Virus (17 page)

Her captain, but something more, too. Maybe—

Richie touched something and the creature’s eyes snapped open, glowing yellow-green.

Foster reeled back instinctively, saw the shock and terror of the others as the biomechanoid focused on Nadia, one flesh and metal hand spasming, reaching up—

Nadia screamed as it clutched her arm. She lurched backwards, struggled to release herself, but the steel beneath the rotting fingers was solid, unyielding, and her hands were still tied.

Steve pulled his bowie knife and leapt forward, Hiko right behind with his strange club. Steve hacked at the arm of the creature, brutal chops that smacked wetly into the meat of the forearm and clanked against metal beneath the skin. Hiko beat at the circuitry lines that threaded the shoulder, crushing them against bone while Nadia continued to scream.

The thing’s hand quivered and loosened, releasing its grasp. Nadia collapsed to the floor, sobbing as the biomechanoid fell back to the table, eyes open but unseeing.

Foster went to her, knelt down beside her as Steve and Hiko stepped away, turning to Richie.

“Leave the goddamn thing alone, Richie!” Steve gasped.

Richie sounded petulant, whiny. “I was just looking at it . . .”

“Touch that again and I will fucking kill you,” Hiko breathed.

Nadia was shuddering, long strands of her blond hair sticking to her sweating, tear-stained face.

“Are you all right?” Foster asked.

Nadia looked up at her, eyes wide and shocked. “It’s Alexi. It’s still Alexi,” she said, then shook her head, denying her own words.

Foster rummaged through her pockets, came up with a handkerchief, and started to wipe at the woman’s face—and froze as Everton broke his silence finally, erupting into a tirade of harsh words.

“This is bullshit, I’ve listened to this long enough! Aliens, my
ass;
this is something your government created, some medical experiment.”

He stormed over to them, glaring down at Nadia. “Something went wrong, didn’t it? Tell me the truth.”

Nadia stared at him in anger and disbelief. “Alexi was no medical experiment, Alexi was my
husband.”

Foster stood up quickly, astounded at Everton’s blatant insensitivity and blindness. How could he deny what he must’ve known, what they all knew, deep down? The
Volkov
was wrong, it felt all wrong, far beyond any goddamn
experiment;
and there was a woman crying for the man she obviously loved right in front of him, her whole life shattered and—

“Could somebody
please
take a look at these nails in my shoulder?”

Foster stalked over to Woods, fuming.
Fuckin’ whiny kiss-ass drunk helmsman, selfish bastards.

She looked at Woods’s bleeding shoulder, saw the nails protruding from his ripped shirt and the total self-pity in his drunken gaze. She reached forward with both hands and gripped the nails, checked the angle, and then yanked them out smoothly.

Woods howled and dropped to the floor as though she’d murdered him. She ignored him, moving to the window and holding up the nails, examining them. The light wasn’t very good; she glanced out the window—

—and saw Leiah’s churning eye wall, an immense tower of black water and raging wind about to slam into the hull of the ship.

• 17 •

“O
h shit . . .” Foster said weakly.

Richie looked up from the still flesh-machine on the table and suddenly day turned to night and the world tilted sideways.

Captain shouted, “Brace yourselves!”

He heard the crash of water against the
Volkov
as his feet suddenly lost the deck and he was thrown across the room backwards, along with everything on the bridge that wasn’t bolted down. The lights dimmed and flickered, the shouts of the others lost to the violent, gusting rain that whipped through the broken windows.

Richie slammed into a console, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. He grabbed at the mounted frame, fingers scrabbling to get hold as the lights strobed—

—and the thing that had once been a Russian captain slid across the deck straight at him, the cold, stinking flesh of its heavy torso smacking up against his own. Richie opened his mouth to scream—and it started to move, a burst of digital code somewhere inside making the twisted limbs shudder and convulse.

Richie shrieked and somehow he was on his feet and halfway across the bridge even as the
Volkov
settled back into the heaving waves.

FUCKIN’ FUCK—

He spun, terrified that it would be right behind him, but it still lay against the console, writhing horribly. It spasmed, flesh and fabric tearing together as the biomechanoid arched its back impossibly high—

—and a metal-meshed spine ripped through to the surface, bringing up bone, muscle, and human tissue woven with circuitry. Huge chunks of reeking body parts fell away, the creature pulling itself up and lurching across the deck in a spray of bloody fluids.

The thundering explosion of bullets suddenly overshadowed the howling storm and Richie hit the deck, covering his head with both arms. He turned his head, saw both Everton and Hiko firing their sidearms wildly at the staggering monster.

“What the fuck are you doing?”
Steve shouted, and Richie turned his head the other way, saw that everyone else had gone down as ricochets pinged through the rocking bridge, chips of molded plastic and metal flying.

“Stop shooting! You’re going to kill someone!” Foster screamed, and for once, Richie agreed with her; it was too close, someone was gonna get hit if they didn’t listen.

Bits of the biomechanoid’s tattered body were spattering across the deck, the creature flailing its mangled arms as it collapsed next to Woods. Hiko and Everton stopped finally, and it flopped itself over, arching up to stare blindly into Woods’s screaming face before it fell back to the deck. It quivered a moment, then lay still.

“We gotta get the fuck off this ship,”
said Richie, knowing that there was no way—and knowing just as surely that if he had to see anything like that ever again, he’d lose his fuckin’ mind.

Another swell crashed against the
Volkov
broadside, tipping her into the foaming sea, and for one long, terrible second, Richie thought they would go over. Then she settled back, water spraying through the shattered glass as the typhoon screamed on.

He pulled himself upright, saw the others stumbling to their feet. Everton ran for the wheel, Foster to the flickering radar screen.

“Head her into the wind!” Steve yelled.

“Wind direction is east-northeast, velocity one-twenty!” Foster shouted.

Everton turned from the helm, the wheel spinning. “The controls are dead, she won’t turn!”

“Captain, we take another hit like that and we’ll roll!” Foster called.

Steve turned to Everton, still shouting to be heard over the storm. “We can manually steer her from the engine room, we can run the ship from there!”

Everton stared at him, confused. “You said the door’s welded shut!”

“We’ll
cut
the fuckin’ door!”

The captain barely hesitated. “All right.” He motioned at the Russian, adding, “Bring her! And keep her tied up till we sort this out!”

Richie grabbed up his AK-47 and turned to Woods, the helmsman still sitting on the deck, seemingly paralyzed by the lifeless creature that sprawled a few feet away. Richie picked up the munitions pack and the RPG, slinging them over his shoulder.

“Get off your ass, Woods,” Richie growled, suddenly furious at the man for being so frightened—and although it hurt to admit, because deep down, he felt the same way. They were going back into an environment capable of producing mechanical zombies, of shaping electricity into abominations that would try to steal their bodies . . .

Not me,
Richie decided, and felt every fiber of his being sing agreement; he’d blow up the whole goddamn ship before they took him down.

They all moved down the stairwell in a tense group, Richie and Baker in the lead, the two women and Hiko behind them, then Everton and Woods. All of them had their weapons drawn and pointed up, careful to take into account the sudden shifts of the rocking vessel.

Everton noticed that the Russian was having trouble keeping her balance with her wrists bound; petty as it was, he felt a certain satisfaction each time she stumbled. The woman was a menace and a liar; she’d spun up a fantastic tale to terrify his crew and had already tried to kill them once—not to mention violently assaulting him like some kind of common criminal. Her minor discomfort didn’t begin to make up for it, but it certainly made
him
feel better.

They had reached the hatch to C deck. Baker and Richie stepped out into the dark corridor with their flashlights while the rest of them waited nervously. Woods in particular was breathing like a fish out of water, although he’d finally stopped bleeding. Everton felt sorry for him; of all the crew, he was the only one who seemed to remember who the captain was.

The two crewmen walked back in, looking frazzled and anxious.

“All clear?” Everton asked.

“Clear,” said Baker.

“Clear.” Richie nodded easily, but his eyes darted back and forth and he’d developed a tic at one side of his mouth.

Everton nodded, and they moved cautiously into the corridor, Richie and Baker leading the way. The stairs were staggered at this end of the ship; Richie had said they’d find the next well only a few hundred feet past where they’d been let out—

Foster stopped suddenly and Everton almost ran into her. He felt a rush of irritation—and then realized that the boat wasn’t heaving as violently as it had been before.

“The ship’s turning,” she said, and reached into her pocket, pulling out a compass.

“We’ve altered course,” said Everton.
Damn it!

Foster studied the compass under Baker’s light, then looked up at Everton, apprehensive. “We just turned twenty degrees into the wind. This ship is steering itself.”

Nadia shook her head. “Ships don’t steer themselves . . .”

Well no
shit,
Natasha.

Everton glared at her. “You’re right. So who is? One of your Russian friends?”

The woman looked at him coldly. “I told you. They’re all dead.”

He barely resisted an urge to slap her; apparently she didn’t realize that she was
their
hostage, that she was no longer in control—

—communist bitch, out here performing immoral, insane atrocities on human beings and then acting like
I’m
the bad guy.

It wasn’t all that surprising that she would continue to lie. She had to know that she would be crucified for all that she’d done once they made it back to land, her and her team of scientists. Questioning her about what her comrades were planning was pointless; he just hoped they’d be able to use her to get to the others. They were mad, all of them—and as soon as he collected his salvage fee, he’d see to it that she got what was coming to her.

“There’s a staircase leading down,” said Richie, motioning to a hatch farther along.

“One more deck,” said Steve.

They moved as a tight group towards the stairwell, through the silence of the shifting darkness. Everton saw a security door in the flashes of light, complete with a fingerprint keypad; the Russians were a shifty lot, and he felt an almost overwhelming impatience to get to the engine room. They could be taking the ship to a Russian port or deliberately sabotaging it to keep the truth from getting out. Even though the
Volkov
had been turned in to the wind, their need to take control was no less urgent; the ship
belonged
to them now, it was theirs and—

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Everyone froze, but the pounding against the bulkhead farther down the corridor continued, the sounds resonating loudly through the empty hall.

Someone was behind one of the hatches, and he wanted out.

Steve turned back the way they’d come, his surprise quickly turning to hope. The urgent sound was close, maybe halfway down the corridor past the stairs.

“Shit, what’s that?” Woods was terrified, his voice cracking.