“She did this.” Brit lifted the damned pirate eye patch I had never been able to break her of using, and the Sergeant Major leaned forward to examine the white eyeball, the iris so clouded it was almost invisible.
“That looks like her work.” She settled back into her chair. “You know, a question a lot of people asked after World War II was how Mengele could get away with his work. Everyone wanted to know if the times made the man, or if the man took advantage of the times. You could ask the same question about her. Her reputation on post was such that everyone referred to her as ‘Doctor Moreau.’ I suspect she took it as a complement.”
“She’s a fucking psycho,” I said, hoarsely. My wife’s face flashed in my mind. Our daughter’s arm in her hands, the splash of blood across her torso, the red eyes. I had married her with so much love and hope for the future, our daughter’s birth had been the best day of our lives, and thanks to one mass murderer all that was gone. I loved Brit, but there was nothing I wouldn’t trade, not even her, to have my family back. My old life and the old world back.
“She’s a sociopath for certain. I never understood why no one suspected her after the parasite was released, but I suppose in the general chaos no one got around to asking questions, and if she’s popped back up on the government’s radar, as she seems to have done, they may not care so long as she appears to be making progress towards a cure.”
“She’s based out of Seattle now, but she hops around the country. She’s got two Delta goons for bodyguards.” I told her.
Our host nodded slowly. “That’s enough to keep her in funding, and to give her whatever guinea pigs she wants.”
Ahmed leaned forward. “Tell us about the beginning, please.”
The wind had died, and just as she opened her mouth, the faint zombie howl echoed across the water. We all jerked upright, reacting on instinct to the sound, but our host only turned her head slightly, as if to hear better. She raised one hand to keep us in our seats. “What you’re hearing is Chazy, New York. The wind drops in early evening and you can sometimes hear it across the water. We’re safe here.” Pierre stepped back out on the porch to listen himself, his shotgun strapped across his back. “The wall is fully guarded in the evening, and there is no way across the water. You’re safe.” The sun was almost fully down, the sky a pale lavender in the west, fading to deep indigo. The moon was still new, and the stars blazed. Above our heads the Milky Way splashed rich and bright, and Brit sighed softly as she looked at it. The Sergeant Major continued her story, and slowly we all felt the chill of her words take hold.
“Even as IG, I had no influence or authority over the complex beneath us. It was administered by DARPA, I think in conjunction with JSOC, and it was made clear to me that the limits of my authority ended at the surface. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn. All I really cared about was counting down the days until I could get back here and be with Bryan for the last half of his chemotherapy. My stepson was up here with him, but he had his own life as a photographer in Florida and we knew he would be flying back south as soon as I left the military. There had been persistent reports that soldiers were disappearing from Detrick, and I had noticed on the local news that the number of homeless in surrounding cities was also dropping. There was no explanation for it, but many were of the opinion that it had something to do with Detrick. The base was gradually developing a rather sinister reputation. I’m a practical woman, but even I began to suspect. I asked around among the other Sergeants Major on post — there’s nothing to match the E-9 mafia, I can tell you — and finally one of them admitted that the disappearances had started about the time Moreau arrived.
“Finally, she snatched the wrong soldier: my NCOIC at IG. Before, she’d been careful to take soldiers already known as trouble-makers, choosing the drug abusers, recently-chaptered troops, or those who were most likely to be reported as AWOL. But I knew Staff Sergeant Roberts, and he was utterly dedicated to the Army. Not married, no children, he had nothing but the Army, and he worshipped it. Now I was pissed. It was one thing to hear rumors, but another thing to take one of my soldiers, steal him out of his own apartment, and experiment on him.” Even now, years later, I saw the NCO come out in her face, the old rage that someone had hurt one of her people. No NCO worth their stripes took the misuse of a subordinate by someone else, anyone else, lightly. “I confronted the Sergeant Major who supervised the bioweapons complex. We knew each other from Iraq, Harold Schumaker. He had balls, let me tell you. When Hasan Akbar fragged those two tents, Harry apprehended him in flip-flops and PTs. Get Harry drunk, and he’d tell you he clotheslined the little bastard as he ran between two tents after tossing his last grenade. Harry wasn’t scared of anything. Mortars, IEDs, suicide bombers, you name it: everyone and everything that tried to kill him failed. But when I confronted him about Roberts, he begged me to let it go. Begged me.” She shook her head, incredulous.
“Why the fuck should I let it go, Harry? She took my troop for her experiments. He’s not a lab rat, for Christ’s sake.’
“But I looked in his face and I saw real fear, the kind of fear that keeps a man up at night. I saw a terrified child staring back at me. ‘You have to let this go, Cassie,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your soldier but you have to believe me, he’s beyond your help now.’
“Not much frightens me, but the sight of this huge, hulking man scared out of his wits, scared me. ‘What did she do to him, Harry? Why won’t you tell me?’
“He could only shake his head. ‘You don’t want to know, Cassie. I swear to God you don’t want to know.’
“‘We have to stop her, Harry. Whatever she’s doing, you have to stop it. If there’s protocol, ways to seal her and her little Nazi scientists in there, you have to hit that button. How many victims is it this year alone? The cops are saying three hundred homeless are missing. If I go through the MPs’ records, how many more victims will I find?’
“He wouldn’t answer me. He just shook his head and told me to leave. I guess the best thing about that conversation, the only good to come out of it, for me at least, is that I confronted him the day after my retirement party. It was Friday, and I had cleared out my quarters that morning. I had ridden to post on my Harley, my truck parked at a hotel near Catoctin Mountain Park. I climb, you know, and I wanted to climb that one before I left for home. Since I lived off-post, the bitch didn’t know that I was already moved out and miles away. I drove back to the hotel, tired and pissed-off, after dark. I figured I’d climb the mountain the next morning, then be on the road by 1500 or so. Instead, I got a call around one am. It was Harry.”
Chapter 24
We sat in silence, unable to turn away. I realized dimly that the island was pitch-black around us, all lights doused, and that eerie howling a gruesome accompaniment to what I already knew, in my heart of hearts, what she would say. Her face was pinched with old pain. “He was terrified, crying with fear. I could hear a pounding on a door somewhere in the background, with that same scream we hear right now. I could barely hear him. ‘Get out of your house!’ he cried to me. “For God’s sake, you have to run! She’s sending them after you.”
“Who, Harry?’ I shouted down the phone. ‘Who is she sending? What is that noise?’
“It’s too late for me.’ He sucked in a huge, sobbing breath and spoke as calmly as he could. ‘I’m so sorry, I should have done what you asked, and long before this. It’s all my fault.’ I could hear him loading a pistol in the background, and he came back on the line. ‘Forgive me, Old Girl. I hope you’re right, and God forgives all sins, because what’s about to happen is on my head.’