Invasive Species (19 page)

And then someone knocked into the camera. The view jolted and spun, coming to rest aimed upward at a patch of treetops.

Trey said, “Don't tell me—”

Christopher sighed. “Sorry, yes.”

More shots, more cries, another scream. The hum of wings close to the camera's microphone. A glimpse of a thin black body. Nothing else. No one reset the camera's aim.

All Trey could make out were the trees against a darkening sky. He wanted to climb inside the screen. He needed to
see.

The scene leaped forward again. Hours had clearly passed, and now it was nighttime. It seemed the battle was over.

“That's it?” Trey said.

Christopher nodded.

The camera was again focused on Agiru's face, just as it had been at the beginning. Illuminated by the harsh light of an offscreen lantern, the old man was still wearing his full Huli regalia. His face was painted yellow, with red slashes under each eye and beneath his mouth; a white line ran down his forehead and nose. His beard was blue, his wig ornamented with brilliant red-and-yellow bird-of-paradise feathers.

“It is done,” he said.
“Mipela I paitin ol stilmen na killim olgeta.”

We fought the thieves and killed them.

His eyes glinted. “Seventeen of our warriors are dead. But the
stilmen
will not return.”

“How can he say that?” Trey said.

“Listen.”

“We are not the first to fight them. The first to defeat them. The
stilmen
attacked the people of the lowlands and islands, Kambaramba and Karkar and Imbonggu and Margarima, first. The warriors of those places fought back. They drove the attackers away, although many men died.

“The lowland peoples warned us, the men of the Southern Highlands, the Huli and the Duna. They told us to watch the forest, to watch the skies. And we did. So when the
stilmen
came here, we were ready. We knew what we must do.

“And, like them, we are victorious. The
stilmen
will be gone from here. This was the last big battle, and we defeated them.

“Together, the people of Papua New Guinea have discovered: The
stilmen
, they like to kill, but they do not like to die.”

He leaned toward the camera, his face a totem of strength and certainty. “If you are watching this,” he said, “this is what we have taught you.”

He sat back and made a dismissive gesture, a flick of one hand.

“Remember,” he said, “they are still just
binatang
.”

Bugs.

“And they do not like to die.”

*   *   *

THE VIDEO CAME
to an end. Christopher stood, stepped away from the computer. “Plenty to ponder in that,” he said.

Trey said, “Yeah.”

“Mostly, it makes me think that in New Guinea, on the islands and in the mountain valleys, victory is possible,” he said. “But here in Oz, we don't have a chance.”

Trey looked at him.

“Think about it. We're a huge, empty country. Not very many people, most of us clustered in a few areas, and hundreds of millions of rabbits and other potential hosts.We couldn't be more outnumbered.”

He shook his arms and shoulders, the same gesture he'd made when overlooking the wetlands. Trey recognized it as a sign of acceptance.

“No, this war is over,” Christopher said again, “and we've already lost.”

“Then leave,” Trey said, the words emerging almost before he'd thought them. “Take your family and go to the Southern Highlands.”

Christopher smiled. “I've been in touch with Agiru. He said they will welcome us when the time comes.”

He looked into Trey's face. “Come with us.”

Trey was quiet.

Christopher took a breath to calm himself, a familiar habit Trey had forgotten. When he spoke again, his tone was lighter.

“I know. What was I thinking? You'll race around, trying to save the world, until the last possible minute. Beyond.”

His gaze burned into Trey's. “But then what?”

Trey was silent.

“We'll be safe in New Guinea. Where will you go?'

Dry Tortugas, United States

WHEN THE MEN
from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security met her at Kennedy Airport, Mariama assumed her counterfeit passport had tripped her up. Perhaps the fat man back in Panama City had alerted the authorities. Maybe this was his revenge.

Or maybe her number had just come up. She
had
, in fact, entered the United States illegally. No matter how porous the borders were, sometimes you just got caught.

As she sat across the table from the three men who would question her, her mind was racing. She had to be able to keep going. They had to allow her to go on. What could she say that would make them unlock the door and set her free?

But then it turned out not to matter. As soon as the questioning began, she realized she had it all wrong. They didn't give a damn about her passport.

The leader, a man with a strong jaw and unblinking gray eyes, said, “You are from Mpack, in the Casamance region of Senegal.”

Not a question.

Mariama recalculated. “I am.”

He reached into a briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of paper. Laid it down on the table between them. “And you are familiar with these.”

She looked down at the paper and saw a drawing of a thief.

Mariama laughed. All three men, their careers built on unflappability, showed their surprise in subtle ways: a blink, a slight clenching of the jaw, the fingers of a hand flexing for an instant.

“Yes,” Mariama said. “Quite familiar.”

“Do you know how to stop them?”

Getting to the point more quickly than she expected.

They must be very afraid,
she thought.

Yet she was unsure how to respond.

She could say yes, she knew. But what would happen then? She'd get absorbed. Become merely a cog.

Disappear into the machine.

Or she could say no and . . . perhaps complete the task she'd traveled across the world to accomplish.

The three men's eyes were fixed on her. Even with the lag she demanded due to a (feigned) difficulty with English, she had barely a second left before her hesitation became obvious, before their suspicions were raised. And once that happened, there would be no turning back. They'd break her to find out what she knew.

Decide.

“Of course not,” she said. “I came here to escape them.”

She saw the disappointment on their faces. And, for a moment, she almost weakened, told the truth.

But she'd never been much for playing on a team. Her philosophy: A team was only as strong as its weakest player. And in Mariama's opinion, almost every player was weaker than she was.

*   *   *

IT WAS THE
wrong decision. Catastrophically wrong.

She'd thought at worst they'd send her home. Then she could start trying again.

But they didn't. After two days in New York they flew her here, to this rock in what had to be the Caribbean Sea, with its old fort and manicured lawns and boatloads of tourists coming to see the ruins and watch the seabirds circling above, white against the blue sky.

None of them knowing there was a small prison on the island, too, a featureless building a stone's throw from where the crowds wandered, and a world away.

For the first few days, Mariama expected to be interrogated. To be tortured. Why else would they bring her to a prison off the mainland?

But as the days passed, Mariama realized that she was here just so they didn't have to worry about her. But why? She was no threat, was she? Why had they neither sent her home nor questioned her further?

She was treated well enough. A cell to herself, with a cot, a small table, and a barred window overlooking a patch of scrubby salt grass, a stretch of sky, a single palm tree, and one end of the small paved runway used by the airplane that had brought her here. The window admitted, along with sunlight in the late afternoon, the sounds of the wind and birds calling, and even sometimes the crash of waves.

Between the window and the overhead electric bulb, the light in her cell was always strong enough to read by. That was most important of all. As Mariama had long known, the greatest punishment a jailer could inflict was to take words away from her.

They wouldn't let her read newspapers or magazines, or listen to the radio or watch television. Instead, they brought her books. Novels, books about ancient history, mystery stories.

But nothing that would give her a clue about what was going on in the real world.

She asked. Of course she did. She asked the people who brought her meals. She asked those who accompanied her during her two hours outside every day, the walks she took within the courtyard, under the brilliant blue sky and circling white birds. She asked the guards who stood outside her cell day and night.

No one would tell her a thing, so eventually she stopped asking them. And there was no one else to ask. If she wasn't alone in this jail, they kept her separate from any of the other prisoners.

Whenever she was outside, the trade winds would be blowing. Every day, she'd take in a deep breath, searching for the familiar smell but detecting nothing.

Not yet.

*   *   *

SHE STOPPED ASKING,
but not wondering.

Why am I here?

It wasn't the foundation for a philosophical disquisition. She wasn't questioning her place in the universe. No. It was:

Why am
I
here?

Why am I
here
?

That led to another question: Who had condemned her? In the darkness of her solitude, Mariama even allowed herself to believe it might be the thieves themselves. That somehow they'd infiltrated the highest reaches of the United States government and commanded that Mariama Honso must be neutralized.

Even in the darkest moments, her essential sanity made Mariama laugh. Even at her maddest, she would never believe herself to exist at the center of the world.

No, not the thieves.

Who, then?

There was only one answer that made sense.

*   *   *

THE WEEKS PASSED.
She told the guards she'd changed her mind, that she wanted to talk, that she had important things to reveal. But it didn't help. No one ever responded.

The guards, young men and women in uniforms she didn't recognize, brought her food. Maids cleaned her cell while she was outside.

Summer turned to fall. Even here, the air had a chill to it in the late afternoon.

One day she had a revelation: She'd been forgotten. She'd slipped into the system, but now no one remembered she was here, why she'd been sent, why requisition slips were still being signed and manpower still being allocated to guard her and keep her alive.

Late at night, sleepless, she thought: I will know when the world comes to an end. On one sunny day the tourists will stop coming to visit the fort. Then the guards and those who keep me fed will disappear.

And then it will be only me, me alone, the last person left on earth.

The last untainted human. Until the thieves find me, too, as they someday will, and pollute me, and finish the job they've already begun.

*   *   *

THAT WAS THE
worst day.

The beginning of the worst days.

Washington, D.C.

“THIS CAN'T GET
out,” the chief of staff said. “Not a whisper, not a breath.”

Harry Solomon didn't bother to stifle his laugh. How often had the old guy called with something desperate that needed fixing? How many assignments had he prefaced with this same tired demand?

It was dumb on so many levels. If Harry or his people had ever let a story leak, even a whisper, even a breath, then the COS wouldn't ever have called again.

So why did he always say it? Harry thought he knew. The point was to make the old guy feel better about himself, to help him justify going ahead and telling Harry what he needed done.

What the Big Man needed done.

Okay. Thought about that way, it made some sense. “'Course,” Harry said. That wasn't enough, so he added, “You know me and my guys. We don't talk.”

Harry knew he'd still have to wait while the COS wrestled with his fears and needs. Usually after about fifteen seconds, the latest tale of woe would come pouring out.

This time, though, the hesitation lasted longer. Much longer. Long enough that Harry actually found himself saying, “Hey, you still there?” over the secure line.

“Yeah.” The old guy's voice sounded different, like he was having second thoughts.

“Then talk.” Now Harry's curiosity was piqued. Usually the call involved some brushfire that needed extinguishing before it could bring the Big Man down. Harry would listen and roll his eyes. Only in public life, and only in this country, would the sort of thing he was asked to clean up require much more than a laugh or a shrug.

Squashing some figure out of the past with a new claim of presidential drug use. (Regardless that the Big Man had been open about his “youthful indiscretions.”) Stoppering up some new embarrassment perpetrated by the First Lady's alcoholic brother. Infiltrating and sterilizing some group of fringe nuts killing time by developing theories that the Big Man was a Manchurian Candidate.

Easy stuff.

“Call me back when you got the cotton wool out of your brain,” Harry said and made to disconnect.

“Wait—”

Harry waited. He'd always intended to wait. He was interested.

Then, as the chief of staff finally began to explain, more than interested. As the stream of words, delivered in a rush, went on, Harry felt sweat prickle on his neck. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

When the COS took a breath, Harry said, “Where, again?”

“Fort Collins.”

“At the DVBID?”

The Centers for Disease Control's Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases.

“CDC was involved, yes. Under the auspices of the MRIID.”

The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, that was. Did someone actually get paid to come up with these names?

“But not at Fort Detrick?” Harry said.

The main offices and labs of MRIID were housed in Fort Detrick, Maryland, a lot closer to Harry than Fort Collins, Colorado.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There were reasons.”

Meaning,
You don't need to know the reasons
.

Harry could feel his blood pulsing in his throat. This was no DUI to be kept out of the newspapers.

“How many are there?” he asked.

A pause. Then, “Six.”

Shit,
Harry thought. “What happened?”

Silence.

“Listen,” Harry said. “I'm not going into something fucked up by the MRIID without knowing what I'm stepping into. I read
The Hot Zone
, yeah, and saw
28 Days Later
. You want to expose a crew to Ebola or the rage virus, find somebody else.”

Even then, a couple of extra seconds of silence over the line. Then the COS said, “No virus. No pathogens. These men were . . . stung.”

Harry couldn't believe it.
“Stung?”
he said. “
Bit?
You mean, like bees? I think I saw a movie once about that, too.”

The old guy wasn't laughing. When Harry was finished, he just said, “Yes. Stung. And you're going to clean it up. Tonight.”

Then he explained how.

As he did, Harry felt his unease return. Whatever it was, it sounded like an emergency. An F5. A 9.1.

Harry didn't ask why. Didn't ask what it was about. Those weren't the kinds of questions he could ask, especially not in an election year.

They weren't even the kinds of questions he was supposed to wonder about. But by the end of the conversation—the COS's monologue, really—he felt, for the first time in a long while, a little shaken. He'd never show it, of course, but there you were.

He had only one question left. Only one he could ask.

“Whatever stung those six men,” he said, “is it still there?”

“Of course not.”

Meaning:
We hope not.

Okay, one more question. “You killed it?”

Silence.

Meaning:
No.

Fort Collins, Colorado

IT WAS THE
damnedest government laboratory Harry had ever seen.

He'd been in others, and they were all basically the same. Squat buildings on university campuses or in office parks. Concrete or brick on the outside. On the inside, linoleum, fluorescent and halogen lights, glass and steel. Disposal boxes for sharps and other hazardous materials in every room. Plenty of bottles of Purell.

People in white coats and eyeglasses hurrying around clutching pads and clipboards and cell phones and little handheld computers.

But the building where Harry and his team were sent late that night was none of these things. It was a two-story shingled house way out toward Horsetooth Mountain, in the shadow of Roosevelt National Forest. On the outside, just a house, out of sight of any neighbors, hidden away in the forest. The kind of thing a family might use for ski weekends in another season.

The nodding leaves of the aspens caught the panel truck's headlights when they pulled to a stop at the end of the long dirt driveway. Beyond the dark house, the surface of a stream glinted silver, reflecting a high, cold three-quarter moon.

Harry felt uneasy out here. He wasn't used to being spooked. It pissed him off.

The man in the seat beside him, Trent, craned around. “Too bad I forgot my fly rod,” he said.

Harry didn't bother to reply. He swung the door open and climbed down. The breeze was cool—it felt like fall here already—and he could hear the stream trickling over pebbles and, farther off, an owl hooting.

No people talking, no cars, no dogs barking. The officials who'd chosen this location had wanted solitude, isolation, and they'd gotten it. Harry didn't like how dark it was.

Why at night?
he'd asked.

There were advantages to working at night, he knew. Fewer eyes watching, for one. But also disadvantages: If some eyes happened to be open, they'd be more likely to notice you, to notice the truck labeled
Central Moving & Storage
rumbling past.

And also, when you got to the site, no matter how isolated it was, at night you had to bring lights. Lights where people didn't expect to see them often meant local police where you didn't want to see
them.

Why at night?

Getting back the usual bullshit.

Why else?

A last long pause, and then the chief of staff had spoken. One more sentence.

We think they mostly come out during the day,
he'd said.

That hadn't made Harry feel any better.

*   *   *

THE FIRST TWO
were lying in the front hallway.

“Holy fuck,” Trent said.

The dead men were wearing the same white lab coats government scientists always wore. But their lab coats were no longer white. They were red. Red shading to black in the beams of the men's flashlights.

Their coats and the floor around them, too. The smell of blood was very strong, and so was another, less familiar odor.

“What the fuck
is
this?” Trent said.

Harry hadn't told them, any of them, what they were going to see here. That was how it worked: No one knew any more than they had to.

Not that knowing in advance made the sight much easier to take. Harry had heard
stung
and had looked up the after-effects of bee stings on the computer. People who died of shock, who gasped and clutched their throats, who died, eyes popped out, when they swelled up and choked to death.

That would have been bad enough, but this was worse. Much worse. These men's eyes weren't still, protruding, staring, as Harry had expected. They were gone. Torn out of the sockets. Nothing left but white flecks and globules across their cheeks.

The other four, scattered across the floor of the lab itself, were the same. Eyeless, with every exposed portion of skin—faces, necks, hands, shins above their socks—covered in red, swollen speckles and slashes. And some deeper gouges where, Harry thought, something had fed.

The crew's flashlight beams kept returning to the eyes. “What the hell did this?” someone asked.

“Some kind of bee,” Harry said.

Knowing he shouldn't have said anything, but feeling shook up. His tongue a whole lot looser than it should have been.

“A
bee
?”

“A shitload of them, I guess.”

The beams went this way and that, crisscrossing, intersecting, as everyone looked in every corner of the room. Harry saw that, regardless of the building's modest, deceptive exterior, the laboratory was well equipped with scanners, scopes, centrifuges, who knew what else. Important research had been going on here, until the bees came.

“Get to work,” Harry said, “and let's get the hell out of here.”

He didn't have to say it twice.

*   *   *

HE AND TRENT
put the dead men into body bags, carried them out to the truck, hoisted them into the coffin-shaped coolers that ran half the length of the truck. When they were done, they'd drive to the rendezvous point halfway to Denver. There they'd find a car waiting for them, and the truck and its contents would no longer be their responsibility.

While he and Trent lugged the bodies, the other two were focusing on their area of expertise. This involved a lot of careful carrying of liquids, some precise wiring, and plenty of quiet cursing.

Harry often dismissed what they did as no harder than splashing lighter fluid on charcoal, but he knew the two men earned their pay. A few hours from now, when they were all safely far away, this isolated little house would erupt. By the time it was done burning, there would be nothing identifiable left.

Nothing to make the story blow up, costing Harry his job.

Or worse than just his job. He was under no illusions.

Not in an election year.

*   *   *

IT WAS TIME
to clear out.

First, though, and as he always did, he took one last walk through the premises. One time there'd been a body in a closet that he hadn't found till that last moment. He would've had a lot of bad days if he hadn't thought to open that closet door.

But he also had another goal for walking through the scene one last time, alone. He was always on the lookout for something, anything, that he might find useful later.

Did anything here qualify? He wasn't sure. But he did find something: an index card, on the floor near where one of the workers had fallen.

Harry picked it up. There was blood on it, but it was still readable. Four short lines, half typed, half handwritten in black ink.

Beside the typed word
Family
, a handwritten
Philanthidae?

Beside the word
Genus
:
Philanthus???

Beside
Species
:
????

And beside
Type Specimen
:
Patagonia, AZ
.

Harry said, “Huh,” tucked the card into his pants pocket, and went out to join the rest of his crew.