“John?”
“We got back here just in time,” John says. Jason is sitting on a large rock, huddled over in pain. Brice is between them, bracing his arm across his chest. He is having trouble breathing. John then bends over the ostrich and, with a few jagged sawing motions, removes the ostrich’s head from its body. He doesn’t even try to hide the grizzly scene from Fi. He knows she’s seen worse.
“Are the animals …” Julie asks, letting her sentence fade away.
“They aren’t done yet,” Brice answers. She can hear the pain he is in every time he inhales through clenched teeth. “They may have stopped for the time being, but we need to get out of here.”
They are all looking around. Not one animal can be seen, but all around them the trees and bushes are shaking.
“What’s our next move?” Julie asks.
Chapter Eight
1
Sils Military Research Facility
Butsko and Wilder meet back at the lab that houses all the animals. They took a break two hours ago to wait for the official security clearance to come through so Wilder could brief his men on what was going on.
Mac Laning and Kane Reynolds stared at Wilder the entire time he told them what he knew. Finally, Wilder told them they were meeting Butsko at the lab, and there, everything would become clear. Or as clear as it could be.
“I’m sure Wilder has filled you guys in on what we are dealing with,” Butsko says as he approaches the men standing at the thick steel and concrete door. Their hesitating answers confirm to Butsko that they don’t believe a word of it. Part of him is happy about that. If he was told the story that he told Wilder, he would think the other person was full of shit and somehow testing him.
I’m glad these guys think for themselves. That’s what we need here
, Butsko thinks.
“Your skepticism is well understood, men,” Butsko continues. “But make no mistakes. What Wilder told you is exactly what is going on here.” He spreads his arms and sweeps them about the facility. “Yes, there are other projects going on in here, but this project, the one you are all exclusively on now, has top priority.” He looks them all in the eyes and emphasizes, “We’ve never been involved in a more important project than this.” Butsko steps toward the door and punches in the code to reveal the retinal scanner. As the laser scans his retina, he says, “What’s in this room could very well be the biggest threat not just to our country, but to the entire world.”
The thick metal door slides open, but this time, the metal viewing windows are open and the men can see all the animals. Kane and Mac just look at each other.
“This is what we know so far,” Butsko starts. “These animals were all being tested on for one reason: to save the lives of soldiers gravely injured on the battlefield.” He doesn’t wait for a response. “We were losing so many lives during their transport home that something had to be done. We hired a researcher who was doing cutting-edge experiments and successfully reanimating animals.”
“Reanimating, Sir?
”
Kane repeats. The look on his face says it all.
“Yes soldier, reanimation.” Butsko’s voice is steady and very serious. “The dogs in the experiment were put down and then immediately placed in a state of stasis. You can call it ‘suspended animation,’ but what they were doing went well beyond that dated practice. A couple hours later, the dogs were brought out of stasis successfully, and there was no damage done on either a cellular or physical level. Those dogs, in fact, are still alive up in Pittsburgh.”
Wilder, Laning, and Reynolds all look at him stone-faced. “Yes,” Butsko says, “in Pittsburgh. They were doing reanimation studies in Pittsburgh.”
“So,” Wilder finally interrupts. “If those dogs are still alive, then I assume they are healthy and not aggressive?”
“Play the footage!” Butsko yells to no one in particular. A hidden screen drops from the ceiling and they watch three dogs running around and playing with small children. “This footage was taken last week. Those dogs have never so much as taken a nip at the children, let alone attack them.”
“Okay,” Kane says. “Then obviously it wasn’t the stasis that made these animals so aggressive.” He pauses for a second. “So what was done different to these animals than those dogs? “he asks as he nodded up to the screen.
“We have some theories,” Butsko offers. “Unfortunately, the lab these animals were stolen from was completely destroyed.” Butsko places great emphasis on the word ‘stolen.’ “Most of the computers were one-hundred-percent destroyed. We have two hard drives that we’re trying to reconstruct in order to extract the last weeks’ worth of research.”
He takes the men over to one of the viewing windows. Inside is what looked to be a house cat, but this cat looks more sleek and predatory than the pet. Its teeth are longer, and even though its claws aren’t extended, you can see the long, sharp tips sticking out. This animal looks like a hunter. Actually, it looks like a killer.
“We do know that the lab outside of Austin, where these animals are from, stumbled upon a breakthrough. They weren’t just killing and then putting these animals into stasis. The researchers there knew that would do nothing to save the lives of soldiers.” He looks at the enclosed cell with the house cat. “They conducted another procedure on these animals once they were in stasis. They engineered a virus that would start to repair damaged brain tissue, fix broken bones, and restore deteriorating muscles.” He knew by the others’ silence that he has their complete attention.
“The preliminary findings were amazing,” Butsko continues. “After a few days, the animals were being revived better than when they were put down. Then the experiments went further. They were inducing brain damage in some of the animals before they were put into stasis. Other animals had bones broken, were burned, maimed, and various other injuries that soldiers might sustain in battle. In every case, the animals were coming out of stasis a few days later completely healthy.” He turns to look at the others, and then, stone-faced, says, “Gentlemen, it was fucking amazing, and one hell of a breakthrough.”
“We don’t know what the new procedure was?” Wilder asks.
“Not completely,” Butsko answers. “The breakthrough and the break-in of the lab were only days apart. They didn’t even have time to brief us fully on what it was before the lab was torched. When we find the ‘breakthrough,’ we find the cause of these animals’ aggressive behavior.”
“Permission to speak, Sir?
”
Kane asks.
“You’ll find that we don’t follow all the protocols you are used to Kane. Speak freely,” Butsko replies.
“Since we’ve been in here,” Kane says as he looks around, “I haven’t seen one of these animals do anything even remotely aggressive.”
“Then you better pay attention,” Butsko says as he nods at the house cat before them.
At the back of the enclosed cage, a metal door slides open with a “whoosh.” A hand, protected by a level-four hazmat suit, drops a small mouse into the cage. Before the mouse even hits the ground the house cat pounces and cuts it in half. It then slowly eats the two halves.
“Jesus Christ,” Mac says. “Now I know where the term ‘cat-like reflexes’ comes from.”
“Keep watching,” Butsko says.
A slightly larger door slides open and the same hazmat hands drop a larger cat into the cage. This one actually makes it to the floor. It runs to the opposite corner and arches its back, hissing and screaming. The altered house cat slowly stands on all fours and sniffs the air. Without hesitation, it pounces onto the new, larger cat, sinking its teeth into its throat and killing it in seconds. They watch, stunned, as it then guts the dead cat and begins eating its insides.
“What the fuck was that?” Kane almost shouts. “That thing just killed in less than a second.”
After another minute, an even bigger metal slot slides open in the cage. This time a wolf-dog hybrid is placed inside. The wolf sniffs the air and is noticeably scared. The house cat slowly walks around the wolf as if it is sizing it up. It then darts behind the wolf-dog hybrid and bites on one of its hind legs. After it bites the wolf, it walks to the other corner and continues to eat the larger cat it had just killed.
“Again, what the fuck was that?” Kane repeats.
“You’re starting to sound like a broken record, Kane,” Wilder says.
“What do you make of this little demonstration, men?” Butsko asks as he turns to them.
“Whatever these things have inside them,” Laning starts, “makes them fast as hell. I’ve never seen a faster, more accurate kill. That cat wasted no energy killing the mouse and larger cat.”
“That’s good,” Butsko says. “We’ve been studying other infected animals here and their kill rate and accuracy is off the charts, but what else did you notice?”
Wilder doesn’t give anyone the chance to answer. “It’s not just instinctively killing,” he says. “It’s like it’s assessing each situation to determine the best course of action.”
“Go on, Dan,” Butsko urges.
“Well, when the mouse was put in the cage, the cat barely even acknowledged its existence. It attacked and killed it before it even hit the ground,” Wilder pauses. “But when the larger cat was put in the cage, it sniffed the air and looked like it was trying to determine what kind of threat it was.”
“Obviously,” Laning cuts in, “it didn’t see it as a big threat.”
“Right,” Wilder says to no one in particular. “The same with the wolf. It sized it up and determined that in a fight, the wolf would most likely win.” Wilder stands there looking inside the cage
.
“No wait. That doesn’t add up. If it thought the wolf was a threat, then why did it sneak behind it and bite it? There’s something else…” Wilder smacks his hands together. “It wasn’t just determining if the wolf was a threat,” he says, clearly excitedly at his own breakthrough. “It was sniffing to see if the wolf was already infected by our mystery virus.”
“Bingo,” says Butsko. “Infected animals don’t attack and kill other infected animals. The mouse, a ‘lower’ life form, is immediately killed and eaten. The larger cat was judged to be the same and uninfected, and therefore, of no use. But the wolf,” Butsko says, sounding excited, “the wolf was determined to be a slightly ‘higher’ animal. Believe me, that house cat could kill that wolf. But instead, it wanted to infect it, and that’s exactly what it did by biting it.”
The men are staring at the wolf, who is lying down on the floor now. “Wait,” Wilder says. “That would mean…”
“That would mean,” Butsko cuts in, “that the virus, or whatever the hell is inside these things, has its own survival instincts, and wants to propagate itself in higher life forms.” He pauses a second and then, “In about two hours, give or take, the wolf is going to die, and then another hour after that, it will reanimate.”
“Is this what happened to that poor bastard we transported here?” Reynolds asks.
“It is,” Butsko answers. “It seems that the higher the life form, the slower the transformation. A bite like the wolf got would take about four to five hours to kill a human being.” He looks at the soldiers closely. “The transformation would take about eight to nine hours.”
“Transformation?
”
Wilder asks.
“Yes. That’s the nice way of describing the process when the person dies and then wakes up again.”
The men all look at the wolf on the ground and the house cat still eating the other mangled cat. Their silence tells Butsko that the gravity of the situation is sinking in.
“That’s right, guys. We have some strange virus out there trying to climb the food chain, and we all know what’s at the top of the food chain, don’t we?”
Shivers ran up both men’s spines.
After a long pause, Butsko finally breaks the silence. “Your silence tells me you understand the severity of what we are dealing with here. There’s one more thing you need to see.”
2
The train is a distant memory now. It seems like the crash happened years ago, but we all know better than that. The group that survived the wreck is down just to Brice, Jason, Julie, Fi, and myself.
We are heading back to the zoo. We found the train tracks and are following them. This time, though, we don’t walk on them. That seemed to be a bad idea last time. Now we walk parallel to the tracks, keeping them about fifteen away but in sight all the while.
It is slow traveling. Jason has a shattered collarbone, and with every step he takes his pain becomes all the more evident. Brice is just as messed up. He is in so much pain it is impossible to tell what exactly that tiger broke. That bothers me, and I think everyone is thinking the same thing: how is it possible that the tiger didn’t kill him? We have seen less powerful animals swoop in and kill, seen monkeys and goats tear apart people.
“Why isn’t Brice dead?” I ask Julie in her remaining ear. “Judging the strength of the other animals, that tiger could have bit right through him and left him in two pieces.”
Julie has wrapped a t-shirt around her head to stop the bleeding from where her ear used to be. She is silent and doesn’t answer me right away. Then finally, she asks, “Do you really wanna know what I think?”
I just look at her through my cloudy eye. “Of course I do. The more I try and wrap my mind around what the hell is going on, the more confused I get. Nothing makes sense anymore. I can almost understand a wolf, a tiger, and a bear attacking, but when deer and goats start tearing people apart… Why the fuck didn’t that tiger kill him?”
Julie inhales deeply. She seems to have an answer, but also appears reluctant to tell me.
“Because it didn’t want to kill him,” she finally says. She looks around, likely making sure Brice and Jason haven’t heard her. She can see the look on my face and offers her own explanation before I could say anything. “Look, these animals have been displaying not only increased levels of aggression. They are also showing higher intelligence. They’ve been hunting us down all day. If they were going on instinct alone, they would’ve attacked and killed us all at one shot.”