The Lingering

by Brown, Ben

  Markus’s face showed more than a little surprise. “You did? May I ask where you think she may have gone?”

  Westbourne reached for a silver box on his desk, and pulled out a cigar worth more than five hundred pounds. He took his time cutting the end, and lighting it. He drew deeply on the brown aromatic delight, and savoured the smoke as it worked its way into his lungs. Finally, he exhaled and replied, “Australia.”

  Markus’s jaw dropped, and Westbourne smiled at his aid’s reaction.

  “How can you be sure, sir?”

  Westbourne stared at his cigar as he rolled it in his arthritic fingers. The pain the simple act caused cut into him, but he savoured it as much as the cigar itself. Pain meant he was alive, and not one of The Lingering.

  “If I were her, that’s where I would go. We know she has the enzyme, and we know the clean are now safe in their protected compounds. The only piece to her puzzle is the blood of an ancient. Ergo, she is heading to Australia.”

  Markus nodded. “As always, you seem to anticipate her every move. What should we do next?”

  “Prepare the company jet. I feel it’s time I visited my Tasmanian facilities.”

  Markus took a step closer to Westbourne’s large desk. “Are you sure that’s wise, sir? You haven’t been well of late, and a trip may not be in your best interest.”

  Westbourne smiled at his aid, but the smile bore nothing but malice. “I said prepare the plane! Making me ask a third time won’t be in your best interest.”

  Markus bowed slightly. “Of course, Sir Richard, forgive me.”

  Westbourne waved him away and turned his chair towards the window.

  Chapter 10

  Location: HMS Singleton, the Tasman Sea. Coordinates 39.3961° South, 148.0250° East

  Date: June 22nd 2013

  Time: 1:15 p.m.

  “How are you feeling now?” asked Archer as he moved the bucket of vomit away from Kathryn Bartholomew’s bed.

  “I feel like death warmed up. Seasickness has to be the worst thing in the world.”

  Archer laughed as he passed her a cloth to wipe her slightly green face. “I can think of a few worse things,” he said, “but not many.”

  She chuckled slightly, but it sounded forced. “We’ve been at sea for weeks; you would think I’d be used to it by now. One bit of rough water, and I’m spewing like a fountain again.”

  “Are you going to be okay for the briefing later?”

  She laid her head back on her pillow, and placed the damp cloth over her eyes. “I’ll have to be. Nathan, I want to thank you for being so kind. I know we didn’t really get off on the best foot, but I’m glad we’re getting on better now.”

  Archer stood, and headed for the door. “You’re a member of my team, so that makes you family. When family get sick, you look after them.”

  She pulled the cloth from her eyes, and turned her head to look at him. He noticed she looked a little less green around the gills.

  “Nathan, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Even after all your years of dealing with them, you and your people seem so scared of The Lingering. Why is that?”

  “Are you kidding? You know what they can do.”

  She raised herself to a sitting position, and the little colour which had returned to her face, disappeared. “I don’t mean you’re afraid to face them. I mean you all seem scared to become one of them. Why is that?”

  Archer moved back towards her. “We’re not afraid of becoming one of them, not exactly. In an effort to eradicate The Lingering, we have all dedicated our lives to protecting the clean. We may not be finding the cure, like you, but we’re doing our bit. We don’t want to become one of those things, not when a cure is so close. You can’t tell me that you would want to be one of them?”

  Bartholomew shrugged. “I suppose one wouldn’t know much about it. I admit, I wouldn’t want to be a ‘biter’, as you call them. But to be honest, the disease doesn’t bother me.”

  Archer retook his seat. “Then why are you doing all of this?”

  She smiled. “To restore balance.”

  “Balance?”

  She nodded. “We were meant to die, so die we must. What I hate most about The Lingering, is the way we treat them. We shove them out of sight to simply decompose, it’s not right. Plus, I hate the idea of people profiting from them.”

  “You mean Westbourne.”

  She looked at the vomit filled bucket and said, “Not just him, there are a lot of people making money from The Lingering’s misfortune. But I’ll admit he’s the worst of them.” She looked back at Archer.” I’m sorry, my nausea seems to be making me a little introspective.”

  He reached out and squeezed her hand. “Whatever your reason for finding a cure, it’s the right thing to do. Do you want me to flush that before I go?” he jerked his head towards the bucket.

  “Could you? I’m starting to feel a bit sick again, and the thought of washing that bucket isn’t helping.”

  Archer picked it up and headed for the door. “I’ll take it to the head, I’ll be back soon.”

  Bartholomew nodded, and laid back down. When Archer returned a few minutes later, she was fast asleep. He set the empty bucket down beside the bed, and headed off to find the rest of his team.

  Archer found Dallas and Bouchard in the mess hall, playing cards with three of the ship’s crew.

  Bouchard looked up from his hand. “What’s cooking, Boss? How’s that pretty young doctor feeling?”

  Archer looked around the hall. “She feels like shit, but the seas have calmed, so she should be fine soon. Have you seen Fairclough?”

  Dallas pulled a large cigar from his mouth and said, “He’s on the bridge with the captain.”

  “Why’s he up there?”

  “I think he’s got the hots for the old seabird,” laughed Dallas as he shoved the immense stogie back in his mouth.

  Archer grinned. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he did. He’s always liked women in uniforms. One time years ago …”

  He looked from Dallas to Bouchard and could tell they were waiting for something juicy.

  “… Well, I think it best I not say, but ask him about Corporal Ergün and that tattoo on his arse. He may have told you it’s a dancing girl from Vegas, but trust me, there’s more to that tattoo than meets the eye.”

  Bouchard erupted into a deep, bellowing laugh. “He’s a dark ‘orse, is Fairclough, he never gives a lot away. I will torture ‘im for months over that tattoo.”

  Dallas wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “Give us a clue about what happened, Boss.”

  Archer rubbed his chin, as if pondering Dallas’s request. “No, I think it’ll be more fun if you two try to find out for yourselves.” He looked at his watch. “Don’t forget we have our mission briefing in two hours. I’m going to get some shuteye, I’ll see you then.”

  Archer stood at the front of the ward room with the captain of the Singleton, Jacklyn Coonan. Coonan, a stocky woman in her mid-fifties, moved to the podium.

  “Ladies and gentleman, if I may have your attention.” The dozen or so people assembled there fell silent. “Thank you. Mr Archer will begin the briefing, and I will field any questions concerning logistics and support. I cannot stress this enough to my crew. This mission is not military, we are here in a purely support capacity. This mission is the Protection Agency’s, and Mr Archer calls the shots.”

  She eyed her people for several seconds, and then yielded the podium to Archer.

  “Thank you, captain. We’ve all gone over this plan a dozen times, so I won’t bore you all with it again. That said, I do feel it’s important to reiterate the key issues for the Singleton and its crew.

  “You have to hold position for close to five days, which will draw unwanted attention. It is vital the cover story is airtight. After a few days, the Westbourne Corporation will more than likely send someone to check you out. The story is engine failure, so you need to be able t
o prove that. If they send engineers, you need to be able to convince them that the story is true.

  “Secondly: we may call for early extraction. If that happens we’ll need a rapid response. No flying at low levels, just get to us as fast as you can.

  “Lastly: if this mission goes tits up, then all records of us being on board are to be destroyed. Any questions?” Archer looked at Coonan’s people, and when no one raised a hand, he turned to her. “I need to talk to my team in private now.”

  Coonan nodded and said, “You heard the man, let’s give these people some room.”

  It took a minute for Coonan and her people to leave, but once they were gone, Archer settled into his more informal manner.

  “Okay, guys, have any of you got any misgivings? If so, now’s the time to lay them on the table.”

  Fairclough raised his hand.

  “Yes, Peter,” said Archer as he rested his elbows on the podium.

  “Boss, you know we’ll all follow you no matter where you lead. The only misgiving I have is that I ever trusted telling you about Corporal Ergün.”

  Archer, along with Bouchard and Dallas, began to laugh raucously. Dr Bartholomew leaned toward Fairclough and said, “Who’s Corporal Ergün?”

  Fairclough looked at her and said, “It’s the woman whose face I have tattooed on my arse. It’s from back in the days when Archer and I were in the SAS. We’d just finished some training exercises with a bunch of NATO forces, and everyone had been granted leave. Absolutely hundreds of us headed for Amsterdam. The place was heaving with military, so I wasn’t surprised to see a girl in uniform in a bar. She told me she was in the Norwegian army, which turned out to be her second lie.”

  “What was the first?”

  Fairclough’s face turned red. “The first lie was that she was a woman. Only after the tattoo did I find out that she had a bigger set of balls then me.”

  Bartholomew burst into laughter.

  Fairclough got up and headed for the door. “Yeah, laugh it up — she broke my heart.” But now he was laughing too.

  Chapter 11

  Location: Bass Strait. Coordinates 39.232253° South, 145.722656° East

  Date: June 23rd 2013

  Time: 2 a.m.

  Like an ominous black shadow, the EH-101 Merlin chopper hammered towards the Australian mainland. In spite of the fact its underbelly travelled just feet from the waves below, it maintained its maximum speed of one hundred and seventy-five miles per hour. At that speed it would travel the one hundred miles to their destination in less than an hour.

  Archer gripped his weapon tightly, and closed his eyes. He tried to work over possible outcomes and options for the mission, but as with all his other assignments, his thoughts turned to his parents and the day he lost them.

  His mind was no longer in the chopper. He had become the seven-year-old boy in the back of his families Ford Zephyr. They were on their way to a holiday camp, was it Pontins, or Butlins? It didn’t matter to him, they were all fun. They all had rides, activities, shows, candyfloss and lots of kids. There would be kids everywhere, and they would all want to play. He loved the summer holidays, but then again, what kid didn’t?

  “Nate, do you fancy a sing-along?”

  The boy laughed, and said, “No, mum, I don’t.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled that smile of hers. “Well I do.” With that she broke into a chorus of the song she sang each and every year. “We’re all going on a summer holiday, no more working for a week or …” Without warning, his mother abruptly stopped her singing, and grabbed his father’s shoulder. “Bill – watch out!”

  Suddenly, the car swerved, and smashed into a power pole. Nathan never found out what caused his father to swerve so violently, but the results of that action would haunt him all his life.

  The child he once was, awoke from his lapse into darkness and smelled petrol and smoke. He shifted position, and a shaft of pain pierced his right arm. The young Nathan looked down at it, and his eyes went wide. He could see a bone protruding from his forearm. Panicked, and again feeling faint, the boy began to franticly yell, “Mum, dad!” Nothing, so he yelled again, this time louder. “Mum, dad!”

  The two in the front began to move, and groan. Thank God, they’re alive, thought the young Nathan. He reached and touched his mother’s shoulder lovingly. But instead of his mother returning his tender touch, she turned and lunged for him. Nathan scrambled back in his seat, his screams now filled with true terror.

  His father began to move and groan. The abomination, which had once been the woman who had cared for his every need, stopped its attempts to grab him and turned to the man beside it. In one lightning quick move, it latched on to his father’s neck and ripped an immense lump of grizzled flesh from his throat.

  His father’s eyes locked on his son, and even at Nathan’s young age, he recognized real pain in them. Not the pain of the attack, but the pain of losing his family to a nightmare. “Nate — run!”

  His father’s voice seemed to be coming from below water. The words seemed to gurgle from his lips. Again, the foul creature at his father’s side lunged, and his father said no more.

  Nathan’s shaking hand battled with the handle of the door, but the child safety locks were on, and the door did not yield to his command. He began to hammer on the glass, and suddenly the door burst open. Strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders, and he was wrenched free of the car. He realized he was in the arms of a man, and the man was now running.

  “My mum and dad, they need help,” cried the terrified boy as he looked back at the flaming vehicle.

  “I’m sorry, there’s nothing anyone can do, not now,” replied his rescuer coldly.

  The car exploded into a fireball, and the panting hero finally stopped running. He placed the injured boy on the ground, and looked at his badly broken arm.

  Nathan stared at his face. It was pale, and sweat beaded his brow. “Are my parents … dead?”

  The man looked over his shoulder at the flaming wreck. “Yes, I’m sorry.”

  A woman appeared at their side, and wrapped a blanket around each of them. “I’ve called for an ambulance,” she said as she stroked Nathan’s hair out of his eyes. “Are you his dad?”

  The man looked up at her, and Nathan could see tears in his eyes. “No, they were both trapped in the car. He saw his mum attack his dad.”

  The woman looked at Nathan, and pity scarred her face. “You mean the poor thing saw her change?”

  She kissed Nathan on the forehead, and the boy began to cry. No, not cry. He began to vent his anger and hurt through great bellows of grief and pain.

  Startled by his outburst the woman stepped back from him, and her face betrayed her. She was clearly shocked by such an animalistic expression of grief from someone so young.

  She began to edge away from them both. “I’ll get you both a hot drink, that’s always good in situations like this.”

  As she ran back towards her house, the man wrapped his arms around the still bellowing boy. A crowd of onlookers had now formed around them, and someone had turned their garden hose onto the burning car. Sirens could be heard in the distance, and a low murmur began to resinate through the horde of nosy spectators.

  “Let it out,” the man whispered in his ear, “let it all out.”

  Nathan gripped the man with his one functioning arm, and unleashed another guttural wail.

  Archer’s eyes jerked wide, and he let out an unintentional gasp. He looked around the chopper as his hand went to his sweat drenched brow. Fairclough caught his eye, and nodded to him reassuringly.

  Why do I have to keep getting that fucking memory before every mission? thought Archer as he nodded back at Fairclough. It’s the same thing every time, I need to let it go.

  He jumped slightly as a hand touched his shoulder. Archer turned to look at the person by his side. Dr Bartholomew looked back at him, and he could see she looked concerned.

  “Are you alright?” she as
ked as she released his shoulder.

  “I’m okay, just pre-mission jitters.”

  “You still get the jitters, even after all the missions you’ve been on?’

  He looked her deep in the eyes. “If you don’t get jitters, then all your fear has gone. If all the fear is gone, you get sloppy, and people die. Trust me – the jitters are a good thing.”

  Bartholomew nodded slowly. “I know I’m terrified. It’s not that I’m scared of The Lingering, because I’m not. I’ve dealt with the infected all my working life, and I know how to handle them. I’m terrified of what we’re going to find.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked at him for a moment, then said, “The Lingering are easy to predict, people aren’t. No one, except Westbourne’s employees have set foot in Australia for close to two centuries. No one really knows what they’ve been up to all this time. I’m terrified we’re going to find something that no one expected.”

  Archer pondered her words. He felt sure she was trying to tell him something, but what? “Kathryn, do you know something that we don’t?”

  For a long time she just stared at him. Finally her shoulder slumped and she nodded.

  Archer’s heart began to pound. “Well spill it, or I’ll order this chopper to turn around.”

  “During my research I began to see signs of sentients among The Lingering. Well, maybe sentient is a strong word, but they certainly seemed to be exhibiting signs of independent thought.”

  Archer shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. We’ve known for decades that their higher brain function is gone; they’re just running on instinct. If what you say is true, then why have you kept it to yourself? Surely you realize this information affects the mission.”

  Bartholomew could no longer look him in the eye. Instead her gaze fell to her lap. “I took my findings to my superiors, but they disagreed with my conclusions. They said I needed more evidence before making such bold claims, so they ordered me to keep my opinions to myself. I can no longer obey those orders, this information is simply too important to keep from you.”