Helix: Plague of Ghouls (52 page)

It got cold, quickly. Air rippled down the stairwell and through the door, stirring up his fur-hair. Something was gurgling. Something tall. Something above him.

“Kill . . .”

Her hands found his shoulders. He opened his eyes and willed the change over him one more time. If he could grow claws long enough, or gather enough strength to break her neck . . .

“Me . . .”

Water rushed down the stairs with a burbling roar. Then it came in a blast, booming open the broken metal door and shoving Ishmael against the wendigo. She screamed and raised her hands, as if the water was acid. Fangs angled out from her jaws like the legs of a lobster. Ishmael fell into the churning, filthy water and stumbled, sloshing after her. Another wave knocked him off his feet, and he went whirling after her.

Drown. Change to self-repair. Drown again. Change to self-repair. Drown again. Change—

He took a deep breath as the water rose chest high, and he dove under, frog-kicking against the current, clawing at the back of her legs to bring her down. He missed and ran out of air, so he rose and broke the surface for another quick breath. Her face was right there, blind, enraged. He could see the back of her mouth.

Water floated Ishmael higher, toward the ceiling.

Hold her mouth open
,
and she’ll drown faster.

Branch-like arms swished through the water, trailing shaggy fur. Ishmael pushed off from her hand and turned himself around. He didn’t want to see this part.

As if obliging him, water licked the bottom of the last kerosene lamp, sizzling.

The light went out.

DEP MADE A
noise somewhere between “Hey” and “Whuff.” Ferox looked up from her engine work.

“Oh my God!” Ferox said. She lost the screwdriver somewhere in the engine block and didn’t care. She ran toward Mary Anne and crushed her in a hug so fierce and abrupt that both women nearly fell over. “You’re all right! Where have you been?”

“Hiding,” Mary Anne said. She’d lost some of her fur, and although her skeletal structure and muscles were still out of whack, she looked no worse than she had when she’d left quarantine. Gil’s miracle cure seemed to be doing the trick.
Well . . . it’s doing something, at least.
Mary Anne was staring warily at Dep, who was nearly six inches taller than the last time she’d seen him.

“But where have you been?” Ferox asked. “We’ve been looking for you for two days straight!”

Mary Anne smiled. “If I can hide from the Lost Ones, I can hide from Jay and his . . .” She shuddered. “Whatever those things are.”

“Bonewalkers,” Ferox said. “That’s what Angie called them.”

“But what are they?”

“They smelled like Lost Ones,” Ferox answered, “only dustier. And they’re smarter.”

“They have no hunting instinct,” Mary Anne said.

“Yeah, which makes me super glad. Dep found one creeping around the Hollow. He tried everything to kill the damned thing. He broke its neck, he crushed it under a rock, he threw it on the fire—and damned if the bonewalker didn’t just traipse back out again, dusting himself off. No clothes left, just . . .” Ferox squinted, trying hard to piece together and translate Dep’s description, which he’d given in a series of charades and grunts. “Armour. It’s like instead of growing hair, they grow plates of bone, all over their bodies. If a bonewalker had hunting experience to go with that, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Dep had to ambush him, break his back, and then tear his head off before he could regenerate his spine. Even then, the head kept opening and closing its mouth, like one of those wind-up teeth toys.”

“Two came after me,” Mary Anne said. “I spent most of yesterday afternoon hiding in the lake, breathing through a reed. They make a lot of noise when they walk.”

“So . . . you must have found Angie’s body.”

“No, but I found where she’d been. The bonewalkers ate her when they couldn’t find me.”

“Damn,” Ferox sighed.

Dep stood at their side, easily gazing over their heads and sniffing the air. He kept his paw on Ferox’s shoulder for balance. Running came easily to him. It was just a matter of letting his lack of balance propel him forward. Standing was tricky, since he was so top-heavy and could only stand on the balls and toes of his feet.

It had begun to snow at the Varco Valley Gas Station, and the flakes fell on the smouldering ruins of Ishmael’s favourite log cabin. The road was empty for miles, or Dep wouldn’t have stayed so close.

“Why isn’t he down-cycling?” Mary Anne asked.

“He did down-cycle, when I did,” Ferox said. “Then he up-cycled again twenty minutes later.”

“How long ago was that?”

Dep had been stuck in that form for at least a day and a half. “I think he’s broken,” Ferox said. “Like I used to be.”

“You think he’s stuck half-and-half?” Mary Anne asked, visibly horrified. “Good God, if this is his half-way point . . .”

Ferox could only shrug. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

“Or wait until Foster returns.”

Ferox nodded. “Yeah, except we can’t stay here and wait for her. The bonewalkers are still out there, somewhere. We’ll never get a moment’s peace.”

“Well . . .” Mary Anne looked down at herself, then at Dep. “We can’t exactly shop for new real estate looking like this, can we?”

“No,” Ferox admitted. “But maybe I can.” She tossed her thumb over her shoulder, indicating her work in progress. “Angie had told us to take a truck, pick everyone up, and get out of here. We got as far as the Station and got out to look for you and Shuffle and Helen, but then Helen ran off. Next thing I know, we’re attacked by bonewalkers.”

“And you lost track of my husband,” Mary Anne said.

Ferox nodded sadly. “After they set fire to the hut in the Hollow, Shuffle ran. His animal half hates fire. He panicked and bolted. As for Helen . . . I have no idea where she’s gone. Dep’s been going around watering every rock and tree—”

“I know,” Mary Anne said, tapping her nose.

“And now that you’re here,” Ferox said, “maybe Helen and Shuffle will follow suit. Except . . . Jay must have known we’d try to escape Varco Lake.” She pointed to the truck. “I don’t know what he’s done, but the engine won’t start. The battery seems to work, but there were a bunch of loose things, a couple of lines that are cut . . . Dep’s been trying to explain to me what I need to do but . . . Well, look at him. It’ll take him years before he can learn how to pronounce English again. I don’t suppose you know something about car maintenance.”

“Nope. Ask me about microbiology,” Mary Anne said. “That’s starting to come back.”

“That’s both thrilling and useless.”

“Yes, and no.”

Mary Anne produced the box which had contained the six or seven doses Dr. Burton had created. One of the syringes was empty. “I think he meant for us to use these against the bonewalkers.”

Ferox was cautiously optimistic. “Yeah, but how do we jab them, if they’re covered in bone armour?”

“You worry about that. I’ll worry about finding some way of making more of this.”

“I wouldn’t recommend going back to the lab,” Ferox said. “The place is crawling with bonewalkers. Dep went up there to see if he could find Dr. Gil, or even Mr. Haberman, but he couldn’t get farther than the garage. Grabbing tools was a big enough risk. They’re armed with cycle lockers and spiral serum.”

“They’re missing too? Gil and Haberman?”

“We don’t know,” Ferox said. “If they’re here . . . well . . . maybe Haberman can hide in the woods as well as we can. But Gil? Not a chance. If he’s alive, Jay’s probably got him.” She dumped her dirty hands to her hips. “I think Jay wants him alive. Gil is the key to the bonewalkers. He created them.”

Mary Anne didn’t look as surprised as Ferox had expected.

“He was trying to create a cure for himself,” Ferox explained. “He’s a carrier, not a true lycanthrope, but there were complications. He thought if he could cure himself, maybe he would cure his MS too. But before he’d perfected the treatment, Jay stole his research.”

“The same way he copied Foster’s research,” Mary Anne said. “And the imperfect treatment created bonewalkers.”

“Gil thinks Jay has someone piecing together research from Foster, from Gil, even from Dr. Grey.”

“That research was destroyed,” Mary Anne said.

“Do we know that for sure?”

“Shit,” Mary Anne said.

Dep perked up, ears swivelling toward some sound coming up from the south-east. The road was shiny and black but it was clear. It bent south around a forest hill. Boughs bent dangerously over the road, heavy with the snow that had accumulated on the last of the autumn leaves. Ferox couldn’t hear, see, or smell any approaching vehicles, but she could trust Dep and Mary Anne’s superior, inhuman senses.

“Go,” Ferox said. “Both of you. Maybe I can flag down some help.”

They didn’t need to be told twice. Mary Anne went one way, and Dep the other. Ferox returned to the truck, and while she waited for the intruder, she peered under the truck for the lost screwdriver. Her mind was elsewhere, running combat simulations to devise different ways of catching and decapitating a bonewalker, using only the tools Dep had brought down from the garage. When she heard the engine noise at last, she stepped onto the side of the road, ready to flag down whoever was coming. If it was a logging truck, she could beg for help, or at least have the driver radio for roadside assistance. If it was a car, there was a chance she could use the driver’s cell phone. If it was a bonewalker, she had backup.

The vehicle came speeding around the hill toward the station. It was a black truck like the one Ferox was trying to fix. There had been a few left near the garage in the custody of the bonewalkers, so Ferox began to back away. The torched station and log cabin offered little in the way of shelter. The truck’s engine was screaming with the effort of racing uphill. To her horror, the truck sped up, as if the driver had recognized Ferox as a target. She retreated across the station’s parking lot, casting hurried glances over her shoulder. She stopped, turned, and stood her ground, a wrench in one hand and a Philips screwdriver in the other.

The truck turned into the station, bounding over a wheel stop. The driver’s side door opened even as the brakes squealed, the wheels turned, and the truck shook as if it was going to flip onto its side. The door flung open wide, and a burly figured jumped out, head down.

“Ferox!” It was a woman’s voice.

“Oh, my God,” Ferox said. She threw down the tools. “You’re—”

Bridget crushed Ferox in her arms. She was sobbing.

“Bridget! Are you all right?”

Bridget didn’t answer. She smoothed down Ferox’s hair without letting her go.

“It’s okay, Bridget,” Ferox said. “It’s all right. Dep and Mary Anne are here too. We’re all right.”

Bridget gulped air and let Ferox go. She mashed the ball of her hand against her eyes, angrily shoving her tears to either side. She sniffed and groaned. “You’re the last people I thought I’d ever see again, in the last place I’d ever think to look.”

“We thought you were in Ontario on a case!”

“We were. We are. But we have to move fast. Do you have Gil with you?” Ferox shook her head. Before she could give more news, Bridget asked, “What about Dr. Grey?”

“Missing,” Ferox said. “After the fire he ran off and we haven’t seen him since.”

Mary Anne quietly returned, but kept a safe distance. She trusted Bridget no more than she trusted Ishmael.

“And Helen?”

Ferox shook her head. “We can’t find her. She’s had non-stop false starts for the last week, and I think she had her last one two days ago. She went like Ishmael. No wendigo.”

“Track her scent,” Bridget said to Mary Anne.

Ferox’s eyes widened as she shook her head. “She doesn’t
have
a scent. Not one I can detect.”

“Me neither,” Mary Anne said.

“And Dep?” Bridget asked. “What about Dep? Where’s he?”

“There’s a problem with Dep,” Mary Anne said. “A bigger problem than I have.”

Dep himself emerged from behind the bushes. Bridget’s eyes tracked him as he stood up, and up, and up. Reluctantly, he padded forward, sometimes losing his balance when he stepped on a stone or a chipped bit of paving.

“That’s . . . a very big problem,” Bridget said.

“Only one of a few problems we’ve got,” Ferox said. “We have to move. This place is crawling with these . . . Lost Ones-ish.”

“The bony ones?” Bridget said. “I saw them up at the main house.”

“Bonewalkers,” Ferox said. “Jay is behind them. And Gil created them.”

Bridget’s eyes fluttered closed.

“There’s a lot more,” Ferox said, with a sigh. “He told me everything. About the cure, about Jay, about the bonewalkers, about Foster’s stolen research . . .”

“Ah, Gil,” Bridget groaned.

“Oh,” Ferox added, “and someone set fire to the Hollow and started a forest fire to flush us out, our truck won’t start, and your windows aren’t tinted dark enough so we can’t take your truck either. I think that’s everything. Tell me you have better news.”