Helix: Plague of Ghouls (9 page)

Burley left the briefing room door open. The room was big enough to hold ten lecture chairs and a desk, but Ishmael and the Padre remained standing. Burley herself sat on the corner of the desk, sniffing and wiping her nose. The dry air made her nose run constantly. She had a map projected onto the whiteboard behind her. She frowned at it, and then squinted at her printouts, as if she couldn’t see them properly. She couldn’t. Muttering all manner of Southern epithets, she opened a desk drawer, took out her purse and extracted a pair of reading glasses from a velvety case.

“Gotta say, feels hella weird, me bein’ up here and you over there. Supposed to be the other way around.”

Instead of replying, Ishmael set down his dinner on one of the chairs and began to eat while she spoke.

“We got Agent Maple down in Halo County, in Ontario. We had some problem there for a while, back when Wyndham Farms was just gettin’ set up.” She glanced at the Padre, as if he was supposed to say something important. He didn’t. She continued. “Maple’s asking for backup. Says there’s something big happening down there and he doesn’t wanna get caught with his pants around his ankles. He thinks there’s a few of ’em down there.”

“A few of what?” the Padre asked.

She looked him up and down like he was a man-sized millipede. “A few of
you
.”

“Bridget said Wyrd found them all,” Ishmael said. “Every one of Dr. Grey’s patients were documented, addresses and all. Bridget said they found all of them.”

“And then some,” Burley replied.

Ishmael nodded. “You picked up whole families. Friends, lovers, one-night stands . . . Anyone who might have come in contact with Grey’s patients.”

“Grey’s victims,” she corrected him. “God, what a mess. You know, we had to pick up a private investigator and dump her in quarantine, because she’d linked all the disappearances back to Dr. Grey?”

“Yeah,” the Padre said. “She didn’t last long.” He was glaring at her over the rims of his glasses. “Two broken ribs, a concussion, and a broken arm
before
she got there. Didn’t much help her chances at survival.” Ishmael himself had been brought to Wyndham Farms in no better condition, but he’d had the advantage of therianthropic blood.

“The Lost Ones?” Ishmael asked him.

“Sepsis,” the Padre answered.

Burley didn’t immediately reply. Ishmael took advantage of the silence by finishing his spaghetti and meatballs, and washing it down with the cheap coffee.

“There was always a risk of a couple second generation misfits who slipped the net,” Burley said. “Lord knows, even I was on the ground sniffin’ ’em out, and I was in charge of the round up.”

And in the meantime, while you were busy for years doing that, I was whistling Dixie all around the world, completely unaware of what was going on here at home. Why didn’t anyone get me involved?

“Hundreds of ’em we
did
find, but only God knows how many more got out.”

The Padre shook his head. “No . . . No, second generation victims always started showing symptoms six months after infection. Someone would have spotted them by now.”

“I know that,” Burley said haughtily, giving him another head-to-toe look. “And no new incidents after August of 2012. We thought we got ’em all, so we could finally breathe and just monitor all y’all at Wyndham Farms. But now, we
don’t
think we got ’em all.”

The Padre was still shaking his head. “If they were second generation, they’d have been Lost by now. They’d have been running around, tearing into human flesh and eating it on the spot.”

Burley’s eyebrows were high. She blinked slowly at him, the very picture of sarcastic irony.

“Oh shit,” the Padre said. “Really?”

“At least one,” she answered. “Just not in public, thank God.”

“They’d be nearly unable to change back,” Ishmael said. He chewed a meatball. “And they wouldn’t be able to travel very far,” he said with a mouthful. “By the time they’re Lost, they’re so physically messed up, body parts start melting together.”

“That’s a damned colourful way to go,” Burley said.

“Hard to hide that in a crowd,” the Padre agreed.

“But,” Ishmael said, “that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t know how or where to hide
away
from the crowd. If this was their home ground prior to infection, they’d probably know the best places to lay low and undisturbed year round. Let me see the map again? Satellite view?”

The Padre sucked his teeth. “I don’t know . . . second generation never lasted much past two years. Any new victims ought to be dead by now.”

“Except for Odysseus,” Ishmael said. “You guys said he made it more than three years.”

“Because he was fricking Buddha,” the Padre said. “And in the end, he had boneless flippers instead of legs. The point is, with the exception of Odysseus, most of them burned out and died within a year and a half of infection, if they didn’t throw themselves off a cliff first. And you’re telling me that someone has survived this long . . .
there
?” He pointed at the map.

From above, Halo County looked like a series of bacterial colonies in a roughly circular petri dish, surrounded by farmland, forestry, and the odd quarry. In the centre of the petri dish was a pair of lakes, making a shape that resembled a crooked hourglass; one was called Steeper Lake, and the other was Pouch Lake. Rivers fed into Steeper Lake from two different angles. The Deer Jump River looped around hills and suburbs before cutting through Elmbury, the biggest of the towns in that county. The other river, which had a Native name eight syllables long, cut through a First Nations Reserve, around a municipal airport, through a small provincial park, between mirrored suburbs, around the south-western edge of Elmbury before finally spilling into Steeper Lake. Between the airport and the provincial park, there were several industrial complexes and the makings of an expansive residential project, by the look of it. Subdivisions had been carved into the landscape like fingerprints. Ishmael didn’t know how old the satellite picture was, but it looked like the suburb was still under construction. The “x” marked the latitude and longitude of a murder scene, Burley said. It was on a stretch of highway between the two rivers, with fallow farmland on one side and forestry on the other, not too far from one of the denser residential areas.

“Looks pretty built up, to me,” the Padre said.

“You’d be amazed where people can hide,” Ishmael pointed out.

“Which is why I wanted you in on this one,” Burley added.

“You sure about that?”

“Jay’s not around anymore,” Burley said, “so it’s not like I can ask that son of a bitch to do it. Fisher’s out looking for a rogue in Myanmar, Alex is in Turkmenistan, and B.D. is out somewhere in New York, hunting your kittens.”

“Kittens?” the Padre asked.

“Later,” Ishmael answered quickly.

“So all I’ve got left is you,” Burley said. She sniffed and peered down the length of her nose at the Padre. “You, and all yer damned Tiger Dogs.”

“You know, you people keep using that term as if it’s supposed to be an insult,” Ishmael said, “but the more often you say it, the more metal it sounds.”

The Padre agreed. “Dangerously close to liking it myself. Tiger Dog.
Rahr
.”

“When was the attack?” Ishmael asked.

“It’s been about eighteen to twenty-four hours, Maple said,” Burley replied. “He says there was at least one victim, sex unknown, age unknown—hell, everything unknown including cause of death. Chewed, eaten, digested, leftovers packed in doggie bags, easily a hundred pounds of man-meat, he says. There might be multiple perpetrators, he says. I say, ‘God, I hope not.’ Anyhow, Maple can handle his own, most times, but if he’s outnumbered, I’d rather not leave his messy corpse for the locals to try and puzzle out, y’know-what’m-sayin’? Maple’s begging for backup, and I need to give it to him.”

“And the tribunal?” Ishmael asked.

“Hell, Ishmael, you ever think maybe this might be your get out of jail free card?” Burley replied. “Prove you’re still some use to Wyrd, maybe they’ll think twice before drowning your ass.”

“Even if it isn’t one of us,” the Padre suggested, “someone’s been eaten and the local police are probably ill-equipped to deal with it. Maybe even Wyrd realizes there are bigger problems at hand than how many lives you saved.”

The Padre didn’t know about the kittens, nor about Moldova.

“Sure,” Burley said, impatiently. “And I told Haberman about the situation, and I requested Bridget on this one, because Maple and Bridget are a good match-up. I’ve seen ’em together in action myself. They’re a good pair, quick, each acting on the other’s reactions without a question between ’em, like one big brain spread out across two bodies. I told Haberman I was gonna dispatch Bridget and he told me to shove that idea where the sun don’t shine. So I told him I wanted
you
on it ’cause you’re the best damned tracker we got, and boy, he had some choice words for me right there, I can tell you that. So I called up Maple and handed the damned phone over to Haberman and let
them
hash it out. Next thing I know, Haberman gives me a full damned roster.” Her lips were pursed. “An’ I told
him
to shove that roster where the sun don’t shine, and that did
not
go over well. Closest I ever seen him get to fur-and-fangs.” She tilted her head suddenly. “You ever seen him in his furry pyjamas?”

Ishmael shook his head.

“Then how do you know he’s a lycanthrope?” the Padre asked, slowly.

She gave him a look, one of the variety that had earned her the name Surly Burley. The Padre shrugged helplessly. “Same way we always identify a lycanthrope in a crowd.”

“So I’m going?” Ishmael asked. “Are
we
going, the Padre and I?”

“All y’all are goin’,” she answered.

Ishmael closed his eyes. “Could you quantify ‘all y’all’?”

“Your whole damned pack of Tiger Dogs, Ishmael,” she answered, “and it stinks to high heaven.”

“Look,” the Padre said, “I realize we don’t smell the same as you classier lycanthropes—”

“She’s right,” Ishmael said.

“Well, excuse me.”

“The
roster
,” Ishmael said. “It’s the roster that stinks.” He turned to Burley. “I mean, Padre can probably handle it, but—”

“Holly, Bridget, you and Padre, Dr. Grey, Andre, Danielle, and your li’l sweet’ums, Helen. Least he said that Mary Anne can stay, if she’s too damned broken.”

“Andre and . . .” Ishmael’s mouth fell open. “No. Nuh nuh—no.”

“That’s what I said,” Burley replied, “word for word!”

“I am
not
taking Dep and Ferox with us. Hell no. No—I can’t even take Shuffle with me.”

“Shuffle’s the Jolly Grey Giant,” the Padre agreed. “He’ll stick out like a seven-foot tall thumb.”

“And he needs to be with his wife right now,” Ishmael said.

“Frankly, I don’t give a shit about whose wife needs what –”

“The reinfection didn’t take, Angie,” Ishmael said, interrupting her. “Mary Anne Grey is about to go feral on us—feral like you’ve never,
ever
seen.”

“Ain’t nothing we—”

Ishmael thrust his hand up his sleeve, shoving the material up to his shoulder. “Scars, Angie. When was the last damned time you saw a lycanthrope with brand new scars?”

She fidgeted and crossed her arms.

“I took that from a Lost One. I was able to beat the infection, but I could have been lucky, and there’s still a chance I’m a carrier of their virus. Mary Anne is
viral
, Angie, in a way that could
kill
one of us. Or worse, turn
us
Lost. And Mary Anne is about to get Lost.”

Burley was quiet.

“It’s a death sentence,” Ishmael said. “If she has to die, then it . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

The Padre did it for him. “It should be her husband, for lots of reasons. For one, she’ll trust him, even when she’s Lost. She’ll let him get close enough. For another, there’s no one strong enough to put her out of her misery as quickly as Shuffle can.”

“And for a third,” Ishmael said, “he’s already been inoculated against her disease, same as me, same as the Padre. Anyone else . . .” He shook his head and rolled down his sleeve, and hoped he
had
been inoculated. For now, the fever was low grade, but the itch in his blood was still there, and dinner was not staying down easily.

“What about Helen?” the Padre piped up. “I mean, she’s only thirteen, and she’s got practically no memory of the world outside Wyndham Farms. We can’t take her with us, infection or otherwise. I mean, jeez, she’s barely
coherent
after Wyrd bombed the shit out of that island—”

After she watched you and Dep kill her mother, you mean
. “If Mary Anne gets Lost, she may end up attacking Helen, the same way Penelope did. Without the rest of the Pack to protect her . . .” Ishmael said. “And no, we can’t take Dep with us!”