Helix: Plague of Ghouls (46 page)

Buckle finished putting the handcuffs on their quarry, who told Buckle to perform some biologically unlikely sexual acts on himself. “What?”

“We could use a guy like you,” Two-Trees said.

Buckle pulled the boy to his feet. “Yeah, I know.”

“You made up your mind then?” Two-Trees asked.

“Not yet. But sure as hell, you guys are a lot more interesting than Palmer. Never see Palmer doing a
Last of the Mohicans
over a hill like that.” Buckle wiped his face. “Seriously though, why’d I just cuff this guy?”

Two-Trees took the box of diaper cream from Bridget’s hand, and then he pulled her along by the arm, leading her closer to Buckle. “Theft, for one,” Two-Trees said. He tossed the box to Buckle.

The wind shifted, and Bridget backed up. “Don’t make me do this, Hector.”

“Fight it, then,” Two-Trees said. “He needs to see this.”

“No, I don’t,” Buckle said.

“You want something help you make up your mind?” He pleaded with Bridget, to get her to look at Buckle, to show him her lengthening teeth and thickening jaw muscles. Buckle didn’t seem interested in that, not nearly as much as he was interested in the black, bristling Mohawk growing through her spotted hair. She jerked her hand free and stalked off, further upstream.

Buckle’s eyes were glassy.

“Even before she’s finished changing, she’s got a bite force quotient that could break your femur. And you’re watching her change. You know her name. You can identify her human face. That makes you a threat.”

Buckle watched, fists clenched, wavering when the cuffed kid fell against him in his efforts to stand up.

“She’s full of adrenaline, and all her instincts are telling her right now: complete the kill. Complete the kill. Those instincts are telling her that you’re standing between her and a meal, and you’re not nearly as scary as another lycanthrope. And what’s she doing?”

Bridget reached down with cracking hands to scoop up water and splash it on her face.

“Proving she’s not a cannibal,” Two-Trees said. “Trusting you with her secret. Trusting me to bring you into the fold.”

When the kid got up, Two-Trees swept the legs out from under him, and he came crashing down, nearly taking Buckle with him. He cursed and wriggled, and when he got up again, Bridget spun on her feet, round orange eyes wide, black lips curled back from dull fangs. The kid lay still.

“From now on,” Two-Trees said, “whether you join us or not, you’ll never, ever look another human being in the eye the same way. Because without a nose like theirs, you’ll never know who might rip his skin off and come at you with claws and fangs like hers. And every day, in every encounter, you’ll have to decide whether to trust a lycanthrope, or to put him down. And you’ll never, ever know when one turns on you.”

“Is that what happened to Red Cloud?” Buckle asked.

Bridget was cursing Two-Trees, the kid, Buckle, mankind in general. She dragged claws across her chest and screeched in outrage. She jammed her fists under her arms and doubled over, fighting to keep the hyena-demon in its cage.

“Red Cloud was one of the founding members of Wyrd,” Two-Trees said. “He believed these were people with a spiritual sickness, something that could be healed. Some of them came to him, thinking that maybe, just maybe, an Indian medicine man might know how to fix them.”

“And did he?”

“No. But he knew how to keep them fed and sheltered, safe from other human beings so they wouldn’t be induced into fur to protect themselves. He trusted the wrong one for too long. The wolf went rogue. Tore the shit out of him.” Two-Trees frowned and shook his head. “But by God, if Grandfather didn’t give as good as he got,” he said, surprised at the thick catch in his voice, “That’s why I do this job, and to hell with Wyrd. I do it to honour my grandfather’s life. I do it to apologize for being a scrawny, screaming eleven-year-old, incapable of making a difference in the fight. And I do it because I think there’s something
powerful
in the human spirit, and I want it to survive. And if I think there are other human beings out there at risk of getting this god damned disease, I’ll do whatever it takes to stop it.” He glared at the handcuffed kid.

Buckle thought for a while. Then he reached down, picked the kid up and dusted him over. “So it seems I’m outnumbered two bad cops to one. What say you and I take a walk and talk things over, eh, son?” He turned to Two-Trees. “Maybe you’d better come with me.” He then nodded toward Bridget, who was looking ragged and wet but human. “Give her a moment of privacy.”

Two-Trees ran his hand under his nose and wiped his eye. “Yeah. Right behind you. Let’s go.”

Buckle made sure to keep a firm grip on the boy’s bent arm, but he made no threats, and quoted him his rights—though Two-Trees wouldn’t let the kid get as far as jail—and he spoke tough-love words in a level, rational voice. They’d run a lot farther than Two-Trees had realized. It took a long time to follow the river and find a safe way back up onto the service road.

“Red Cloud killed him?” Buckle asked. “The animal that ruined him . . . Was that the corpse they found in the barn?”

The punk was glaring over his shoulder at Two-Trees. “You have no idea what you’re up against, asshole,” he said, with a laugh. “You’ve got no idea. Just wait until my girl gets in touch with the Tribe.”

“Whose tribe?” Two-Trees asked.

“You’ll see,” said the kid, laughing.

“We’ll go up this way,” Buckle said. “Near the bridge, you see it?”

There were steps carved into the mud where generations of fly fishermen had come to test their luck in the river. Buckle helped the kid climb up ahead. Two-Trees followed.

Buckle stopped at the top of the old river bed. The pharmacy thief began to laugh.

“Shit,” said Buckle.

Two-Trees shouldered him aside.

There must have been forty of them.

FOSTER BROUGHT AS
much as she could with her, leaving the courier to get the rest. She showed the extra box to the Padre, asking if he’d ordered anything.

Ishmael was stretched out on the truck’s middle seat, trying to get some rest. He intercepted the package before it got as far as the Padre’s hands. “Thank you.” He sat up and picked at the packing tape.

“Alex Selkirk?” she asked.

“In the 1700s,” Ishmael explained, “Alexander Selkirk had a fight with his captain and was marooned for four and a half years. When he finally made it back to England, Daniel Defoe heard about his story, and wrote a book based loosely on Selkirk’s life, calling it
Robinson Crusoe
. And apparently Selkirk had a real love for cats.”

Ishmael opened the box. Inside was a wallet, a new smart phone, a set of car keys, a well-used passport in Selkirk’s name with Ishmael’s picture, a driver’s license likewise named and photographed, Manitoba medical insurance, some business cards for Selkirk & Anderson, a stack of American currency, two stacks of well-used Canadian tens and twenties, and two credit cards. Equipped with his Alex Selkirk identity and resourcefulness, the first thing he wanted to do was run out and buy a decent suit.

“The modern-day Alex Selkirk happens to be the senior partner in Selkirk and Anderson Investment Banking,” Ishmael added, “and makes about sixty-five million a year without Wyrd knowing about it, with assets in Hong Kong, London, Islamabad, Gdańsk, St. Petersburg, and Manila. The vast majority of my employees are teleworkers or cottage-industry workers, and all of them are either refugee lycanthropes, carriers, or witnesses. See, this is why I travel abroad helping people. You never know when they might be able to return the favour. It doesn’t pay me much, but any port in a storm.”

“Sixty-five million a year isn’t much?” Foster asked.

The Padre was hiding on the floor between the back and middle benches with a blanket over him. He slid back a corner of the covers. “So that’s why you didn’t bat an eye when I asked you for a computer. You’re made of money.”

“Yeah. And do me a favour? Fire up that laptop.” Ishmael wiped his nose as he turned on the smart phone. He had full service. The phone was locked with a four digit code, which had also been left on a note inside the box. He walked the Padre through the initial log-in settings; his cell phone was now acting as a Wi-Fi hotspot, and the Padre could start sending messages out. Coughing, shivering, Ishmael dictated a message first to Anders Jewell Anderson to confirm that he’d received the care package. He sneezed twice. “I don’t miss that,” he said, running his hand under his nose. “Any sign of Bridget?”

Foster stepped out of the truck. “I don’t see her.”

“Told you we should have gone with them,” the Padre said.

Ishmael reminded him that his face was now the most sought after in Halo County, and that it was a better use of his time to see if they could get in touch with Gil, or Angie, or anybody at Varco Lake.

Foster opened the front passenger side door. “Here she comes. She’s just walking up the road now. No sign of Two-Trees or Buckle. But if they were in trouble, she’d be yelling at us, I think.”

“What, she’s just walking?” the Padre asked.

“Yeah.”

Ishmael dictated another email address while he put things in his wallet, and the Padre typed with agonizing slowness.
Alex Selkirk
, he reminded himself as he slid the bank card into one of the wallet slots.
Alex Selkirk.
He put the American Express card in next.
Easy as throwing off one skin and putting on another.
The corporate Visa went after that, each card a new bolt in his financial quiver. He took the computer back, changed language settings to Cyrillic, and opened his Yandex Mail account. There were messages waiting for him, some asking why he hadn’t checked in, one asking what to do in case of a Moldovan rogue, and one saying, “If this video is a fake, then it was made with technology that doesn’t exist yet.” He snarled at his luck. He replied in Russian, asking his compatriots to analyze what technology might have been used if the video weren’t a fake, and from there, determine where the equipment may have been purchased.

“So, this is all great,” the Padre said. “We’ve got equipment, we’ve got money—”

“We can find another hotel,” Ishmael added. He finished the email and returned the keyboard settings to English.

“First things first,” Foster said. “I need someone to help me start refining more counter-cyclical agents, to keep you
from changing anymore.”

“You’ve got what you need?” Ishmael asked.

“Yeah, it’s called ‘my blood’, ‘time’, and repeated lethal stabbings to bring on the change.”

“You’re serious?” Ishmael asked.

“In quarantine, all I had to do was go into the tunnel at the back of the lab,” Foster answered. “The place was clogged with change pheromones. Someone extracts my blood as I’m up-cycling from me to Holly, and then again when I’m down-cycling. We can use the first to trigger the Padre on command, and we can use the second to keep you human long enough to flush out whatever’s making you sick. But it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of patience, and at least one person who keeps their thumbs while I cycle through. We can usually get about a pop can’s worth of unprocessed plasma in six hours, given enough food, and clean water to drink. And from that, we can extract maybe enough for one dose of the counter-cyclical agents.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said it would take sixteen hours,” Ishmael said.

“Second thing we need to do,” Foster continued, “is confirm that someone cured you.”

The Padre grunted a question mark.

“I carry more or less the same retroviral material you do, with some differences. One, being able to switch between Holly’s form and my own. Two, I’m not catching.”

“But you said Dr. Grey developed our strain from your blood, and we’re contagious as hell,” the Padre said.

“I know. My retrovirus carries the same genetic structure as yours, but certain genes are dormant, especially those that propagate the retrovirus and deposit it in my spit and blood. Grey figured out how to wake up those genes, but not without a lot of tinkering, first.”

“What’s that got to do with curing Ishmael?”

“Well, if Grey could figure out how to wake up dormant genes, couldn’t someone else figure out how to put other genes to sleep?”

“And you think someone’s putting the cat to sleep?” Ishmael asked.

“It’s very possible,” she replied. “Maybe your false starts are actually
last
starts.”

“And that’s why I’m sick?”

“Maybe you’ve re-developed a human immune system. Maybe you’re trying to fight off your lycanthropy retrovirus. Maybe you’re still fighting whatever the Lost Ones infected you with.” She snapped her fingers and clapped her hand to her forehead. “
That’s
why you were able to build antibodies against the Lost Ones’ infection! That’s why you had enough antibodies to donate to you and Ferox, and everyone else. You couldn’t have done that if your human immune system wasn’t already kicking in. As a full therianthrope, you shouldn’t have any antibodies at all!”