Eden Plague - Latest Edition (7 page)

Might not be right, but it was strong, very strong.

But that didn’t mean he even liked the guys, always. Sometimes he couldn’t even stand them, outside of an op. And Daniel was always a bit of a loner, hadn’t worried about keeping in touch. He could always find them later, he thought.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
He hadn’t memorized many Bible verses, but that was one of them. He couldn’t remember who said it, but that guy really knew what he was talking about.
I hope he died well, saving his friends. Couldn’t ask for a better way to go. I know I’d welcome it when it came, if I died doing my duty, so others could live.

He shook off his melancholy thoughts. Maybe the XH meant he didn’t have to think about dying anymore, or his buddies dying or anyone. Maybe XH would put him out of business. That was a strange idea. This stuff was going to change the world, if the unknown downside didn’t turn out to be too bad.

In any case, physically he felt great, better and better by the hour. His thoughts were clearer, his body hummed with vitality and health. It was an overnight revolution. And all he had to do was bite someone, he figured, to pass it on. He had a sudden feeling of power, of the ability to bestow a gift on his friends and withhold it from his enemies, whoever they were. Then he felt a sudden stab of conscience, realizing that he wouldn’t, couldn’t withhold it from anyone that needed it. That Others May Live was his code. Not “That Others
Who I Happen To Like
May Live.”

Daniel’s resolve crystallized. He knew then that everyone had to have this stuff.

His conscience nagged at him as he drove, with nothing to do but think and listen to the radio. He started remembering stupid things he’d done as a kid, growing up in Omaha. He’d hurt people, emotionally and physically. He’d been a jerk, because he could be. He was big and tough and athletic and good-looking and he’d used and discarded girls like paper cups, drinking his fill then tossing them away. He’d had a filthy mouth, he’d gotten into fights, and he’d bullied weaker people around him. It was all for their own good,
of course,
and they deserved it,
of course,
and he deserved whatever he wanted from life,
of course
.

Of course.

He kept a purer part of himself compartmentalized, in a box marked “Duty,” and that was sacred. In that box he was a paladin. He did everything right, everything by the book unless completing the mission called for a deviation, and the mission was everything.

But outside of duty, he was a son of a bitch.

Then Becky came along. God, she was beautiful, with sandy straight hair in bangs, freckles, a generous figure that he found just right - and she had a young daughter. It was fireworks and flame for a while, and they got married.

It lasted five years, until the drinking and gambling and stupidity ruined it all. They didn’t have any kids of their own, either. It was Daniel, his half of it. That poisoned the well too, just one more contributing factor.
I can’t be much of a man if I was shooting blanks with my own wife, right?

He had too much medical training to deny a low sperm count.

A wave of guilt washed over him and he ground his teeth, tears of regret leaking out in the privacy of his van at sixty-five miles per hour. He had never faced his own culpability, and it was cleansing to just accept it.

Dr. Benchman used to tell him he had to take responsibility for things he’d done and he would feel better. He’d preferred Prozac and Ritalin and Dexedrine, but he realized he didn’t want those now.

I think the XH is fixing me.

Was XH going to put the shrinks out of a job too?

An inkling of the downside started to rattle around in the deep recesses of his thoughts, way down there where things he didn’t want to think about lurk. He couldn’t see it clearly but he figured that given time it would eventually surface.

Feeling better, his thoughts turned to Elise. He’d shot her, she’d made a fool of him by escaping – or had he let her go? Maybe he could have tried harder. He’d never killed a woman – not that he knew of, anyway. Never had a woman fire a weapon at him either. Maybe he’d had a soft spot? It wasn’t something he’d thought about much. Then he hadn’t kept her out of their clutches at the biker bar, but he might have had to kill four men in front of witnesses to do it, and she’d been so adamant. He turned it all over in his mind, trying to analyze his own feelings.

Okay, he admitted it to himself. He was interested. She’d shown backbone, and every man likes a woman with a spine, a woman he can respect. But there was something more there, a connection he felt. Part of it was the shared experience of combat, of the life and death stress that welds people together in unusual ways. But there was more to it than that. Was he fooling himself? It was the way she had looked at him, like she knew him.

Well, he had all day to think about it.

By the time she was back home – if she could call a cheap apartment she never wanted “home” – she was bone tired. But at least she was healed up after they had stuffed her with food. Correction, Karl had. Miguel just sat there and glared into the rear-view mirror after Karl had made him sit up front. He’d kept trying to cop a feel and she’d complained about it.
A true international jerk. Russian hands and Roman fingers.

“Pack a couple of bags. Doc says you gotta live at the lab for a while.”

“Great. Just great.”

“He says it’s for your own protection too. He said Jenkins had powerful friends and they won’t be happy he’s dead.”

Elise protested incredulously, “It’s not like
I
killed him. I did
exactly
what he told me to, and almost died for it. As far as I know he just pissed off the wrong guy.”

“Doesn’t matter. Pack. As much as you like. It might be a while before you come back.” Karl was a bulldog, and she knew she couldn’t change one bit of his mind.

She started packing.

When they got to the lab, Karl threw her bags down in one of the sleeping rooms, the one right across from the security cubby.
They probably have cameras in my bedroom, too. Have to change in the dark or give them a show. At least I’ll have work to do – Bobo and Mandy and the computers and gene sequencers and Arthur and Roger…I’ll be all right.
She told herself to cheer up, then took a shower, turned off the light and threw herself onto the lower bunk.

She awoke hours later when the door opened. Miguel stood in the doorway staring at her. “Get out!” she snarled.

He only smiled, an evil thing. “Doc wants to see you. He says get your cute ass up.”

“Really.” She didn’t move from under the blanket. “Fine. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

He stared some more, as if he expected her to get naked in front of him.

“Get out or I’ll tell the Doctor about you.” She sat up suddenly, the blanket held to her neck. “Or maybe I’ll bite you!” She hissed, showing unimpressive, very human fangs, and made as if to lunge at him.

Nevertheless he jumped back, and then spat on the floor and slammed it shut with a curse.

She laughed darkly to herself, then opened her bags and began to dress.

***

Nine hours after he left Quantico, Daniel was muscling the van around the twists and turns of State 211 south out of Salt Lick, Kentucky, looking for Clear Creek Road, then Buck Creek Road. After that, it was all by memory, looking for the unmarked gate with a “Trespassers Will Be Violated” sign on it, then off into the wooded hills on the rutted dirt track. Branches scraped along the roof and sides of the van, adding to the innumerable dings already there. He’d got it cheap in a fleet auction, and never regretted it. If anything scraped too deep he just sprayed some white enamel over it.

After ten minutes of rollercoaster he drove up to Zeke’s cabin, rustic but well-maintained. There was a big barn next to it, and he pulled up midway between, headlights shining on the big door. He turned off the engine and the headlamps, leaving the parking lights on and turning on the dome light overhead. He put his hands on the steering wheel and he waited.

A moment later he heard something and froze in place. If it was hostiles, he was screwed anyway. He had to believe it was Zeke or one of his guys, checking him out.

A faint sound, like a breath, came from behind his left ear. His eyes flicked to the door mirror and he could see the barrel of an assault weapon with a short, dark figure behind it. About the same time Zeke came around the corner of the barn, dressed in some old BDUs. He was easy to identify, big and bearded. He’d gotten paunchy since retirement, but he still moved easily. He would be in his early fifties, about ten years older than Daniel was. He walked confidently up to the open window, waving the gunman back. Reaching through, he clasped hands with Daniel.

“DJ!”

“Zeke. Really good to see you, man. Is that Spooky back there?”

“You know it. Still doing his thing.”

Spooky was a little Asian guy, what Daniel’s dad would have called a Montagnard. His name, what ended up on his documents anyway, was Nguyen Pham Tran. The Vietnamese equivalent of John Smith. He had come over as a teenager in the Boat People wave of the 1980s, and joined the US Army as soon as he could. Ninjas had nothing on Spooky in the bush. His family had been anticommunist insurgents until they got sent to the reeducation camps. Spooky didn’t talk about it much.

“Hey, Spooky,” Daniel called over his shoulder, now that he felt he could move without getting shot. He heard a grunt in reply. When he got out of the van, he didn’t see Spooky anymore. He’d faded back into the woods.

Daniel hugged Zeke, slapping his back. “Good to see you, man.” He stretched, then bent over, touched his toes, loosening up his muscles after the long drive.

“That physical therapy must be working, if you can stretch your back like that,” Zeke observed. “Let’s go inside. Spooky’s enjoying having woods to play in. We’re lucky he was between jobs.”

The little man kept busy working for defense contractors, personal security. Sometimes that meant just what it sounded like – keeping VIPs safe in rough country. Sometimes it meant off-the-books clandestine and covert work, all plausibly deniable.

“You still teaching at that gun club?” Daniel asked.

“Yep. Certified Master Instructor, senior Range Safety Officer, all that. Once the relic holding the top job finally retires or croaks, I’ll be in charge of all range operations. Nice and cushy.” He paused, chewed his lip. “Too cushy. Run your van into the barn, will you?”

Daniel did that, as he opened and closed the big door behind him. There was a Jeep Cherokee, a Land Rover and a Porsche Cayenne parked inside.
I bet the Porsche is Spooky’s. He always did have champagne tastes.

As they walked out the side, man-sized door, Daniel said, “Well, if what I got to tell you doesn’t get your cushy butt off the couch, I don’t know what will.”

They went into the cabin, grabbed a couple of cold ones out of the fridge – Zeke a beer, Daniel a diet peach iced tea. They sat down in the dim glow from the coals of the fireplace, no artificial lights on. Daniel breathed in the familiar, comforting smells of canvas and wool, old fish and deer’s blood, wood and smoke.

Setting his tea on a side table next to his elbow he stared across at Zeke. “I only want to tell this once, so can we get Spooky and anyone else you got around in here? He needs to hear it too.”

“It’s just Spooky and me so far.” He pulled a little sport walkie out of his jacket pocket and keyed the mike twice, then twice more. Private code for “bring it in,” Daniel guessed.

A minute or so later he felt the faint stir of air that accompanied a door opening, but try as he might he didn’t hear a thing until the hot pot in the kitchen started boiling. He saw Spooky moving around in the next room with a stainless steel tea ball then heard him pour. He came in with the mug, sat down across from Daniel. His face was sharp and closed, wary as always. He wasn’t Daniel's friend, but he was Zeke’s, and that was good enough for now.

Daniel told them the story, then, from the open door at his house to departure from Quantico, leaving nothing out but some of his own private thoughts.

Spooky’s face showed nothing. Zeke’s more open countenance showed doubt and wonder. He ran his left hand repeatedly over his face, smoothing his beard, his eyes distant, thinking. Daniel was sure his mind was running down some of the same tracks his had, and he would come to some of the same conclusions pretty soon. Now he would see what these guys were made of.

Zeke got up and began pacing. Spooky nodded at Daniel, then slipped out of the cabin again, probably to make another sweep. Daniel would have bet cash money there was nothing to worry about out there, but Spooky wasn’t taking any chances. Hopefully he’d swept the van for bugs, too.

“Got anything to eat?” Daniel asked, uneasy in the silence.

“Yeah…” They went into the kitchen and Zeke turned on the little light over the stove. He pulled out a fragrant pot of something from the fridge, set it on a gas burner and lit it. “Cass sends her love. And her stew.”

Daniel laughed. “Ditto, and I get to enjoy the stew.” Then his face fell. “Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned me to her.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m fresh out of the habit of lying to my wife.”

“I hope you didn’t tell her precisely where you were going.”

“I’m not
that
out of practice. I just told her I had to help you out for a few days, and I couldn’t tell her where. She’s a Special Forces wife and a retired spy. She understands.”

He got out a loaf of bread and sliced it up, next to a bowl of butter. They waited for the stew to warm up, and for Daniel’s story to sink in.

Zeke opened his mouth a couple of times to speak, then closed it, false starts. Finally he said, “All right. So you say you got this XH in you, whatever it is. So you can heal like magic, almost, if you’re the same as Elise now. If it doesn’t take longer to get to its full strength. If it doesn’t have some unknown freaky side effect. And you can pass it in a bite. But maybe you’ll turn into a werewolf when the moon is full, or maybe you’ll burn up your years of life, or maybe you’ll get a taste for blood and go Dracula on our asses, or who knows. But I have to see it for myself. I mean, I wanna believe you, man, but…”