J.A. Konrath / Jack Kilborn Trilogy - Three Scary Thriller Novels (Origin, The List, Haunted House)

by J. A. Konrath

  Meyer theorized that Bub’s endocrine system was extremely advanced. The endocrine system in humans was capable of instantaneous reaction, such as a burst of adrenaline in a dangerous situation. Bub’s had developed to the point where it had taken over the healing functions, knitting wounds instantly. Nixon had given the go-ahead to fully amputate one of Bub’s limbs, but Meyer and Storky only went as far as a finger tip.

  It grew back, longer and sharper than before.

  Sun thought of Hercules and the hydra. Every time he cut off a head, it grew two more.

  Meyer and Storky also tried to accurately gauge Bub’s age. They took a sample of Bub’s horn and tried to carbon date it. All living things take in carbon-14, which is created in the earth’s atmosphere when the sun’s rays strike nitrogen gas. It combines with oxygen to form CO2. As long as the organism is alive, it has a constant new supply of C-14. But in dead tissue, the C-14 begins to decay into nitrogen-14, with a half life of about 5,730 years. Since Bub’s horn—made of keratin like hair and feathers—was dead tissue, it seemed ideal for the task.

  Something wasn’t right, apparently, because the amount of N-14 found in the sample would have put Bub’s age at over 200,000 years. Obviously impossible. Meyer hypothesized that since Bub breathed and was able to process nitrogen, that somehow accounted for the high N-14 count. Sun, who never excelled at chemistry, found that explanation suspicious, but easier to believe than the idea that Bub was older than mankind itself.

  Along with a record of Bub’s medical history, Sun was also sorting through the hundreds and thousands of pictures taken since the project’s beginning. Everything and everyone involved in Samhain over the last century had been photographed, filmed, recorded, and videotaped, and more than half of the file cabinets in Red 3 were filled to the brim with visual media.

  Somewhere, buried in all of this mess, was the answer she was looking for.

  Sun didn’t share Dr. Belgium’s belief that Bub was some strange, prehistoric missing link. She also didn’t share the view of the holies, who believed Bub was a true demon, a spawn of hell.

  Sun had a different theory, one she wasn’t willing to share yet. Not without proof. Given that the average tenure here was twenty-two years, Sun figured she’d find it eventually. In twenty-two years a person could find anything.

  Maybe even peace.

  She finished sorting the files in front of her, and then moved on to the next cabinet. It was crammed full of serum and tissue analyses. Sun picked up a thick folder containing an in-depth report on the physical properties of Bub’s early stool samples. It didn’t surprise her to find out that they contained ample amounts of radioactivity.

  The demon was so damn tough, even his droppings were nuclear.

  She gave it a cursory flip through and dropped it in the BUB pile.

  “Attention, this is Race.”

  Sun reflexively looked up at the intercom speaker near the door.

  “We have a new arrival, Andrew Dennison, and I think it would be a good time to have a group powwow to get him up to speed on the project. The Mess Hall, in five. Refreshments will be served.”

  Race chuckled and cut out.

  Sun placed her hands on her lower back and stretched, the vertebrae crackling like a bag of chips. She left the lights on in Red 3 and headed for the Octopus. Her thoughts drifted to Andy Dennison, not for the first time.

  Sun thought he was cute, in a non-threatening teddy bear kind of way. He was trying hard to be amusing. The complete opposite of Steven, who was so self-assured and serious. She compared all men to Steven, and they all came up lacking. That was one of the reasons she’d been celibate since his death. Everyone else seemed like a step down.

  So what was it about this new guy that intrigued her? Must be hormonal, she decided. She had been completely alone in Africa. Andy was the first man her age she’d had a conversation with in close to a year.

  Maybe she should let down her guard a notch, stop acting so hard-nosed. Would it kill her to be personable? He obviously found her attractive. She should be flattered rather than irritated.

  But then, she should be a lot of things.

  Sun walked through the Octopus and went down the Green Arm. Before entering the Mess Hall she absently reached for her purse to check her hair in her make-up compact. The gesture annoyed her; she hadn’t carried a purse or a compact in a long time.

  She settled for finger-combing her bangs back, and went into the cafeteria. The holies were already there, locked in their usual intense debate. Dr. Belgium was measuring coffee to put into the automatic maker, his actions as meticulous and precise as they were in the lab. Andy was leaning against the water cooler, hands in his pockets. Sun caught his eye and tried to look sympathetic. He gave her a shy smile back and walked over to her.

  “Sorry about…”

  “No need,” Sun interrupted. “We’ve all been there.”

  “I haven’t thrown up since doing keg stands in college.”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “Oh. Harvard.”

  He said it as if it embarrassed him. Sun had met plenty of Harvard men, and they usually wore it like a badge of honor. Interesting.

  “How about you?” Andy asked.

  “Johns… uh Iowa State.”

  “Were you going to say Johns Hopkins? I didn’t know they offered veterinary medicine.”

  Sun thought fast. “I lived in Maryland, took some undergrad classes there. Transferred to Iowa.”

  If he’d caught her lie she couldn’t tell.

  “Is that what you always wanted to be? A vet?”

  “Yeah.” Another lie. “Did you always want to be a linguist?”

  “I never really thought about it. It’s something I’ve always been good at.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I do, or why would I do it, right? Do you like being a vet?”

  “Yes,” Sun said, happy to say something honest. “I don’t beat myself up if my patients die.”

  Andy smiled. He had a pleasant smile, she thought. She smiled back, surprised at how good it felt.

  “I’m still not sure if I want to stay,” Andy said. “This isn’t a normal translating job for me. I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “It’s okay to be afraid.”

  “I’d bet you’ve never been afraid of anything in your entire life.”

  “Not true. When I was seven, a bat got in my bedroom. Harmless, couldn’t have been bigger than a tennis ball. But the way it flew; in a figure eight, unbelievably fast, inches from my face on every pass—it terrified me. Then it landed on my head, got tangled up in my hair. I was so scared I couldn’t move. Took about five minutes to get up the guts to scream. Seemed like an eternity.”

  “What happened?”

  “Dad came in, caught it with a blanket, let it outside. He said it must have come in through the window. I didn’t open my window again until I was eighteen.”

  They shared a small laugh, which felt even better than the smile.

  “Well, now you’re taking care of the biggest bat in the history of the world,” Andy said.

  “Gotta face your fears sometime. Besides, I think Bub’s a wee bit too big to get tangled in my hair.”

  “You don’t find him terrifying?”

  “At first I did. Now I’m more intrigued than scared. Aren’t you just a little bit curious about him?”

  Andy rubbed his upper lip. “It’s hard to be curious when breakfast is coming out of your nose.”

  “Just think about it for a second. Every person on earth, no matter what country or culture, has some kind of idea of the devil. But no one has ever seen him before. Don’t you want to know more about him?”

  “You think he’s really Satan?”

  “Actually, I find that pretty hard to believe.”

  “So what is he? An alien or something?” Andy asked.

  “That’s hard to believe too. But of the two, I’d buy the alien theor
y more than the biblical one. His physiology is just too strange.”

  “An alien, huh? So is he the kind that flies around with Elliot, or the kind that eats Sigorney Weaver?”

  “I don’t know yet. He seems friendly.”

  “Maybe that’s because he’s locked up. I wonder how friendly he’d be on the other side of the Plexiglas.”

  Race entered the Mess Hall with Dr. Harker. They were in mid-conversation and Sun caught the end of it.

  “…for what you’ve done with her. I still can’t accept why you’re here, but—”

  “No thanks needed, General.” A frowning Harker cut him off. “It’s my job.”

  Just visited Helen, Sun guessed. Both looked grim. Harker retained the look; she probably scowled in her sleep as well.

  Race, with the poise of any good leader, quickly hid his feelings with a good ole boy smile. “Good, we’re all here. Before we get started with the intros I’d like to announce that the Jacuzzi should be operational again by tomorrow. The same rules apply as with the pool, swimming suits are mandatory. You got that, Frank? We have ladies present.”

  Dr. Belgium gave Race a nod without turning his attention from the brewing coffee.

  “Good. Now I think all of you have met Andy Dennison by now, except for Julie. So let’s start with you.”

  Harker had a long, hound-doggish face and a droning voice which left no doubt that she didn’t kindly suffer fools. Sun learned after only a few meetings with her that Harker considered everyone a fool.

  “I’m Dr. Julie Harker. I came on in 1980 to oversee the medical well-being of the Samhain team, including the dispensing of medication and monthly physicals. I’ve also been monitoring Bub’s vitals since my arrival, and have been attending to the treatment of General Race’s wife Helen.”

  It didn’t surprise Sun that it was the exact same speech she’d given to her a week prior, right down to the nasally inflection.

  “Thank you, Julie,” Race said, and Dr. Harker took a seat and removed a nail clipper from the chest pocket of her lab coat. She began to snip away at a hangnail. “How about you, Frank?”

  “Hmm? Oh, sure.”

  Dr. Frank Belgium touched the fresh cup of coffee to his lips and took a large slurp.

  “Frank Belgium, molecular biologist. I’m the gene guy. I’ve been mapping Bub’s genes. Hard, very hard. As you may know, or, well, maybe you don’t, it took ten years for the human genome to get sequenced, and we’ve only got 23 pairs of chromosomes, and less than 25,000 genes. We’ve isolated 44 pairs of chromosomes in Bub. Hard work. Hard hard hard.”

  Belgium took another loud slurp of coffee.

  “But he’s from earth. I’m sure. Bub has the same twenty amino acids as all life on this planet. Why is this important? Well there are about 80 different types of amino acids, and all can create proteins, but nothing on earth uses those extra sixty. All life—plant, animal, bacteria—uses different combinations of those same twenty, and the reason is because we all evolved from one common ancestor. That’s why all living organisms share genes. Everyone in this room, on this planet, shares 99.9 percent of the same DNA. We share 98.4 with chimpanzees, 98.3 with gorillas, all the way on down to blue-green algae.”

  Sun glanced at Andy. He was being drawn in by Frank’s words, the same way Sun had been upon first hearing them.

  “Now,” Belgium continued, “if life started several times, rather than just once, we’d probably find different amino acids in different things on earth. But we don’t, we all have the same genetic code, and Bub shares it as well.

  “What I’m doing, is mapping sequences in Bub’s genome to find out what on earth he shares the most genes with. Very hit or miss when we’re not sure where to look. It’s kind of like searching for a single sentence in a single book in the Library of Congress.”

  Frank shrugged and drank more coffee.

  “What do you believe Bub is, Doctor?” Race asked, glancing at Andy while he spoke.

  “I think, well, I guess I think he’s a little bit of everything. A mutation. Maybe he’s a member of a prehistoric race that became extinct… since he’s intelligent it would reason that we’ve never found fossils of his kind, perhaps they cremated their dead, or buried them at sea. Or maybe he’s a genetic experiment. Maybe our own government created him.”

  “In 1906?” snorted Harker.

  “Dr. Harker, what proof do we have that he’s actually been here since 1906? Were you here when he arrived? How do we know that we’re not caught up in some crazy conspiracy to help test the latest in biological weapon technology?”

  “At least that would stir things up a bit around here.” Race gave a wide Southern grin.

  “How about an extraterrestrial?” Andy asked. “Isn’t there any possibility Bub is from another planet?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Even if we discounted the problems associated with space travel from another galaxy, it would be a zillion to one, a gazillion to one, that life formed on another planet with the exact same genetic make-up as life on earth. It would be easier for the same lottery number to come up every single night for a hundred years…”

  “Unless it was intentional.” Father Thrist cleared his throat and crossed his arms. “Unless God created Bub the same way He created man and all life on earth. That would explain Bub’s genetic code without the need for evolution, molecular engineering, or space travel.”

  Frank raised an eyebrow. “I thought demons and angels had no physical presence. They’re ethereal, only existing in heaven and hell.”

  Thrist laughed. It was the first time Sun had seen mirth from the terminally serious priest.

  “All of my life, people have questioned my beliefs because there has been no physical evidence to substantiate them. Now here we have something that is clearly a demon, or even Satan himself. Something we can see and touch. And everyone is looking for a new answer, rather than the answer that Christianity has had for two thousand years.”

  “Judaism has had it for over three thousand,” Rabbi Shotzen said, wagging a finger.

  Thrist gave him a sideways glance. “All around is proof of God’s creation. Me, you, trees, birds, the earth, the universe—but since the beginning of this century mankind has worshiped the god of science, rather than our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here is something science cannot explain, yet you refuse to believe. Andrew,” Thrist gave the linguist his full attention. “What was your reaction when you first saw Bub?”

  “Fear,” Andy answered.

  “But what did Bub represent to you? When you saw him?”

  “A devil.”

  Thrist nodded. “Everyone who sees Bub recognizes a devil. They are concerning themselves with the how and the why, but the ‘what’ has been answered. Bub is a devil. Where do devils come from, Andrew?”

  “This one came from Panama.”

  Sun and the others laughed. Rabbi Shotzen had to be nudged by Thrist because his laughter went on longer than the others’.

  “But before he was found in Panama, where did Bub come from?”

  “Devils usually come from hell,” Andy said.

  “Or heaven,” Shotzen added. “Depending on your interpretation of his creation. Lucifer, the Morning Star, had tried to shine brighter than Adonai, was cast out of heaven for his pride.”

  “Or, according to Enoch,” Thrist said, “Devils are angels who chose to fornicate with humans. Wasn’t that the explanation Rabbi Elkiezer gave in the 8th century? Something about fornicating with the daughters of Cain?”

  Shotzen dismissed him. “Remember, Enoch wrote pseudepigrapha and apocrypha—nothing the scribe did went into the Torah.”

  “But,” Thrist countered, “if we were to base our conceptions solely on the Bible, which encompasses the Torah, we’d have very little to go on.”

  “Devils and angels were created by ha-shem as separate entities,” Shotzen insisted. “Had adonai created angels that became devils, it would contradict His perfection. Instead, ha-sh
em created devils to punish sin. It can be interpreted that all evil, in fact, is Satanic rather than Divine. The Book of Jubilees agrees.”

  “Either way,” Thrist said, “we have a being here that is obviously supernatural, and obviously created by God. Shouldn’t we be focusing our efforts on attempting to figure out why He allowed us to find Bub, and what He expects us to do with this knowledge? Is this the beginning of the apocalypse? The first sign of Armageddon? Or should we take this as a message that God indeed exists, and use it to spread His word? And why, after almost a hundred years at this facility, and who knows how many more years buried in the ground, did Bub finally wake up?”

  “That’s why Andy is here,” Race said. “To ask him. Right Andy?”

  Sun glanced at Andy, who squirmed under the spotlight. She raised an eyebrow.

  “Uh… are we sure he can’t escape?” Andy asked.

  Race grinned. “His enclosure is four foot concrete with steel plates sandwiched in between each foot. The Plexiglas is bullet proof, shatter proof, fire proof, and has been tested up to sixteen thousand pounds per square inch. Even if he did escape the habitat, he’s two hundred feet underground, and he’d have to go through those two titanium doors. Plus, there are safeguards.”

  “Such as?”

  “In the eighties, the President decided that if Bub were to ever wake up, we’d need to have some control over him. Bub has two explosive charges surgically imbedded inside of him, one in the neck and one in the heart. Either one would render Bub out of commission, even with his rapid healing abilities. He’s got enough boom in him to blow up a tank.”

  Andy’s face scrunched up in thought. Sun watched him. She wanted him to stay, she realized, and that surprised as much as scared her.

  “I’ll need some things; books, programs, access to the Internet. And that capsule that Bub was found in, are there pictures of the writing?”

  “Son, we’ve got the whole damn capsule, you want to see it.”

  “I want to see it. It’s as good a starting place as any. I also need the video recordings of Bub since he’s been awake, anything that has him speaking. He’s only said a few things to me so far.”