Lazarus was the name he had taken for himself, the name of the man who had come back from the dead, but that wasn’t what had happened to him.
Erik Somers—‘Bishop’—had died. The man who had come back, Erik Lazarus, was someone else.
“Where’s Felice?” asked another of the suited figures.
“Safe,” was all Lazarus said. He did a quick head count. They were all there. All had made it to the relative safety of the camp. It would not be safe much longer. The vines were advancing, growing toward the besieged doctors and scientists, an inch or two with every passing second.
“We have to go,” he announced. He regarded the machete in his hand for a moment then passed it to the nearest man. It would not do for what he had in mind. Instead, he turned toward the stack of gear they had packed in — medical equipment and camping supplies. He selected a short-handled shovel with an eight-inch-wide blade. It was hardly ideal, but given what he had to work with, it would have to do. “I’ll try to clear a trail,” he told the others. “Stay on it. Stay close to me. If I go down, run as fast as you can and don’t stop until you are clear. Got it?”
He got wide-eyed looks and tentative nods as an answer. That would have to suffice.
He lowered the shovel, the back of the blade flat against the ground, and then launched into motion, plowing a narrow strip through the sea of green. The vines peeled off in great clumps, rolling to the side or, more often than not, dropping back into his footpath, but he simply kicked these out of the way as he ran.
He did not stop. He did not look back.
There was nothing more he could do to save the others. Whether or not they survived was up to them now.
21
The pain gradually receded, fading to a dull glow and a persistent itch that was, in its own way, almost worse than the chemical burn. But while the physical effects seemed to steadily abate, Pierce’s shock at seeing Erik Somers, alive and evidently well, only compounded with the passage of time.
Somers — whom Pierce thought of primarily by his military callsign: Bishop — had been a member of Jack Sigler’s team. They had worked together closely during the years when Pierce had served as an instructor for the team. They had not been what Pierce would call ‘friends.’ The Iranian-born, American-raised giant had not allowed many people to get close to him. But the man was as unshakably trustworthy as he was physically unstoppable. Pierce had been stunned to learn of his death, eighteen months earlier, during a mission in the Congo region of Africa.
A mission where Sigler’s team had crossed paths with Felice Carter.
Evidently someone had finally gotten close to Bishop after all.
Pierce rolled over on his side and regarded Carter, who was suffering through her recovery. Now that she was no longer encumbered by the environment suit, he was able to really see her. Carter was tall and lean, with the physique of a distance runner. He did not doubt that she was attractive, though in her present state it was hard to say. Her straight black hair was pulled back in a utilitarian pony-tail, though several strands had escaped the elastic band and were now plastered to her angular face.
“I guess now I know why he didn’t come back,” Pierce murmured.
He hadn’t intended to say it aloud, but the effect on Carter was immediate. She flashed him an angry look that hit him like a physical blow. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know that there are people who love him, and are still in a lot pain because they think he died.”
“He did die,” she replied.
“Is he regenning again?” The question caught her by surprise and left her momentarily at loss for words. Pierce decided to fill the silence. “Yeah, I know all about it.”
Pierce thought about saying more, thought about telling her that he and Bishop had shared the strangest of bonds — they had both been used as lab rats by Richard Ridley. The mad geneticist had, at least in that phase of his life, been obsessed with giving humans the ability to regrow lost limbs or recover almost instantaneously from even the most grievous wounds. His early attempts had yielded the desired results, but the healing process was so agonizing that it transformed the recipient into a ravening, mindless — and virtually invincible — animal. Bishop had received a dose of that serum, but had, through nothing more than the strength of his will alone, resisted the effects long enough to find a way to keep the bestial rage in check. Pierce had received a slightly different version of the serum, one derived from the DNA of the mythological Hydra, which had come with its own set of side effects and, unfortunately for Bishop, a different antidote. Alexander Diotrephes and the Herculean Society, had supplied a drug to completely restore Pierce, but the compound had had no effect on Bishop. For several years thereafter, Somers had lived with the knowledge that a serious injury might turn him into an unstoppable rage beast, and given his position as the member of an elite special ops team, the likelihood of that happening was extremely high.
Much later, Ridley had utilized his knowledge of the Mother Tongue to ‘heal’ Bishop of the affliction, permanently stripping away his regenerative ability, or so everyone had believed.
Carter’s reaction was not quite what Pierce expected. Her initial ire seemed to melt away, replaced by something more like sadness. “I honestly don’t know. Something terrible happened to him. When he found me, later, he was…different.”
She took a breath, got to her feet, and then to Pierce’s utter surprise, offered a hand to help him up. “Maybe seeing you will be good for him. He might open up to you. Despite what you must think, I’m not keeping him here.”
Pierce accepted her hand. “I’m sorry. I jumped to a conclusion. It’s just…” He gave a helpless shrug. “We all thought…” He let the sentiment hang. There was too much happening, too many lives lost or in immediate danger. He turned his gaze to the woods. In the growing darkness, it was difficult to distinguish where the vine infestation began. “Is there something we can do to help him?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “We barely had time to make sense of what happened here. But if anyone can survive this, it’s him.”
“So what did happen? Where did this come from?”
“I’m not an expert in plant biology, but I do know that this growth is unlike anything seen before. That tells me it’s not naturally occurring. Someone created this and set it loose here.”
“A GMO,” Pierce said. A genetically modified organism. It was a catchall term that could be applied to any artificially created species, whether the process involved hybrid breeding or the direct manipulation of genetic material in the laboratory — gene splicing. The subject was the focus of intense controversy, with some people imagining a doomsday scenario with created ‘Frankenfood’ crops destroying or outcompeting naturally occurring species, though the vine infestation certainly seemed like that particular nightmare come true.
“I’ll have to analyze it, of course,” Carter went on. “But this didn’t just happen out of the blue. Someone is responsible for this.”
Pierce nodded slowly. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
When she did not answer, he decided to take a concrete step forward. He took out the damaged passport and his phone. Dourado might be able to backtrack the document’s owner and figure out if Van Der Hausen was involved, and who, if anyone, he was working with.
Before he could snap a photo of the passport page however, he saw that he had missed a call from Gallo. He debated calling her back but decided it could probably wait. Only one call and no voicemail message. How serious could it be?