Maverick pulled the dead co-pilot from the cockpit and tried to cover him up, but the scent quickly attracted pterosaurs, that began to buzz the ledge. While Wilkes and Garner pot-shot the circling dragons, Maverick simply tossed the body over the cliff.
“Sorry, pal,” he muttered.
Wilkes and Garner had both already tried their radios but had gotten nothing.
“We're on the opposite side of the range, and tucked into a little pocket of volcanic rock,” Garner said. “No telling what natural properties might be interfering with the radio. We need to get up top, over to the other side of the mountain, before we can call for help. Maybe even a different peak.”
For starters, that meant a sheer climb of nearly a hundred feet.
There was a tangle of brush, but a good portion of that had been torn away by the chopper itself, leaving a lot of flat, bare rock.
“So who gets to make the climb?” Wilkes asked, looking up at the daunting ascent.
The group of them looked at each other.
Allison had shot Bud a look – you're not going anywhere.
Rosa was no rock-climber. Shanna had a broken leg.
“Well,” Mr. Wilson said, “I'm sure not climbing that damn thing.” He nodded at Maverick. “That's why I had you.”
Maverick shrugged, putting his hands against the rock wall, testing for handholds.
“Hold on,” Garner objected. “You people are still in custody.”
“You keep not saying 'prisoners',” Maverick remarked, ignoring him as he tested his weight on some of the tangled roots.
Garner started to move towards him, but Cameron put a restraining hand on his shoulder. Garner rounded on him. Cameron pulled back his hand with a shrug.
“You know he's just going to hit you again,” he said.
Garner's hand dropped to his sidearm.
“What if I shoot him first?” he said.
“Well, then I'll hit you,” Mr. Wilson said, standing up and planting a stiff right fist square in Garner's jaw, knocking him flat on his back.
Without waiting, Allison grabbed a log off the fire, and with the smooth stroke of a softball batter, she turned and struck Wilkes dead in the groin.
Wilkes' eyes went wide, as he doubled over, blurting a glut of involuntary profanity. He stumbled back and dropped to his knees.
As he gasped breath, he glared at Allison, eyes streaming.
“What the hell you do that for? I was just standing here.”
Garner let out a low moan and Cameron reached down a hand.
“Don't feel bad,” he said, as he helped the soldier to his feet. “I've seen him do that to full-grown Holsteins back on the farm. It's actually impressive you didn't go out.”
Maverick gathered a small pack from the chopper – rope, a few tools. He also dangled the service pistol he'd snatched off the co-pilot before he'd pitched him over the cliff, nodding at both soldiers, but most meaningfully at Garner.
“Either of you got a problem with me having this?”
Garner glanced at Wilkes, who was still on his knees, and then Mr. Wilson, who appeared to be polishing his knuckles. Resigned, Garner shook his head.
“Okay then,” Maverick said, “then why don't we get everybody set up?”
Garner sighed. He grabbed up his rifle, and tossed the strap over his shoulder, but pulled his service pistol and handed it to Bud – who promptly turned and gave it to Allison.
Allison popped the clip into place with a cold snap.
Wilkes handed his pistol to Cameron, while shouldering his own rifle.
Maverick looked up, squinting in the sun, eyeballing the sheer rock wall.
“You know,” he said, stepping back, “now that I look at it, this just seems foolish.” He turned, tossing the rope over his shoulder to Garner. “Here. Which one of you wants to be a hero?”
Garner caught the rope with a frown. But he dutifully stepped forward, putting his hand on the rock, feeling for handholds.
The volcanic rock was layered, so while the climb was nearly vertical, there were grooves to latch onto. Unfortunately, there was also no way of telling what was solid rock versus what was ready to tumble loose. The ropes of root were likewise compromised.
With the sheer drop, simply pushing back from the wall would be to fall – maybe back to the rock ledge, or possibly into the chasm beyond.
Garner began to scale the cliff, feeling one hold at a time. After he'd gained ten feet, Maverick stepped up and began to follow behind him.
“I thought you weren't coming,” Garner called down.
“No, I was just smart-assing,” Maverick replied. “But I thought I'd let you go first.”
Wilkes looked unhappily up at the cliff, but nevertheless followed along behind Maverick.
Cameron knelt beside Shanna, just touching her hand, as if all that need be said was in their physical touch.
“We'll be back,” he promised.
Shanna smiled. “I know you will,” she said, with no doubt.
Cameron looked up at Rosa.
“You're a doctor. You'll take care of her, right?”
Rosa nodded. “That's what I do,” she said.
Cameron turned steadfastly, deliberately not looking up, and began to climb after the others.
Already nearly thirty-feet above, Maverick kicked loose a small cascade of rocks. Cameron covered up as the shards bounced off his head and shoulders.
“Owwww! Dammit!”
“Sorry,” Maverick hollered.
Mr. Wilson shook his head apologetically. “That's his mother's son.”
The climbers proceeded slowly; Rosa estimated that Garner was about fifty feet when a large pterosaur swooped in – one of the nastier-looking beasties, with claws and teeth.
It went for Garner, with his rifle strapped on his back, helpless to defend himself. Immediately below, Maverick tried to reach the pistol in his belt without letting go his hold on the rock.
Then a single shot rang out as Allison dropped the bird from the ledge beneath. The pterosaur crumpled, wings folded, as it bounced off the cliff into the ravine.
Maverick's voice bugled down.
“Thaaank you!”
And with the smoking pistol still in her hand, and Lucas bundled in her other arm, Allison started crying.
Almost immediately, little Lucas joined her, whether from the gunshot or by his mother's own tears. Allison turned to Bud, almost burning him with the pistol barrel as she wept in his arms.
Rosa put a tentative hand on Allison's shoulder. Allison could be a bit of a touch-freak when she got emotional, but this time she clasped Rosa's hand, squeezing out any comfort she could. After a moment, she sat up, making an attempt to dry her eyes.
She looked down at the infant in her arms, whose own sobs had subsided to concerned sniffles, as he looked up at the goddess who was his mother.
“What kind of a life is this?” Allison said. “I mean, what's the point? The world's over, isn't it?”
She looked around helplessly at the others, but none of them had a ready answer.
But Shanna shook her head.
“The world has only ended for you,” she said. “He doesn't know it unless you tell him. For him, everything just started.”
Shanna waved her hand out at the prehistoric new world.
“This was my childhood,” she said.
Rosa shook her head. “What does that mean? Who are you?”
Shanna sighed. “Well, I guess you could say I'm the daughter of the apocalypse.” She looked thoughtful. “It's ironic. All my life, I wanted to see the real world. But this was always my life. And now it's all there is.”
For the first time since Rosa had met her, Shanna's face bent into a genuine frown, a dark expression that somehow looked hurtful on her features.
“I grew up alone except for my father. And the animals. That was all I had. I mean, I could see the outside world, I just wasn't allowed to touch it.”
Now she smiled a bit. “
Don't get me wrong, I was hacking into top-secret files since I was a kid. My father didn't seem to mind about that. I knew perfectly well who killed Kennedy by the time I was eight, but there was never anyone around to care.”
Rosa perked and started to ask, but Shanna was already past it.
“Area 51 got their best stuff from us,” Shanna said. “There was never a Bigfoot, or a Loch Ness Monster. And yes, the alien autopsy was a fake.
“But,” she said, “Monster Island was real. It was my home.”
Chapter 19
Kate's first reaction to the cryptologically mythological Professor Nolan Hinkle was dismay and shock.
She wasn't sure what she had expected. Kate had known he was an old man, but as Shanna bent to his side, the impression was of an RN assisting a resident of a nursing home.
Perhaps even a dementia patient.
Nolan Hinkle regarded Kate and her entourage with clear confusion – which was perhaps understandable, given Cameron's camera, and Maverick with his rifle slung over one burly shoulder – but there was blinking hesitance in his old eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was willowy and frail.
“Shanna? We have guests?”
Kate glanced sideways at Betty, who nodded back with a frown.
“Professor Hinkle?” Kate said, stepping forward. “My name is Kate Rhodes. I'm an investigative documentary filmmaker. I received footage via an e-mail in your name. Footage of this island.”
But even as she said it, Kate was beginning to doubt it.
“Daddy,” Shanna said, “did you contact this woman? Or make any outside contact at all?”
Hinkle shook his head, wide-eyed and bewildered. “I can't imagine,” he said.
“We got here somehow,” Kate said. “I didn't peg the latitude/longitude on a dartboard.”
She reached in her bag.
“Here,” she said, producing the thumb-drive. “I can show you the message.”
Shanna popped the device into the nearest PC, bringing up the video – the images of the canyon they'd just driven past, and all the beasts in the valley.
She shook her head. “I don't understand.”
“That's the main valley,” Hinkle said, suddenly alert. There was an abrupt change in his posture, and he seemed to snap to attention. “We have three, where natural faults have split the island cap.” He leaned forward, tapping on the screen, indicating the surrounding foliage. “It was actually quite difficult to duplicate a prehistoric ecosystem on such a small island.”
The willowy tones were replaced by a professorial lecturer. Kate was reminded of her own grandfather, in the late-stages of senility, long past the point where he remembered who she was, but he had been an electrical-engineer for forty years, and could switch-on and discuss that stuff for hours, never once screwing up the math, right up to his final days.
“We are talking, after all,” Hinkle continued, “not just about animals from different climates, but entirely different eras. In a fraction of their natural space.”
Kate nodded to Cameron, who brought his camera to his shoulder.
“Hold on,” Shanna said. “You shouldn't be filming.”
“We're already here,” Kate said. “They’re going to arrest us anyway. And we're way past the point of I-could-tell-you-but-then-I'd-have-to-kill-you, right?”
Kate had meant the remark to be flippant, but Cameron glanced at her over his camera, a touch disquieted. Even Maverick frowned.
Betty, who hadn't even been told, displayed no external reaction beyond rapid blinking.
Oh well, Kate thought. No point dwelling on it now.
“Excuse me, Professor,” Kate asked, simply moving forward as if the entire exchange was a scheduled interview, “you say this island is small. Why create such large animals? Every creature I've seen is the largest example of its type.”
“Well, young lady,” Hinkle said, responding automatically to the student's question, “size is very much a focal point. One of our first practical applications was the accelerated growth of crops and livestock.”
Hinkle's grin turned briefly nostalgic.
“Do you know one of my original sponsors as a young man was Greenpeace? They wanted their condors back.” Hinkle chuckled with the memory. “That was before the government stepped in.”
Shanna put her hand to her head with a groan. “Daddy...”
But Hinkle was lecturing now.
“You will note,” he said, indicating the screen, “the animals are not exclusively dinosaurs. We have representation of every single branch of animals that ever produced giants. Fish, mosasaurs, lizards, snakes, crocodiles.” Hinkle pointed to several gigantic beasts that resembled rhinoceros with necks like giraffes. “We also have several large mammals.”
“What about that big gorilla?” Maverick asked, raising his hand like a kid in a classroom.
“Congo.” Hinkle nodded. “Yes, that was the next stage. Gigantism not simply reproduced in an existing, albeit extinct, species, but applied to an extant animal, from a line where gigantism never evolved.”
Maverick nodded slowly, like that same kid who didn't quite understand the answer.
“Growth can be generated by many factors,” Hinkle explained, “both in an individual and a species. The question is what activates it, and can macro-evolutionary catalysts be applied to the micro-scale of a single organism?”
Now Kate was nodding along with Maverick. Recognizing the blank looks on his students, Hinkle grinned.
“Would you like to see?” he asked.
“Daddy,” Shanna said, “you're going to get us arrested.”
Hinkle pish-poshed. “Nonsense. Shanna, we're being rude. We have guests.”
Again, the here-and-now focus seemed to shift in the old man's eyes.
Shanna glanced at Kate. “Daddy, do you understand? These people are not supposed to be here.”
Hinkle paused, turning to his daughter, holding up a corrective finger.
“Neither are we,” he said. “Yet, here we all are.”
Shanna frowned, starting to reply, but she was interrupted by a loud beeping, like a timed alarm.
“You need to set out the morning feed,” Hinkle said. “You've got your chores.”
Shanna sighed, throwing her hands up.
“I'll be right outside,” she said, eyeing Kate meaningfully. “Everything's automated. I shouldn't be long.”'
With a last, reluctant look at the rest of them, Shanna turned to leave, tapping the sliding glass shut behind her. The motion-sensing cameras followed her movements and her image remained on the security screens, blinking to a new view as she walked past each building.
Hinkle sat down in front of the computer, and started pulling up files, his trembling fingers typing fast and sure.
“One thing I discovered,” Hinkle said, “was that the slightest genetic flaw could create wild disruptions at the most basic chemical level of an altered organism. So one of the first things I developed was a purification process.”
“Purification process?” Betty asked, learning over Hinkle's shoulder, observing the simulation on-screen.
“A method,” Hinkle said, “of chemically eradicating imperfections in an organism’s genetic structure. All animals on this island are the healthiest, strongest, most intelligent examples of their species that their genes could muster.
“And,” he said, “that includes my darling daughter, Shanna.”
Kate blinked. “You experimented on your own daughter?”
“Wait a minute,” Cameron said, lowering his camera. “That girl, Shanna... she's a clone?”
Hinkle laughed.
“No, of course not,” he said. “She was conceived and born in the normal way. All I did was administer a sort of super prenatal-vitamin. She was, in fact, the very first. And it was from her very DNA that I was able to move forward with all the rest of it.”
Kate was shaking her head in disbelief. “You recklessly administered an experimental agent to an unborn?”
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“Hardly recklessly,” Hinkle replied, a bit miffed. “I knew it would work.”
“Didn't you wonder,” he asked, “how an old toad like me could have produced such a beautiful daughter? The prenatal agent weeded-out abnormalities at the chromosome-level. No defects, no deformities, every single cell healthy and full.”
“Aesthetics,” Hinkle explained, “are about balance. That's why athletes tend to be attractive people. The even-limbs that allow for physical talent also produce aesthetic balance. It is simply key to the binary-design, and translates to otherwise subjective aspects like facial features.”
Cameron was shaking his head, watching the security cameras as they followed Shanna on her rounds. “She's an experiment?”
“Not an 'experiment',” Hinkle objected. “My wife and I used many advanced prenatal methods unavailable to the general public, all during her pregnancy. Always to the benefit.”
Kate nodded. “I'm sure. And where exactly is your wife?”
Hinkle frowned. “Died,” he said. “Many years ago. When Shanna was young.”
“But she approved?”
“Much of it was her own work. She was my research partner,” Hinkle said. “The original agent was originally intended as no more than prenatal health. It was only later, through happenstance, that my wife discovered the resulting potential in Shanna herself.”
“What potential?”
“We found that the prenatal agent had a negative effect on recreated organisms. One of the difficulties in cloning is that all the genetic traits of the parent get passed on, including aspects like the organism's current stage-of-development. Genes that mix-up commands to age with those of adolescence are simply not viable. The organism ages quickly, and dies young, among a whole host of other problems. Unfortunately, when we attempted to solve this by administering the prenatal purification agent to our engineered subjects, the results were catastrophic, to say the least, massively accelerating the genetic defects.”
“But,” Hinkle said, “when the agent was extracted from Shanna's blood, out of a viable living organism, as opposed to a synthetic test-tube, suddenly it allowed us to adapt the purification process to clones as well. Once that viability was passed on, everything changed, and our research moved forward at light-speed.”
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