The Aeschylus (36 page)

He climbed up to the deck, grabbed the starter, and pulled it. The engine coughed. He pulled again, hearing the starter flub and whistle without turning over. He found the primer button and pumped it, pushing gas into the engine, then tried the pull again. Nothing. Nothing for the next six tries, either. He gave it a rest, his arm aching.

“Doc, give me a hand with this!” Where was Gideon this time?

He greased his palms and gave it one more go. The engine turned over with a belch and a roar, coughing up clouds of black smoke. The sound was immense, at least three times louder than any boat he'd been on.

“Hot damn!” he shouted. “The Dutch boy comes through again! Gideon, where you at?”

If the man said anything in reply, he didn't hear it. The noise was too goddamned loud. He figured he'd let it run for a few minutes and then cut it. Now, if they couldn't patch the other boat, they'd have a Plan B. AJ would be proud.

Dutch squinted over the top of the boat to the open door, oblivious to the figure creeping onto the platform behind him.

Mason crept along the deck, as silent as the dark. He paused just long enough to pull his knife out of its sheath. No guns had survived the journey through the water, but his blade had made the trip just fine.

“Gideon! Where are you?” the man called.

He could taste the sweat on the air, could feel the other man's heart beating in his chest. His own chest felt as if it were on fire, burning with the need to strike.

“Doc! You're making me nervous, Doc!” Dutch bent and grabbed something off of the floor. It looked like a flare gun, but that couldn't save him now.

“Help me!” Gideon's form came hurtling through the open doorway. His body hit the ground and rolled, coming to rest in front of the spinning rotor of the engine. A metal container clanged next to him, spilling from his hand in the tumble.

The game was up.

“Gideon!” Dutch called.

Mason slid in behind and thrust with his knife. Dutch spun at the last moment, but it was too late.
Too late!

But it wasn't.

Instead of hitting the man's kidney, the blade sliced between his ribs. Dutch rolled with the cut, and Mason felt something smack into his head. He reeled. Dutch slammed his wrist and
then kicked him in the thigh.
One-two
. The knife clattered to the ground, gliding further down the deck and out of reach.

Quick! He was quick!

With a cry, Mason lunged, tackling Dutch and driving him to the ground. He put a knee on the man's chest, then smashed him with his fists. He pounded his face, his skull, and when he covered up, Mason hit him in the ribs.

He chanced a glance over the rails and saw St. Croix stalking Gideon, grinning like a monkey. He picked the skinny man up and embraced him just beneath the boat, biting at his neck.

Then something heavy and metallic slammed into the side of Mason's head. He stumbled, looking down towards Dutch and seeing the man had picked up a wrench.
A goddamned wrench!

“Gideon! Hold on!”

Dutch kicked the engine, dropping the propeller parallel to the floor. He didn't know it would work, he
couldn't
know that it would work... but suddenly St. Croix was howling, his skull shredding and crunching in the tilt-a-whirl of the blade.

Mason roared. “No!”

His two other men emerged from the shadows and ran at the doctor. Gideon was still holding Peter in a weird embrace, shrieking vengeance as the blade chopped through his head.

Vy grabbed Gideon and slammed him onto the ground, ignoring St. Croix's body and the spinning blade behind it. Melvin jumped after, and then the two of them were digging into the doctor with their fingernails, hacking at him with their teeth. Gideon screamed as his body shook, blood pooling beneath him.

Mason jumped towards Dutch, driving his knee into the man's groin. The man dropped to the deck, and Mason kicked the wrench away. Before Dutch could escape, Mason grabbed him and hauled him over his head like a power-lifter. A fresh gout of blood drained from his bullet wound, but he felt alive!
Alive!

He tossed the puny man over the rails, and Dutch hit the concrete with a thud. Mason wondered how long this guy—
this fucking tough guy
—would survive when he fed him feet first to that propeller.

Beneath him, Gideon had managed to crawl to the object he had been carrying.

“Finish him,” Mason yelled. “Finish him now!”

Gideon unscrewed the cap on the gas can. Even with the weight of two men on top of him, he was able to tip it over. The liquid splashed out onto his thighs, onto his stomach, onto the two men who were hacking and biting him. The man was crying, laughing, howling as he did it. In another life, it would have been a sight to fuel Mason's nightmares, even with all he had seen.

The sound of a metal click snapped his attention back to the other man. On the ground, Dutch had uncurled.

He was holding the flare gun.

“
Do it!
” Gideon yelled. “
Do it!
” He was laughing as he yelled it,
laughing
as they tore him apart.

Dutch didn't know which gas Gideon had been carrying: the good stuff, or the inert sludge. If it was the latter, he was dead.

It wasn't.

A red ball shot from the tube and hit Gideon in the leg, the flame catching before it even made contact. A ball of orange fire engulfed the entourage, spreading up and over the ground.

Mason leapt from the deck of the ship and grabbed Melvin, pushing him out of the way as the fireball exploded. Christian was not as lucky. He was at the nexus when it hit, the fireball washing over him in a giant puff. He stood as a flaming pillar, then lumbered towards the exit, his arms thrashing like a B-movie caricature.

On the floor next to him, Gideon's body burned without a sound, and Dutch knew he was dead.

Poor Gideon.

He found his feet and ran, following Christian's howling figure out the door. The burning man made it to the beach and
fell into the water, dousing himself with a terrible hiss. Later, Dutch would ask himself why he hadn't finished Christian right there and then as the man lay helpless, but that was no
mystery. Henry Jones, elite sniper and security guard, was scared. He was scared out of his mind, and he was hurt. Blood still flowed from between his ribs, the spot where the knife had cut him. He needed to find help, and fast.

Behind him, Mason was stripping off his clothes, peeling burnt cloth and skin from his back in layers. When he tried to run after, he stumbled, his wounded leg finally giving out beneath him. He howled with rage, staring at the fleeing man with hatred in his eyes.

Dutch didn't look back. He ran on, his mind reeling with terror and confusion.

How? How, how had they survived?

But he knew the answer. They were
them
now, their skin blackened and their minds twisted. Now, they would stop at nothing.

As he made his way along the beach, jogging up the coast towards the fortress, he looked up to the sky and saw the sun had finally fallen below the horizon.

The Island:

February, 1939

At the door to the lab, Dominik watched his own sun slip below the water. The lights around the base began to flicker, casting an ugly yellow glow across the grounds. Even with all that had happened, even with Kriege missing and Zimmer dead, the commander's schedule was flawless.

And that meant he would be coming.

Richter had been so pleased with their progress that he wanted to see the solution for himself. So he would, but not in the way he expected. Dominik had managed to delay him until this evening, and that was all the better. The night of the first sunset happened to coincide with the day before Lent, and the men had taken this as an excuse to throw a party. In a few hours, every watchman on the island would be stone drunk inside the officer's bunker, and the commander would be in the lab. It was almost too good to be true.

The other prisoners were waiting for him in the basement when he arrived.

“We're here,” Ari said.

Ettore wiped his brow. “It's just you. Good.”

Dominik didn't think he'd ever seen the man so nervous. It had been a risk bringing him into the fold, but he and Ari decided it had been a necessary risk. Counting Lucja, they were now four. Four souls resolved to violence and escape. The only man not aware was Thomas Frece. Frece was as scared as the rest of them, but he was a coward, and cowards were unpredictable. When the time came, however, he would stand with them... or he wouldn't. Dominik saw him studying charts in the corner and hoped it would be the former.

Ettore sidled over and held up a small vial. “The chloroform you wanted.”

Dominik nodded.

They'd had to manufacture it themselves by sneaking in acetone, ethanol, and bleach, but it was used by surgeons the world over, and the risk was worth the gain.

“You ready?”

Ettore nodded. “I'm sure it will work. I've never seen this used on a person before, only on pigs and dogs.”

“You are using it on a pig,” Ari said.

Dominik took the jar and unscrewed the lid. “We can do this. Never doubt it.”

“It will be different than on the boat. Richter is a killer. You know that, don't you, Dom?”

“I do. And in some ways, it makes things easier. It takes choice out of the equation. We have to do it for real this time, Ari. For me, and for you, and for Lucja.”

Lucja was another matter, and Dominik said a silent prayer to keep her safe. She would be on her way to the vehicle depot soon, ready to sabotage any chance of vehicle pursuit. He had wanted to send Ari with her, but there wasn't any way for the man to get close without arousing suspicion. She had to go it alone.

The day before, they had decided Ettore would be the one to wield the cloth. Richter always kept a close eye on Dominik and Ari, but he seemed to ignore their stoic companion. After some argument, Ettore had agreed, at last giving in to cold logic, as Dominik knew he would. Cold or not though, the man was sweating now.

There were so many things that could go wrong. The search party hadn't found Doctor Kriege. They had no idea where he was or how dangerous he had become. The search had wreaked havoc on the base patrols, all of which were now unpredictable. And as for the commander... what if he showed up with other soldiers?

Nonsense
, Dominik thought. Richter was too proud for bodyguards.

The door above the stairs swung open, and all four men froze, listening. Dominik counted the footsteps, trying to ascertain who was coming. Then, he knew: there was only one pair of boots. As he turned towards the doorway, he saw the commander pacing towards them, and his heart gave a jolt.
Luck
, he thought.
Luck is with us!

Richter entered the laboratory with the air of one bestowing a great favor upon an unworthy underling. “So,” he began, looking directly at Dominik. “Tell me about your results, Mister Kaminski. Tell me what it is that you have discovered.”

A drop of sweat fell off of Dominik's eyebrow and plunked onto his lip. It almost made him blabber, but he forced himself to speak calmly. “As you've heard, Commander, the key is formaldehyde. At room temperature, pure formaldehyde is a gas, but when distilled into a liquid form or a mist, it becomes extremely effective at containing the growths.”

“Go on.”

“We've known that the growths borrow characteristics from multiple phyla, but at their core, they're a fungus like any other. Their individual traits are traceable to any number of other species. And formaldehyde, well it's been proven to be an especially effective fungicide, especially against black mold. Our friends share quite a few characteristics with black mold, as you know. The chemical causes the cells to disintegrate, but not in a way that's going to implode the whole structure or cause them to release their spores. The spore sacs themselves wither and die when hit. I think what we have here... it's exactly the tool you've been searching for.”

Richter began inspecting the vats for himself. “You are confident this is the solution? That we need not pursue other avenues of control?”

“No sir,” Dominik said. “Fire to destroy, formaldehyde to contain. I think you have your answer.”

Though he should have been pleased, the commander only grunted, still looking at the vats. Dominik glanced over his shoulder at Ettore, who had begun to slip closer. The man looked patently guilty, but the commander wasn't paying attention.

“And the method of dispersal?”

Dominik gritted his teeth. Revealing this bit of information would reveal a bit about their plan, but then, he thought Richter would soon not be in a position to disseminate the information to anyone. “It can be released as a gas, either as a bomb or with something like a crop-dusting plane. The effects on people in the containment area will not be pleasant, but it will leave buildings and infrastructure intact.”

He chanced another glance at Ettore and saw the man's hands clasped in front of him. Dominik wondered if he was up to the task after all. Worse, he wondered how much Frece suspected. The man was starting to look unnerved himself. Fortunately, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut while Richter was talking.

The commander tapped on one of the metal cylinders. “If you are so confident now, then why, may I ask, did you not come upon this solution quicker?”

“The effects of formaldehyde are not well known. It's toxic, and not an ordinary way to deal with fungus. On top of that, as you know, the lieutenant's policies made it impossible for us to import dangerous chemicals. We talked about trying a series of aldehyde chains at one point, but when we couldn't gain access to them, we gave up.” Actually, it had been Smit's rule about allowing prisoners access to dangerous chemicals and the lieutenant had only upheld it, but condemning Dietrich sounded better.

The commander's eyes darted momentarily to Ettore, then flicked back to Dominik. “So if you were not given access to these chemicals, how did you come upon the solution?”