Project U.L.F. (25 page)

Wyatt struggled against the current to lift his torso out of the water and raise an arm to signal his distress but he did not get the response he was hoping for. Kate lifted her arm to mimic his action. What was she doing? Did she not realize the danger he was in? She was…waving. She thought he was waving at her! As he watched in horror, Kate let the arm fall and turned away from him. Wyatt attempted to shout, but his legs could no longer kick with enough force to keep him in position and he dropped back into the swirling waters to be rewarded with a mouthful of the dirty liquid.

The suction directly underneath him suddenly became incredibly strong. He attempted to climb onto the container and join his pack on top of the float but all he succeeded in doing was upending it and pulling the pack down on top of him. The weight forced him under and he was aware of the pack glancing off his head before it sank past him and into the murky depths. After that, he lost all sense of direction as he was buffeted and spun by the shifting waters somewhere beneath the vast lake’s surface.

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Byron stopped kicking, letting his legs fall and his body assume an upright position in the water. Nothing. He lifted his head to the sky and then strained to get a foot touch on the bottom, but again nothing. One last try, he thought, even though what he was about to do repulsed him. He took a mouthful of air and then forced himself under the surface, silently hoping that the effort would not be in vain. It wasn’t. His feet touched something solid underneath him. He pushed off and surfaced again. Infused with a new energy from his discovery he triumphantly announced to the others, “Only a few more feet. Come on, we’re nearly there!”

A minute later his feet touched bottom again, only this time he found he could stand with his head and shoulders clear out of the water. He pushed his pack so that it drifted away from him towards the shore and immediately turned to help Bobby who, being female and shorter than him, was still out of her depth. When he reached her, he grasped her arm firmly and felt her body physically relax under his grip. She was exhausted. He pulled her through the water as best he could until she too could touch bottom and then the pair of them headed for the shore, wading slowly through the deep water. They emerged onto the beach half walking, half staggering, partly because the soft mud gave under their feet, partly because they were weary from the swim. Par, Chris and Kit were already on the bank, lying on their backs and breathing heavily.

Bobby was struggling to walk alongside Byron, her feet tangling themselves up in each other until the effort became futile and she sagged into his arms. Byron lowered her to the ground and knelt over her, his concern showing as furrows on his old brow. Bobby’s breathing was shallow and in the sunlight her face was pale. Then a shadow came over the pair of them.

Byron turned and squinted into the sunlight, where a figure stood behind him, black, silhouetted against the bright sky. “Let me see her,” the voice from the dark figure ordered. Byron moved away and as the shadow dropped to his knees to join him, the light now on his features confirmed what Byron’s ears had told him. It was Chris.

Chris began to unload his pack, his eyes flitting between the items he removed and Bobby. The cut to her head still bled and the injury looked much worse now due to the trail of blood mixing with the drops of water on her face, spreading to form a substantial crimson mark on the side of her face.

“God knows what was in that water,” Chris said to himself more to anyone as he tore the seal off an antiseptic wipe with his teeth. As he cleaned Bobby’s wound with one hand he sifted through the other items which now lay on the floor around his knees. He picked up a small bag and tossed it over to Byron. Byron caught the small vacuum packed bag reflexively. “Mix that up, quickly!” Chris ordered. “The instructions are on the pack.” Byron looked at Chris, surprised at the tone of voice in which he had been addressed. He didn’t like what he saw in Chris’ eyes. “Do it!” Chris said, “I don’t have time.”

“With the wound cleaned, Chris applied a bandage to Bobby’s head after which he began plunging a syringe into numerous different vials and extracting some fluid from each of them.

Byron opened the bag to find two smaller bags inside, each containing a bit of powder. He was, he read, to mix the contents of both of them together. He did as instructed and shook the bag to ensure a good mix, the smell of one of the fine powders was familiar but he just could not place it.

“This may hurt a little,” he heard Chris say and looked up to see him about to put the syringe into Bobby’s arm, but Bobby was unresponsive, already deeply in shock.

“What’s that?” Byron asked.

“Cocktail of antibiotics,” Chris said, “Much as I hate to use them, especially at these doses, I’d say there’s a damn good chance given the color of that water and the extent of that cut that Bobby will definitely have some kind of infection.”

“You know she’s allergic to the 15th generation penicillins and beyond,” Byron added hastily, anxious that Chris did not put Bobby’s life in further jeopardy.

“Yeah, I know, I read her file,” Chris said, frowning in concentration as he administered the drugs. “Now, you got that mixture for me?”

“Wha…? Byron said, taken aback by Chris’ efficiency, “Yeah! Oh yeah, right here!” he extended the small bag which Chris snatched out of his hand.

“Thanks.”

Chris then turned away from him and pulled a large bottle of water out of his pack, proceeding to pour the liquid into the bag with the powder. The result was a deep red liquid.

“Hey don’t waste that drinking water!” Byron exclaimed.

“It’s sterilized water, not drinking water,” Chris said sharply and then he looked at Byron seriously, “And this is no waste.”

“Why? What is that stuff?”

“Essentially, blood,” Chris explained as he continued to frantically work next to Bobby. “What you mixed up was dehydrated phospholipids and hemoglobin. When you add water, the phospholipids all join up together to form tiny microscopic bubbles called liposomes. Now in medicine we use liposomes for all sorts of delivery systems, to deliver genes in gene therapy, to deliver drugs to specific sites in the body. In this case we’re going to use them to transport hemoglobin into and around the bloodstream until Bobby can regenerate the blood she lost. The nice thing about these liposomes is that they are essentially tiny blood cells but we don’t have to worry about blood groups or rhesus antigens since liposomes don’t carry any of the protein markers that blood cells do.” As he finished speaking, Chris taped the IV line needle into place in the back of Bobby’s hand and then connected the bag of newly mixed blood. Byron had listened and watched Chris in silence. Most of what Chris had said had been incomprehensible to him, and he had just watched Chris go about his work. There was something different about him. The young man in front of him now was not the same kid who had cradled his dead friend in his arms only yesterday. Was it only yesterday? So much had happened since then. Something had snapped. Chris had either lost something or gained something but Byron could not tell which, or what that something was, or if that was a good or a bad thing.

Chris stood holding the bag of blood in front of him at head height. “I think we’re done here Byron. There’s nothing more you can do.”

“She is going to be all right, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Chris said quietly wiping sweat off his forehead with his free hand. He was obviously relieved, “It was touch-and-go there for a little while but I think she’ll be fine.”

Byron nodded and patted Chris on the arm. “Good job, kid,” he said. He looked down at Bobby, laid prostate on the sun-baked mud. He was sure there was already some color returning to her cheeks. Chris smiled, as much to himself as to Byron. The others would probably never realize, but Chris had repaid his debt. He had almost certainly saved Bobby’s life.

With the immediate drama over, Byron turned to take in their new surroundings for the first time and assess their situation. When he looked out across the massive lake, he saw Kate still about forty yards out from the shore. Of course! In the urgency of the situation on the shore, Byron had completely forgotten about Kate and…Wyatt. He looked hard but could not see a second figure in the water. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes from the sunlight shimmering off every tiny ripple in the lake, but still Wyatt was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Wyatt?” Byron asked.

There was no response from anyone else. Byron turned to look at the others. Chris was busy attending Bobby, and Par and Kit were still flat on their backs, exhausted from the swim.

“Par! Kit!” he shouted

“What?” the two men said in unison, lifting their heads off the ground to look at him.

“Where the hell is Wyatt?”

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The vibrations were stronger now. The large object was passing slowly down and away from her, sinking into the murky depths. It was that which had blocked the signals from whatever it was that was struggling in the water. She swung her massive head to get a better focus on the vibrations which ran along her lateral line, firing thousands of nerve impulses as they passed down her frame. Perceiving no danger from the sinking bulk, she passed over the top of it and headed toward the noise.

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Deep underwater Wyatt was still spinning. His lungs ached for air but he had decided that the best course of action would be to stay absolutely still and hope that, sooner rather than later, his body’s natural buoyancy would overcome the currents under the surface. Once he began to rise, he would know which direction the surface was and he could strike out for it with his arms and legs, speeding his ascent. He would never know it, but his motionlessness probably saved his life.

As he spun in the water, curled into a ball and trying to fight the panic rising inside him, he was vaguely aware of another massive current buffeting him from the left. He struggled to imagine what it could be, but he would have had to have a very vivid imagination to guess correctly.

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The creature accelerated towards the source of the vibrations with a sweep of her tail. With each passing second, the signals were getting stronger and she was homing in on the source.

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Par and Kit stood to join Byron on the shore, looking out over the large expanse of water. Looking for any sign of Wyatt. The three of them cupped their hands to their foreheads, trying to shield their view from the bright sunlight which shimmered off the water’s surface. Chris glanced up occasionally from Bobby, a worried look on his face. Byron could not decide if he was worried about Bobby’s condition or the fact that Wyatt was missing. He was sure he did not want to know which it was.

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Kate peered around the side of the container she was pushing in front of her. She could see the four men all stood on the shore, all motionless staring out towards her. They seemed quite happy to stand there and watch her struggle the rest of the way to the shore. “Bloody typical,” Kate murmured to herself. “Men! You’ve always got to prove something to them.” She gave the container an aggressive shove, and Furball teetered on top of the pile of equipment balanced precariously on the float. “Sorry,” she said.

Kate looked back at the men on the shore in disgust. It would not hurt them to come back out and help her—and then she wondered why they had not. After all, a U.L.F. team
was
a team. You looked out for each other, helped each other out. That was what Wyatt had been drumming into her from the moment they arrived. As she watched them, she noticed that the three men nearest the waters edge were all turning their heads, or craning their necks. They were not looking at her, they were looking at or for something else. She wondered what it might be. She stopped kicking and turned to look behind her. Wyatt had vanished!