by Layton Green
Charlie tried to hug Grey, but he held her off and took her by the arm. “Show me your hand.”
“What?”
“Your hand.”
Unnerved by his intensity, Charlie let Grey flatten her palm and examine the fingers of her left hand. He stiffened when he saw how the nails extended half an inch above the fingers and had already started tapering to a point. They felt much harder than fingernails should feel.
“Weird, huh?” Charlie said, after another bout of coughing. “This morning I woke up like this. My muscles feel weird, too.”
Grey started to tremble.
-45-
Naomi took the binoculars back from Viktor. “So that’s how they’ve been accessing the lab. A sewage tunnel connected to van Draker’s cellar.”
Viktor noticed a short enclosed walkway linking the guard shack to the large brick building with no windows they had spied earlier. “Do we try to get in? How confident are you that you can subdue the guards?”
“I’m a police officer, not James Bond,” she said.
“I couldn’t tell from the escape last night.”
She waved a hand. “Those are just bush driving skills. What about your partner? Any word?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What if he . . . doesn’t respond?”
Viktor felt his chest tighten. “I don’t know. Is there another officer you trust? Someone who could help us get inside?”
“No one who would cross van Draker,” she said slowly. “Especially not with a warrant out for my arrest.” Naomi belly-crawled out of the bushes and pushed to her feet, leading the way back to the Corolla she had hotwired. “They’ll find the Land Cruiser and be looking for this car by morning. We can’t hide forever, unless we go into the bush. And that doesn’t help with van Draker. We’ll just be fugitives.”
“I know,” Viktor said, striding forward to keep up with her. “I know.”
The morning sky was a forge of red light, bellows pumping fog, as dawn crept over the jagged tips of the mountains. Viktor and Naomi drove away from the nature preserve on a back road that skirted a series of ravines with muscled green slopes.
Neither Viktor nor Naomi had a plan, and the sergeant didn’t know whom to trust. They were tossing ideas back and forth when a car approached from behind, blue lights flashing.
Naomi gripped the wheel. “Someone must have gone to work early in that office park.”
“Every policeman in the area is probably searching for your car. What do we do?”
Naomi slowed to a stop on the side of the road and gave Viktor instructions. He felt a trickle of sweat under his collar. “Are you sure?”
“It’s the only way. If it’s a junior patrol officer, he might not even have a firearm.” She put a hand on Viktor’s thigh. “This means crossing a line. I understand if you want to stay in the car.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Viktor said, “but you’re wasting time.”
She met his gaze and stepped out of the car with her hands up. “I’m unarmed,” she called out, and started walking towards the police car.
A young male officer exited with his pistol raised. He pointed his free hand at Viktor. “You, too.”
Viktor eased out of the car, giving Naomi time to get closer.
“Stop moving, Naomi!”
“It’s me, Geert. I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all a mistake.”
Naomi had drawn to within ten feet.
Geert swiveled towards her. “Not another step!”
Viktor reached into the car and whipped out the shotgun, pointing it at the policeman. He wasn’t going to shoot, but he had to sell his intent.
Geert took his eyes off Naomi and froze, the pistol pointing halfway between Viktor and Naomi. The officer knew the professor had the drop on him. Naomi approached swiftly, took Geert’s weapon and phone, and locked him in the back of his own patrol car.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Geert said.
“Who do you trust,” Naomi shot back, “a fellow officer or Jans van Draker?”
Geert shook his head. “I’m just doing my job, hey?”
Naomi and Viktor drove off in the Corolla, knowing it was marked but unsure where to go or what to do. They just knew they had to get off the road and find a safe haven.
The professor tried Grey again from Naomi’s phone, and to his surprise, he answered. “Finally,” Viktor said in relief. “Where are you?”
“On my way to you,” Grey said. “Why are you using Sergeant Linde’s phone?”
“What?”
“I saw the news. They might be tracing you.”
“They can do that this quickly, with a cell phone?”
“They’re resurrecting human beings and orchestrating a global genocide.”
“Ah, yes. Good point. I’ll dispose of it after we speak. What do you mean, you’re on your way to me?”
Grey gave him an extremely abbreviated version of the events of the last few days, and said, “They injected Charlie, Viktor. The night before we freed her. Her nails are growing and there are other signs.”
Viktor closed his eyes and put his fingertips to his temple. “Do prdele.”
“You said before you thought van Draker has a vaccine,” Grey continued. “Is that still true?”
“If it exists. The only other place would be Iceland.”
“Those labs were old, barely in use. It didn’t feel right.”
Viktor compressed his lips and told Grey about the secret entrance he suspected lay somewhere inside the water treatment plant.
“Can you find someplace to hole up until I get there?” Grey asked. After a pause, his voice lowered, as if he didn’t want to be heard. “The sooner the better. She’s changing.”
Viktor thought, and an idea sprang into his head, someplace he and Naomi might be safe as long as they could arrive unnoticed. “I believe so.”
“Then ditch the car and the phone, and get there as soon as you can. Use another phone and text me your location. I’ll come get you. Or I can go in alone, and get you later.”
“No,” Viktor said quickly. “You might need me.”
Grey’s voice hardened. “I know there are things in that lab you want to see for yourself. But is now the time?”
“I’ve been in the lab and I know van Draker. You’ll need help.”
“Fine,” Grey said, after a moment. “Now get rid of that phone. And the car.”
After they hung up, Viktor held the cell phone tight in his hands, digesting the conversation. Then he took out the SIM card and lowered the window, tossed the phone, and turned towards Naomi. “I have an idea,” he said.
-46-
“What is it with you people and underground labs?” Jax said as he drove a Nissan XTrail 4x4, rented under yet another false name, into the Cape Town city center. Grey was in the back seat, watching Charlie’s condition worsen as he waited anxiously for Viktor’s text.
On the flight over, Charlie’s skin had turned feverish and assumed a grayish pallor. Her hair was falling out in clumps, the fingernail growth continued, and veins bulged from her engorged muscles.
In a frightened voice, she had asked Grey what was happening to her. It broke his heart, but he told her.
She took it as she always did, with a brave stoicism that a child without her experiences would never have mustered.
I’ll fix this, Charlie, he vowed. I’ll fix it or die trying.
When they reached the Isle of Skye, Grey had called Dr. Varela and asked if the vaccine was ready, and whether there was anything he could do for Charlie.
Dr. Varela said an experimental vaccine was closer but still some time away.
And that he should call a priest.
Jax bartered for another flight, this one to a private airport near Cape Town. Another ten grand on Grey’s dime. After a heated negotiation, Jax ate half the cost of the helicopter flight from Iceland.
They had landed near Cape Town at dusk, almost twenty-four hours after t
heir escape from the W.A.R. stronghold. Before Viktor hung up, he had divulged the location of the old water treatment plant, in case the professor and Naomi didn’t make it to a safe-house. Charlie might not last until morning, Grey knew.
As soon as midnight hit, he was going in. With or without Viktor.
“Where to?” Jax asked.
Grey had visited Cape Town once before, when he lived in Zimbabwe, but didn’t know the city very well. “Any place we can hole up for a few hours?”
“How about some grub?” Charlie chimed in. She was curled into a ball, covering her clawed hands and taking in the city with wide eyes. “Do you have to starve yourself on missions?”
“You heard her,” Grey said. He winked at Charlie, trying to keep her spirits high. “Burger and fries?”
“You know it.”
Jax gave it some thought. “There might be a W.A.R. sympathizer in a merc joint. In the high-end places, too.” Jax grinned at Charlie in the rear view. “I know just the one.”
After stopping at a pharmacy for Ibuprofen, Jax took them to a bar called Rafiki on Kloofnek Street. They sat on a balcony with a view of Lion’s Head peak, so close it seemed they could reach out and touch it. The clientele at the wrap-around bar resembled a pierced and tattooed United Nations meeting.
“This burger’s dope,” Charlie said, awkwardly trying to use her stiffened fingers to eat, “but I don’t feel so hot.”
Grey put a hand on her elbow. “You need some more water?”
“Nah,” she mumbled, looking nauseated. “Be right back.”
Grey winced as she rose to use the restroom. She had barely touched her food.
“What’s the prognosis?” Jax said, after she left.
The bathroom door was in full view, and Grey kept an eye on it. “Days, at best, unless we find an antidote. And we’re not sure one exists.”
Jax swallowed and set his burger down. “Damn. She’s a good kid.”
“The best,” Grey said, his voice remote.
“Would a hospital help?”
“Not really, and I can’t risk her being targeted.”
Jax glanced up at the proud chin thrust of Lion’s Head, and then back at Grey. “Listen, I want you to know . . . whatever you need on this thing, I’m in.”
Grey looked him in the eye. “I appreciate that. There’s really only one more job, but it’s very, very important.”
“You got it, brother. What do you need?”
“A babysitter.”
After dinner, they left the city on the N2. When they reached the barren lowlands near the airport, Grey noticed Charlie absorbing the rotting shacks lining the road, the slums cordoned off by trash-heaped fences that provided a physical and spiritual boundary.
“That’s not cool,” Charlie said, with a cough.
“No,” Grey said, “it’s not.”
“C’mon, Viktor,” Grey muttered to himself. Hurry up and text.
Glancing back at Charlie’s drawn features, Jax veered off the N2 and took them to a coastal town called Betty’s Bay. Surrounded by a bowl of sheer mountains thrusting upward like swords, kissed by the Antarctic, the teal bay at the end of the scenic drive was an awe-inspiring sight.
“First time in Africa, kid?” Jax asked Charlie, as they all left the car and followed a tourist trail skirting the edge of the rocky cove. The fishy, iodine smell of beached kelp wrinkled Grey’s nose.
“Uh, first time outta New York.”
“Africa is where it’s at,” Jax said, “if you like beauty and adventure. But it isn’t for sissies.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “This area’s a good way to ease in. The Western Cape is like California. With cobras.”
Charlie laughed. “Do you always work with Teach?”
“Jax is an entrepreneur,” Grey cut in, giving the mercenary a long stare. “He helps people out sometimes.”
“That’s right,” Jax said, with a smirk. “When people need something special, they give me a call.”
“You as good as Teach is?”
“Depends on what you need done,” Jax said.
“You know,” Charlie threw a few air punches, “with taking care of business.”
Grey had heard enough. He didn’t want Jax filling her head with his bullshit philosophies. “Ever seen penguins before?” he asked, checking his phone for the hundredth time as he pointed behind Charlie.
She whipped around, gasping with delight as a pair of the tuxedoed flightless birds climbed out of the water and waddled across a rock. Charlie rushed to the railing, the conversation already forgotten.
They camped out in the parking lot until eleven p.m., after Grey had almost given up hope on Viktor. When he finally got a text from a burner phone with an address in the Cape Flats, he cocked his head in confusion, and showed it to Jax.
The mercenary took the phone. “A chicken shack?” He typed the name into his phone’s GPS, then raised his eyebrows. “I’ll be damned.”
After a long and harrowing drive through the Cape Flats at night, a journey in which Grey thought numerous times that he and Jax were about to be carjacked—or at least attempted to be—they finally rolled through a congested slum and into a square of cracked pavement peppered with open-air stalls closed for the night. Discarded wrappers, bottles, and other urban detritus littered the streets. Groups of locals slithered into the darkness at the sight of the late-model Nissan.
Grey tensed and told Charlie to get down as half a dozen armed men emerged from behind one of the shacks lining the periphery of the square. At first, Grey thought Viktor had been compromised, but Jax kept his cool, lowered the window, and calmly told the men who they were looking for. With a nod of recognition and an almost incomprehensible accent, one of the men stepped forward and told them to park the car behind the shack and follow them inside. They gave Charlie a curious glance but said nothing.
In a tiny kitchen filled with the aroma of charcoal and caramelized chicken fat, Grey found Viktor sitting on a chair of stacked milked crates next to a tall blond woman in her forties with rugged good looks.
The professor greeted Grey and Charlie warmly, and gave Jax a nod. “Grey told me you were involved.”
“Professor,” Jax said, tipping his head in return. “We should stop meeting like this.”
Viktor introduced Officer Linde and his driver, a ferret-like Malay man eating a chicken leg on a Styrofoam plate. Grey noticed the look of mutual respect—and attraction—that passed between Viktor and the blond officer.
After discussing a strategy to infiltrate the water treatment plant, Grey paced the room with his hands behind his head. “We’ve no idea what’s waiting for us in there. How many guards there will be. I doubt it’s a military base, but if that’s where the virus is made . . .”
“You could use a distraction,” Jax said. “Once you get inside.”
Grey nodded.
“I could take care of that.”
Grey thought about it, and discarded the idea. Not only could their enemies use Charlie as leverage if they located her, but she might need protecting from herself. “I want you with her. At all times.”
Jax put his hands up. “You’re the boss.”
“I don’t need washing, yo,” Charlie said, then doubled over coughing. “I mean watching.”
Though she looked fitter than ever, Charlie had lost more hair and started to slur her speech. Grey knew the muscles and other signs of advanced physicality were an illusion. The last gasp of the deadly gargoyle virus. He sensed that, if she lost her grip on her mind, even an antidote would be futile.
One of the local men stepped forward, giving Charlie a long glance before turning to Grey. “You need a distraction, is it?”
After scouting the perimeter of the water treatment plant, Grey climbed down a wooded section of the hill on the western side. The night was cool, the insects a chorus of baby rattles. Using disposable phones the owners of the chicken shack had lent them, Grey waited for Viktor to text him the go-ahead.
; At 12:35 a.m., the signal came.
The guards were on a smoke break.
Grey had five minutes.
He hurried to the bottom of the eight-foot wall, jumped, and pulled himself up. Balancing on the narrow ledge, inches away from the electric fencing that topped the wall, he took four strips of black rubber out of his backpack. Old bicycle tires supplied by the men in the slum, which Grey had cut and fashioned into foot-length sections.
Four strands of taut electric fencing, each a foot apart, topped the cement portion of the wall. Grey knew the wires were live by the faint, sporadic click-clack sound they emitted.
Grey fitted the tire strips over the strands of electric fencing, one atop the other. He pulled on the wires to test them. No sag. Good. Cutting or touching the wires together likely would trigger an alarm.
Using the rubber as handholds and footholds, Grey climbed over the fence and dropped to the other side, noting the cameras spaced along the lower sections of the wall. If he didn’t make it to the guard shack in time, the guards would spot him at once.
He took out the Glock G43 Jax’s pilot had sold them and sprinted across the property, switching off the trigger safety as he ran.
He rounded a corner and saw the guard shack a hundred yards away, just visible in the darkness. He slowed and ran as silently as he could, until he saw two guards pinching off their cigarettes a few feet from the door to the shack.
Fifty yards to go.
Grey had to get closer. He gave it everything he had.
The guards dropped the butts and started for the guard shack. Grey wasn’t going to make it. Left with no choice, praying no one else was in earshot, he fired above their heads.
One of the men dropped to the ground. The other whirled and darted for the guard shack. Damn. Grey fired at the door and missed it by a foot, but it caused the guard to freeze.
“On the ground!” Grey shouted. “Do it!”
He worried the guard would bolt inside and risk getting shot, but the man reluctantly dropped to his knees and then his stomach. Grey breathed a sigh of relief as he ran forward, keeping his gun trained on the men.
