T
he quiet in the office lasted long after the call ended.
Zach and Candle were at opposite ends of a table, a temporary DMZ between them. Bell looked beaten. Book was just pissed.
“You didn’t have to take all the blame,” Zach said to Bell.
“Or any of it,” Candle said.
Zach stood up, ready to start the shoving match again. “That’s it, jackass—”
“Stop it,” Bell ordered. They both sat down again. “Colonel’s right. We have a job to do. We missed the obvious before. Let’s start again. Up from the ground floor. Go.”
“It’s late,” Book said, looking at his watch. “Shouldn’t we get some rack time? Start fresh in the morning?”
“It’s morning over there already,” Bell said, an edge in her voice. “But hey, if you’re too tired, go ahead. Take a nap.”
Book scowled and stayed where he was.
“Ideas?” Bell asked. “Anyone?”
“What about that mad scientist guy? He could do something like this?” Candle asked.
“Konrad?” Zach was surprised these people knew about him. His whole existence, like Cade’s, was classified far above the usual definition of top secret. “We already ruled him out.”
“Well, rule him back in.”
“No,” Zach said. “Konrad prefers things that have his signature on them. He’d want to make sure Cade knew he was involved. It’s very personal with him.”
“That’s not much of a reason to eliminate him, Zach.” Bell sounded apologetic.
“Konrad also hates working with anything related to Innsmouth. Finds it disgusting and beneath him. And frankly, the Snakeheads aren’t half as tough as anything Konrad could put together in his spare time.”
“Fine. Moving on.”
They went in circles like that. Zach learned they knew a few things about the Other Side and its incursions into our world—some things that surprised even him.
But none of it got them any closer to an answer.
After another hour or two, they sat, resentment filling the quiet spaces between them.
There was another lead, Zach knew. But it was firmly under NIGHTMARE PET, and he’d be breaking about a dozen conditions of his clearance to let anyone else in on it.
Hell with it, he decided. “I know someone who can help us with this,” he told Bell. “Let’s go.”
Book and Candle began to get up from their chairs, moving like someone had just told them they were being sent to the dentist.
“Not you,” Zach said.
“Why not?” Candle demanded.
“Because it’s not a tour group, all right? I’m taking enough of a chance here.”
Hewitt stirred from his post at the door. Bell shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll do this Zach’s way.”
They looked like they were about to protest, then thought better of it.
“All right,” Candle said. “For what it’s worth, Barrows, I’m sorry about before. We’re on the same side. I just . . . I missed it. You know? Embarrassing.”
Zach was taken off guard. It must have shown on his face.
“Same here,” Book said. “You caught the error. Credit where it’s due. Now let’s get these fuckers, all right?”
“Yeah. Sure,” Zach said. “Thanks.” He didn’t know what else to say.
Hewitt and Reynolds didn’t pay any attention to this little warm and fuzzy exchange. They remained slumped in their chairs. Reynolds was asleep; Hewitt was downing snacks from the vending machines.
That made Zach feel better somehow. He didn’t know what he’d do if they wanted to hug it out.
He and Bell left the office.
BOOK DIDN’T EVEN WAIT for them to get to the car. “Well?” he said to Hewitt.
Hewitt looked up, crème filling dotting the corners of his mouth.
“Follow them, jackass.”
Hewitt gave Book a scowl, but stood, crumpling a Twinkie wrapper. He turned toward the door and suddenly, without warning, he was simply—gone.
A dark shadow fell across the floor, and then that vanished as well.
Candle shuddered. “Man, that creeps me out every—”
Book took two steps across the room and slapped him. It sounded like a racquetball hitting a wall.
“You fucking moron,” he said. “How goddamn lazy are you? The same fake ID? You couldn’t even find a different name?”
Candle rubbed the fresh red welt on his face. “You were the one who let him at your terminal,” he whined.
Book raised his hand again. Candle flinched. “Don’t,” Book warned. “Don’t even try to shift this. You screwed up. We could have kept them running in circles for days. Weeks even.”
“How was I supposed to know someone else would be checking the database?”
Book considered hitting him again, but knew it was a waste of time. That was the trouble with all these double games and cover identities. You had to work with who you were given.
“Never mind. You think you can fix it now?”
Candle nodded furiously. “Not a problem. Take me five minutes. I swear.”
He sat down at his terminal and began clacking keys, staring hard at the screen: a picture of the model employee.
Book decided to throw him a bone. “That was good, what you did there with Barrows. Keep him unbalanced. Make him think we’re his buddies now.”
Candle shrugged, but Book could see the pride. “He’s a political hack. They all want to be loved.”
In the corner, Reynolds was still snoring softly. None of this had even made him stir. Candle kept typing for a moment. Then: “You think Bell is into him?”
“Who, Barrows? Don’t worry about it. You didn’t have a chance anyway. She likes men.”
Candle pulled on his tie, which showed the message again: EAT ME.
“You know what I mean. It could complicate things. If she’s not on board.”
Candle rummaged through Hewitt’s pile of snacks. He held out a package to Book. “Want to split a Twinkie?”
“No,” he said, and kicked Reynolds in the foot, waking him. “Come on,” he said. “We have someplace to be.”
“Where are you going?” Candle said, like a kid left out of a class trip.
“Just going to make sure everyone stays frosty,” Book said. “Get to work. We’ll be back soon.”
Reynolds followed Book to the door in a kind of sleepwalk. They got into one of the Humvees and began driving for D.C.
TWELVE
In Colorado during the Depression, a number of witnesses claimed to have seen man-sized, bipedal, dinosaur-like lizards. One was supposedly exhibited in a farmer’s barn for several days after it was shot and killed. Whether or not this is related to the “serpent people” legends of the local Hopi Indian tribes is unknown.
—Cole Daniels,
Monsterpaedia
Z
ach thought about blindfolding Bell, but he had no idea how to ask a woman something like that. A girlfriend had once tried handcuffing him in bed and he’d laughed so hard it completely spoiled the mood.
Besides, Zach realized, if he trusted her enough to share one secret, then she might as well know the rest of them.
He drove the black A/A Humvee down into a service tunnel for the Metro and waved his phone at a panel on the ceiling. A radio receiver picked up, and a gate opened in another side passage. A few sharp turns later, and they were down a ramp into a much older series of tunnels—ones that had been around since Washington, D.C., was built.
He parked the Humvee. Bell was trying to look nonchalant, but she was still staring at the walls around them. It was like an eighteenth-century street, paved with stones, under a brick ceiling.
“I had no idea,” she said.
“Not many people do,” Zach said, trying not to sound like he was bragging. “Cade’s been using these tunnels for years. You can even reach the White House from here.”
“Is that where we’re going?” she asked.
“No,” he said, and pointed to an exit in the wall, just large enough for them to walk through. “This is a lot less glamorous. Believe me.”
“IT’S REALLY a remarkable accomplishment,” Dr. Carl Everett said. “Sophisticated, but actually quite elegant. Even beautiful.”
They were in the basement laboratories below the NIH, where a series of fallout shelters had been rebuilt to house a variety of classified experiments.
Everett was speaking of the body. He stood by a steel table laid out with a Snakehead from the raid on the yacht, partially dissected. Crusted blood and gore leaked from the wound Cade had punched in its torso, and its eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
Zach suppressed a shudder, but not because of the creature on the slab. Everett creeped him out.
Zach and Cade did not work completely alone. There was an entire support structure of specialized personnel, men and women who had been drawn in because of their own contacts with the Other Side, or because they simply didn’t flinch as much as regular civilians when faced with soul-rending horror. He didn’t even know how many there were. They were all a little weird—they had to be, to keep a job where a hostile work environment meant occasional zombie outbreaks—but Everett won the prize for grand high freak.
It wasn’t his appearance or demeanor. Everything about him was mild. He wore a warm cardigan sweater under his lab coat. He always made Zach think of Mr. Rogers.
Except Mr. Rogers probably never looked so calm while up to his elbows in a monster’s guts.
Perhaps all his time dealing with death had made him callous, but Everett’s composure faltered only when he confronted something new and hideous. And then he’d break into a smile, as if he was watching a child receive a new puppy at a birthday party.
Bell, however, looked like she was barely holding on to her lunch. And Everett’s placid manner seemed to have the same effect on her that it did on Zach. He decided to hurry this along.
“Aside from the aesthetics, what can you tell us about the Snakeheads?” Zach asked him.
“I’ve mentioned before, your nickname for them is not very accurate. The creature contains reptilian, aquatic and amphibian traits—”
“Doctor,” Zach said. “Cut me some slack, okay? Just the high points.”
Everett grimaced, but nodded. He pointed at the body.
“What you have here is a human being who’s essentially been reengineered by a very powerful infectious agent. He was hit with what appears to be a retrovirus that rebuilt him from the cell level up. And from what you tell me, onset of the change was nearly instantaneous after infection. Truly remarkable.”
“You’re sure it’s a virus?” Zach asked. “Cade has fought things like these before.”
Everett shook his head. “This is related to Innsmouth, but it’s not the same thing. The transformation in Innsmouth was triggered by years of interbreeding, as well as occult ritual and environmental factors. Basically, you had to live there and be related to the Marshes. A very shallow gene pool. Bin Laden was clearly infected with an earlier variant of this strain, but again, it wasn’t contagious, and probably required months of treatments in near-total isolation. Probably some ritual as well.”
Bell furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry, did you just say Bin Laden?”
Zach made a face. “One security breach at a time, okay?” He turned back to Everett. “So if this isn’t the same as the earlier outbreaks, what is it?”
“Someone has taken the Innsmouth DNA and turned it into a disease,” Everett said. “They’ve loaded it into a fast-spreading viral carrier that spreads in body fluids. It doesn’t require ritual, or any weakening of the usual barriers between our world and the next. It will infect people who’ve had no previous contact with the Other Side.”
“So, like demonic possession, but on a cellular level,” Bell said.
“Exactly right,” Everett said, as if he hadn’t heard the sarcasm in her voice. “Put simply, it appears that the virus is a carrier for a package of RNA that immediately transcribes itself into the host DNA of the cells. Each infected cell is then repurposed, and the host organism made into an optimal carrier for continued proliferation of the virus itself.”
Zach and Bell exchanged glances. She shrugged. “Try putting it a little more simply,” he said.
Everett shrugged. “The virus changes humans into the shape the virus wants.”
“How can a virus want something?”
Everett blinked at them. “A figure of speech. The virus has the goal of reproducing. That’s all it does. And this body is the best way for the virus to do that. It’s like someone decided to take humans all the way back down the evolutionary process and start again at the ground level.”
He looked at Bell and Zach, who stared back.
“Look,” Everett said impatiently, as he pointed at the corpse. “The skin. Transformed into scale-like layers. Denser and tougher, like a reptile’s. The cells receive a boost of keratin and osteopontin that’s leached from the bones, causing them to thicken and harden. At the same time, the skeleton becomes more flexible and resilient, like that of a fish or amphibian. It’s capable of taking much greater force without breakage. It flexes under pressure. Which is necessary, as the muscle tissues have also been augmented. The fibers of the skeletal muscle are replaced by fibers that are much closer to Type Two muscles—which contract faster, and with much greater strength. It also requires less oxygen and is capable of greater endurance in anaerobic conditions. And this, of course, is of direct benefit because of the blood.”