Emma threw the pickup into reverse and spit gravel as she backed out into the street. She drove back up to 79 and hesitated there at the stop sign. Turn right, back to Clarksville and Billy Joe?
"Uh-uh," Emma whispered to herself. At least not tonight. Maybe by tomorrow he'd have cooled off a little. At the very least he wouldn't be as drunk, she hoped.
Emma turned left onto 79. Stopping at a Minit Mart, she bought a twelve pack of Busch — her favorite beer. Billy Joe wouldn't let her drink it at home. He said it was too expensive. Emma figured that it didn't matter what she bought, she was in trouble anyway — might as well go first class.
She took the poorly marked right turn onto the Trace, the tarred road leading to Lake Barkley. A small parking area by the lake was her old high school hangout. This time of year it was empty, but in a month or so there would be several cars out there on weekend nights, full of teenagers with surging hormones.
Emma parked the truck facing the water and turned off the engine. She got out and climbed into the bed of the truck, twelve pack in hand, the shocks squeaking as she moved about. Sitting on the right wheel well, she popped the top on the first beer. She slammed the entire thing down in one long gulp — a quality that had endeared her to Billy Joe early in their relationship. She tossed the empty out toward the water.
Seven beers later Emma felt a certain pressure in her lower abdomen. She belched and lumbered off the back of the truck. Another couple of brews and she'd be ready to crash. Emma finished her call of nature in the woods and then headed back to the truck, straining to button her jeans at the same time. Twenty feet from her steel bed she halted and blinked.
Someone was messing with the driver's door. Billy Joe sure as shit wouldn't like that. Emma's voice was saturated with drunken indignation. "Get your ass away from my truck!" She picked up a rock and threw it.
There was no answer. Then the shadowy figure turned and Emma felt her stomach plummet. It was no person.
Something moved off to her left — another figure, this one with a rifle in its hands. What little higher-level cognitive functioning Emma had left shut down. She turned and ran; the creatures kept their distance, herding her to the east up an incline.
Emma pushed blindly through the undergrowth, bouncing off trees, thorns tearing at her skin. The drive went on for almost fifteen minutes. Every time Emma tried to stop and turn, one of them would be there, heading her in the desired direction.
Finally, Emma broke through some undergrowth and there was nothing beneath her feet but space. Her last thought as her legs pinwheeled in the air was relief that the running was over.
Chapter 14
The skeleton of the helicopter smoldered on the side of the knoll. The riddled DIA van sat on four flat tires, the interior full of smashed equipment coated with blood. All the corpses were in body bags and laid out in a row. ODA 682, augmented by the surviving DIA men, maintained a thin perimeter around the top of the hill.
Riley, Lewis, and Merrit all clambered on board the other helicopter to fly back to Biotech, where Merrit insisted she had something to show them if they were truly going to understand the threat posed by the Synbats. Riley thought that the battlefield they were leaving was ample proof of the creatures' destructive capabilities. He couldn't imagine anything worse.
They landed and walked into the building to an office where Lewis's men had set up a radio hookup. A VCR and TV stood in the corner. Lewis took the radio controls from his man and gestured for him to leave the room, then he looked away from his machines for a moment and addressed the others. "I've got a speaker box and room mike set up. We're going to have a conference call so all of us get to hear what Doctor Merrit has to say. Then we can work out a course of action. The other people who will be on the line are General Trollers, my boss, who is presently in the air en route to Fort Campbell; General Williams, who commands Fort Campbell; Colonel Hossey, the commander of the 5th Special Forces Group; and the duty officer at our headquarters in Fairfax."
Lewis flicked a switch. "This is Search Base. We are prepared on this end."
A loud voice boomed out of the speaker. Lewis scrambled to turn down the volume. "This is General Trollers. On line."
A new voice. "This is General Williams from Fort Campbell with Colonel Hossey. On line."
"This is Colonel Statmore at Home Base. On line."
"This is Colonel Lewis. I've got Doctor Merrit with me here, along with Mister Riley from the 5th Special Forces Group. Doctor Merrit is the most knowledgeable person we have concerning the Synbats. Mister Riley has been in charge of the team that was part of the initial response to the escape of the Synbats, so he's our expert as far as fighting them."
"Doctor Merrit, this is General Trollers. What we need from you is information."
Riley wasn't surprised by the anger in Merrit's voice when she spoke. "I thought you had all the information you needed from Doctor Ward's briefings and status reports."
Trollers made a vain attempt to speak in a soothing voice. "I do have quite a bit of information, but I need you to give General Williams and Colonel Hossey a briefing on the Synbats. Their troops are in the process of being alerted and will be responsible for the neutralization of our problem. I have the overview of the Synbat project, but we need details now. We need to know the extent of the threat and how we can destroy the animals."
Merrit leaned forward and closed her eyes in concentration as she organized her thinking. Then she spoke. "Synbat stands for synthetic battle form. We were attempting to use artificial processes to develop an organic form that could function on the battlefield.
"We were working with baboon and human genes using transgenic manipulation, more commonly known as splicing, to produce a large and quick-growing mutation. We came up with a creature that, upon maturation, was approximately forty percent larger than a normal baboon and grew at a factor of roughly fifteen times faster.
"The creature retains some of the phenotype of the original baboon species but we — "
General Williams's voice cut in. "Could you please define phenotype?"
Merrit thought for a few seconds. "Phenotype is the observable appearance of an organism as determined by genetics and environment. There is also genotype, which is the genetic constitution of an organism, which may or may not be expressed physically."
Trollers's voice was tinged with impatience. "That's all fine and well, Doctor, but we're just concerned with what we have to face and how to kill them."
"You need to understand the concepts, General," Merrit shot back at the radio, her voice rising almost out of control. With visible effort, she continued. "I'll explain why in a little while. The Synbat is both human and baboon. We don't know the exact extent it is of either one. In reality it is a totally new species."
"You've created a new species?" Williams exclaimed in disbelief. "How could you do that?"
Merrit backtracked. "Biotechnology is a relatively new field. In terms of history, 1977 is considered year one, the year when scientists first coaxed microorganisms to manufacture insulin for humans, and first produced somatotropin, which is a growth hormone, as well as interferon and some oil-eating microbes. The capability to manipulate genes has been around for more than a decade."
"Then why has no one done it yet, other than your lab?" Williams asked.
"People have done it, just not with human genes. Federal regulations released in June of '86 prohibited that, except under controlled and approved guidelines. The possibility of mutating a microorganism inimical to man was too great. A technology that deals so directly with the basic life processes is fraught with great dangers and is very tightly controlled.