Never Fear Page 22

  Commander Merritt’s hands clenched. “No one authorized that, Adams! You should have radioed—”

  “We tried, sir. The radios went dead right after we landed, and once we found the pieces of the helicopter… Respectfully, we weren’t trying to get into trouble; we just wanted to see if there was anyone hurt—”

  McConnell: “He’s right, sir. The radios were unresponsive after the first forty-five minutes or so, and they were DOA back onboard.”

  After a silence, Commander Merritt nodded: “Carry on, Adams. Then what happened?”

  “Well, we thought we heard screams—human screams—coming from somewhere up the beach, though the place has strange acoustics; the surf, the wind make it pretty noisy, not to mention those flying things squealing overhead, so it could have been coming from the dense vegetation toward the center of the island. Anyway, after about ten more minutes of walking, we ascended a small dune, and that’s where the rest of the helicopter was.” Adams swallowed, staring at the C.O. in trancelike, unblinking remembrance. He motioned toward the man on the bed. “We found him like this… Completely nude, crumpled up next to a bunch of half-frozen papers and the debris of the ‘copter with the walkie-talkie in his hand. Only a few scratches on him from what we could see, just knocked-out. I’m… amazed he’s alive,” Adams said. His voice was quivering. “How… how could he be alive? In those temperatures… Naked? I mean it was warmer, but still plenty cold if you’re exposed like that. And … and the helicopter was demolished, like there was an accident or something. The bloody clothing next to him had a tag: Faust. That’s the guy from the transmissions, right, McConnell?”

  McConnell was gawking at the man in the infirmary bed, stunned, his hand covering his mouth. He shot a glance at Commander Merritt, whose red-eyed gaze was also fixed on the sleeping man, and nodded. “Tell him about the other thing you brought back, Adams.”

  Merritt broke away from his thoughts. “There was something else? What?”

  Adams swallowed, his face suddenly ashen, and looked to the floor. Merritt looked again at McConnell, who took a deep breath.

  “What did Adams bring back, McConnell? Another survivor? Where—”

  “No, sir,” Adams interrupted. “Not a survivor. It’s in another lab; one of the medics is investigating it.”

  “Well let’s go see, Adams,” the commander said. He looked at McConnell. “I want to know the second this guy comes to.”

  McConnell nodded again. “Yes, sir.”

  V.

  “Commander, have you heard the term ‘globster’ before?” Medic Aaron Randolph asked.

  “Yes. Like sea monsters or something.”

  The medic smiled, thin blond hair falling over his forehead, freckled cheeks creasing at the corners of his eyes as he looked between the sullen Adams and his C.O. The ship was beginning to gently roll as night approached and a storm once more buffeted the Higgins. “That’s sort of it, sir. Globsters are… kind of mysterious relics that wash up periodically. They can be hard to identify, as they have features of several different animals, or it seems like they do. Almost like the chimeras from Greek mythology. Some people even claim they’re ‘cryptids’—previously unknown or undocumented creatures, possibly related by era or locale, like the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot. I mean, maybe they are, but it’s doubtful; apocryphal accounts of plane wing gremlins, Chupacabras, and moth men make no sense, as they’re generally too divergent from one another.” Randolph paused, then added: “Of course, there are exceptions. They didn’t think Giant Squids, okapis, coelacanths, or Komodo Dragons were real once either. Usually, though, it’s a lot less interesting than that—they’re just pieces of some animal, like that huge blue eyeball that washed up a couple of years back that they now think belonged to a dead marlin, or the badly decayed carcass of a big shark or whale—”

  Adams looked up sharply, eyes wide. “That’s no whale, Randy. Look again!”

  The medic raised his hand: “I hear you. It’s weird, alright! But stuff is starting to show up all over; things that were unknown before from the deep, or critters that normally never appear where they’re found. Even mass strandings. Happened just recently in L.A.—one day a damn deep sea oarfish washed up, completely intact, then a few days later a barely-living Alaskan saber-toothed whale! They say it might be Global Warming or something, who knows? It’s weird, though, and becoming more common. Not sure what this thing is; I checked it out under the ‘scope, too. It’s not like any other specimen we have onboard, that’s for sure. The cryptozoologists would love it.”

  Merritt straightened up. “Can I see what you’re talking about?”

  “Absolutely, Commander. Right this way.”

  They walked to the rear of the room where the storage freezer and the other autopsy tools were stowed. The medic opened the locker door, pulled a covered tray from inside, and set it on the counter. The tray was about two feet long and over a foot wide; the white cloth covering the specimen barely concealed the bulging object underneath. The medic smiled at the C.O. and the ensign. “It’s dense, heavy.” He pulled the cloth away unceremoniously.

  The thing on the tray was hard to comprehend; there was no visual context for it. It was a drab gray, mottled with blooms of light pink. On one end, it was severed all the way through, the raw wound displaying its musculature and a core of bone. This side was slender, smooth; toward the other end of its length, there were what appeared to be scales that became an almost chitinous, hard appendage of some type, resembling a fixed-open claw. Within this structure, there was a softer retracted piece with what looked to be a suckered tentacle covered in miniature hooks. This black flesh was pliant, and the appendage seemed to be gently moving within.

  Merritt’s eyes widened. “Is that thing—”

  The medic nodded. “Yes: It’s moving. It’s been moving since I got it.”

  Adams spoke at last: “It was moving around next to Faust on the beach. Pretty vigorously.”

  “Jesus. What the hell is it?” Merritt asked, stepping back in revulsion. “And that smell! Is that—”

  “Yes,” Randolph confirmed. “As it warms up, it starts emanating that strange odor… Like plastic burning.”

  The intercom interrupted them: “Commander Merritt, this is McConnell. Faust is awake, sir. Not said anything yet, but he woke up a little while ago.”

  The senior officer looked from Adams to Medic Randolph to the slowly writhing thing on the countertop. “Keep me posted on this, Randolph; I want to know what you find out about the microscopic results. Christ—gives me the fucking creeps. Let’s go, Adams.”

  Merritt thumbed the button on the wall speaker: “Roger that, McConnell. On the way.”

  VI.

  Drifting,

  Spiraling:

  The breath of a sigh,

  Or the blink of an eye

  Is all that it takes;

  And then the dreamer wakes—

  VII.

  “Faust. My name is Christopher Faust,” the man on the bed replied. His voice was weak, strangled.

  Commander Merritt: “Were you with the Australis crew?”

  Faust nodded; his gaze was distant, fixed on something just beyond the officer. Ensign Adams watched Merritt as he continued to question the man. “Where are the other members of your crew? Did they go inland?”

  Faust nodded again. “Yes. Three… of them went to the center of the island. We started with nine. I was… the aviator.” Faust’s voice was curiously flat and atonal. He never made eye contact, just kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. “We… were attacked.”

  “'Attacked?'“ Merritt shared a surprised look with Adams. “What do you mean? By whom?”

  “Not whom—what.”

  “Okay, then,” Adams said. “What?”

  Faust slowly, mechanically, turned his head toward the ensign, his eyes staring forward. “By… the things in the air. The things from the sea.”

  There was a tense silence.

  “Okay, Airman
Faust,” Merritt said at last, forcing a smile. “You’ve had a rough time. Let’s reconvene this later, once you’ve been able to regain your strength.”

  Faust methodically turned to face Merritt again, features slack, rubbery, eyes unblinking.

  “They’re… alive on the inside, Commander. Three of them went to the center of the island.”

  Merritt nodded. “We’ll see if we can—”

  “And then,” Faust interrupted, “the dreamer wakes.”

  Adams gasped, and the C.O.’s head snapped back in astonishment.

  “What?” Merritt stammered, “What did you say, Faust?”

  “The dreamer has awakened.”

  After a long and uncomfortable silence, Adams signaled Merritt to step out of the quarters.

  “Let’s go over and visit Randy again, sir,” the ensign said as the two men moved away from the infirmary.

  VIII.

  “Wow. That’s really weird,” Medic Randolph said. “What does it mean? Is it from a book or something?”

  Adams huffed. “Yeah, I’ll say… it’s from a weird dream I’ve been having—”

  “And every time you nap or go to sleep,” Merritt interjected, “this dream picks up at exactly the same place… Same strange feeling, same bizarre imagery, right?”

  Adams stared at Merritt, his mouth hanging open. Finally: “Yes.”

  A cold sweat broke out on the C. O.’s body, yet he felt too warm. “I’ve been having it, too. Started around the time that we began looking for the Australis. Just shy of a week ago—”

  “Oh shit, this is freaking me out, sir!” Adams exclaimed, plopping into a chair in Randolph’s lab.

  The medic stared at the two men who seemed suddenly unable to communicate. “Pretty strange. Twilight Zone-type stuff… Well, not to add too much more weird to it, sir, but I found something… interesting during the microscopic exam.”

  Merritt cleared his throat, rubbed his eyes, then turned his attention to Randolph. “Okay. What have you learned?”

  “It’s odd, I’ll give you that, but just hear me out a minute…”

  The medic sat down with the others, grabbed a pen and some paper and started writing and sketching. After a few moments, he began to explain his findings: “So this organism is… unusual physiologically. Perhaps you’re familiar with the concept of the Hayflick Limit?”

  Merritt shook his head.

  “Well,” the medic continued, “it’s an observation in genetics. Basically, it’s the idea that there are physical limits to the number of times a cell can divide… under certain conditions these limitations are able to be chemically or virally circumvented, avoiding the natural process of cellular suicide known as apoptosis. This thing not only looks to have solved this problem, but also has a ‘workaround’ for the shortening of telomeres as a creature ages. Conceptually, telomeres are the ends of genes that are worn down by cell division; imagine that they’re like the little plastic caps on the tips of shoelaces that keep them from fraying. ‘Younger’ telomeres keep the genes viable. This is also the case with several cancers—that they can keep the telomeres ‘young’—as a result, damage arises, in part, due to unchecked cellular division. Normally that’s a good thing, as it would impact the length of the telomeres negatively, thus applying a kind of brake to out-of-control division—” Randolph drew some examples on the paper to assist the visualization; Merritt nodded for him to continue.

  “Anyway, from what I can tell with this thing, there’s very rapid, controlled cellular division, and an ability to deliberately allocate cell speciation. So in a way, these tissues have characteristics of a tumor, but without the need for a continuous—or in this instance any—blood supply, as they appear to take oxygen directly from the atmosphere; the integument acts as a porous gas exchange membrane, similar to the way insects breathe, but more complex. Sort of like an external lung.” The medic glanced over to Adams who seemed to understand.

  “So what does that mean?” Adams asked, leaning forward.

  Medic Randolph tilted back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Not clear, but it looks like it makes these cells immortal. Not only that, but there’s another strange element…” Randolph returned to the sketch paper. “See where I drew this? Here, and here?”

  Adams and Merritt nodded their heads in understanding.

  “It appears these cells are peculiar hybrids of some kind. They have aspects of genetic mosaicism, and are these little… independent units… they’re like tiny mirrors of the larger organism—”

  Merritt: “I’m not following.”

  Adams picked up the explanation: “What I think it means,” he said as he glanced at Randolph, “is that each cell is a microcosm of the complete organism.”

  “Exactly: All of the material is there; each cell appears to have a pluripotent cellular reserve. It’s not only immortal, like certain jellyfish, but self-organizing; completely contained within itself. And not only that,” Randolph said, “but it seems that every cell is on some level … conscious for lack of a better word—”

  “What are you saying, Randolph?” Merritt asked, touching his temple as he struggled to understand.

  “I’m saying, Commander, that the cells react not just as cells—meaning with respect to extreme heat, cold and some of the chemical agents I’ve applied to both the biopsy cultures and the entire appendage—but they cannot be ‘killed’ in the normal sense of the term; they regenerate, and relatively quickly. Not only that—they behave as though they have a type of ‘collective awareness’ and each can respond accordingly to the stimuli or circumstances as either A) a unified being, or B) as an autonomous piece of that organism, thus ensuring survival at all costs. They even seem to be able to absorb and replicate other proteins, which gives them the ability to… become that protein.”

  Adams laughed without humor. “Oh my God. You mean like that fucking ‘80s movie?”

  Randolph looked surprised. “Yeah, actually. Quite protean. Just like that, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There are other examples in nature microscopically, and so on. Besides, this isn’t quite the same. I seriously doubt this is an alien; it’s probably just an evolutionary strategy. Most likely a viral thing, or at least started that way. Hell, turns out a shitload of our so-called ‘junk DNA’ is comprised of retroviruses that functionally seem to have no purpose now. Might’ve had some uses at one time, but those uses are genetically ‘turned off’, ‘cause we don’t need them due to the way we’ve evolved. Proof of that is the way our wounds heal; we have most of the same DNA as, say, a salamander, but they can regenerate arms and legs, and we can’t. We just scar over.”

  Merritt’s head was swimming. “So what did you do with the—”

  “With the specimen?” Adams finished.

  Randolph nodded toward the storage freezer. “In there; won’t hurt it, but slows it down quite a bit. In fact, I noticed that the severed part is re-growing. Looks like it’s trying the re-create the missing body.”

  “Shit! How do we rid of the fucking thing?” Merritt was genuinely alarmed.

  Randolph assured him: “No worries, sir. It needs a lot of oxygen to facilitate this process. It’s fairly immune to temperature extremes, but it can’t stay submerged—kills the tissue in a matter of minutes based on my tests; of course, seems likely that a completely … integrated organism might be able to overcome that problem. Could be multiple types of organisms, too: They reported other strange creatures there, right?” He paused, noting the concern on the C.O.’s features. “But with respect to this thing, Commander, don’t be too worried—it takes a while to re-grow whole pieces. Probably a few days or more depending on size, maybe longer. The absorption trick is faster, but has similar limitations; I mean it’s an ‘organic machine’ in a way, so while the duplicated components are nearly perfect, they occupy a state between being alive and dead. Besides,” Randolph said, shrugging, “this is the find of a lifetime—we need to bring it back with us.”

  Before Merritt c
ould mount a protest, the intercom sounded: McConnell.

  “Commander, something… interesting is happening. Could you please report to the bridge?”

  “What is it?” Merritt asked, pressing the switch.

  “The ship near the island, the Indianapolis has—”

  Adams gave a stunned look to Merritt: “Did you say Indianapolis, McConnell?” There was a pause.

  “Sorry, sir. I’m tired, and I’ve been having this crazy dream… I mean the Australis—she’s completely sunk now.”

  IX.

  Equipped with sidearms, survival gear, and machetes, they returned to the island the next morning. Once on the beach, Faust stoically led Adams, Merritt, and three others into the forest at the center. McConnell had briefed them of increasing seismic activity during the past day, warning them to be mindful of possible tremors.

  Overhead, huge bird-creatures the size of small cars swooped and pirouetted in the overcast sky; as the team was making its landing in the surf, Adams managed to photograph a bizarre, man-sized purple and red mega-crab exoskeleton that was drifting in a backwater near some crags. As was the previous case, compasses, radios, and GPS devices became unreliable.

  Inside the canopy, the kaleidoscope of brilliantly-plumed flowers, lush plants, and fantastically odd-looking—even menacing—giant insects was overwhelming: The place was an explosion of noise, a jumble of odors, a riot of color. The weather had graced them with a fortunate reprieve.