Genesis Plague (39 page)

A
fter she cut through the first strap, she was able to easily
pull off the rest with her free hand.

She ran to my table and
quickly loosened the straps.

“Now let’s get the
hell
out,” she said as I hopped down from the table.

We ran for the door.
Dr. Crown and the other three infected still squirmed on the floor, unable to block
out the piercing wail of the siren. Crown took a feeble swipe at me as we ran
past, then covered his ears and screamed.

I followed Maria down
the dark hallway. A small patch of blood stained the back of her shirt.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

“Not bad enough to
stop,” she said over her shoulder.

We skid to a stop in
front of the elevator. I mashed the descent button until the door opened.

The only sounds as we
went slowly down to the first floor were our heavy breathing and the muffled
alarm.

Then the alarm stopped.

“Oh, shit,” said Maria.

We both flinched when
something pounded on the elevator door on the floor above. Then there was a
scream of metal as the door was breached. The elevator jerked down as one of
the infected landed on the roof. The door opened on the first floor as the
infected ripped and clawed at the machinery atop the elevator, trying to get
through.

“We can’t go into the
jungle!” shouted Maria. “They’ll run us down too quickly.”

There was only one
other way out of the building that I had seen on our way up to the control
room, but I didn’t think Maria was going to like it.

“Come on!” I said,
grabbing her hand and running down the cramped corridor on the bottom level.
Steam hissed and pumps churned in the dark, humid room. We reached the far wall
and I pointed to the bubbling trough of water that fed out of the building
through a narrow tunnel.

“Are you crazy?!” she
screamed over the noise.

I shrugged. There was
no other way.

“Jump in!” I shouted,
pulling her toward the water.

“Wait! Do you hear
that?”

I stopped to listen,
but I could only hear the sound of the water pumps.

“Someone’s in here!”
said Maria.

Then I heard a distance
voice, calling from somewhere in the room.

“What’s he saying?!” I
yelled.

Maria shook her head.
“I can’t tell! Sounds like fun, or rum.”

Flint burst into view
at the end of the corridor, panting hard, limping on his injured ankle. He
turned to look behind him, eyes wide with terror, as one of the infected men
jumped out of the freight elevator. Deep cuts scored his skin where he must
have forced his way through a ragged hole in the roof.

“Flint! You’re alive!”

“RUN!” he screamed.
“Don’t just stand there!”

I turned to Maria and
all I saw was the sole of one of her shoes as she disappeared into the churning
water with a splash. She was quickly sucked out of the pump trough and into the
hole in the wall.

Flint waved me aside as
he ran up, the infected man close on his heels. I stepped out of the way and he
dove into the water, paddling like crazy for the hole.

The infected man set
his sights on me.

Sorry pal, not today
,
I thought as I jumped into the water after Flint.

The man plunged his
arms into the trough as I swam to the bottom and toward the hole in the wall.
The churning pumps pounded down like fists punching the water, making it
difficult to see where I was headed, but I didn’t dare break the surface for
fear of getting my head ripped off.

I kicked hard toward
the black void beyond the wall. A vacuum pressure gripped me as I approached,
and an indomitable current pulled me into darkness.

T
he water pushed me down the sloping pipe, rushing past my head
and forcing its way into my mouth every time I tried to breathe. The walls of
the pipe were slick with grime, and my hands helplessly slid over the surface,
searching for anything to grab.

Intermittent windows on
the top of the pipe cast circles of pale light down into the rushing torrent. I
caught a quick glimpse of canopy above as I slid under one window, and nothing
but the hanging jungle mist through another.

Then the pipe spat me
out and I was falling. Unlike the end of the first pipe run earlier, this one concluded
with a pleasant splash into a pool of brown, lukewarm water. The bottom was too
deep for my feet to touch. I swam toward the edge of the pool, spitting and
choking for air.

The pool was surrounded
by low trees trailing ropey vines into the water. A light mist played across
the surface of the rippling, muddy water. Several streams led away from the
pool, moved along by electric pumps that churned just under the surface.

Maria clung to a
gnarled tree root that snaked into the water’s edge. Her dark hair was
plastered to the sides of her head. She shivered despite the warm water.

She nodded when I asked
her if she was okay, and she calmed down slightly when I squeezed her arm.

“Have you seen Flint?”

There was a soft splash
behind me and Flint popped up from below, sputtering and wiping his face.

“Where the hell were you?”
I asked.

“Just seeing if there
was another pipe leading away. Thought I felt a current moving down below.”

“No more pipes, Flint,”
I said firmly.

The one that dumped us
into the pool dribbled water. It disappeared into the ground next to the pool,
heading in the direction of the machinery room.

“Thank you, by the
way,” I added.

“Well, you got those
creeps off me, so it’s the least I could do. Come on,” he said, swimming for
the edge of the pool. “I have an idea where to head next.”

“What about your pipe
idea?”

“Can’t a guy just
brainstorm a little? Besides, that was almost a minute ago already. Let it go,
man.” He grinned.

“What are you so happy
about?”

He swam to the edge of
the pool, and said, “I was remembering what it’s like not to have something chasing
me. I think I could get used to it.”

He was reaching up to
grab hold of a root when he screamed. Something thrashed in the water behind
him – something big, with greenish brown skin and a thick tail. The tail
whipped back and forth rapidly as Flint struggled to hold on to the bank.

Blood mixed into the
murky water. I pulled myself up onto the bank and ran around to Flint. I
grabbed his forearms, but his skin was too slick and I couldn’t get a good grip.
He screamed louder as whatever had his leg thrashed wildly in the water.

Then the thrashing
stopped and the water went still. Blood slowly seeped out of the wound in
Flint’s ankle as he lay on his back in the water.

“Pull me out, Paul,” he
said weakly. “Pull me out.”

Maria came over and
helped me to drag Flint from the pool. His shoe was missing and his ankle was a
lacerated mess. The white of his bones showed through pulpy red flesh.

“It’s okay,” he said.
He groaned in pain.

“Like hell it is,” I
said.

“Guess you’re lucky you
don’t taste too good,” said Maria, patting Flint’s shoulder. I could tell it
hurt her to see him in so much pain.

“They’ll have medical
supplies where we’re headed,” said Flint. “Come on, let’s get moving before
that thing comes back for seconds.”

I
t was slow going with Flint’s injuries. He limped on his left
ankle, but most of his weight was divided between Maria and me, who walked on
either side of him, grunting and sweating as we helped him through the dense
jungle.

“Are we going the right
way?” I asked.

Flint managed a single
nod as his head lolled on his pale neck. He was leaving a nice trail of blood
behind us.

The half-scale volcano
appeared through a break in the canopy, and we corrected course to head
straight for it. It was impossible to see more than ten feet in front or behind
us due to the thick foliage, but that didn’t stop me from continually checking
over my shoulder for whatever had taken a chunk out of Flint.

The trees thinned and
the volcano came into full view. A beige maintenance door was visible in a square
wall of grungy concrete at the base of the looming mountain. We moved as
quickly as possible across the open ground once we left the cover of the
jungle.

“Is this it, Flint?”

He nodded and mumbled
incoherently.

“He’s losing too much
blood,” said Maria.

“We’ll all lose too
much blood if we don’t hurry.”

“How will we get
inside?”

Flint mumbled again and
grinned drunkenly.

“What’s he smiling
about?” asked Maria.

As we neared the beige
door beneath the volcano, I thought I knew the answer. Flint’s left shoe was
propping it open. I thought he had lost it in the water. His ankle was such a
mess that there was no point returning it to him.

Maria held the door
open while I helped Flint inside, then she kicked his shoe aside and locked the
door behind us.

“Should hold off any
infected for about two seconds,” she said, tugging on the door handle.

Flint groaned.

“We haven’t forgotten
about you, buddy,” I said as I shouldered his weight once more.

We were in a long
utility tunnel beneath the volcano. Caged lights hung from the ceiling,
illuminating a path to another door at the end of the tunnel. A low electric
hum penetrated the concrete walls. It was no cooler in there than it had been
in the jungle.

“I think they might be
pushing real lava through this volcano,” I said.

“I thought that, too,”
said Maria as she lead the way down the tunnel. “But why?”

“Maybe they’re trying
to create an exact simulation. More accurate test results that way.”

“Seems almost
prehistoric, given the heat and the size of some of the ferns.”

“No giant mosquitos,
though.”

“Thank God.”

The door at the far end
was unlocked. It opened onto a factory floor of sorts, with a ceiling that
reached up as high as the roof in the jungle. There was no mist, however.
Powerful fans churned slowly in the ceiling, dissipating any moisture
accumulation. Sealed metal tanks the size of rocket boosters lined the factory
floor, separated by bulky machinery.

“Place like this must
have needed a lot of people to run it,” I said.

“And an infirmary for
any on-site accidents.”

Most of the enormous
room was given over to the tanks and machinery, but there was a single square
structure a hundred yards down the line, almost like a small house on the
factory floor.

“Could be an
administration office,” Maria said.

“Let’s go find out.”

Flint cried out in pain
as we walked along the wide aisle, toward the structure. The towering wall that
bordered the jungle was to our left. Large garage-style doors lined the bottom
of that wall as far as I could see. Loading bays for animals being introduced
into the jungle, perhaps.

The structure did
indeed turn out to be an administration office comprised of several well-lit
rooms.

Maria and I lowered
Flint into a chair. I knelt next to him, my hand on his cold forehead.

“I’ll see what I can find,”
said Maria, moving farther into the building.

I inspected Flint’s ankle.
It was still bleeding freely. There may have been an enzyme in the saliva of
his attacker which prevented clotting.

“I’m not going to lie
to you, buddy,” I said. “This is about as bad as it’s ever been for us.”

There was a water cooler
in the corner. I grabbed a paper cup and drank thirstily. I tried to get Flint
to drink, but he didn’t have the strength.

Maria returned in a
hurry, peeling three syringes from their packaging.

“You should see their
first-aid kit,” she said in answer to my questioning look. “They were ready for
any
thing.”

“Except a world-ending
virus,” I muttered.

She injected the three
syringes into Flint’s shoulder in rapid succession. Immediately after the third,
his eyes popped open and he gasped sharply.

“Coagulant and a couple
of uppers,” said Maria, throwing aside the spent syringes.

“More like pure
adrenaline,” said Flint, looking around.

“How are you feeling?”
I asked.

“Leaky,” he said,
poking at his ankle.

Maria slapped his hand
away. “Don’t touch that. We still need to find you a proper infirmary so I can
try to stitch you up.”

“Try?” said Flint
weakly, his eyes rolling in their sockets.

I snapped my fingers in
front of his glazed eyes to focus his attention. “Did you set off the alarm,
Flint?”

He grinned and nodded.

“How did you know the sound
would aggravate the infected?”

He swallowed thickly
and looked away, embarrassed.

“When I was running,
one of the bastards got too close and I… well, I screamed like a girl, to be
perfectly honest.”

“What do you mean?”
asked Maria.

“I mean I squealed like
a five-year-old. A high pitched, monster-just-came-out-of-the-closet scream.
Next thing I know, the guy was on the ground trying to rub his own ears off.”

I patted his shoulder.
“Well, guess I can’t make too much fun of you for that.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a
way,” he grumbled.

I turned to Maria. “Did
you find a schematic of the place?”

She shook her head. “I grabbed
the first aid kit and came running.”

“Thanks for that,” said
Flint.

“I’ll take a look,” I
said.

I left the two of them
and checked the other three rooms in the building. Two were given over to
standard office setups: printers, computer workstations, filing cabinets. The
third looked more like a hybrid office and research laboratory. There were two
microscopes and other pieces of equipment you would expect to find in a normal
lab.

What stopped me in my
tracks was a series of marker drawings on a whiteboard that took up most of one
wall. Paper printouts brimming with data were taped to the whiteboard between
the elaborate drawings.

There were helix
patterns, chemical makeups of viral compounds, even formulae attempting to
alter the structure of DNA. I was particularly drawn to a large illustration of
the
Loasis
virus, complete with two capsid heads. A sheet of paper taped
next to the drawing showed various images of microscope slides, each depicting
the virus in a presumably healthy host environment.

The images were
displayed as a kind of slideshow that demonstrated how infection would progress
through its various stages. The first was an intact virus approaching its wormlike
prey: bacterium that resided in the human stomach.

The second image showed
the spidery legs of the virus clamping onto the bacterium as it prepared to
inject its own DNA for replication.

In the third image, the
secondary capsid head had split open to reveal a short black filament, almost
too thin to register at that magnification. In the next image, the filament
could clearly be seen moving away from the
Loasis
virus.

I remembered that the
original samples from Mauna Loa had been riddled with those black filaments,
but all of them were inert. We had assumed they were nothing more than food for
the algal colony which sustained the slug-like
Polychaeta Loasis
– the
same algal colony that also gave birth to the virus.

We were dead wrong.

The filaments were
another organism entirely. A hitchhiker – a mimic that piggybacked on the
Loasis
virus, disguised as a DNA capsid head until it entered a host’s body and broke
away into the bloodstream.

My brain worked in
slow-motion as I walked slowly along the wall, following the diagrams to their
terrible conclusion. Laid out in perfect clarity were the various stages of
this new organism, from microscopic filament to symbiotic partner with
Polychaeta
Loasis
.

Maria was right. It was
a parasite that joined with its host. It didn’t kill, it assimilated.

The last picture on the
wall was a still image of a man face-down on an operating table, his skin
purple with rigor mortis. A blue sheet covered his body except for an open
strip that ran up his spine to the base of his skull. His vertebrae were
exposed, revealing thin, root-like tendrils heavily embedded all the way to the
top of his spinal column, where a lumpy mass of flesh bulged out.

The mass of flesh was
identical to the cluster of wavering tendrils on the
Loasis
slugs, on
the three infected people in the jungle, and on Dr. Crown.

It was the parasite.