Heredity. Blood. Tribe.
… All primate units struggle for ascendance, the weaknesses of many sheltered by the strength of a few…
Rolling waves. Black water, white-cresting: “… coming back to me. Come back… Come back… Doc, come back to me…”
I felt the urge to linger, to take the soft hand extended, to float away with dissipating molecules and vanish into delicious nonexistence.
Then I was aware of a woman’s touch. Warm lips on a numb vacancy. Warm wind funneling into a sealed space.
My lungs inflating, deflating.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM. Pounding on a door, someone demanding entrance through my chest.
A kiss: Inflate… deflate.
Another: Inflate… deflate.
The woman’s warm breath becoming cold, fueling slow light in a dark place. Dying embers flared by a breeze.
Male voice. A guttural raging. Then a woman.
“Idiot, speak English. You know my rules when Mr. Earl’s around.”
“I said this guy, he’s so goddamn heavy, Broz should be here to help.”
“To hell with Broz, we’re leaving without him.”
“Even if the man’s breathing, his brain’s dead by now. Why bother? And I’m getting very tired of your orders!”
“Get him in the plane. Behind the cargo curtain. And don’t drop the oxygen cylinder, you idiot!”
Sound of a woman walking away. Silence. Footfall of a man approaching. Stink of lavender, a burning cigarette.
“Stay cool, Aleski. Keep it together until we get to the islands. They’re expecting us. I just got off the phone.”
“She makes me so mad. I hate her.”
“Just be cool. We’ve got business to discuss, you and me. I suddenly don’t like that bitch as much as I thought.”
“She treats this guy like treasure, but treats me like shit-and he almost killed us one night with a boat.”
I felt a withering spinal compression, simultaneously a hollow melon thud.
“Don’t kick him. If you want, give him another shot before she comes back-that way, no surprises during the flight. If he tells us something useful, afterward, you can do whatever you want.”
Bee-sting burning in my arm.
“I’d like that. And what about Dasha? Can I…?”
“Whatever you want. You’re the new head of security. You make the rules.”
“Me? Really?”
“Really. I just got real bad news about Dr. Stokes. The medic says our boss has a problem. Parasites. We probably all do. Me, I’m such a genius. I put the bitch in charge of our water supply.”
Engines synching, torque of propellers, a robotic turn. G-force stomach of Earth falling away.
Vibration. Cargo plane hydraulics. Familiar.
Thermal pockets in darkness; straining for altitude… then a deeper, cozier darkness. Air becoming sea. I was on my pretty new surfboard, slow lifting waves, riding deeper, deeper into a drug-gauzy sleep.
Dreaming again…
Warm air flooding a sealed space. Inflate, deflate, chest rising.
A kiss: Inhale. Exhale.
Another: Inhale. Exhale.
A woman’s eyes, shampoo scent of hair, whispered words above propeller rumble.
“Nice, your lips. I found a photo of you. I’ve wanted to try this.”
A kiss. Another. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
“Do you like? There was a fairy tale when I was a girl. Awakening a prince with a kiss. You’re probably the closest I’ll ever come. You almost killed me-you bad, bad boy.”
Lips joined, two bodies breathing. Touch of fingertips on chest, unbuttoning, moving downward, skin touching skin, fingers spreading, flexing. Cat paws searching.
“This isn’t right… the drug shouldn’t… unless that idiot gave you another shot. Can you hear me? I straightened your glasses. Open your eyes. Try. I’m here.”
Fuzzy image of a woman’s face, short blond hair, Slavic cheeks, sharp chin. Attractive, in a feral way. Familiar… a memory just beyond reach.
“Doctor Ford. Marion. Wake up. We don’t have much time.”
Kissing again, breathing as one, the woman suddenly naked, pushing her pear-curved breasts to my lips, hips seeking. The sound of a zipper, fingers slowing, touching experimentally as they find me. Tracing, lifting, positioning.
“Hello, my yieldak. Yes. Keep me company while your large friend sleeps.”
Pleasure dream; unreality becoming reality…
“I have something here. You might feel a little sting. Nothing serious. It’s not dangerous.”
Blurry image of the naked woman standing over me, something in her hand, legs wide as she squatted. “For now, though, you’re doing just what Dasha needs you to do…”
32
I awoke in a yellow shard of sunlight, eyes squinting, head pounding, groaning in pain. My chest and throat felt as if I’d swallowed glass. For a confused few seconds, I thought I had the all-time worst hangover. A taste in my mouth. Metallic, disgusting.
Then a jumble of dreams came tumbling back. My sluggish brain struggled to separate what was real, what wasn’t.
Hospital parking lot, Tomlinson hurt. Big hands grabbing me from behind, a stabbing stiletto pain. The irksome realization that I’d stepped into a trap, that the fatal error was mine, no one else to blame.
The only friend you don’t take care of is yourself-the only friend I think you’re capable of hurting.
Tomlinson’s warning words.
I touched my neck. Swollen, crusted with blood.
There was the memory of drowning panic, of suffocating, a chemical dispersal-dying.
Bad judgment-a variety of suicide?
Then… what? I was on a plane.
Yes.
Flown where?
I tried to roll to my feet; collapsed. Had to lean against the wall to keep from falling, I was so dizzy. I was in a small room made of coral rock, morning sunlight streaming through the only window. Bars on the window. Two metal doors. Box-sized cages stacked floor to ceiling, a scamper-tittering from within. Stink of urine and dust.
My eyes were open but not focusing. I realized my glasses were tied around my neck with fishing line, as usual. Fitted them over my ears. One lens was shattered, yet the world sharpened. I saw that cages were filled with rats, white mice, grain and turds scattered across the floor.
There was a spiderweb in the corner, a skeleton of a bird suspended within above a sprinkling of feathers.
I checked myself-saw that I was naked. Filthy. Grass and sand in coated chest hair; arms bruised, backs of my heels raw.
I’d been dragged.
I stumbled to the window, looked out.
A rain forest mountainside. Silver beach, turquoise bay. Scent of frangipani and diesel. Low cliffs on the opposite shore, roofs of buildings showing red tile through foliage. A narrow cut, quarter mile wide, where current boiled in gelatinous whirlpools, waves breaking outside the reef.
Beyond, water darkened where it deepened. A crowded boat was outward bound: stacks of furniture, strawhats and bright umbrellas, brown faces suspended above the deep.
People fleeing.
I was in the tropics, possibly the Caribbean. An island. In a room made of rock slabs with bars-something from pirate days.
There were sheds nearby, tin, rock, and wood. A portion of open field that might have been part of a landing strip, a small harbor where a barge was also churning water, struggling against heavy current, its high bow pointed seaward. There was something hidden beneath camouflaged netting on the vessel’s cargo deck.
I saw four distinct rotors. Wedges of red metal above aircraft tires.
Helicopters…?
Four helicopters, drone-sized, incongruous in this Third World setting. One man in the elevated wheelhouse, two deckhands coiling lines astern.
Who? Why?
The vessel was headed north, morning sun to starboard.
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
I jumped, surprised by a woman’s voice behind me.
“You’re in the Bahamas, only thirty miles from Cuba. We’ve got to get out of here. They’re coming to kill us both.”