“Don’t let them touch you,” he said. He went to the next door in the hall. He opened it with the key card. The room was empty.
The creatures were getting closer. He ran to another door. That room was empty too. The scratching and skittering of the creatures grew louder. There were more doors in the hall but no time to check them.
Ashley shouted, “Peter! Robert!”
No answer.
They had no choice but to run. They came to a T at the end of the hall and stopped.
“The place is a big circle,” Bobby said. “There must be exits on the outer wall.” The problem was, the halls were straight instead of curved, making it hard to tell which direction was out or in.
As Bobby was looking to the right, he glimpsed two people in green clothes running from left to right at the next T. If any of these people were as smart as they thought they were, they’d be trying to get out right now. From the way the others had talked, it sounded like at least some of them weren’t crazy enough to actually carry out the 4:44 protocol. Unless they planned to do it as soon as they got clear of the facility.
“They’re catching up!” Ashley said.
Some of the faster creatures were only seconds behind them.
“This way,” Bobby muttered, and he took off following the doctors he’d seen.
He and Ashley turned right at the T and ran straight all the way to the outer wall. Next to a door with another sign above it that said Salida were six green-clad men and women. They were shouting at each other and didn’t see Bobby and Ashley until they were only a few yards away. The doctors stopped shouting and stared.
Bobby spoke first. “Do you guys know where our friends are? Peter Wooley and Robert?”
For a moment none of them spoke.
“He’s got part of it,” a woman said. She was holding a tablet with her finger hovering above the screen. “We should initiate now!”
“Don’t!” said one of the men. “I’m not willing to die here. Neither are you, Sofia, and you know it. Just open the door and we can leave.”
It appeared that Sofia was the only one of them with a key card.
Bobby heard tapping and scuttling behind him just before the doctors saw what was coming.
“Sweet Jesus,” one of the men said. “Open the goddamn door, Sofia!”
Sofia was shaking, her finger still hovering over the tablet.
Without warning, the man drew back and punched her. The tablet clattered to the floor, and she crumpled into a heap and began moaning.
The man ripped the key card from her neck. He went for the door.
“Hurry!” someone said.
The creatures were twenty yards away, and there was nowhere to go but through the door.
The door opened, and blinding sunlight poured in. The doctors ran out except for Sofia and another woman who had knelt down to help her up. But Sofia could barely even sit up. The other woman looked up at Bobby and Ashley.
“Please. Help me!”
The first creatures in the swarm were seconds away. Bobby exchanged a glance with Ashley, and then they both grabbed Sofia by the armpits and dragged her to the door. The door had already closed, so Bobby let go of the woman and pressed Helmich’s key card to the reader. The door clicked.
“Oh Jesus,” the woman said.
Bobby pulled the door open and turned around. The kangaroo-like creature had outdistanced the others and was now sitting on Sofia’s lap, sniffing her face. Sofia was apparently too dazed to move.
“Pull her out the door,” Ashley said quietly.
Bobby held the door open as they dragged her out. The kangaroo stayed on Sofia’s lap until it was through the door. It jumped off and hopped away. Just as Sofia’s feet cleared the opening, Bobby stepped through and slammed the door shut, but not before another creature—something the size of a rabbit but more like a lumpy, disfigured bird without wings—slipped through and ran off.
“Sofia, are you okay?” It was the second woman. She was on her knees, holding Sofia by the shoulders.
“Bastard,” Sofia said, holding a hand to her forehead. “He hit me.”
It occurred to Bobby that the air was warm. This wasn’t what the air in Oklahoma had felt like. He turned and looked at their surroundings. There was a gravel parking lot with about ten cars in it. Several of the doctors were driving out of the lot onto a road, throwing dust and gravel in clouds behind them. Beyond the parking lot were open fields. Beyond the fields were scrubby green trees. And sticking up through those were several tall palm trees. He turned and looked at the compound. It wasn’t tall, only one story, but the white walls extended far to the left and right, gently curving in until they disappeared. It was a concrete circle 324 meters in diameter.
“Where are we?” Bobby asked.
Sofia and the other woman looked up at him. Their eyes darted nervously to the object Bobby held against his chest—Addison’s arm.
“Four miles east of Salinas,” the other woman said. She pronounced it suh-lee-ness.
Bobby shook his head.
“Where’s that?” Ashley asked.
Sofia spoke up, her voice still shaky. “The Caribbean side of Puerto Rico.”
Twelve
Quentin stopped walking when he realized Lindsey was no longer with him. She was a dozen yards back, waiting for the mbolop to come down from a tree. Quentin sighed and pulled off his pack. He started to set it down and realized he was standing over a slide, a smoothed-out trail entering the water of the Méanmaél river on his left. Under typical circumstances he would call Lindsey over to look at it, and they would speculate as to whether it had been created by a small crocodile or a large water-rat. But she hadn’t been herself all morning, since her somewhat alarming encounter with the tree kangaroo. Not that she seemed ill or depleted in any way. Her condition was quite the opposite, in fact. Lindsey was more animated and enthusiastic than she had been in several days, which was strange considering the circumstances.
Quentin hefted his pack to his shoulder and walked back to her side. Samuel and Sinanie were already well ahead of them, but they were following the river’s edge and would be easy to find. Quentin put the pack down and waited, uncertain of what to expect from the mbolop.
Suddenly the creature scuttled backward down the trunk of the tree. When it turned to face them it had a plum-sized fruit gripped in its teeth, perhaps some variety of avocado. It held the fruit in its diminutive forepaws and chewed a hole in it. Methodically, as if this were a practiced procedure, it placed the fruit on the ground, clawed its way into its own abdomen again, dug out a glistening lump of tissue, and shoved the lump into the hole in the fruit. It then picked up the fruit and offered it to Lindsey.
Quentin forced himself to remain silent as she ate it. This was the fourth time in four hours the mbolop had offered her something to eat, and she had long since made it clear that she considered the offerings to be safe and would not be dissuaded from eating them. Never mind that the first of them had rendered her unconscious.
Quentin sighed loudly.
She smiled as she finished the fruit and tossed the seed away. “If you knew how good I felt right now, you’d stop worrying.”
“How do you know you’re not just high on something that thing gave you? You have no idea what you’ve ingested.”
“I know what it’s giving me,” she said. “It’s giving me what I need. It’s taking care of me, making sure my body chemistry is perfectly balanced. That’s why I feel so good.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
She stepped closer to him and gave him a long, deep kiss. She smelled the way she always did—desirable—even on the second day of hard hiking. She pulled back and gazed into his eyes.
“Do I seem out of balance to you?”
Quentin had to control his breathing. “Not really, no.”
“Then stop worrying.” She smiled. “Do you remember the first time you told me you loved me?”
“Of course.”
“Mark Twain National Forest. We were in that old orange tent. When you said it that night, how did you know it was really true?”
Quentin frowned. “Are you actually comparing this to—”
She leaned in and kissed him again, this time for even longer.
Finally, she pulled back. “Look, I know why you’re worried,” she said. “But this feels right.” She held up her hands, fingers out, and gazed at them. “I felt fine before. The Lamotelokhai’s nanoparticles—or whatever they are—had been taking care of us. But this is different. In the last few hours I’ve started feeling better than ever.” She shook her head. “If that’s even possible.”
Quentin studied her face. Her eyes were bright and alert. She certainly appeared to be herself.
Abruptly she furrowed her brows and sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”
Quentin sniffed and shook his head.
“It’s fresh soil,” she said. “Like it’s right in my face.” She looked down at the mbolop. It was now snuffling around in the leaf litter on the forest floor, as if it were looking for something to eat. She then looked up at Quentin, her eyes wide.
“What?” he said.
She pointed at the mbolop. “Put your hand down there. Let him smell you.”
Quentin crouched and extended his hand, palm down. The creature leaned forward to sniff it.
“That’s you!” Lindsey cried. “I smell your skin. Right now. Right in my face!”
Quentin looked at her, confused. He felt the tree kangaroo lick his fingertips and he instinctively withdrew his hand.
“Oh my god!” Lindsey said. She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my god.” This time it was muffled. She turned away, still covering her mouth.
“Lindsey?”
She let out a burst of laughter. “It’s incredible!”
“What is?”
She turned to him, flashing a delighted grin. “You’re not going to believe this.” She guided him by the shoulders a few steps and stopped. “Stand right there.” She took several steps back and stood facing him, still grinning.
“You’re starting to scare me again,” he said.
“Put one hand behind your back.”
He did.
“Now pick a number and hold out that many fingers.”
Quentin gave her a look, but then he held out three fingers behind his back.
“Three,” she said.
He stared at her. She raised her brows, waiting.
He changed from three fingers to five.
“Five.”
Quentin turned and looked behind him. The mbolop was sitting there on its haunches, watching him. This was impossible. He tucked his hand against his body so there was no way Lindsey could see it, and then he folded all his fingers into a fist except for the middle one.
“Very funny,” she said. “One finger.”
He turned around to face her, speechless.
She smiled again and shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it either.
“Hold on,” Quentin said. He walked over and kneeled down by the mbolop. He leaned in to within inches of its snout and cupped his hands around his mouth. He then whispered to the creature, so softly that Lindsey couldn’t possibly hear from where she was. He said, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
She giggled. “As much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”
∞
“I must say, the most peculiar things happen when you two are in the vicinity,” Samuel said. “Enigmata are drawn to you as are ants to honey.”
Lindsey pulled the last of the food from her pack, a half-dozen sago cakes, and passed them to Quentin to divide up. The mbolop was lying on its side next to her. “I know it all sounds strange. The funny thing is, it already feels normal to me, like this connection I now have with the creature is something that was missing in my life before. I feel… complete. Not alone anymore.”
Quentin cleared his throat.
She put a reassuring hand on his. “It’s not like that. It’s more like—I don’t know—like when we were kids learning to walk. Suddenly that’s what we did, and it seemed like we should have always been able to walk, only we couldn’t before that because it just wasn’t our time yet.”
Quentin exchanged a glance with Samuel, who seemed just as perplexed by this new development. Sinanie gazed thoughtfully at Lindsey. It was hard to say how much of Lindsey’s explanation he had understood, but he had watched attentively as she had demonstrated to Samuel how the mbolop was now an extension of her senses.
After Quentin and Lindsey had caught up to Samuel and Sinanie, they had continued hiking for another hour before deciding to tell them about this. Samuel had suggested they stop to rest, and it had seemed like the time to bring it up. Neither of the men had seen or experienced this phenomenon before. It was becoming apparent the tree kangaroos were as full of surprises as the Lamotelokhai had been.
They sat in silence for some time, eating the last few sago cakes.
“I think I’ll name him Rusty,” Lindsey said. The mobolop raised its head as if it knew she was talking about him.
Quentin eyed the creature’s mottled brown fur. “It suits him.”
“Not just because of his color. There was this boy I met when I was a young girl. I was only six. In first grade. We lived too close to my school for me to ride the bus, so I would walk. The school was only five or six blocks away, but one day I was daydreaming about something. Suddenly none of the houses looked familiar. I got scared, and I froze. I just stood there on the sidewalk. Eventually a boy I had seen at school came out of his house. He asked why I was just standing there.” Lindsey huffed out a brief laugh and shook her head. “When I told him, he said I wasn’t lost at all. He said he’d seen me walk by his house every day. He was right. I hadn’t taken a wrong turn. Suddenly his house and all the others looked familiar again.”
“I suppose your hero’s name was Rusty,” Quentin said.
She laughed and put her hand on his again. “I could name him Quentin, but that would get confusing, now wouldn’t it? But seriously, that kid somehow helped me see things in a new light. And so the name fits.”
He squeezed her hand. “I guess the real question is, why do you feel compelled to name the thing in the first place?”
She frowned at this. “Bobby named Mbaiso.”
“Bobby was fourteen then.”
“Does it bother you that I’m naming him?”
It was Quentin’s turn to frown. “Of course not. It’s just that we came here to find Addison. When we do, we’ll take him home, and the mbolop will stay here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “There’s no way in hell I’m going back without Rusty.”
He stared at her, taken aback by this. “You can’t take a tree kangaroo—”
“We’ll figure out a way! Or we’ll stay here.”
Quentin had no idea how to respond. He shook his head. “You’re joking, right?”
Her features softened somewhat. “No. Yes.” Her lips showed the slightest of smiles. “I wish you could understand what I’m feeling right now.”
Samuel cleared his throat politely. “More than 150 years have passed since I first encountered the Lamotelokhai. I have witnessed many peculiar phenomena thenceforth. It is my opinion that it is wise to allow such a phenomenon to run its course before drawing conclusions. What seems inconsequential now may turn out to be of great consequence. What seems perilous now may turn out to provide unforeseen benefits.”
Quentin and Lindsey stared at each other. Quentin nodded in acceptance.
The mbolop—Rusty—rolled from its side and sat up. It dug into its abdomen, produced another lump of flesh, and offered it to Lindsey. The fifth one of the day. She put it in her mouth without hesitating.
“Unforeseen benefits,” she said, glancing at Quentin.
∞
After several more hours of hard hiking it started raining, so they s
topped for the night. By this time, Lindsey was already fluent in the mbolop sign language. She had explained to Quentin that it was easy. When she saw Rusty sign something, a vision appeared in her mind. The visions helped clarify the meaning of the gestures. Bobby had once told Quentin he had acquired the same ability with Mbaiso eight months ago. He had acquired it in the same way, by eating a chunk of Mbaiso’s body.
The group quickly constructed another lean-to shelter to sleep under. It was still raining when they finished the shelter, so they all sat in a row beneath it. The mbolop plopped into the mud next to Lindsey. Quentin was hungry, but the food was gone.
He nudged Lindsey. “Maybe Rusty can find some fruit we can eat.”
She patted the tree kangaroo on the head to get its attention and then made some gestures with her hands. The creature jumped up and hopped away.
“You’re an mbolop whisperer,” Quentin said.
In spite of her haggard, soaked, and mud-covered appearance, Lindsey smiled at this. But then she pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and just stared at her feet.
Samuel was in the process of wiping mud from his lower legs by repeatedly sweeping his palm from his knees to his bare toes. He glanced at both of them. “Have you considered what you might say to your son if we are able to find him?”
Lindsey remained quiet as Quentin considered this.
“I suppose we’ll know better what to say once we have a better idea of his state of mind,” Quentin said.
Samuel took one more swipe at his leg and then flung the mud from his hand. “I would suggest that you refrain from excessive exuberance. He seems to me to be quite timid, and I fear he may retreat if frightened.”
For months Quentin had subjected himself to three conflicting mental images of Addison. First, there was Addison as he had been before all this started—Addison his son. Actually, a copy of that Addison still existed. He was living an innocent, undisturbed life with his parents—copies of Quentin and Lindsey—and he deserved to be spared from this nightmare. Quentin’s own copy of Addison, the original Addison, had been lost in a plane crash not far from where they sat at this moment. Following the ill-advised application of the Lamotelokhai’s medicine, that Addison had turned into a murderous monster. That was the second version of his son, the version Quentin had tried so hard to forget. And third, there was the version of Addison that had actually been only the Lamotelokhai’s disguise.
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