Helix: Plague of Ghouls (2 page)

Ishmael scratched at the scar across his shoulder.

Gil gave Ishmael a pleading look.

“What?” Ishmael asked.

“Coffee,
por favor
.”

Ishmael wiped the sweat from his mouth and dropped his hands to his hips. “Yeah.” He sighed. “Sure.”
Why not? Anything to change the subject, right, Gil?

He left the medical lab for the kitchen and brought back two cups of coffee. He was about to set one cup on a relatively stable-looking set of papers, when Gil barked a shout of annoyance and moved the papers from one disorganized pile to another. Ishmael set the mug down on a cleared spot on the desk.

“Thanks,” Gil grunted at last. He tried lifting the mug. It was too heavy for his narrow wrist. He had to use both hands now. He used to play guitar, mashing his fingers across the strings like he was grating a tough block of cheese. The mug quivered, and Ishmael fought the urge to chase it with a napkin and an open hand, to catch the dribbling coffee before it hit Gil’s lap. Despite the tippiness of the cup, Gil didn’t spill a drop. With great care, Gil set it down again. Then he sat still, looking drained.

Ishmael sat too, and he drank some of his own coffee. It wasn’t bad. He’d made better. It was one of the rare few things he’d really missed during his incarceration in Wyndham Farms.

I was only there for a week . . .

“I’ve had worse,” Gil said at last.

I was only there for a week. I missed coffee for a week. They were up there for six years.

“Hey.”

Who the hell am I to complain about stress and anxiety?

And what the hell did I bring back with me?
He closed his hand into a fist, watching the tendons shift across swollen knuckles.

“Ish.”

He was thinking about licking the palm of his own paw. The width of it. The power in it.

The infection under the fur and flesh.

“You’re still there, aren’t you?”

Ishmael’s nostrils were flaring. He sat up, breathing deeply, hoping to cool his blood. “I think I’ve gone nocturnal.”

Gil shrugged. “Well, no shit. You
are
a
cat
.” When he spoke, he would take a deep breath, and as he relaxed and leaned forward, he’d squeeze air into a tumble of words. “Get the kit.”

“We don’t need it.”

“Get . . . the goddamned . . . kit.”

Ishmael jammed his fist into his sweater pocket.

“You’re flushed,” Gil said. “And shaking.”

“It’s because I make damned good coffee,” Ishmael shot back.

“We need to know. If not for your sake . . .” Gil’s voice expired in a wheeze. He clenched his eyes shut, crushed his teeth together, and breathed. There was a screaming punk rocker trapped in Gil’s body, and he was raging to get out.

He was raging at Ishmael.

“If not for you,” Gil said, “then for the sake of . . . those people you . . . cross-infected.”

Ishmael left his coffee on a counter nearby and hunted for Gil’s equipment: a syringe, rubber tubing, six glass vials, and some antiseptic pads. Ishmael’s neck itched.

“Ahab calls them ‘Tiger Dogs’. Good band name,” Gil said.

“I think it’s already taken.”

“When was the last . . . ?”

“Four days,” Ishmael replied.

“Yay, progress,” Gil said, shaking his skeletal fist with skeletal enthusiasm.

Instead of his usual pain-in-the-ass six-day cycle, Ishmael had been slipping into his animal form once every two to three days since he’d left Wyndham Farms. At least at Varco Lake, there was a limitless supply of beef, chicken, and mutton, and if he was lucky, a stray moose or caribou tromped through Varco Lake when Ishmael was already in hunting mode.

Ishmael handed Gil the syringe, vials, and antiseptic. He’d handle the job of tying up his arm. “Last change was on Sunday.”

“Sleeping at all?” Gil asked.

“Not really. Can’t sleep in the dorm. It’s Varco Valley Station or it’s outside.”

“With Holly.”

“It helps,” Ishmael said, unapologetically. “We take turns sleeping. Watch each other’s backs.”

“And each other’s fronts.” Gil began to swab Ishmael’s inner arm. “But why the shorter cycle?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Hell you
do
know.” Gil coaxed the tip of the needle where it was supposed to go.

Ishmael ground his teeth. “Flashbacks, I guess,” he said. “My head whirls, and suddenly I’m right back there, hanging head first over the . . .” He shivered. “Over Digger’s mouth.”

“The wendigo,” Gil murmured.

“I understand what a seal feels like when it looks down the throat of a Great White shark.”

Gil switched vials without removing the needle.

“It doesn’t help matters that Fitch and company come banging on my door at three in the morning. With an axe,” Ishmael said.

“She saved your ass then, too?”

“Shut up,” Ishmael said, trying hard to hang on to his peevish mood.

Wyrd justice was too slow for some members. Fitch was a long-time crony of Jay, and he wanted Ishmael and the Tiger Dogs gone. If Fitch and Friends couldn’t kill them, then they’d run them off Varco Lake property, forcing them to breech the terms of their agreement with the Wyrd Council. Make any attempt to escape, and the Wyrd Council would issue an Immediate Kill warrant, and turn every licensed lycanthrope against them.

Ishmael’s illness would only complicate matters.

“Are you the only one sick?” Gil asked, his lips barely moving. There were surveillance cameras inside the lab, too, and no way to tell who was reading lips.

“I’m not sick,” Ishmael said. “I can’t get sick. You know that.”

Dr. Foster had explained that the theranthropic retrovirus was jealously protective of its host. As soon as a foreign body entered the host’s body, it would force its host to up-cycle, flushing out all toxins, poisons, and invading viral material by the time the host returned to human form. The retrovirus had completely replaced Ishmael’s immune system, and that retrovirus was working just fine.

Gil rolled his eyes and began the third vial. “Are you the only one?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Just me.”

“You sure?”

. . . dangling over that mouth . . . dislocated jaw . . . like Predator . . . or that worm-thing in Star Wars with the ring of teeth . . . Sarlacc—only it was one of us.

It was one of us.

He dug at the scars on his shoulder. Sweat erupted down his back and chest.

The next stage of our evolution.

De-evolution.

“Shmiley?” Gil asked.

Oh God—Dep—that lazy smile . . . He’s got the same strain—God help us—and I brought him here, on the verge of his first change—

Something itching in my blood—

Too much! Too much!
He rubbed the ball of his fist against his aching forehead.

A cold finger touched him on the shoulder, and he jumped. His skin prickled. His arm was dotted with the stubble of new fur itching to break the surface.

“You get anything done on . . . the new routing?” Gil asked.

“I uh . . .” Ishmael said. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but his mouth was dry. He was grateful for the concrete, off-topic question. “Yeah. But I don’t think it’s going to do much good. By the way, who the hell did they hire to cover me while I was away?”

“I dunno,” Gil said, and he looked like he didn’t give a shit either.

“Whoever it was, he was a dink.”

Gil grinned.

“Spent more time untangling knots in the code than I did in building new stuff. Whatever. We won’t get any significant speed until we run fibre optics all the way up here.”

“No luck at all?” Gil began the fourth vial.

Ishmael shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been working on some repeaters, to see if we can increase the range out to Varco Valley Station.” He was mumbling. He couldn’t help it. His jaw was so stiff he couldn’t enunciate. He watched Gil take the fourth and fifth vials. He extracted a little blood from one of the vials and applied it to what looked like a litmus strip. He counted seconds, his lips moving, and he made a handwritten note of the colour changes.

“Gil, I can’t breathe,” Ishmael said. “I can’t sit still. I need to be outside.”

“It’s cold outside.”

“I know it’s cold outside. That’s why I’m pissed off that I want to be outside.”

“You can’t plug a . . . computer into a . . . tree out there.”

Ishmael nodded. “If I can increase the range and speed of the connection, I can remote into the lab servers whenever necessary from the comfort of the cabin . . . If it gets cold, I can go outside and chop wood, and if I want to, I could . . .” A muscle in his cheek jumped. He looked away. “Whatever.”

“And whenever,” Gil said, with another slow blink. “You need to get that . . . under control.”

Ishmael nodded, but Gil was pointing at Ishmael’s fingers. The nails had turned black. “God damn it . . .” Claws were trying to grow through. “Four days off-cycle, and already . . .” He tucked his hands into his armpits and closed his eyes.

“It’s not stress,” Gil said.

Ishmael’s upper lip burned. “Recurring nightmares, eight women changed into one of my kind, people chopping through solid oak to get at me, men stalking Holly into the women’s bathroom, Wyrd’s final decision hanging over our heads . . . No, no stress.” Ishmael ground his teeth and rubbed his fingers. He’d been fighting the change all morning, and now, with Gil watching, he was losing the battle.

“You need . . . a vacation,” Gil said.

“I need answers,” Ishmael retorted. He scratched at the scar tissue across his shoulder.

Gil was right. There was more happening than stress. The ’98 Lakebridge Park murders, those had been stressful. The Moldova Incident in 2007, that had been stressful. Every day since then, keeping the truth covered up, that had been stressful. And Ishmael had handled all of it like a champ.

His heart was pounding. He heard phantom people running behind him. He heard someone breathing in his ear, laughing. They were right on top of him, and he was running naked, furless, and unarmed through their territory, tripping over fallen trees.

Gil sat back in his chair, collecting his thoughts while he gathered his breath. With so little strength, every word had to be chosen for its maximum efficiency. “This would be easier,” he said, “if you hadn’t killed Foster.”

“I didn’t kill Foster,” Ishmael said, for the eightieth time. “The Lost Ones got her.”

“After years living with them?” Gil asked. “Suddenly they win? When you were there?”

“If not them, damn it,” Ishmael shouted, “then the air strike probably did her in.” He clapped his fingers to his upper lip. No blood. Pain, but no split yet. “I didn’t do it.”

Gil didn’t know Dr. Eva Foster was hiding in plain sight at Varco Lake.

“She could look at your blood . . . tell you at a glance . . . which virus you’ve got . . .”

“I know,” Ishmael said.

“Brilliant,” Gil added, with a sigh. “Inexhaustible.” He barely made it through the whole world before his voice failed.

“Intolerable,” Ishmael said. Gil grunted an enthusiastic, aggravated agreement. “But you have to believe me. I didn’t kill her.”

“Bridget says you did.”

“And what does Dr. Grey say?” Ishmael asked. “What does the Padre say? Or Ferox?”

Gil smirked. “What
does
the fox say?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

Gil nodded wearily. “Dr. Grey . . . might help me. If you can find him.”

Ishmael frowned. “I know exactly where Shuffle is. I just don’t know how much use he’ll be. He didn’t even know he was Daniel Grey. Hell, if he’s forgotten his whole life, how do you expect him to remember advanced microbiology, especially without his notes? Gil, you’d have better luck asking Mary Anne, for all the good he’d do you.”

“He can help. Haberman brought him here. Told him to sit and talk with me. We sat and talked, once. He knew.”

“He knew, what . . . ?”

“Terminology. Equipment. Genetics.”

“And then—”

“He left,” Gil said. “Never came back. Not like I could stop him. Or follow him.”

Ishmael checked his fingers again. The nails were still black. He’d arrested the change, but he hadn’t rolled it back.

“And Mary Anne
could
help,” Gil said. “She was a doctor once, too. Hospice care. Good researcher. Worked with Foster and me . . . at the bunker, beginning of . . . quarantine.”

Ishmael nodded. Holly had told him about life in the bunker, and about how Mary Anne had been invaluable as a research assistant there and on the island. But he’d forgotten—discounted—Mary Anne’s worth. He’d only been thinking of her in terms of a dying patient, not as a scientist.

Gil’s hands settled on the arms of his chair. If the old boy weighed a hundred pounds, it was because he was carrying a ten-pound weight in either pocket.