his head hung low.
“You gave it to her?” she asked as he approached. By the look on his face, it seemed as if he already regretted his decision.
Instead of answering, Dom motioned her to follow him to a corner of the pilothouse near a window covered in black grime. There, she leaned against the bulkhead with her arms crossed. The first hints of dawn filtered into the grungy windows, accentuating the deep grooves and wrinkles in Dom’s face. A solid layer of dirt and dust coated the scruff along his chin and jaw. The bandages on his arms were a sickly golden color, stained by the muddy river and dried patches of blood. He looked every part the battle-worn soldier, and she imagined his appearance mirrored the weariness weighing on him now.
But when he locked eyes with her, there was a fire behind his steely blue-gray irises that spoke of his mental fortitude, the strength he relied on when leading the Hunters into battle. He placed a hand over his heart. “I decided to wait on the chelation therapy.”
The way he emphasized the pronoun gave Meredith pause. “But she didn’t want to. Did you give her a placebo or something?”
“Of course not,” Dom said. “She said she’d rather risk her own death than risk the lives of the crew. I told her I wouldn’t let it get to that point, so I gave her some painkillers and antibiotics. She’s in bad shape, Mere.”
Meredith narrowed her eyes, hating the creeping suspicion she felt regarding Dom’s decision. She hadn’t realized how strongly she felt about giving Renee the chelation therapy until after Dom’s choice had been made. “You sure that was the right move?”
“Nothing in this business is one-hundred percent.” He grabbed her hand, playing his fingers between hers. “You know that as well as I do. But given our intel, I believe I made the right call to preserve our assets in the field.”
The subtly facetious delivery of that line almost made Meredith laugh. Their handlers at the CIA had always refused to acknowledge that Dom and Meredith were actual humans, not just assets, and the duo had often mocked the way their handlers told them to retrieve other “assets” from compromising situations. That usually translated to saving their fellow agents’ asses because shit had hit the fan. His use of their inside joke gave her slightly more confidence that Dom’s mind was still there.
Her guard melted. “I want to believe you made the right choice.”
“So do I.” He held her hands flat against his palms and massaged the tops of her fingers with his thumb. “I don’t think Renee is infected.” His thumb paused on the nail of Meredith’s index finger. “What’s the one surefire symptom? The one part of the puzzle she was missing?”
Her eyes shot instinctively to Renee’s hands, folded in the woman’s lap as she sat against the bulkhead.
“Calcification,” Meredith said. “Right.”
Dom nodded. “If you see the nails start t
urning yellow and bony growths forming, you don’t have much time. Renee’s nails are completely clean. Should something change, we act immediately. For now, the best thing we can do is let her rest.”
“Okay,” Meredith said.
“I think we’re doing what’s best for her.” He let her hands go and turned to look out over the river. “I’m not crazy, right?”
Meredith was taken aback. “I, uh, don’t think so. At least, what you just said makes sense.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. Look, Meredith, I’d never ask this of anyone else on the team, but I need your honesty. No sugarcoating it.” He took off his helmet and brushed his hand through his sweat-matted hair. “I thought I heard a person cry out in the forest when those Imps attacked. I swear to God. And I’ve had this terrible feeling that something’s been watching us—or maybe that we’ve forgotten something. But I just can’t put my finger on it.”
Meredith hesitated, her lips pressed into a thin, straight line. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“For a former field agent, you’d be an awful poker player. You do. You think I’m crazy.”
Meredith turned her head away. “No, not exactly. Not crazy. But I’ve noticed you’ve been off.”
Dom smoothed out his hair then replaced his helmet. “All right, that’s what I was afraid of.” He sighed. “Look, I know what I heard. I know what I’ve seen. And I’ve learned to trust my instincts. But if you have an ounce of doubt in me, I’m worried the others might, too.”
“You want me to do something about that?”
“No, no. That’s my job. But here’s the deal.” He leaned in closer. “If you really think I’m off my rocker, if I’m going all Colonel Kurtz and this really is my Heart of Darkness...well, you know me better than anyone else out here.” He exhaled with deliberate slowness, his chest deflating. “Shit, you probably know me better than I know myself.”
The songs of unseen birds filled the cabin as dawn light burst over the jungle’s canopy. Leaves in the distant branches of trees swayed and danced as if they were greeting it. Meredith couldn’t tell if it was from Titans stalking through the forest or just the innocent rustle of the wind. In her mind’s eye, she saw Dom leading them through the burned husk of Bikoro, past shuttered and bombed-out homes and ruined markets into the den of an unknown enemy with equally unknown strength.
The Tide (Book 5): Iron Wind Page 16
