Текст книги "The Eden Plague"

Автор книги: David VanDyke

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Then Daniel and the serpent turned in, exhausted.

-6-

Elise sat crunched between two big men, Karl and Miguel, and kept her mouth shut. They weren’t the type of guys to fall for feminine wiles or pleas for sympathy. Knowing what she was, they viewed her with unbridled ruthlessness. Short of killing her or maybe amputating something, they knew they could damage the goods any way they wanted and get away with it. And she didn’t like the way Miguel always looked at her, as if he’d like to handcuff her to her lab bench and give his lusts free rein. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t, not really, for fear of contracting the virus and giving up his love of cruelty.

Shivering, she remembered just how vulnerable she was. Super-healing should give me an advantage, but all I can think about is being trapped as a combination researcher and laboratory subject. Studying myself. That’s irony for you. She’d rolled the dice and lost, this time, but she’d given what she could to Daniel and she had to hope that would be enough.

Sinking down into the seat as the Suburban shot southward to the next interstate feeder, she concentrated on not feeling the despair, or hunger. Looking at her skeletal hand in the flickering light, she felt the cramping in her guts. Maybe… “Hey, Karl,” she said softly. “Do we have any food in here?”

The minder ignored her. She could tell he felt personally betrayed by her attempt to escape, since he’d always been respectful of her. Or perhaps it was because they’d lost the younger Jenkins. Yes, that must have been it. He must feel like he’d failed in his duty.

“Look,” she reminded them, “you know my caloric needs. You know how valuable I am to the program. My body weight is under a hundred pounds and falling right now.” She held up her papery-skinned hand for his inspection. “By the time we get back to the lab there might be irreversible damage.”

“Should have thought about that before you tried to run, puta,” snarled Miguel.

“She’s right, though,” responded Karl, resigned. “If we bring her in damaged it will just be worse. There’s some kind of burger drive-through up there; pull in.”

“You buy the food, then,” grumbled Miguel. “I gotta take a piss.” He hopped out as they pulled up to the microphone.

“Thanks,” Elise said.

“Shut up,” Karl said flatly. “I’m not your buddy, and even if I was, buddy’s only half a word.”

She wondered what he meant. Some kind of military thing.

Occupying herself, she thought about Daniel, about his tortured eyes, eyes she had to run from out of necessity, but eyes that perhaps could be part of someone that would – what? Save her? If she’d read his file right, he would. That’s why she had tricked Jenkins into choosing him.

At least it was a chance.

***

Sleep was a big black scary thing inhabited by dreams where Daniel pumped round after round into Men In Black. They either wouldn’t go down, or the bullets would exit the gun with a little pop and bounce off their chests, and he would end up in a fistfight where he’d punch and punch and couldn’t hurt them and they would laugh. Then it would turn into something else, something from his past, like dragging his dead best buddy Hector Koltunczyk into a hollow in the dirt, trying to plug the leaks in him with his fingers, but Hector sprouted fountains of blood like one of those flexible hose sprinklers where the water came out the holes.

Long ago he had come to the realization that not even his new, Pararescue-trained self of several years later could have saved his friend, but if there was any one thing that drove him to leave the Army Airborne and try out for PJ, it was that incident where Hector died in his hands in Mogadishu.

It had taken a boatload of pushing, a break in service, giving up his stripes and starting over to make the move to the Air Force Pararescue program. The Army hated it when people didn’t re-up, and they dangled goodies, choice assignments and choice jobs, in front of him. He’d wanted to learn to save lives as well as take them, though, and they couldn’t guarantee him Special Forces Medic, which was the only other possibility he’d considered.

So he went PJ. That was the nickname for “parajumper,” Pararescueman. Despite the ninety percent odds of washout, he had not only qualified, but had excelled at it all the way through the Pipeline. Seventeen months of training just to graduate, “That Others May Live.” That was the Pararescue motto.

At the end of it Daniel Markis was one of fewer than three hundred of the very best combat lifesavers in the world, cross-trained with a variety of special ops expertise. Small arms, water operations, light aircraft, survival, mountaineering, demolitions, you name it, he’d done it in sixteen years in the PJs. Some of his Army buddies had thought he was a pogue or some kind of traitor for going green to blue, but none of his real friends did. Nobody that met an Air Force PJ at work ever thought so either.

That Others May Live. That’s why he did it.

He was elite of the elite, back then, a sky-god in a blood-red beret, before that IED took it all away from him, leaving him with a bum knee and a bad back and a serpent in his brain.

Daniel realized he’d gone from dreaming to drowsy reminiscing somewhere along the line, as dawn was breaking over Quantico. The sounds of Marines at morning PT came from off in the distance, and a five-ton truck drove by his parking place with a rattle.

Sitting up, he sucked down a half-liter bottle of water, then slipped out the side door and took a leak between the vans. He was hungry again, really hungry, so he went to the Mickey Dee’s one more time and ate his fill. Nobody seemed to be looking for him, and with hair cut high and tight he blended in pretty well here, though his shave was a day old.

Halfway through his third McMuffin it hit him: no headaches this morning, and the serpent was hiding.

Usually he woke up with a near-migraine that took four ibuprofen, a vicodin and a triple espresso to tamp it all down to a manageable level. His knee should’ve been locked up stiff too, and his back hurting, but right now he was pain-free for the first time in a long while. Since Afghanistan. And jones-free too, for that matter.

Looking at the gauze on his hand, on impulse he unwound it to check the wound. He rubbed at the dried blood, then finished the sandwich and got up to go into the restroom. After washing his hand he stared at it.

Nothing there.

No bite, no bruise, smooth pristine skin. And he felt good, better than he’d felt in a while. His face stared back at him in the scratched-up mirror for a while, until someone else came in to use the toilet. Shaking himself out of his reverie, he went back out to finish his breakfast, pancakes and hash brown patties and coffee and large orange juice.

He sat and thought about super-healing. Stupid, pulp-sci-fi name, but what else should he call it? X-factor? Sounded like a TV talent show. Wolverine, like that comic-book guy? Maybe H-factor. Or XH, experimental healing. Because it had to be experimental. The government could never keep secrets for long, no matter what the conspiracy nuts thought. The government was made up of people, good people and bad people and heroes and stupid arrogant people like Jenkins who lost control of missions and secrets. But what was the secret this time?

The obvious answer was it was a kind of drug. Shoot up, accelerate the body’s natural healing, instant cure. But a drug couldn’t be passed on with a bite, like what he thought had happened. Elise bit me, deliberately, and said I’d understand. So she transferred it to me, at least some of it. Already he was grateful to her for that.

Discounting the supernatural – and he wasn’t, not completely, but his mind shied away from that for now – it would have to be some kind of parasite or bacteria or virus, that was able to spread from person to person and help them out. Or maybe…what about nanites? Like in science fiction, like those Borg things that injected you and took over your body and mind with germ-sized machines. But no matter what, it had to be something small, and self-replicating, self-sustaining.

He wondered how much the XH could cure. Obviously gross injuries were possible. And cancer, if he could believe Elise. What about AIDS? What about aging? Life extension, even immortality? Did they even realize what they had?

His mind whirled with the possibilities.

If it conferred youth and immortality, it would change the world like nothing ever. The rich would pay anything, and people would kill for it. People would go to war for it. In fact, it might win wars, making soldiers into fearless super-warriors. And who would decide who got it?

But Elise had said something about a downside, some kind of disadvantage…maybe some kind of burnout? Maybe instead of immortality it used up the bearer, ate up his vitality so the more healing he had to do, the shorter his life was. Maybe. But Elise had looked younger than Daniel was, twenties maybe, and cute and gutsy, under all that blood and stress.

She said she had been a scientist before her cancer was deemed terminal, that she had worked for them a few years…seemed about right. And what had she said – “Yeah, there’s a downside, at least for the Company.” Not for her, but for the Company. So it couldn’t be a shortened lifespan, he thought. Maybe it had no effect on lifespan. Maybe it froze your age just as you were, like in a vampire story. That might be nice, if you got it young.

He sighed, rubbing his face. Too many questions, too many possibilities. And he needed answers, because whatever it was, it was inside him too.

He had no way to contact Elise, so he would just have to hope she was all right and could get in touch with him sometime. Putting her out of his mind for now, he told himself he didn’t owe her anything.

Leave her to rot.

Right.

His conscience sharply disagreed with him. Kind of funny, because the serpent had held his conscience captive for quite a while. Maybe the XH was healing some of his brain damage, and if the XH healed his body too, got rid of the headaches and concussions and bum knee and aching back and the persistent spiral fractures from too many hard landings and everything else, even if that was all it did, then he guessed he owed her a lot. Besides, there was the way she’d looked at him, even while he pointed a gun at her. No terror. Caution, sure, but a kind of trust and hope, too, emotions he had missed for a long time in his life, feelings that tugged at him and made him think of things beyond just rescuing her.

Building castles in his mind.

He pushed that aside for now. First he had to get an idea of what was happening at his house. He wouldn’t be any good to anyone, least of all Elise, if he walked blindly into a manhunt. No, he had to reach out, get some help.

He drove to a beer joint he knew of in Quantico Town. This was a unique little municipality, a tenth of a square mile, entirely enclosed by Quantico Marine Base. Residents got passes to come and go, all five hundred of them or so. But what was even more unique, the unusual thing that he needed, was the pay phone inside. Not too many of those around but things didn’t change very fast in quaint old Quantico Town.

Ignoring the “closed” sign on the door of the Forward Observer pub, he shoved the door open and went on in. If you looked like you belonged, Felix the owner would ignore the archaic eighteenth-century law still on the books that said you can’t sell alcohol before noon. That’s why the door wasn’t locked, that and they made a few bucks in the morning selling coffee and smokes and breakfast sandwiches and day-old donuts to guys on their way to work. Fortunately, Felix wasn’t in to recognize him, just a chesty young thing with a wedding ring, in too-tight jeans and a tee shirt, makeup over acne, probably the teen wife of a teen Marine, making a few extra bucks.

“Whatcha want?” she said with that fake brightness servers put on. Standing hipshot, she pointed with one long nail over her shoulder at the menu chalked on the wall.

Ah, the brashness of the young.

Daniel didn’t sit down. “Three ham cheese and egg bagels, large coffee to go.” He pulled a gallon of milk out of a fridge. “This too. The head that way?” She nodded, and he went back in the direction of the facilities, which happened to be where he knew the phone was.

His first call was to his next-door neighbor Trey, a friendly Creole from Louisiana who’d married a nice German girl on a tour in Bitburg and eventually settled down in Virginia after retiring from the Army. Even in the twenty-first century, a black man bringing a white girl home to “N’awlins” had a tough row to hoe.

“No, nothing unusual going on, DJ, what’s up?” he asked.

“Nobody in my driveway, no visitors, nothing like that?” They kept an eye on each others’ houses, because there were four schools in the area and a few kids always had sticky fingers.

“Nope. Why, something wrong?” he pried gently.

Daniel would have loved to tell him, the way he was feeling right now. Trey was a neighbor, a fellow vet but not really a brother in arms. He could probably be trusted to a point, but Daniel didn’t want to involve him if he didn’t have to, so he dissembled, though it was painful to do so. “No, just missed a meeting with a friend, wondered if he came by there.”

“Okay…well, you let me know if I can do anything.”

Daniel could tell Trey didn’t buy it, but he stuck to the plan. “Thanks, Trey. Hey I might be out of town for a week or two, could you pick up my mail and keep an eye on the place for me?”

“Yeah, DJ. Sure.” He sounded hurt.

Man, he hated that.

“Look – Trey, I can’t talk about it right now, okay? You know how it is. But I’ll tell you when I can.” With that half-lie and half-promise, he hung up. Then he called work, told them he was really sick and wouldn’t be in for a week. In that time it either wouldn’t matter or it would be all over.

Daniel thought of calling his dad, who was a good guy to have with you in a situation. David Jonah Markis, Chief Warrant Officer Four, US Army retired. He’d fought in Vietnam, driving Hueys, and had been wounded a bunch of times flying guys in and out of hot landing zones. Purple Heart with oak leaf clusters, and a Silver Star for the time he went down and carried his wounded copilot seven miles through enemy territory to the nearest US firebase, with an AK round in his left lung. He lived in South Carolina now, had sixty acres and his own grass airstrip south of Blacksburg, and an old but airworthy Piper Cub to keep him busy. But if they knew who Daniel was, they knew his dad too and might be watching him. If Daniel wanted to talk to him he’d have to figure out a way to do it without bringing the trouble to the elder Markis.

But there were some that they didn’t know about, he hoped. They couldn’t cover everyone. No one had unlimited resources, not even the Agency. And they had limited powers inside the US anyway; they had already broken any number of laws and while a certain amount of that could be covered up, it became more and more risky the more they did. He had to depend on them not knowing he had the XH in him. He hoped they thought it was just a missed opportunity and they wouldn’t frame a federal charge to get the FBI and every other law enforcement agency in the country looking for him.

He got out his beat-up Army-issue green memo book that he’d had forever, that he’d carried to the Gulf and back. It had long since been laminated and converted into a home address book and retired to a drawer, but he had grabbed it on the way out of the house and now looked up Ezekiel “Zeke” Johnstone’s number. He had to risk it, and since he hadn’t contacted Zeke since forever, he hoped they hadn’t connected the two of them yet.

Calling, he reached a screening service. Right, this number isn’t on his safe list. He said, “720th” at the beep, waited through Please Enjoy The Music While We Reach Your Party, and almost gasped with relief when he heard Zeke pick up.

“Yeah?” he said, his voice neutral.

“It’s me, man. Deej. Think a few years back. 720th, Kandahar. I can’t say any more, they might have a keyword trace.”

“Yeah man, I got it. Let me call you back on a better line.”

He could hear a woman’s voice, a shriek of childish mirth in the background. He closed his eyes as he hung up. Damn, I hate to drag him into this.

A minute later the pay phone rang and Daniel picked back up.

“All right, I’m on a one-off. You sure they ain’t got your end?”

“Not a hundred percent, but ninety-nine-point nine. It’s a pay phone and if they knew where I was they’d already have picked me up.”

“All right. What you get into this time? Another loan shark?”

Daniel used to gamble, and lose. It was one risk of being an adrenaline junkie – when ops slowed down, you had to find something for a jolt. Some guys drank too much, chased women, or took up high-risk sports. Skydiving, that was a given. Bungee jumping, jet-ski, flying, racing…he did all of that, especially the drinking…he had also played craps. A lot. He’d gotten stuck. The inevitable mathematics of the house odds had eventually strangled him, and he borrowed from the wrong people. Zeke and some of his guys had helped him out with that. Daniel paid him back and he’d been clean ever since.

“No, nothing so simple. This is something big, something black, blacker than black. Man, I hate to involve you, what with Cassie and the kids, but it’s either you or run for the border. I don’t want to run yet.”

“It’s all right, man. You know what I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me your family. I think you need to cut them out. Get some distance.”

He could see Zeke in his mind’s eye, thinking and chewing the inside of his cheek the way he always did. “All right. Can you find the cabin?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Yeah, I can find it. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to lead them to it. And Zee-man…might want to put out a warning order for a few more guys, just in case. This is some through-the-looking-glass stuff, and I don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

“Just don’t tell me I’m going to wake up in a tank full of goo with a tube down my throat.”

“Well, I got a red pill for you here, if you want it.”

He snorted. “All right, Morpheus. When can you be there?”

Daniel thought for a moment, trying to calculate the distance and time. About ten hours to Cave Run Lake, Kentucky. “Sometime tonight, I think. Same white van.”

“Okay, brother. You take care, and I’ll see you tonight.”

He put down the phone, used the head, then went out and paid for his food order. He brought it out to the van and ate a bagel sandwich sitting there in the seat, watching Quantico go about its morning routine. After drinking a half a gallon of the milk he started on the coffee. Hunger pangs seemed to come and go, and apparently he had to feed them when they did.

On the road he passed the inbound base traffic piled up at the gate. Then he took it easy, driving in the right lane south down I-95, letting his thoughts flow.

Things were a thousand times better now. Yeah, he felt a little guilty for putting Zeke on the spot, but what were friends for, anyway, and Daniel had saved his life, after all. In some cultures that meant he was responsible for Zeke. Either way, me for him, him for me.

There was nothing quite like the bond between men who had faced death together. It sounded corny, even in his mind, but it was the unspoken truth that turned recruits into veterans and boys into men on the battlefield, and had for millennia. It was more important than just about anything else, on a par with the love between husband and wife. In fact, Daniel knew guys who would choose their brothers in arms before their wives, maybe even their kids.

Might not be right, but it was strong, very strong.

 That didn’t mean he even liked the guys, always. Sometimes he couldn’t even stand them, outside of an op, and Daniel was always a bit of a loner, hadn’t worried about keeping in touch. He could always find them later, he’d thought.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. He hadn’t memorized many Bible verses, but that was one of them. He couldn’t remember who said it, but that guy really knew what he was talking about. I hope he died well, saving his friends. Couldn’t ask for a better way to go. I know I’d welcome it when it came, if I died doing my duty, so others could live.

Daniel shook off his melancholy thoughts. Maybe the XH meant he didn’t have to think about dying anymore, or his buddies dying or anyone. Maybe XH would put him out of business. That was a strange idea. This stuff was going to change the world, if the unknown downside didn’t turn out to be too bad.

In any case, physically he felt great, better and better by the hour. His thoughts were clearer, his body hummed with vitality and health. It was an overnight revolution. And all he had to do was bite someone, he figured, to pass it on. He had a feeling of power, of the ability to bestow a gift on his friends and withhold it from his enemies, whoever they were. Then he felt a sudden stab of conscience, realizing that he wouldn’t, couldn’t withhold it from anyone that needed it. That Others May Live was his code. Not That Others Who I Happen To Like May Live.

Daniel’s resolve crystallized. He realized then that everyone had to have this stuff.

Conscience nagged at him as he drove, with nothing to do but think and listen to the radio. He started remembering stupid things he’d done as a kid, growing up in Omaha. He’d hurt people, emotionally and physically. He’d been a jerk, because he could be. He was big and tough and athletic and good-looking and he’d used and discarded girls like paper cups, drinking his fill then tossing them away. He’d had a filthy mouth, he’d gotten into fights, and he’d bullied weaker people around him. It was all for their own good, of course, and they deserved it, of course, and he deserved whatever he wanted from life, of course.

Of course.

He’d kept a purer part of himself compartmentalized, in a box marked “Duty,” and that was sacred. In that box he was a paladin. Everything in there he did right, everything by the book unless completing the mission called for a deviation, and the mission was everything.

But outside of duty, he’d been a son of a bitch.

Then Becky came along. God, she was beautiful, with sandy straight hair in bangs, freckles, a generous figure that he found just right – and she had a young daughter. It was fireworks and flame for a while, and they got married.

It lasted five years, until the drinking and gambling and stupidity ruined it all. They didn’t have any kids of their own, either. It was Daniel, his half of it, that poisoned the well too, just one more contributing factor.

I can’t be much of a man if I was shooting blanks with my own wife, right? He had too much medical training to deny a low sperm count.

A wave of guilt washed over him and he ground his teeth, tears of regret leaking out in the privacy of his van at sixty-five miles per hour. He had never faced his own culpability, and it was cleansing to just accept it.

Dr. Benchman used to tell him he had to take responsibility for things he’d done and he would feel better. He’d preferred Prozac and Ritalin and Dexedrine, but he realized he didn’t want those now.

I think the XH is fixing me.

Was XH going to put the shrinks out of a job too?

An inkling of the downside started to rattle around in the deep recesses of his thoughts, way down there where things he didn’t want to think about lurk. He couldn’t see it clearly but he figured that given time it would eventually surface.

Feeling better, his thoughts turned to Elise. He’d shot her, she’d made a fool of him by escaping – or had he let her go? Maybe he could have tried harder. He’d never killed a woman – not that he knew of, anyway. Never had a woman fire a weapon at him either. Maybe he’d had a soft spot? It wasn’t something he’d thought about much. Then he hadn’t kept her out of their clutches at the biker bar, but he might have had to kill four men in front of witnesses to do it, and she’d been so adamant. Turning it all over in his mind, he kept trying to analyze his own feelings.

Okay, he admitted it to himself. He was interested. She’d shown backbone, and every man likes a woman with a spine, a woman he can respect, but there was something more there, a connection he felt. Part of it was the shared experience of combat, of the life and death stress that welds people together in unusual ways. Still, there was more to it than that. Was he fooling himself? It was the way she had looked at him, like she knew him.

At least he had all day to think about it.