Genesis Plague (38 page)

T
he stench of the infected woke me. Sharp ammonia burnt my
nostrils. I opened my eyes to find that I was seven feet off the ground, moving
through the jungle on the shoulders of one of the infected men.

He kept a firm grip on
one of my ankles and wrists. I tried to roll backward off his shoulders, but he
squeezed until it felt like my bones would snap. I suppose even if I could have
jumped down and made a run for it, my escape would have been short-lived. The
other infected man followed close behind, carrying Maria. The infected woman
walked slightly ahead, leading the way.

Maria’s eyes were shut,
and her body swayed gently with the movement of her captor. My heart skipped a
beat at the thought that she was dead, but then she opened her eyes and
groaned. Blood caked one side of her face. She blinked as she focused on the man
that carried her, then she saw me.

I mouthed the words
Are
you okay?
and she nodded slowly, closing her eyes. She cradled her head
with her one free hand as if it were made of glass.

The trio of infected
pushed past large fronds as they moved through the jungle. I couldn’t tell our
location from a hole in the ground since I could have been unconscious for
thirty seconds or thirty minutes.

The canopy was thinner
than near the door where we entered the jungle. Through a break in the leaves I
saw the peak of a volcano in the distance. I nodded in that direction and Maria
saw it, too. A thin trail of gray smoke rose lazily from the peak, disappearing
into the mist that covered the ceiling of the manufactured jungle.

“Do you think we can
talk?” I asked loudly, watching the man that carried me. He didn’t seem to
care. “I guess so,” I continued. “Do you have any ideas on how to get out of
here?”

“I don’t know if we
can,” said Maria. “What happened to Flint?”

“I lost sight of him in
the clearing. If these are the only infected, then hopefully he’s safe… at
least for now.”

Unless there are other
creatures in this jungle,
I thought.

“Who knows what else
PharmaCor cooked up down here?” Maria asked, echoing my thoughts. “These three
are large, Paul, and I don’t think it’s natural. You can see elongated stretch
marks on this one’s torso. There’s also heavy scarring on his back, like he’s
had multiple operations.”

“This place is anything
but natural.” I shifted in place and the man carrying me growled from deep in
his throat. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. He blinked.

The three infected broke
into a quick trot when we reached a small clearing, and I caught a detailed
glimpse of the woman ahead. A small clump of short tendrils protruded from the
base of her skull, just above her neck.

“Maria,” I said. She
looked at me and I pointed to the woman. “Is that what I think it is?”

She stared at the
undulating tendrils on the woman’s neck until we plunged back into the dark jungle
on the other side of the clearing.

“I don’t see how that’s
possible,” she said, her brow furrowed in deep thought.

“But you saw it,” I
said. “There’s no mistaking what it is.”

She shook her head
slowly, as if unwilling to admit what she had seen.

The tendrils growing
out of the back of the woman’s skull were pale white in color and almost
translucent. They wavered and danced like the arms of a sea anemone. When
brushed by a frond, they retracted partly into the woman’s flesh, just as an
anemone would when threatened.

“It looks exactly like
the parasite I found on the
Polychaeta Loasis
specimens,” Maria said.

The three infected opened
their mouths in unison and let out strained, raspy screams as we emerged from
the jungle at the base of a wall that stretched up into the mist. A hundred
feet up the wall, an observation room fronted by large, broken panes of glass
jutted out from the concrete, overlooking the jungle.

The infected swayed on
their feet as they waited before a steel door in the wall. There was an
electric buzz from somewhere inside, and with a loud clunk of metal, the door
swung open.

T
he room was a cacophonous roar of machinery. Steam hissed from
release valves as the infected carried Maria and me down a cramped corridor
lined with sweating pipes and humming generators. A row of water pumps lined
one wall, most likely the power source for the stream we saw running through
the jungle. A wide trough of churning water sloshed beneath the pumps and
formed a rapid causeway as it disappeared through a large hole in the wall.

The infected became
agitated in that room. They made clicking noises deep in their throats and shook
their heads violently as if to clear away buzzing insects, nearly spilling
Maria and me to the floor in the process.

An open freight
elevator waited at the far end of the room. The infected carried us inside,
then swayed gently in place as the door closed. Maria looked at me with wide
eyes as the elevator ascended. I didn’t want to lie to her and say that I
thought everything would be okay.

The seemingly
interminable elevator ride ended, and the door opened on a dark hallway. The
infected men followed the woman down the hall and into a brightly lit room with
three stainless steel operating tables. A dozen various surgical instruments,
from bone saws to scalpels to drills, sat gleaming atop a wide desk near the
wall.

On the opposite side of
the room, three large glass cylindrical tanks rose up from the floor and
touched the ceiling. Each was filled with clear liquid. Suspended in the liquid
of the tanks was an organ of some kind, but not like any organ I’d ever seen.
Each was about three feet long, with a clump of fleshy tubes at the top. A
thick stem descended from the clump. Thin roots grew out from the stem every
few inches. The roots moved slowly in the water, brushing the sides of the
tank. The three organs looked almost like human spines with the brain stems
still at the top, even though there were no solid bones to be seen.

Maria and I began to
fight as soon as the infected carried us toward the tables. I squirmed,
punched, and kicked. The infected man carrying me twisted one of my arms
painfully behind my back, but I didn’t calm down. He slammed me to the table on
my stomach while I still kicked and swung. The infected woman strapped me down
with thick leather belts until I was unable to move more than my fingers.

My face was mashed
against cold metal, my breath fogging the surface.

Maria was slammed down
on the table next to me and held immobile while the infected woman strapped her
in place. Our faces were turned toward each other. I’m sure Maria saw just as
much terror in my eyes as I saw in hers.

As soon as Maria was
strapped in, the three infected stepped back and waited.

Moments later, someone
whistled pleasantly as they walked down the hallway. A man strolled into the
room, a big smile on his face. I didn’t recognize him right away because he was
now wearing a dirty lab coat, and he was much more pale.

It was the man from the
video we had seen when we first dropped down the chute into the bowels of the
facility; the man who had told us not to resist our upcoming surgery. The
silver hair we had seen in the video was now greasy and almost black, stained
with dirt or old blood or something worse.

The back of his neck
was covered by a much larger version of the parasite than the ones on the three
infected. The tendrils were thicker and longer, wavering behind his skull like
a cluster of eels dragging slowly through the water.

Yet he didn’t look
infected. His gray eyes were clear and there were no hints of black veins under
his skin.

“Well, doctors,” he
said, smiling broadly as Maria and I squirmed on the tables. “What do you think
of my jungle?”

“W
ho the hell are you?” asked Maria.

The man swiped a hand
through his greasy hair to try and smooth it down, but his fingers caught in a
lump of… something. He wiped his hand on his filthy lab coat. The three
infected stood off to the side, silent and watchful.

“Dr. Richard Crown,
lead researcher of this facility. And who the hell are
you?
”

“We’re just trying to
stop the virus,” I said.

Dr. Crown laughed
heartily. The tendrils protruding from his neck wiggled faster.

“Why would you want to
stop
the virus?” he asked.

“You’re joking, right?”
said Maria.

Crown smiled at some
inner joke as he went to the display of surgical instruments and began looking
them over.

“It’s wiping out
everything on the planet as we speak,” I said. “It crossed the species barrier,
which means that nothing is safe. It won’t be long before everything is dead.”

“Well, of
course
it
crossed the species barrier,” said Crown with amusement, as if I should have
known it from the beginning. He selected a scalpel and held it to the light.
“It’s a learning virus, and a damn good one, too. I have to tell you,” he
continued, turning to look at us. “I didn’t think it would be so nice to see
people again. Healthy people, I mean. No offense to my compatriots.” He
gestured to the three infected standing outside the door.

Keep him talking
,
I thought.
Distract him. Gotta find a way out
.

But there was no way
out. If we got out of our bindings, the infected would catch us and put us right
back in.

“What are you going to
do to us?” asked Maria.

Crown gestured to the
glass tanks, and at the floating organs within.

“I’m going to make you
better,” he said.

I looked at the
wriggling tendrils on the back of his neck, then at the organs in the three
tanks.

Not organs,
I
thought.
Parasites.

He was going to put those
things in me and Maria.

I grunted as I
struggled against my bindings. Dr. Crown sighed.

Finally I gave it up
and relaxed, breathing hard. I banged my forehead on the cold metal table as I
tried to think of a way to stall.

“What do you do here?”
I asked. “I thought PharmaCor made medicine.”

Crown set down the
scalpel and picked up a syringe.

“It started out as
medical research,” he said, seemingly pleased with the question. “This facility
was originally built as a processing plant for mass quantities of antivenin,
protein synthesis for cure studies, and blah blah blah.” He walked over to my
table and lifted my shirt. He probed the sides of my spine with his hand.
“PharmaCor was originally one small part of a global conglomerate of similar
companies,” he said, “all in the race to find the next big market drug. To
achieve this goal, we employed field agents. Headhunters of sorts who travel
around the world, following rumors that could net the company exclusive rights
to an undiscovered strain of flu or some other communicable disease. Such
infections would translate into the highest profits, as the cure for any such
virus would be in equal or greater demand.”

“You can sell the virus
and the cure to different buyers,” said Maria.

“Very good! Or to the same
client, depending on the application. Anyway,” continued Crown, “several years
ago we made a discovery after an evacuation near a volcano in Peru.”

“Sabancaya,” I said
quickly, remembering the map we saw when we first entered the building.

“Precisely. A new
species was discovered in a chamber beneath the volcano. This organism was
highly resistant to most forms of bacterial infection, and was even host to one
of the nastiest microbes we had ever encountered.”

Crown uncapped the
syringe.

“You’re talking about
Polychaeta
Loasis
,” said Maria.

“If that’s your name
for it,” Crown said. “We just called it the slug.”

He jabbed the needle
into my back and injected burning liquid. I bucked hard and the needle snapped
off.

“See there?” said
Crown, sounding disappointed. “Now you have to get another shot.”

He yanked out the
broken needle and threw it aside.

“Why wasn’t it
announced?” asked Maria. She was breathing quickly. Sweat beaded on her
forehead. “Why keep it a secret?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”
asked Crown as he went back for another syringe.

The burning sensation
in my back subsided. I arched my spine but could not feel a difference. Perhaps
I had been able to stop most of the injection.

“You wanted to market
the cure immediately if the virus got out,” said Maria.

He nodded. “Though
believe me when I tell you that we never planned to release the virus. We’re
not monsters, for God’s sake. But accidents
do
happen. Not to mention
that the research into the origins of the virus could potentially lead to cures
for a dozen infectious diseases against which we have no natural defenses. The
organism was like the holy grail of antiviral research. But, as I’m sure you
figured out, the virus is generational between hosts. It mutates too quickly,
evolves too rapidly to neutralize its base mechanisms. Given this impassable
roadblock, research into the virus was halted and the company decided to focus
instead on, well, other endeavors.”

He smiled briefly at
the three infected nearby.

“You’re saying the
parasite made them like that?” asked Maria.

“Mostly,” said Crown.
“Their bodies needed a little help from us to allow the organism to take root.
That’s part of the reason for their unusual size. As the virus mutates further,
such alterations will be unnecessary.”

He walked back to my table
carrying the fresh syringe.

“But you’re not like
them,” I said.

“No, I’m not. They were
in the late stages of infection when we introduced the parasite. I was clean.”

“Is that why you’re
still functioning normally?” asked Maria.

He paused as he was
reaching to inject me again, and he turned slowly to look at her.

“You know, I think
maybe you don’t need another shot quite yet.” He patted my back and I tensed
up. “I think I will start with Ms. Chatty instead.”

He set down the syringe
and went to the tools, then picked up a glimmering scalpel.

“There was an animal,” I
said, trying to get his attention back on me. “Something huge above us near the
surgery room.”

“Ah, that must be
Vincent,” said Crown, nodding as he walked to Maria’s table with the scalpel.
She looked at me pleadingly. “Our great ape. He was one of our many failed
experiments before we successfully joined the parasite with humans. You’re
lucky he was the only thing you bumped into. There are worse things lurking out
there in the jungle.”

Dr. Crown lifted up the
back of Maria’s shirt and traced a slow line down her spine with his fingers.
She shuddered under his touch.

“You are sweating, my
dear,” said Crown. He rubbed the sweat between the tips of his fingers.

“Is Alexander King one
of your headhunters?” I asked.

Crown laughed at the
absurd question, but it did make him pause. “Do you know him? He’s our most
efficient field man. Ruthless, but efficient.”

“Is he here now?” I
asked, growing more desperate. I started to realize this was going to happen;
this man was about to operate on us without any anesthesia or sterilization.

“But of course he is!”
said Crown. “The entire board of directors is awaiting the next stage of
humanity’s evolution.” He looked at me and Maria, then he sighed, as if he were
suddenly bored with the discussion. “It’s quite a pity you won’t be around to
see it.”

He bent down with the
scalpel, and Maria screamed as the doctor cut into her back.

“Now,” said Crown,
leaning back slightly to look at her, “you might feel a slight pinch…”

He lowered the scalpel
just as an ear-piercing klaxon screeched out from a speaker in the ceiling.
Crown dropped his scalpel on the table and covered his ears, yelling in pain.

The three infected
dropped to the floor, pressing their hands to their ears and writhing in agony.
They opened their mouths and screamed silently as the alarm blared.

Maria wiggled her hand under
the thick strap until one of her fingers touched the bloodied metal of the
scalpel. She turned it so she could grab it by the handle, then she swiped
furiously at the strap over her hand, cutting through the leather before the
siren stopped and the infected were back on their feet.