Swamp Thing 1 Page 6

  “They’re upstairs,” Alec lied. Perhaps he could divide the troops.

  “Now what would they be doing up there?” Ferret asked cynically. “Why wouldn’t they be in the wall safe by the bookshelves?”

  “How do you know—?”

  Ritter stepped forward, slipping his gun into his belt. “What’s the holdup?” he asked curtly.

  Ferret said, “He’s being difficult.”

  Linda gasped and Alec held her tighter.

  “Ritter,” said Alec, “not you! You have every security clearance I ever heard of.” Alec studied the man now as he had not done before; he was dressed in black, a costume for concealment, an expensive velour utterly out of character for Ritter—a man of strictly practical tastes.

  “No, Dr. Holland, not Ritter,” the man said with a shrug. “Ritter, poor fellow, is long dead.” He smiled from some secret joke. He grabbed his right ear and tugged; a mask began to stretch and peel away. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve rather enjoyed this masquerade.” His voice was becoming deeper, more cultured. “It’s been quite a challenge for me to exhibit so little interest in your actual work here—which, in fact, I find extraordinary, revolutionary, almost as exciting, I dare say, as you do, Alec.”

  The mask was off, and the face beneath that of the pedestrian Ritter was sharp-featured, hawklike, conspicuously intelligent. As the man continued to speak, his voice continued to deepen until it sounded omnipotent, almost benign; and the lumbering, tense posture of Ritter gave way to a straight spine, making of the man a taller, prouder, more imposing figure. There was a chilling electricity about him that in others might have been comforting, but in him was terrifying—out of context with his army of criminals. Insane.

  “Our lawyers have become acquainted on occasion,” he said with amusement, “but we’ve never met, officially. I won’t offer my hand, because I’m quite confident you’d decline to shake it. My name is Arcane.”

  8

  Arcane stared at Alec with a patient smile. “I’ll give you a moment to review your predicament,” he said. “I’d like us to work together, of course. If that doesn’t appeal to you, the onus of an alternative falls on you. Your move.”

  “Where’s Cable?” Alec asked.

  “Outside. Alive at the moment.” Impatiently, Arcane said, “You’re not dealing with essentials, Alec.”

  “The electronics man who was killed by the alligator . . . that wasn’t an accident,” Alec stated with very little questioning inflection.

  Ferret interjected gleefully. “It wasn’t even an alligator.”

  “The man was a trifle too interested,” said Arcane, “in field work. I’m waiting.”

  Alec’s mind was a jumble of horrifying possibilities: Arcane finding ways to use the formula as a weapon, introducing commercial substances from untested byproducts, cornering the produce market, enslaving hungry countries with handouts, perhaps even causing ecological imbalances that could destroy the world—or holding the world for ransom with that threat.

  Alec’s eyes were on the orchid; while he stared at it a new leaf curled out and a blossom bud began to form. In spite of his situation, he wondered, as a scientist, how long the prodigious growth would continue before more nutrient was required, and what might happen when that time was reached. Or would it ever be reached? Would the plant/animal cells replicate themselves indefinitely? Would they be passed along to offspring?

  Arcane took the pistol from his belt. This was not the army-issue revolver Ritter had carried; Arcane’s was gleaming, silver-plated.

  “I’m waiting,” Arcane said.

  Alec made no response.

  Linda said, “For God’s sake, Alec, don’t—”

  Her brother cut her off by squeezing her close. “Shh,” he said.

  Arcane said to Ferret: “Your mistake, you see, was in threatening the great Dr. Holland. You don’t know him. You make the silly mistake of suspecting that everyone’s motives are the same, and that he’d react the way you would.” Arcane shook his head. “What’s called for here,” he said, “is that we threaten the life of those he loves.”

  Arcane aimed his pistol at Linda’s head; Ferret jumped out of the line of fire. “Whether we kill you or not, Alec, you have my word that when we leave the swamp, Linda will be alive. If she tries to tell her story she’ll be locked in an asylum, but she’ll be alive. I’m not afraid of witnesses, dear boy, because as you know, I’m dead.” He snorted. “Died in a tragic accident.”

  “Don’t believe him,” Linda said weakly. “Don’t do it.”

  Arcane moved closer to her. “Alec—give me the beaker of soup, the cultures used in its preparation, the chemicals of the medium, and your notes on the development. Or Linda dies now. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”

  Alec pulled away from his sister.

  “No, Alec,” she implored. “He’ll kill us anyway.”

  Alec shrugged. “And find what he wants when we’re dead.”

  “But maybe,” said Arcane, “I’m more to be trusted than you imagine. You have that chance, you see. I advise you to avail yourself of it.”

  Alec’s head was beginning to ache; there seemed to be no proper course of action, no step he could take without betraying all he cared about and believed in. He ran a clammy palm across his furrowed brow. “I’ll get it,” he said.

  He left Linda beside the giant orchid, almost hoping its magical properties would protect her, and stepped to the wall safe.

  It wasn’t locked; he never locked it. He always assumed the space-age lock on the only entrance was enough protection for him and Linda and their secrets.

  Bruno, baby-faced and bulbously over-muscled, followed Alec with a cocked revolver. He had to lower the firing pin and pocket it when Alec handed him the stack of notebooks. Bruno glanced inside the safe to see that none were being left behind.

  “Fine,” said Arcane. “Now the solution itself.”

  Alec nodded. A feeble plan had hatched in his brain. It was not a grandstand play, and in the long run it might make little or no difference, but it was something to try. With even so small a hint of purpose, his mind cleared. He realized at once that Linda would have to notice what he was doing and help without being told anything: He prayed that her face would give nothing away; Arcane would be watching them both for any indications of change.

  He had not given Arcane the most important notebook; that was still on the bench where Linda had been making notes—in plain sight, if one knew where to look. All of the most important discoveries were noted in that newest book.

  With any luck, he might also be able to give Arcane the next-to-last “soup” Linda had cooked up, the one he’d shown Cable on the third microscope slide. That fluid was startling enough in its properties to keep Arcane’s labs busy for some time before they realized something crucial was missing.

  Bruno handed the stack of notebooks to Arcane, who glanced at their spines. They were out of order, but plainly numbered. He rearranged them—numbers one through fourteen—and, satisfied, handed the stack back to Bruno.

  Linda had a plan, too; but it did not mesh with Alec’s. As he turned to take down the wrong container of solution, Linda suddenly rammed her elbow into Bruno’s ribs and grabbed the notebooks from him. He lunged to grab her, but Arcane kicked Bruno aside and fired at Linda.

  “Linda!” Alec breathed as she fell forward from the blow of the bullet and went sprawling toward the open door. The books splayed from her like a hand of cards.

  Alec forgot the container and ran to her side. He lifted her limp head and felt for pulse in her neck. There was none. He looked away, his vision blurring with angry tears, and saw Cable’s body lying outside in the foyer.

  Bruno, like a child picking up toys, retrieved the notebooks.

  “Take me seriously from now on,” Arcane said. “Please, Alec.” There was a note of regret in his voice, along with chords of menace.

  Everything was lost. Alec got shakily to his feet, his hands wet with Lind
a’s blood, and walked to the specimen racks. He abandoned his idea of deceiving Arcane with the wrong sample. He took the right one, the one that glowed fluorescent yellow as if it contained a piece of the sun, and walked toward Arcane with it. Alec remembered the explosions and the fires from even tiny droplets.

  He walked past Arcane toward the door. He hoped to hurl it to the floor and burn the lab, and everyone in it, to the ground.

  “Don’t let him leave, Bruno,” Arcane said, misinterpreting Alec’s actions.

  Bruno blundered into Alec with a body block that jolted him and sloshed the fluid over Alec’s body. Instantly, Alec was a blinding explosion of green fire that enveloped him utterly.

  He screamed. The men staggered back from the intense heat and light. Alec fell to his knees but rose again, flailing the air like a blind man, screaming. The flame was so bright that his body could not be seen; all that was visible was a pulsing globe of green brilliance. Alec ran through the door.

  His sensations were more horrifying than painful, but he knew that he was burning, that he was in shock, that he had to reach the water or become a pile of dead green cinders.

  Arcane, Ferret and their men, racing after him out of the church, saw a vaguely human form inside an aura of light—a light so bright that the whole camp was visible, and long shadows turned like spokes as he ran.

  Grasses flared into flame as Alec ran over them, and where he grabbed the railing of the wooden bridge a fire started. He dived into the water of the inlet.

  He hit the water. Steam erupted in a boiling cloud, and there were repeated flashes and explosions under the water. Glowing clots of moss were tossed up into the air, and an eerie green vapor rose and seeped over the banks, almost obscuring the smoldering bridge.

  Arcane looked back at the church, just as a low explosion rumbled forth from it and a whoosh of fire flashed briefly out the open doors. He spotted Bruno nearby.

  “The notebooks!” Arcane spat out.

  “I got ’em,” Bruno said, holding the stack out for inspection.

  “Good. Let’s get out of here.”

  Two of Arcane’s men had already carried a boat from its hiding place and were trotting it downstream from where the inlet still boiled and flashed. As Arcane turned to follow the boat, he instructed Ferret: “Stay here. Get rid of the bodies. Make sure there are no witnesses. Stay clear of the lab for a while; the chemicals in there are going to give you some fireworks.”

  Ferret handed Arcane a walkie-talkie. “Right. Your plane’s ready to take off. Just radio ’em to tell them where to pick you up. When we’re done we’ll drive the jeep out—the long way around.”

  There was another explosion in the church, and the sound of splintering glass. They all glanced toward it; a billow of black smoke, fire-lighted from below, puffed up through the fragmentary roof of the old building.

  Had that explosion occurred even a second earlier, Cable would not have escaped. They would have seen her.

  She was conscious when Alec’s flaming body seared past her, though she was confused and not yet able to piece events together. By the time Arcane and his men rushed past, she knew enough to play dead; and when she saw that the lab had caught fire, she realized somebody might still be inside.

  She scrambled to her feet and stumbled over Linda’s body. She called out “Alec!” but in all the confusion was not heard by the men outside, who were spellbound by the fireworks erupting from the swamp.

  All she saw of any significance in the lab was that notebook, the one she had seen Linda writing in, the one with the secret that had the power to change the world. She grabbed it.

  A rack of chemicals near the security door was in flames. A large container exploded and sent a long finger of fire out the front door as it sprayed burning jets of liquid inside. Flames rose from lines on the floor and from one of the bookshelves where some of the burning chemical had splashed. Another chemical by the door sizzled into flame and sputtered up waves of black smoke. There was only one way out, and it seemed impassable, surrounded by fire.

  But there was no option. The notebook in her hand, Cable shielded her face with her arms and charged through the flaming doorway.

  Miraculously, the fire had not caught outside the lab, though there were little curls of smoke emerging from pinholes in the partition wall. She had the presence of mind not to bolt directly out the door, but first to look and listen.

  Ferret and his men were standing in a semicircle near the old bridge—which for some reason was on fire—and they watched a spectacular chemical blaze that created dazzling fireworks in the swamp. Two other men were struggling with one of the little blue outboard boats. No one was looking her way.

  Just as she rounded the far corner of the church, there was an explosion inside; its concussion shattered the glass ceiling of the lab.

  As Cable, her head throbbing, made her way deeper into the thick underbrush of the swamp, the old church exploded with a rainbow of colored fires. She tripped in the utter darkness and fell to her knees. Her hands hit the ground, and something slithered from beneath one of them. She began to cry like a little girl afraid of the dark; but that was the least of her sorrows. It seemed sure that she alone had survived whatever holocaust had taken place. And the deadly creatures of the swamp were minor threats compared to the unscrupulous venom of men.

  9

  A ground fog rolled in that smelled of rot and smoke and blew away before the sun rose. For a few minutes, the underside of a blanket of low clouds was blood red from horizon to horizon, then faded to gray as if the wrong morning was dawning and nature had decided to correct the mistake. After brightening, the sky darkened again; after warming, the breeze turned cold. A mist started to fall.

  The creatures of the swamp were quiet. A bird called occasionally; locusts chirped now and again.

  From where she sat, against a knobby, tangled cypress trunk, Cable could hear and vaguely see what was going on both at the camp and in the lake. Both sites were ghoulish. Bruno was picking through the ruins of the church, several others were wheeling the last of the bodies, weighted with stones, across the peninsula to dump them in the swamp. She had seen them bury nine. Now they carried the bodies of Charlie Tanner and Sam Darkow—the two, she dimly believed, who had died on the path in view of the infrared camera. Charlie. Nice, almost-honest Charlie—what had he been doing out there?

  She heard a twig snap and realized that it might mean she would be found, but she scarcely cared. Her eyes were open, unblinking, fascinated in an unreal way by the impossible funeral procession. She could hear Ferret’s grating cloying voice, but she paid no attention to the words. Her mind was in neutral—accepting data but not daring to evaluate it. She knew she was in emotional shock and tried to observe her state dispassionately. She suspected she breathed only about once a minute, and she had ceased being aware of her heartbeat. With very little effort she could convince herself that she was not there at all.

  Another twig broke. Nearer.

  She shrank farther into the roots of the tree.

  A mud-crusted boot stopped not far from her hand.

  Her heart began to pound again. She looked up, but the man’s face was hidden by a low branch of the tree. The tree shuddered a little when he shoved against it, leaning.

  The man muttered, “Goddamn sons of bitches,” and she could tell that he was crying.

  If he doesn’t stop, I’ll start crying again too, she thought.

  Finding another person in distress roused Cable’s brain. “Get down, out of sight!” she whispered hoarsely. “Now! Quick!”

  He sank slowly and sat next to her in the crook of the crazy treetrunk. It was Bill Darkow. He said nothing, though he probably remembered who she was.

  “We’re the only ones left,” she told him. “They killed all the others. Not just your brother.”

  “The Hollands?” he asked, his voice a gurgling whisper.

  “Yes,” she said. “And Charlie—”

  “I saw t
hem take Charlie . . . with Sam.”

  They sat without speaking, till he started to sob silently, and she rested a hand comfortingly on his knee. “If you get out of here alive,” she said, “and I don’t, you’ve got to get a report to Washington.”

  He nodded. “You can tell me,” he said. “I’ll remember. Damn right I’ll remember.”

  “Washington’s in area 206. You want JL5-2000. Extension 1919. Identify yourself as number 517. God, you can’t remember all that.”

  “I think I can,” he insisted. He smiled and wiped his cheeks.

  “Ask to speak to your immediate superior. They’ll connect you with a government security official with jurisdiction over this operation, someone in the vicinity. Tell them what happened, and tell them the man to nail is called Ferret, whom I think is working with someone called Arcane. They’ll tell you Arcane’s dead. I don’t think so; Ferret’s working for somebody. Show them where the . . . where the bodies have been dumped.”

  He nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  “Get out of here the best way I can and try to deliver the same message.”

  “It’ll be safer if we go separately,” he suggested.

  “Right. Tell me those numbers.”

  “Area 206; JL5-2000, 1919, 517.”

  “Amazing. I couldn’t do that.”

  They watched Sam Darkow’s body being slid into the muddy water. The murderers seemed mystically far away, pastelled by the mist; it made the splash sound unnaturally loud.

  Darkow laid his hand over Cable’s. “Thank you,” he said humbly. “I’ll go first. I’ll head back along the west side of the peninsula till I reach the farm roads. Good luck, Ms. Cable.”

  “ ’Luck, Bill. And be careful, damn it. You walked right up here in plain sight. Keep down!”

  “Uh, I have a better idea what’s going on now. I’ll be careful. You, too.”

  She smiled. When he had crawled out of sight into the sawgrass and cattails, she thought to herself in amazement: What do you know—I can smile.

  The next thought that crossed her newly awakened mind was of the notebook. It was inside her blouse. Suddenly she remembered what it was and how it got there. She wondered whether she should have sent it with Bill, and decided that she had at least as good a chance with it as he would have.