Separation (25 page)

He seemed to love every one of his fifteen
minutes, but fell silent once Overton went to the cockpit and came
back carrying a laptop. “You’re going to want to see this,” he said
in a sober tone. “We got another message from Allenby. This is live
and it’s for you, Harry. I already set up the audio.”

Harry accepted the laptop. Opening the lid,
the ugly figure of Allenby stood in his cavern, the same spot as
before. He’d mutated even more, with the bulges in his face turning
to calcifications that practically obscured his eyes and covered
most of his face. In a fight, this would present a most formidable
defense.

The man’s body had also changed, with the
arms becoming longer and thicker. A human spider, Allenby had
seemingly challenged the limits of genetics and won. His voice had
also changed, becoming more sonorous and echoed like water in a
well.

“Goldman, if you’re seeing this, then here’s
what I want. You and Istvan, the pig, will come to Lake Shasta. I
presume you’ve figured out my location by now. Just the two of you,
and I’ll spare your wife.”

A second later, the camera panned over to
where Anastasia was bound, gagged and lying on a table. Two
mutants, man-sized dogs mixed with zebras, with hound-like heads
and striped, muscular bodies, hovered over her, salivating. Specks
of drool coated the sides of their misshapen mouths. It became a
question of whether they’d rape or kill her.

Their master, though, seemed to sense their
innermost feelings and snapped his fingers. “Move back. Don’t harm
her. I want her husband to see this.”

Seeing Anastasia tied up, Harry felt his rage
build. “If you touch one hair on her head,” he began, knowing he’d
just uttered the biggest cliché in existence, “you won’t last five
minutes with me.”

Allenby leaned into the camera, practically
ingesting it. “You are in no position to make demands. Bring the
pig. You get your wife back. If you betray me yet again, I’ll peel
the skin from her body slowly and film it for the world to
see.”

The transmission cut off. Harry frantically
tapped buttons, but the image did not reappear. With a cry of rage,
he hurled the machine away and it landed with a clatter.

Overton went to pick it up, doing so
wordlessly. “Well, it’s not broken, so that’s something.” He chose
that moment to stare out the window.

Harry said nothing and sat with a bowed head,
wondering how his life had gone from good to toilet level in such a
short time.

Once Allenby started speaking, though, Leo
had quickly moved to another seat and turned his head away. In
contrast, Istvan, who’d not uttered a word the entire time, watched
the entire broadcast, his face immobile. “I see what has happened.
You will go and get your wife back?”

“Yes.”

“And you will trade me for her?”

Istvan’s voice had come out with a catch in
it. He knew it was a death sentence. There was no other way,
though. Harry startled to fumble out a reply, saying something to
the effect of not wanting to but having to, and finally, hung his
head, ashamed it had all come to this. “I’m sorry, it’s just
that—”

“I know what Allenby want with me,” Istvan
cut in, sounding surprisingly calm. “I know he means to use me. I
know he has your wife.”

The mention of his wife made Harry snap his
head up. “Istvan, wait...”

“No, you must hear me first.” Inhaling
deeply, he straightened up and a note of passion, something which
denoted decency and friendship and more, coated each word. “But I
also know you love her and must be with her. So I will go with you.
That is my honor.”

“More than likely, this is a one-way trip.”
When Istvan stared at him in an uncomprehending manner, Harry
simplified things and put his hand on the little man’s shoulder in
a friendly gesture. “If I could do this any other way, I would.
Thank you.”

He got a smile in return. “Maybe we will be
lucky.”

Getting up, Istvan walked over to the other
side of the airplane and curled up on a seat. Soon, he was
snoring.

An ahem got Harry’s attention. He looked up
and saw Overton gazing at him.

“What is it?”

“Are you ready for this?”

“I don’t have a choice.” Licking his lips,
Harry added, “Thanks for coming with me. I know you got removed
from your position, and—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Overton
interrupted.

“You could lose your job.”

“I’d rather keep my self-respect.”

His words, simply spoken, brought a smile to
Harry’s face. “This is hard for you,” the agent was saying. “It’s
hard, I know that. But I’ll be there along with the pilot and—”

“No, I’m going with Istvan, just the two of
us,” Harry interrupted and glanced at Leo, who still had his face
averted. “This is on me. Allenby will kill her if he suspects
anyone.”

“You know he’s going to try to kill you.”

Offering a shrug to indicate he was resigned
to his fate, Harry didn’t know what to say at first and settled
for, “It comes with the territory.”

As they touched down, Harry rolled his neck around to
get rid of the kinks. The tension had been building for the past
couple of hours, and it would probably get even higher. It would do
no good to worry about his wife, but he couldn’t help it. Love was
something worth fighting for, after all, and he was prepared for a
duel to the death.

Glancing at Istvan, he saw that as usual, he
was sleeping, and it seemed only something on an apocalyptic scale
was capable of waking the pig-man.

“Where are we?” Harry asked, once Overton
came back to inform him of their arrival.

“We’re at Benton Airpark. It’s a city-owned
public airport, near Redding. That’s the closest point I could get
to Lake Shasta. The FBI has a private hangar here... we won’t be
seen. I’ve got a car waiting.”

It seemed like a plan. As they touched down,
Leo awoke, rubbing his eyes. “We are here?”

“Yeah, we are,” answered Harry, trying to
formulate a plan of how things would go down. Nothing really came
to mind. Get in, get Anastasia, and get out again. Simple, really,
but it all depended on how open to cooperation Allenby was... and
he didn’t come across as being open to anything save murder.

“What do I do?” A look of apprehension
crossed the little mole-man’s face. “I not have idea of how to
help.” His voice shook as he bowed his head, perhaps in fear or
shame, Harry couldn’t tell which.

It was time to let him off the hook. “Stay
here. Stay safe.”

Leo quickly retreated to the relative safety
of another seat to curl up, but he didn’t go to sleep. Instead, he
looked on, his eyes darting back and forth between the other
occupants of the plane and his mouth half open as if deciding to
make a statement or not. His biggest statement came when he said
and did nothing.

Harry woke Istvan up. He yawned and
stretched, and then, like Leo, realizing the moment of truth had
arrived, got a look of terror on his round face. His earlier
bravado seemed to have faded. “I know what will happen to me when
we go there,” he gulped. “I know what will happen after.”

“He’s not going to get you,” Harry said as he
laid a friendly hand on Istvan’s shoulder. “I promise you.”

Promises were often made in situations like
these. But could they be kept? Harry didn’t know if he was capable
of promising anything. Considering the odds against him, he came up
with a few scenarios, all of them bad. One, he’d find Allenby, go
up against him and lose. Two, even if he managed to find Allenby,
there was no telling if Anastasia was safe or not. Three, if
Anastasia was hurt or...

He stopped considering the options after
number three. Losing Anastasia would be like losing his life, and
he was determined not to let it happen. “Nothing’s going to happen.
But you have to trust me.”

As the three of them disembarked, Istvan
glanced around nervously. “I trust you, but I am scared.”

“Who isn’t,” Overton replied in the grimmest
of tones as he checked his weapon. Satisfied, he thrust it back
into his holster. “Let’s get going.”

Disembarking, they found a nondescript black
sedan waiting. Overton got in and took the wheel. He drove out of
the hangar and no opposition came their way. “So what’s the plan?”
he asked once they hit the highway.

“We go there and I give myself up,” Harry
answered. It wasn’t the smartest plan around, but there didn’t seem
to be any other way. He couldn’t be sure Allenby wouldn’t hurt
Anastasia, but he had to take that chance. Revenge was what this
monster wanted more than anything. Perhaps he’d slip up
somewhere.

“Let me go with you,” Overton insisted.

“No, we will go.”

That came from Istvan, who spoke up, his
voice clear and unafraid. “He will not kill me. Dead, I am of no
use to him.”

His words, so simply spoken, made Harry
doubly determined to beat this monster somehow. “Just keep driving.
Once we get to the forest, we’ll find our way.”

Overton said nothing else and kept the sedan
moving steadily along the highway, occasionally glancing at the GPS
and nodding. A while later they reached the edge of the forest.
There, Harry and Istvan got out. “Wish us luck,” Harry said.

“Good luck.”

We’ll need it.
Harry kept a sharp eye
out and trained his senses on the environment. The sound of bees
buzzing, land-based animals scratching their way through the
undergrowth and the flit of bird’s wings all came through, However,
he wasn’t interested in the mundane. He was interested in the
unusual.

Istvan did his part, dropping to the ground
on all fours and snuffling along. “I cannot find scent of them. I
only smell other animals, regular animals.”

Perhaps they’d wised up, using some other
kind of body-masking agent to hide the stink. Or perhaps they were
so deep underground no smell could filter its way up to the
surface. Harry didn’t know and right now, he didn’t care. The
thought of going beneath the earth scared him, but Istvan, in spite
of his previous brave words, had to be terrified at the prospect of
being trapped by a madman.

As they tramped along, a memory of the final
fight against Szabo went through Harry’s mind. He’d faced off
against Szabo, a giant in strength, an odd although lethal
combination of bear and shark. The underground laboratory had been
in Yakutsk, a Russian seaport city. Stark, stripped down to the
bare essentials, he’d fought the giant in a broken down lab room.
Nothing but tables, rubble, and a shark tank from which Szabo had
received part of his DNA was in the room.

“You cannot beat me,” Szabo had said
triumphantly. He’d tossed Harry from end to end, and did so easily.
Battered and bruised, Harry had fought back, but against a larger
and much stronger foe, he was destined to lose if he kept fighting
in such a face-to-face style.

“Weak, you are weak,” Szabo declared. “You
are also incomplete. You do not have a tail like your wife
does.”

This much was true. When Harry had gone
through the transformation process, it had been interrupted, hence
his tailless status. However, he had something Szabo lacked—the
ability to adapt.

Catlike reflexes allowed him to dodge the
monster’s blows. Harry did what his feline genes allowed him to do.
He evaded smash after smash, darted in to slash and punch, and
quickly pulled back again.

When Szabo charged him, Harry had his back
against the wall—literally—and a rusty spike protruded from the
concrete. In a deft as well as a desperate move, he stepped aside
and the shark-bear monstrosity ended up lobotomizing himself. Harry
finished him off as quickly as possible and dumped his body into
the shark tank. “Eat hearty...”

“What are you thinking about?”

Istvan’s question broke his train of thought.
“Oh, uh, just what we’re going to do after this,” Harry answered,
attempting to impart an air of unconcern. Hard to appear jaunty,
especially in a situation such as this, but keeping up a façade was
half the battle. “I mean, once we’re done, we’re going back to New
York and fix something up for you.”

“Perhaps I can have a job?”

Make him happy...
“Yeah, Overton
talked about getting us jobs, you and me, my wife... all of
us.”

It was a poor lie, but it did earn him a
smile. “Yes, I will like working,” Istvan replied after a few
seconds.

He trotted along the ground, wearing a
somewhat enigmatic smile, as if he, too, was playing along with the
lie. It was a curious look, and bespoke a sadness that went beyond
being changed into something he’d never imagined or wanted.

To take his mind off the upcoming conflict,
Harry asked, “What did you want to be back in Hungary?” Istvan had
originally come from Budapest.

“An engineer,” the reply came. “I wished to
help reconstruct my country as well as other countries in Europe.
It was my dream.”

Halting in his tracks, he looked at his
hoof-hands. “I cannot handle instruments well. I am only good
for...”

Abruptly, he stopped talking. “We are close.
I can smell them.”

Impossible... if they were underground, then
how could he know? Harry thought his friend had gone into wishful
thinking mode, a kind of delusion, but realized that Istvan
possessed a better sense of smell, and also, Jason had said the
power emanations were coming from the park. Better to verify first.
“Did you find the entrance?”

“Close, it is close.”

Istvan snuffled along for a few seconds,
searching this way and that, and finally came to a plot of grass
that looked somewhat flatter than the surrounding area. “It is
here.”

To make his point clearer, he tapped the
ground and a faint metallic echo pinged back. “Great sense of
smell,” Harry said admiringly.