Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  The first raindrops slapped his shoulder and the top of his head.

  He studied the rooftops past the curious gulls in search of a cross, a radio antenna, anything that might identify the mission, careful not to pay too much attention to the blood spatters on the sides of the huts that had been saved from the torrent by the overhangs.

  Every time a branch bowed or leaves fluttered or the grass skirts of the corpses riffled at the behest of the wind, he had to fight the urge to grab Courtney and sprint for cover.

  They continued to the north on a path between huts that led into a grove of mango trees. The cloud of seagulls behind them dropped to the ground with a whistle of wings so loud it could have been a scream. Several more bodies were crumpled in the bushes along the trail, hidden from the bulk of the birds where the flies could have them all to themselves. Bishop had to swat the bloated insects away from his face. The trees gave way to another cluster of huts, at the back of which was undoubtedly the mission they had traveled all this way to find. Rather than rows of lashed sticks, it had been built with native stones and adobe, and poorly patched by mismatched mud through the years. It reminded Bishop of the missions scattered throughout the countryside in California. A cross stood from the top of the stunted campanile, in which a single rusted bell hung. The slanted roof of the crumbling, single-story domicile was composed of broken clay tiles that had been replaced by clumps of thatch. The whitewashed adobe had been scoured away by the wind and replaced with a chalky crust of brine. The shutters over the windows appeared to be nailed closed, and whatever door had once protected the narthex had been replaced by a clapboard construct of ill-fitting boards.

  And behind the building and the crumbling quadrangle walls was exactly what he had prayed to find. A tall metal antenna with all sorts of horizontal branches loomed over the sloped roof. Slanted guy-wires tethered it to the trunks of the surrounding palm and date trees.

  There were no bodies on this side of the village, only hard-packed dirt with standing puddles surrounding a fountain that overflowed with green sludge and a fire pit of stepped gray stones, most of which had cracked and turned to pebbles. He could see the amassed ash and burnt wood inside, and what could have been the charred bones of a boar or a pig.

  He caught a glimpse of the ocean again. The wind was whipping up the waves. The glimmer of sunlight had been replaced by whitecaps.

  Raindrops pattered the ground around them as the clouds overtook the sun, which lost the race across the sky to the west.

  Bishop led Courtney up the stone steps to the mission’s front door.

  He gave the handle a solid tug, but the door didn’t budge. After several more futile attempts, he gave up. Had it been nailed shut from the inside?

  They were going to have to find another way in.

  He looked at Courtney, at the brave front she tried to project, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Together they descended the stairs and started around the side of the building, behind the quadrangle wall.

  Sixty

  The waves beat against the cliffs faster and louder, like the tolling of some great bell as they marched to the gallows. They had run to keep up with Pike for as long as possible, until one by one they had fallen back with Brazelton, who grew increasingly frustrated at their slowing pace. Pike had long since vanished into the jungle ahead of them. Every now and then, Bradley caught a glimpse of him through the trees before he vanished once more. Barnes had found several partially edible mangoes on the ground that they shared, stealing bites around mealy black bruises and insect holes.

  The raindrops grew larger with each step and the thinned canopy no longer protected them like it once had. His hair was already wet, and cold ribbons trickled down his spine into the waistband of his slacks. His entire body ached and he would have paid a king’s ransom to rest his legs and feet, if only for a few minutes. Had he known what lay ahead when he left Seattle, he would have at least brought more comfortable walking shoes.

  He chuckled aloud at the thought, which drew nervous glances from his companions, who undoubtedly feared he had snapped. Maybe he had. This entire nightmare was surreal, as though they had crossed over into some other world where none of the normal rules applied, but Bradley knew better. After all, whether he had envisioned it or not, like Pike said, this was surely what he had hoped would happen all along. There had never been a way to unleash such evolutionary power without fulfilling its awesome potential and producing the very monster it had been biologically designed to create. It had been such an all-consuming passion that he had never paused to consider the ramifications. And all to satisfy his own curiosity, when common sense should have intervened to stop this madness before it had even begun.

  The blood of more than a hundred men and women was on his hands. What did he have to show for their unwitting sacrifice? Those of them that remained would be lucky if they even survived long enough to escape this infernal island with their lives.

  He saw the way the others looked at him, the blame in their eyes. None of them had signed on for this. He had deceived them, but worse, he had fooled himself into thinking he was capable of wielding the power of a god when there was some knowledge that nature had gone to great lengths to hide where no one should have ever found it.

  The ground shook again, dropping him to his knees in the mud. He wasn’t sure if he had the strength left to stand, or even if he wanted to. The burning smell was growing worse. The entire volcano was shrouded by smoke, wisps of which now filtered down into the branches overhead. He heard a loud cracking sound like thunder. It was as though the entire island were breaking apart with them on it.

  Gulls squalled from directly ahead.

  He struggled back to his feet and staggered onward with the others. None of them spoke. After all, what was left to say? Either they would be able to use the radio in the village to call for help or they were going to die this very night.

  Pike emerged from the forest and walked back toward them. As always, his expression gave nothing away, but he still walked with his pistol firmly in a two-handed grip. Whatever he had found down the path certainly hadn’t set him at ease. Pike walked right past him and collared Brazelton. The two of them stepped off to the side and conversed out of earshot.

  “What’s going on?” Reaves whispered.

  “I have no idea.” Bradley rubbed the scab on his swollen forehead where he had struck the rail. The headache had burrowed behind his eyes. “But it doesn’t look like he’s too happy about it.”

  “This isn’t your fault alone. We all share the responsibility for what happened. If I had never instigated that dig under that kiva…”

  Bradley rested his hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

  “Eventually someone else would have. Or we would have still learned about the remains in Vietnam from your student. Regardless, we would have eventually found ourselves doing precisely what we’re doing now.”

  Reaves nodded and looked away through the forest toward the ocean. Bradley knew how Reaves felt. Saying the words out loud didn’t make him feel any better either.

  Pike broke away from Brazelton and addressed them all in little more than a whisper.

  “Form a single-file line. Stay close together and right behind me. I don’t want to hear a sound from any of you.”

  Before Bradley could ask if he’d found the village, Pike struck off to the northeast, away from the path. Bradley hurried to keep up with him. A twig snapped under his foot and earned him a fiery backward glance.

  They worked through the densest shrubs and groves, staying close to whatever cover they could find. Downhill to the left, the squawking of seagulls grew louder. He occasionally glimpsed a white flock circling through the treetops and wondered what could have attracted so many of them.

  Pike’s head and weapon swiveled in unison, from left to right. They continued on their current course until they eventually veered westward once more. The smell of smoke continued to worsen. Bradley had to swallow hard to stifl
e a cough for fear of incurring Pike’s wrath. A new scent reached him, and suddenly he understood the reason for Pike’s detour. The shrieking gulls…the smell…

  If something had happened in the village, then all was lost.

  The darkening sky flashed with lightning. The distant reply of the thunder eventually grumbled toward them from the east. As if on cue, the storm commenced in earnest with the sound of clapping on the leaves overhead.

  They passed the concentration of seagulls until, despite their ceaseless racket, he could faintly hear the ocean. Pike led them due west now. When he lowered to a crouch, Bradley did the same. They advanced another dozen paces before Pike finally stopped. Bradley followed Pike’s line of sight through the gaps between the branches and almost moaned in relief.

  There was a bell tower with a wooden cross perched on top of it. And farther to the right, something metallic glinted. He leaned to the side to get a better look at the radio tower.

  “We made it,” he whispered.

  There was a hint of movement near the base of the tower, mere silhouettes passing through shadows.

  “Not quite yet,” Pike said. He raised his pistol and eased through the bushes toward the source of the motion.

  Sixty-One

  They entered a small enclosure around the back of the building that had once served as the priest’s garden. Flowering hedges grew up against a rear wall draped with vines. Weeds and ferns surrounded the base of the radio tower, the tethers of which formed the framework of a teepee over the trapezoidal space. A smaller rear door was in the same state of disrepair as the front, and fit so poorly that Courtney could nearly see into the room behind it through the wide, uneven seams. Just to its right, a bundle of black cords passed through the adobe wall and ran straight into the ground. As she neared, she saw small mounds of earth, and then the hole from which they’d been excavated.

  Her heart dropped into her stomach.

  “No,” Bishop whispered.

  Courtney stared into the hole and started to cry. Both ends of the severed wires poked out of the standing water and mud, frayed and unraveling. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The rain poured down on her, but she could no longer feel it. How could this have happened? Such cruelty…This couldn’t have been Ty…He was the most generous, gentle soul she had ever known.

  “The antenna’s for long-range communication,” Bishop said. “We still may have enough juice to reach the mainland or the nearest passing ship without it.”

  There was a crack of splintering wood behind her. She turned in time to see the boards that had been fashioned into the refectory door clatter to the dirt, leaving Bishop standing there with the makeshift knob in his hand. He cast it aside and stepped into the shadows. Courtney walked to the threshold and peered inside. The small chamber housed little more than an unmade bed, an open trunk brimming with clothes, and a faded leather-bound bible on a crate in the corner. The manila walls were spider-webbed with cracks. There were sections where the plaster had crumbled away to reveal the chicken wire framework and the rotting timber behind it. A slender doorway led to the dark patio at the heart of the mission. There was a pitted antique desk under the window where the cords from the antenna entered the room. Bishop stood in the center of the priest’s quarters, staring down at the broken casing of the radio and the components strewn across the wood-plank floor in a mess of wires. He reached down and picked up the desktop microphone. Its cut cord dangled uselessly. He studied it for a long moment before he whirled and spiked it against the wall. When he turned around again, his face was drawn with anguish. He kicked the pile of fractured circuit boards across the room and raised his stare to meet hers.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “You said you had a backup plan.”

  He shook his head.

  “I was hoping not to have to even think about it. It’s not an especially good one.”

  “If you have one at all, it’s far better than anything I can come up with.”

  “There are a ton of glaring problems with it. Most notably, we’d have to turn around and head back in the direction we came from. If anyone’s following us, we’d be walking right back at—”

  He stopped abruptly and cocked his head.

  “We could try to go around—”

  He closed his hand over her mouth and pulled her against him.

  “Shh,” he whispered into her ear and slowly withdrew his hand.

  All she could hear was the sound of the raindrops tapping on the clay tiles on the mission’s roof. A low rumble of thunder rolled down the mountain from the west. The settling smoke clung to the treetops as it slowly filtered to the ground, a dark mist nearly indistinguishable from the storm clouds. There was only a sliver of blue sky left over the eastern wall of the garden.

  Bishop guided her toward the eight-foot-tall rear quandrangle wall, never once taking his eyes from the western wall and the tall trees that encircled the adjacent hut beyond it.

  “If I boost you up,” he whispered, “can you climb over?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Once you hit the ground, I want you to run as fast as you can toward the beach.” The way he looked past her, unblinking, was unnerving. She risked a glance in that direction, but saw only the wall and the forest leading up into the clouds. “I’ll be right behind you. If I don’t make it—”

  “What’s happening? What do you see?”

  She heard a faint splash and the slurp of a boot rising from the mud.

  “Go!” he whispered. He grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her up until she could reach over the edge.

  She climbed up, swung her legs over the other side, and was just about to drop down to the ground when she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Bishop had already leapt up beside her and had one leg over the top of the wall when a shadowed figure darted around the corner of the mission and into the garden.

  With a squeal of surprise, she let go and fell down into the mud. Her feet slipped out from beneath her and she splashed onto her rear end in a puddle. A split-second later, Bishop grabbed her by the hand and yanked her up again. They were already sprinting past the decrepit hut and into the tall weeds behind it before she found her balance. The leathery leaves of fruit trees slapped at their faces. She could barely keep her eyes open long enough to make sure she didn’t barrel headlong into a trunk.

  There was a shout from behind them, which only served to make Bishop run faster.

  The ocean called to them from downhill. She saw sporadic swatches of white sand and blue sea through the branches. Her lungs burned from the smoke.

  In her mind, she saw the non-descript figure, a mere blur of motion ducking into the garden, its body a seamless, shimmering black. Had she seen a horn on its forehead? White-blonde hair? Everything was happening too quickly.

  They burst from the jungle onto the beach, their bare feet slapping the wet sand. Jagged rocks stood from the surf like massive snaggled teeth. The waves pounded them, throwing spray high into the air before racing across the shore toward their feet. A wide bay spread out before them through the smoke. The angry waves were dimpled with raindrops, and reflected the lightning that streaked past through the clouds overhead. The wind chased tatters of brown leaves and detritus past their legs.

  The crack of gunfire stopped them dead in their tracks.

  Bishop nervously looked her in the eyes as the report echoed away into oblivion.

  “Lace your fingers behind your heads!” a voice shouted.

  Bishop nodded to her, released her hand, and slowly raised his arms. Courtney’s heart pounded in her chest as she did the same.

  “Now turn around. Slowly.”

  They turned their backs to the ocean and again faced the jungle. And the scuba-clad man who had rescued them from the submerged isolation chamber on the Mayr. He narrowed his eyes.

  “How the hell did you two get here?”
/>
  Sixty-Two

  Pike had seen the severed wires poking out of the hole the moment he turned the corner into the garden. A glance through the doorway had shown him his worst nightmare. The radio transmitter lay in ruins. That must have been what had made the loud crash he had heard as he approached the mission. They were effectively cut off from rescue now. And the two people standing before him now, the very same ones he had saved from their tomb at the bottom of the sea, had destroyed their only hope of leaving this island alive. The rage boiled inside of him to that point that it threatened to explode in a fusillade of bullets.

  How had he allowed this to happen? While he cursed himself for his mistake, it was one he looked forward to rectifying.

  Tufts of smoke rolled past him like tumbleweeds from where they crept out of the jungle at his back. His eyes stung and his chest burned, but neither would affect his aim.

  He scrutinized Bishop and Martin down the barrel of his pistol. They hadn’t been among the survivors of the Huxley’s sinking. He would have recognized their faces among those swimming or floating to shore. They were still wearing the same scrubs as when he had last seen them on the ship. Their sagging posture and the dark rings around their eyes reflected sheer exhaustion. One glance at their feet confirmed that it was their bloody trail he’d been following, a trail that had intersected theirs from an overland course. Unless they’d abandoned ship on the opposite side of the island before the Huxley set sail, their path should have kept them near the coast. He could only conclude that they had been deliberately trying to avoid those of them who had managed to escape from the foundering vessel, which left him with the glaring question of why. Had they somehow contributed to running the ship onto the reef?