Ultimate Thriller Box Set (5 page)

She was giving him a graceful way out, but he knew her opinion of him would drop even further if he took it.

Andy turned the knob and entered.

The smell hit him again, heady and musky, almost making Andy gag. This time the room wasn't empty. Standing among the medical equipment was a man in a lab coat. He was tall and intense looking, with a thin line for a mouth and wide expressive eyes. His hair was light gray, short and curly. Andy put him at about forty, but he could have gone eight years either way.

“Oh good, feeding time,” the man said.

“Dr. Frank Belgium, this is Andy Dennison,” Sun said. “He's the translator.”

“Good good good, we're in need of one. Attack the mystery from all angles, the more the better. Yes yes yes.”

“Frank's a molecular biologist.” Sun said it as if that was explanation for Dr. Belgium's weird speech patterns and birdlike movements. “How's the sequencing going, Frank?”

“Slow slow slow. Our boy—yes, he is a boy, even though there isn't any evidence of external genitalia—his bladder empties through the anus, like a bird. He has 88 pairs of chromosomes. We're looking at over 100,000 different genes, about quadruple what humans have. Billions of codons. Even the Cray is having a hard time isolating sequences. Nothing yet, but a link will show up, I'm sure it will.”

“All life on earth, from flatworms to elephants, share some DNA sequences,” Sun explained. “Dr. Belgium believes Bub also shares several of these chains.”

Dr. Belgium nodded several times. “Bub's got the same four bases as all life, the same 20 amino acids. Even taking into account his...
different
anatomical layout, I believe he's terrestrial, that is, he has earthly relatives somewhere. We're trying matches with goats, rams, bats, gorillas, humans, crocodiles, pigs, everything that he looks like he may be a part of, to fit him into the animal kingdom... but now it's feeding time, so let's see if we can witness another miracle, shall we?”

Sun led the sheep past Andy and over to Bub's habitat. Andy, who'd been avoiding looking in that direction, forced himself to watch.

At first, Bub wasn't visible. The dwelling was filled with a running stream and trees and bushes and grass, as deep as a basketball court and about thirty feet high. The foliage was so dense in parts that even a creature Bub's size could apparently hide in it.

“All fake,” Dr. Belgium said. “Fake brush, fake rocks, fake stream. It's supposed to resemble the area where he was found, in Panama. I don't think he's fooled.”

“Where is he?” Andy asked, cautiously approaching the Plexiglas shield. He squinted at the trees, trying to make out anything red.

Bub dropped from directly above, the ground shaking as he landed just three feet in front of Andy.

Andy yelled and jumped backwards, falling onto his ass.

Sun laughed. “Did you forget he could fly?”

Andy didn't notice Sun's amusement. Bub was crouching before him, his black wings billowing out behind him like a rubber parachute.

Andy’s mouth went dry. The demon was the most amazing and horrifying thing he’d ever seen.

Hoofs big as washtubs.

Massively muscled black legs, with knees that bent backwards like the hindquarters of a goat. 

Claws the size of manhole covers, ending in talons that looked capable of disemboweling an elephant.

Bub approached the Plexiglas and cocked his head to the side, as if  contemplating the new arrival. It was a bear's head, with black ram horns, and rows of jagged triangular teeth.

Shark’s teeth. 

His snout was flat and piggish, and he snorted, fogging up the glass. His elliptical eyes—black bifurcated pupils set into corneas the color of bloody urine—locked on Andy with an intensity that only intelligent beings could manage.

He was so close, Andy could count the coarse red hairs on the demon’s broad chest. The animal smell swirled up the linguist’s nostrils, mixed with odors of offal and fecal matter.

Bub raised a claw and placed it on the Plexiglas.

“Hach wi' hew,” Bub said.

Andy yelled again, crab-walking backwards and bumping into the sheep. The sheep bleated in alarm.

Bub, as if commanded, backed away from the window. His giant, rubbery wings folded over once, twice, and then tucked neatly away behind his massive back. He walked over to a large tree and squatted there, waiting.

Sun led the sheep past the Plexiglas and to a doorway on the other side of the room. They entered, and a minute later a small hatch opened inside the habitat, off to Bub's left.

Andy mentally screamed at Sun,
“Don’t open that door!”
even though the opening was far too narrow for Bub to fit through.

Bub watched as the sheep walked into his domain. The door closed behind it.

The sheep shook off its blindfold and looked around its new environment. Upon seeing Bub it let forth a very human-sounding scream.

In an instant, less than an instant, Bub had sprung from his spot by the tree and sailed through the air almost twenty feet, his wings fully outstretched. He snatched up the sheep in his claws, an obscene imitation of a bat grabbing a moth.

Andy turned away, expecting to hear chomping and bleating. When none came, he ventured another look.

Bub was back by the tree, sitting on his haunches. The sheep was cradled in his enormous hands, as a child might hold a gerbil. But it was unharmed. In fact, Bub was stroking it along its back, and making soft sounds.

Sheep sounds.

“He's talking to the sheep,” Dr. Belgium said. “He's going to do it. Here comes the miracle.”

Andy watched as the sheep ceased in its struggle. Bub continued to pet the animal, his hideous face taking on a solemn cast. There was silence in the room. Andy realized he'd been holding his breath.

The movement was sudden. One moment Bub was rubbing the sheep's head, the next moment he twisted it backwards like a jar top.

There was a sickening crunch, the sound of wet kindling snapping. The sheep's head lolled off to the side at a crazy angle, rubbery and twitching. Andy felt an adrenaline surge and had to fight not to run away.

“Now here it comes,” Dr. Belgium said, his voice a whisper.

Bub held the sheep close to his chest and closed his elliptical eyes. A minute of absolute stillness passed.

Then one of the sheep's legs jerked.

“What is that?” Andy asked. “A reflex?”

“No,” Sun answered. “It’s not a reflex.”

The leg jerked again. And again. Bub set down the sheep, which shook itself and then got to its feet.

“Jesus,” Andy gasped.

The sheep took two steps and blinked. What made the whole resurrection even more unsettling was the fact that the sheep's head hung limply between its front legs, turned completely around so it looked at them upside down.

Andy's fear changed to awe. “But it's dead. Isn't it dead?”

“We're not sure,” Sun said. “The lungs weren't moving a minute ago, but now they are.”

“But he broke its neck. Even if it was alive, could it move with a broken neck?”

The sheep attempted to nibble at some grass with his head backwards.

“I guess it can,” Sun said.

“Amazing,” Dr. Belgium said. “Amazing amazing amazing.”

“Shouldn't you get the sheep?” Andy asked. “Run some tests?”

“Go right ahead,” Sun said. “The door's over there.”

“Probably not a good idea to go in there before Bub's eaten.” Dr. Belgium said.

Andy said. “Can't you tranquilize him or something? Race said he went into the habitat before.”

“Twice, against my insistence, but only to get some stool samples and to fix a clog in the artificial stream. Both times Bub ignored him. Even Race isn't insane enough to go in there and take his food away. And I'm not going to tranquilize Bub until we know more about his physiology. We don't know what tranquilizers would do to him.”

Bub barked a sound, similar to a cough. The sheep trotted around in a circle, head swinging from side to side, trying to bleat with a broken neck.

Bub coughed again.

Or was it a laugh?

The sheep swung its head around at Bub and screamed. Bub reached out and grabbed the sheep. The grab was rough, all pretense of tenderness gone. Holding a hind leg in each claw, he ripped the sheep in half and began to feast on the innards.

Andy's stomach climbed up his throat and threatened to jump out. He put a hand over his mouth and turned away, the munching and gobbling sounds filling the large room.

“From amazing to horrible,” Dr. Belgium said, returning to his computer station. 

“He eats everything,” Sun said, putting the reins in her coat pocket. “The skull, bones, hide, even intestines. Doesn't waste a crumb. The perfect carnivore.”

Andy threw up, seeing the banana muffins for the second time that day. He apologized and fled the room, his brain scrambling to remember the code number for the gate. He managed, but got stuck when he reached the second one.

This was insane. This whole project was insane. Andy felt no curiosity at all—only terror, revulsion, and anger at being suckered into this mess. He gave the bars a shake and a swift kick, swearing in several different languages.

Sun came up behind him and punched in the correct code.

“Thanks,” Andy mumbled.

He took off down the hall, barely noticing the deep frown of concern on Sun’s face.

CHAPTER THREE

Dr. Sun Jones wasn't pleased with herself. She had to stop alienating every man who showed the slightest bit of interest in her. It wasn't healthy.

But then she hadn't felt healthy in quite some time.

Physically, Sun knew she had more strength and stamina than anyone else in the compound. Even in Africa she'd adhered to her daily exercise regimen of sit-ups and push-ups, receiving more than a few quizzical stares from the indigenous wildlife. Physically, she was a well-tuned machine.

Emotionally, it was a different story.

Sun walked down the arm to Red 3 and let herself in. The lights were already on, bright and harsh and making the large space seem more like an operating theater than a records repository.

Filling the room were dozens of file cabinets, ranging in style from antique oak to modern stainless steel, arranged rank and file like library isles. Off in the corner was a small desk, piled high with the papers she'd been recently reviewing.

Sun sat in a chair twice her age and tried to focus on the massive amount of work ahead of her. She'd discovered the records room on her second day here, and had been spending all of her free time trying to organize the astounding amount of data it contained.

Everything about the project was filed here, from the 1907 payroll ledger of the Spanish team who dug the compound (and was then deported back to Spain), up to the arrival of last month's food shipment. Invoices, reports, inventories, letters, dossiers, Presidential mandates, and even recipes for chicken cacciatore were all haphazardly mixed together with little thought to common sense.

At one time there may have been some order to the room. Helen Murdoch, Race's ill wife, had put an end to that. Sun didn't know the details, but Dr. Belgium had mentioned that years ago Helen had
'torn Red 3 apart'
, and cleanup had consisted of simply shoving things back into cabinets.

Sun had wanted to ask Helen about that, and even went so far as to visit her in her room, but the woman was too far gone to remember anything.

Sad.

The obvious answer—hire a team to organize everything into a database—had been thought of but deemed unrealistic. Manpower was the only thing the Project lacked. The more people involved, the more likely there would be a security leak, so employment at Samhain was kept bare bones.

Sun had taken it upon herself to make the task hers. She'd been hired to study Bub in his habitat, based on her experience with large predators. It turned out to be amazingly dull, even though Bub was an extraordinary specimen. Watching a pride of roaming lions was a learning experience. Watching a lion at the zoo was sleep-inducing. Bub simply sat around, as if waiting for something. The only time he became lively was at his feedings, and even that had little variation. The records room gave her an opportunity to be useful.

Sun had no office experience to speak of, but she had good organization skills, and after only one week her effort was paying off. She'd been chronologically sorting the mountains of paperwork into two main sections, SAMHAIN and BUB. Each of these main topics had a dozen subsections, which would undoubtedly be broken down even further.

The work was slow going, made even more so by Sun's inquisitive nature; all too often she would find something particularly fascinating and drift off task. Like the Rosenberg file.

It traced the hiring of an independent engineering firm called G & R to improve upon the compound's emergency generator in 1951. The hirees, one Julius Rosenberg and one David Greenglas, snooped where they shouldn't have and actually tried to blackmail President Truman.

Truman didn't go for it, and the two, along with Rosenberg's wife Ethyl, were executed for treason on less than authentic charges.

No one had blabbed since.

Sun thought Race was simply trying to scare her with that story when she'd first arrived. Now she had no illusions that her oath of secrecy was as serious as they come. Strangely, it didn't matter to her one bit.

Sun had no one to tell.

While the political history was interesting, Sun was even more intrigued by the thousands of tests done on Bub since his arrival 100 years ago.

Forty-some people have worked at Samhain, encompassing over a dozen professions, from botanist to phrenologist. More often than not, those who were chosen stayed for the rest of their lives. Samhain had been both their home and their life’s work, and as far as she knew Sun was the only person who had ever seen it. It was both inspiring and depressing.

The files Sun had been recently reviewing were from the 1970s, most of them concerning a series of experiments done by two men named Meyer and Storky. The duo performed a staggering number of tests on Bub, up until Meyer's death from Kaposi's Sarcoma in 1979. So dedicated were they to research that Meyer had a linear accelerator sent to Samhain when he was diagnosed, and took his radiation treatments onsite so they could continue their experiments without interruption.