“Explain,” she demanded.
“There appears to be a moderate amount of unexpected cellular breakdown occurring. I’m not sure the subject will hold together.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Possibly,” the doctor said, pressing icons across the screen of his console. “But the specimen’s ultra-lean body fat is problematic. Typically, the glucose coefficient should be at least twenty-two percent higher than it is.”
“Just make it work, Doc. Cyrus wants results, not excuses.”
“I guess we should have fattened the dude up a bit at one of our feeding stations, first,” Freebo added, with a joyous tone to his voice. “So much for Mr. Tough Guy.”
“I’ll need to adjust the linkage protocols in an attempt to decrease the subject’s metabolic rate. If I don’t reduce the diffusion efficiency, we’ll lose containment before the retrovirus can complete the transmutation process.”
“We’re still going to need a delayed activation sequence,” Kristov said. “Otherwise the evacuation plan is useless.”
“Yes, I’m fully aware of that, Commander. I plan to install that feature right after I simplify the injection sequence. It needs to be mobile and less invasive.”
Lucas angled his eyes back to check on Zack. He couldn’t believe what he saw. The mercenary’s tissue was now semi-translucent, like a giant blob of mostly-clear gelatin that was shaped like a human body. He could see his friend’s muscles, organs, arteries, and veins, but his skin and bone structure were . . . missing.
The pressure crushing his heart intensified. He knew Zack would never recover from whatever this experiment was doing to him—and he was next. Lucas swallowed a sticky lump of spit in his mouth. Mortality was bearing down on him, but all his mind could focus on was regret for never having found Drew.
Just then, a low-pitched bone-rattling sound echoed from outside the room, shaking everything in the lab for a good five seconds. It sounded like a massive explosion—possibly down the hall.
“Go! Check it out!” Kristov told her men.
Two seconds later, the wall next to the lab door exploded inward, sending Kristov and her men flying across the room along with concrete, metal, and dust. The pressure wave sent the table holding Lucas flopping backward, spinning itself into a horizontal position. Something heavy and thin landed across Lucas’ shins.
Intense shredder-fire soon filled the room, sending shock waves of piercing sound through his ear canals. Nanoseconds later, splashes of warm, runny liquid hit his face and arms. Some of it landed on his lips and ran into his mouth. It tasted salty and somewhat metallic, like iron.
A female’s voice cried out for help, but instantly, a short blast of shredder fire overtook her screams. More wetness landed on Lucas, just as the room fell silent.
“Lucas?” a male voice called from within the dissipating dust cloud.
He recognized the voice. His heart danced. “Rico, I’m over here!” he shouted, looking down across his nose, just beyond his feet. His body was covered in patches of blood, with a severed arm draped across his legs.
The end of the arm where the bicep should have been was ragged and shredded. It looked like a hunk of warm string cheese after it had been pulled apart. Red fingernail polish was still painted neatly onto the victim’s fingernails, even though blood was dripping from several places along the appendage.
Rico’s handsome face appeared through the fading dust. “You all right, kid?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, but I thought you were dead. What happened?”
“When you failed to come through on the jump pad, I figured you’d changed your mind about being part of this mission. Zack and I split up to cover more ground in our search for the BioTex. Imagine my surprise when I saw you on stage with the sexy ninja chick.”
Lucas thought about telling Rico about the detour he made to the Baaku transport ship, but decided to wait for a better time. “Yeah, I got sidetracked a bit, but at least I made it here.”
Rico picked up Kristov’s severed arm. He held it in the air, shaking it twice. “Tennis anyone?”
Lucas laughed. “Serves the bitch right. Talk about a big bag of crazy.” He looked at Rico. “How the hell did you find me?”
“Comm-chatter. I lifted a transceiver from one of the guards. The first thing I learned in basic, way back when, is that if you want to keep a secret, and I mean really keep a secret, don’t tell your XO. The best intel comes from cross-talk. Undisciplined grunts love to gossip.”
Rico ran his hand across the energy mesh at the foot of the table. It changed colors as his hand moved. “How do I get you out of this?”
“See the console to my right?” Rico nodded. “Kill the power. There should be a button—”
Before Lucas could finish the sentence, Rico pointed his rifle and let loose a long burst of shredder rounds, making Lucas’ ears ring again.
Yakberry’s console exploded into a pillar of smoke and fire. Pieces of the console blew apart, showering Rico and Lucas with wreckage.
The security web de-energized. Lucas sat up, spun his legs off the table and stood up. “Nice shooting, Tex. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it worked.”
Lucas wished Rico hadn’t destroyed Yakberry’s research. He had planned to take a copy of it back to Kleezebee for further analysis. He decided not to mention the disappointment to Rico. Instead, he surveyed the room for more survivors. The guards and Freebo were scattered over the floor—more or less in one bloody chunk each, with no signs of movement.
Rico unzipped a pouch on the front of his equipment vest and pulled out a four-inch gauze pad. He peeled off the sticky strips covering the edges and gave it to Lucas. “This should stop the bleeding until we can get you patched up.”
“Thanks,” Lucas said, putting the bandage over the fresh wound on his cheek. “Just what I needed, another fucking scar. I’ve got one hell of a collection, don’t you think?”
Rico smiled. “Now we just need to find Zack. He never showed at the rally point.”
Lucas put his hand on Rico’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. He angled his head to direct the major’s attention to the lab table next to them. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it.”
Rico didn’t respond.
“That’s Zack.”
“What?”
“Trust me. I watched it happen. That’s Zack.”
“What the hell did they do to him?”
“Some type of experiment. He’s totally jacked. I’m sorry.”
Rico rammed the butt of his shredder rifle several times into the stainless steel top of the table Lucas had been lying on, then let out a ten-second, bone-chilling scream. Then, as if a light switch had been flipped off, Rico stood quiet for a good ten-count, as the emotional tsunami ran dry from his face.
He turned to Lucas and spoke in a perfectly calm voice. “Mark my words, Doc. Before this mission is finished, I will kill whoever is responsible for this.”
Lucas pointed to the oversized body that was bleeding in the corner. “You already did. Dr. Yakberry.”
“Looks like I may have used a little too much explosive.”
“Ah, fuck him. Fat bastard.”
“Agreed, but I put you at risk, unnecessarily.”
Lucas threw his hands out to his sides. “Hey, I’m in one piece. It’s all good. The energy field may have protected me.”
“Just dumb luck.”
“Better to be lucky than good I always say.”
“At least the first charge was correct.”
“Where was it?”
“Down the hall. Two hundred meters. Bought us some time. They won’t be using their comms anytime soon.”
Rico studied the lab for a handful of seconds. Then turned to Lucas. “This has Cyrus’ fingerprints all over it.”
Lucas nodded. “I’m not sure what his end game is, but I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. He’s fattening up the locals with free food and
it’s all part of this experiment, whatever it is.”
Rico looked at Yakberry’s damaged system console. “I guess I should have found a better way to turn that unit off. I suppose we won’t be able to retrieve any data from it?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not a chance. But at least I got a good look at it, so I should be able to relay most of it to the professor during our debriefing.”
Rico bent down and put his hand in each of Kristov’s pockets, pulling out nothing but air and lint from each one.
“Check inside her top,” Lucas said, remembering what he saw when Kristov was on stage in the underground base. “Just try not to linger.”
Rico smiled, then slid his hand inside her blouse, and felt around her ample bust line. “Damn, this chick is built. A total waste of a great piece of ass.” He pulled out a piece of white paper about four inches long by two inches wide, folded in half, with bloodstains smeared across one corner. He opened it.
“What’s it say?” Lucas asked.
“Fisher’s Bakery.”
“Holy shit!”
“You know the place?”
“Yeah, I’m a regular.”
Rico flipped the note over. “Piston. Noon.”
“That guy’s a total douchebag. A walking cement-head.”
Rico’s held the note in the air between his first two fingers, waving it back and forth. He seemed perturbed. “Doc? Focus! Do you know what any of this means?”
“No. But I can take you there.”
“We should evac,” Rico said, with a sense of urgency in his words. “It won’t take them long to dig their way here.”
“What about Zack?”
“Can you help him?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not my area of expertise, but I’m pretty sure there’s no way to undo what’s been done to him. He’s just not Zack anymore.”
“Hell, I’m not sure what he is—certainly not human.”
Rico paused for a few moments, then pulled his sidearm from the holster on his belt. He raised the semi-automatic weapon, pulled the slide back and released it before aiming the barrel at the spot where Zack’s head used to be. “This is no way for a soldier to die.”
Lucas wasn’t sure why, but his legs moved him back two steps. Maybe they thought the life-sized blob would somehow explode and shower him with Zack-goo.
Rico pumped three rounds into the mass on the table. The body jiggled from the impact of each shot, but the rounds stuck deep inside the gelatin. One of the rounds stopped only inches from the explosive charge that Rico had injected into Zack’s wrist earlier that day. Lucas made a mental note to remind the major to deactivate all remaining charges when they got back to the warehouse.
“Any other ideas?” Rico asked. “We can’t leave him like this.”
“There’s really nothing we can do for him. We should go.” Lucas waited for an answer, but Rico froze, staring at his friend’s body on the table.
“Major? We gotta’ go,” Lucas said.
Rico remained transfixed on Zack’s body.
Lucas nudged him on the shoulder. “Rico!”
The major snapped out of his funk. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m good.”
“Do you have a way out of here? One that doesn’t involve a firefight with Kristov’s army?”
“I’ve got it covered. But it’s a long walk back,” Rico answered, sliding his pistol back into his holster. He turned, slung his shredder rifle over his shoulder and climbed through the rubble leading to the opening in the wall.
Lucas followed him. Just as he stepped into the hallway, he heard a faint moan coming from the lab behind him. He decided not turn around or stop—he needed to report back to Kleezebee before the facts of the experiment leaked out from his memory.
TWENTY-SIX
Wyatt Rutherford stood outside the reverend’s private quarters, on the second floor of the hundred-year-old church, staring at the two-line nameplate affixed to the walnut-colored door. He tried to focus his thoughts, but couldn’t, not with the video player in his mind reliving every ghastly detail about the deaths that took place during the torching of the Dunn-Rite Café by his squad.
He exhaled a forceful breath, sending a pungent blast of his own breath ricocheting off the door, snapping him out of his twisted daydream. The odor was distinct and powerful, reminding him of the greasy nuts he had eaten for a snack ten minutes earlier. It was certainly better than the lingering stench of burnt flesh that had been haunting him all day. He took a step back to let his nasal passages recover.
The door’s placard was made from a finely grained piece of wood and stained black, highlighting its letters—if you could call them that; a better term would have been chicken scratches. They looked as though they had been carved with a corkscrew, and done so by someone with a debilitating nerve disorder.
“Not exactly precision work,” Wyatt mumbled.
The first line read Larry B. Mulcahy, with the words Medium & Spiritualist loosely centered beneath it. A crack in the surface ran down the middle of the sign, at a slight angle from top-left to bottom-right, and the seam was covered with a faded, yellow-colored substance, which was probably glue. A set of four Phillips-style screws held the sign in place, one in each corner, though not uniform in their placement. The screw heads looked to be stripped, possibly from repeated tightening.
The non-believers in town referred to the over-sixty preacher as Crazy Larry, instead of Father Mulcahy, even though several of his most famous paranormal accomplishments had been documented and studied by scores of scholars and academics over the years, none of whom had ever been able to prove him a fraud or a fake. The fiery Irishman seemed to go out of his way in the press to take on all skeptics and critics. He was an easy target: constantly touted himself as the “One and Only,” certainly flaming the passions of disbelief. The preacher claimed that his ability to commune with God and heal the sick stemmed from an alien abduction some ten years earlier.
Wyatt took a few moments to run the tip of his index finger across the nameplate, taking in every bump, scratch, and dent that had weathered its surface. He had never met the faith-healer in person before, but had attended several of his recent Sunday demon-purging services. He always arrived early to ensure that his preferred seat in the back-right corner of the last pew was available. But today, neither he nor his soul could sit in the back and hide from damnation.
“You can do this,” Wyatt muttered with a half-breath.
He knocked on the door and waited for an answer. None came. The receptionist downstairs had told him that the cleric was in residence, so he knocked again, this time doubling the force. “Father, may I come in?”
Wyatt heard a hollow clicking sound that ended with a deep thud. The door swung opened six inches, then stopped.
Wyatt put his head inside the opening, trying to determine if he should walk inside, but he couldn’t see anything. He pushed the door open with his elbow and walked in with a half step, wondering if his shin would impact something inside. The overhead lights turned on the instant his foot landed across the threshold.
Father Mulcahy was standing in the corner with his face pressed against the wall. His arms hung straight down along his sides and he was stark naked—his saggy, wrinkled butt pointed at Wyatt. Dozens of aged, one-inch scars covered his back, arms, and legs and his thinning blond hair was sticking out in all directions.
“Father? May I speak with you?”
The reverend never moved. “Yes, Wyatt. What is troubling you?”
“How do you know my name?”
“The One and Only sees all. The conduit to the salvation has no bounds.”
Wyatt wasn’t sure how to respond. “I’m not sure if you know, but I’ve just started attending your services—”
“Last pew on the right. Sunday early service. Five consecutive weeks.”
Wyatt was impressed. “I prefer to sit in the back and meditate.”
“I sense you come here today with a burdened heart, my son.”
“Yes, Father. It’s my job.”
Mulcahy turned his head to the right, never moving his body away from the corner. He mumbled a long string of words at triple speed, but Wyatt couldn’t make out any the words except the last one—Beelzebub.
The faith healer spun his head back to face the corner. “Your faith is in conflict with your actions.”
“Yes. I’ve been asked to do some terrible things. Things that I’m not proud of as a man and as a parent. They weigh on my heart. I need forgiveness, Father. And guidance.”
The father’s voice deepened several levels and slowed its delivery speed, almost as if someone else were speaking. “The men with whom you associate are ripe with contempt for all others. They are true non-believers, sub-creatures of the underworld, destined to burn in the fires of hell for all of eternity. Damnation and pain is their one and only fate. Purge yourself of these demons! Cast out the evil that has forged a stronghold in your soul!”
“I can’t just quit. Cyrus would never allow it. He would kill me and my family.” Wyatt cleared his throat, battling the emotions gripping his chest. “My wife and I just adopted our first child. She’s three. Her name is Mikayla. She’s the love of my life. Everything I do, I do for her.”
“But at what cost?”
Wyatt shook his head. He didn’t answer.
“Let God be your guide back to faith. Choose wisely, before it’s too late.”
“There must be another option. Something else I can do to redeem myself. Help me, Father.”
The preacher didn’t respond.
“Please. I beg you. The guilt weighs so heavily on my soul that I can’t breathe sometimes.”
“There is another choice.”
“What it is? I will do anything.”
“There is a young scientist who hails from another time and place. He has suffered a terrible personal loss and has since turned his back on God, forsaking all that is righteous. He has chosen a dangerous path of violence in his quest for answers. He, too, is adrift without faith. But together, you two shall rise up from the ashes and conquer the tormentors. His name is—” The preacher’s head jerked sideways and he went through another ultra-fast mumble sequence. The last word he spoke this time was sacrilege. Then his speech returned to normal speed when he said, apparently to thin air, “Let the healer handle this task.” He turned his head one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. “Agreed,” he said with conviction, this time sounding like a group of people answering in unison. He turned his head to face the corner again. Then went silent.
Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2) Page 19
