Season of Passage, The (42 page)

Lauren started on the last day.

11, 7: I pray that you who discover this record wil not make the mistake of thinking me insane. If you do, then the evil on this planet that turns men

into walking corpses wil invade the Earth. Above al else, that must not happen. We should never have come to this place.

I don't have much time. I must explain what happened today. My dearest friends are now aliens. They smile constantly, with vacant eyes that remind

me of animals. I feel a strange power in them, a cold hatred.

I decided our only chance was more medical tests. Since I no longer trust Gregory, I had his assistant, Fyodor, subject al of us to physical exams.

Fyodor has never been to the canal or the island. But as he listened to my heart beat, I

noticed his smiling expression. Where his hands touched my skin, I felt a disquieting chil . I asked if he was feeling wel , and he laughed and said he

had never been better. That made me suspicious. Fyodor had been feeling miserable like the rest of us. I asked him if he had examined Ivan and

found anything unusual. He said no. I pointed out that Ivan no longer appeared to breathe. At that Fyodor laughed again, and said that must mean

he's dead. Then he offered me a bottle of water and suggested I drink it immediately, for my system was dehydrated.

I smel ed the water and detected a faint, nauseating odor. To the touch, the liquid felt different than water. It was thicker, and it stuck to my fingers

like glue. It also gave me a slight burn. I asked Fyodor where he got the water and he told me Ivan had given it to him. He also said that it was

delicious stuff. I ordered him to continue his examinations and left for the control room.

Once there I considered the idea that Fyodor had been changed, like the others, but without having visited the island. I felt anxious about having

placed my uncontaminated men in his hands. I turned on a remote camera that viewed the laboratory. There I watched as Fyodor withdrew a blood

sample from Peter. At first Fyodor appeared to do nothing unusual. Then he attached a tourniquet and IV to Peter's arm. He explained that he

needed an exceptional y large amount of blood for a special experiment he wanted to perform. Peter agreed reluctantly. After Fyodor was done

with him, Peter left the laboratory, and then Ivan appeared.

What happened next was terrible. Fyodor handed Ivan Peter's blood. He bowed as he did so, and thanked Ivan for the opportunity of decision. Ivan

took the beaker and made a toast in the direction of my camera - he must have known I was watching. Then Ivan drank down the blood and gave

the

empty beaker back to Fyodor. Ivan promised him that soon his thirst would be quenched.

My old friend drank Peter's blood!

I checked our weapons locker. The rifles and lasers are gone. The weapons the Katarina carried are also gone. They are way ahead of me.

I have cal ed for a meeting at the Katarina tonight. I believe they wil come - they seem to fear nothing. There is only one way of stopping this plague.

Ivan's remark about quenching their thirst haunts me. Fortunately he does not know of the weapon we carry that is far more powerful than the

missing lasers and rifles.

I have fed a program into the Karamazov's computer that cannot be overridden. This ship wil never leave this world, but it is my hope that she wil

continue to serve mankind by protecting this record. Whoever should read this - leave this place before it is too late.

I wish I could see Anna one last time. I wish I could get a message off to Carl. He wil have a lonely journey home.

I have to go now. They are coming.

Lauren closed the diary and shut her eyes. Now she desperately wanted to leave Jessica. She longed to blast off and get back to Earth and warn

everybody. She didn't want to be given the opportunity of decision.

Gary came in over the radio. 'I'm ready, Doc. We can leave now.'

She squeezed Dmitri's diary. At least it felt warm. 'OK.'

'Did you find out anything?'

'Yes.'

'What?'

'Gary,' she said. 'Let's make a couple of crosses before we go down there. They couldn't hurt.'

Coming, Lori?

TWENTY-SEVEN

The boat was where they had left it, floating on the canal at the end of the cave two hundred feet below the edge of the cliff. The rope ladder that led

down to the water was also in place, and they climbed dowrf into the boat without difficulty. Lauren found paddling a relief after the long walk. Her

injured knee had swol en to twice its proper size - another waste of precious moisture. Yet the black waters that surrounded them no longer tempted

her.

'Where did you get this water, Fyodor?'

'Ivan gave it to me. It's delicious.'

'When we get back home, Lori,' Gary said, breathing hard inside his suit, 'I'm going to take you surfing in Tahiti. You can lie on an empty beach al

day and let the hot sun bake your beautiful body a sexy brown.'

She sighed. 'Tahiti - it's a place I can hardly imagine anymore. I can't even imagine a warm sun in this hel hole. We should al go there. Jenny loves

the water. Terry does, too.'

You remember Terry? That's my fiancé. We're engaged.

'It'l be great,' Gary said quickly. 'Al of us wil go, yeah.'

'I wonder how Ivan escaped Dmitri's trap,' she said.

'I'm more curious about how he became possessed in the first place. He didn't have someone to show him the way.'

Lauren recal ed her last day in the forest in Wyoming. She had fal en asleep in front of Terry's cabin and had had a horrible nightmare. She had

awoken with a start, with Jennifer asking whose name she had cal ed. (Whose name had she cal ed?) Then and there, mil ions of miles away, the

attack on her had begun; al those weird voices in her head -1 see you brought the fire, and bizarre stuff like that. It was Mars trying to take over. Jim

had hit the nail right on the head when he said the infection wasn't physical. The monster sucked on your mind before it drank your blood. Of course,

you had to invite them in - al the stories said that. You had to make a decision.

'Mars was probably al Ivan needed,' Lauren said in response to Gary's comment.

Gary nodded. 'I hope we don't flip out in that cave.'

After they had been paddling for about an hour, Lauren noticed a sudden series of ripples crisscrossing the canal. She wasn't sure, but had the wal

just jerked?

'Gary?' she said.

'What?'

'Did you notice anything unusual a second ago?'

'No. Why?'

'I think there was another earthquake.'

'I wouldn't be surprised.'

'Yeah,' she muttered. They continued to paddle forward. Yet something nagged at the back of Lauren's mind. The cavern up ahead held a large

body of water. How large they did not know for sure. It could be as large as an ocean.

Lauren paused to adjust the reception on her vocals up to maximum. Now every sound was like thunder in her ear: her breathing, the splash of the

water, her heartbeat. Yet faintly, far away, she could hear the roar of something large and dangerous approaching.

A tidal wave!

'Gary!'

'Huh?'

'Turn your vocals al the way up!'

He did so. 'Oh, shit! This planet is trying to kil us.'

'What should we do?' She cut her receivers back to normal; nevertheless, the wave could stil be heard, echoing in the black with the hol ow sound

of certain death.

'The sides of the canal wil be solid white wash,' Gary said. 'We've got to get to the middle.'

With one powerful stroke, Gary pivoted the boat. They paddled frantical y towards the center of the canal. The noise grew louder and louder. Yet

they could see absolutely nothing in front of them.

'Is this the middle?' she shouted over the din a minute later.

'I don't know!' Gary stopped paddling and shot off a flare. The glare was blinding, but they saw enough to know that they were stil far from the

center. In the distance, a dark wal , wreathed at the side with cascading foam, stormed toward them.

They tried to increase their distance from the wal . Unfortunately Lauren was nervous; she couldn't keep up with Gary's strokes. Their rhythm went

out of sync, and the raft veered to the side. They began to spin in circles. Lauren tried correcting the situation but only made matters worse. Final y

Gary turned and shook his head. He indicated she should set aside her paddle and brace herself. She couldn't have heard him had he spoken, the

roar was deafening now. He shot off a second flare in the direction of the tsunami. In the brief dawn that fol owed they saw a mountain of water, at

least forty feet high, churning with an avalanche of white foam, ready to sweep away their puny boat.

As the flare died, however, Lauren saw that the swel was intact in the middle. There was hope. She gripped the sides of the boat as hard as she

could.

A moment later her heart was stuffed into her stomach as the boat was grabbed by an al -powerful hand and tossed upward. The passage of the

water was so swift, it actual y threw them several feet off the surface. They landed with a sharp jar, and Lauren feared the force would rupture the

bottom of their boat. When she opened her eyes, though, the boat seemed intact, although it rocked violently on the foam left behind by the tidal

wave.

'Maybe we won't go surfing in Tahiti,' Gary gasped.

'We'l just wet our feet,' Lauren said, trying to catch her breath.

The remainder of their watery journey passed without incident. At the mysterious island, Gary secured the boat and climbed onto the drenched

shore with the bomb hugged close to his chest. Lauren fol owed closely, carrying the laser. It did not take them long to locate Jim's original

phosphorescent markers. They proceeded inland, and quickly the island's spel of fear began to work on them. Lauren underwent a profound

change in point of view. She was going to shoot at anything that moved, she decided. Jessica would just have to take her chances.

They came to the pool where Ivan's remains lay scattered in bloody leaps. Incredibly, his eyes were stil open, and the obscene grin remained on

his mouth. Gary kicked the head into the water, where it slowly sank beneath the black surface.

Good luck, Lori. Be sure to write when you get home.

They pushed into the hil s. At the spot where Jessica had fal en, the markers came to an end. They had no choice but to send up a flare, destroying

their chances of surprise. In the burning light, approximately a mile distant, they saw a tal hil , topped with a distinctive plateau. They decided it

was probably the monsters' clubhouse.

Not long afterward, they huddled together in the center of the barren plateau. There they found a hole that appeared to lead downward. It was time

for them to be fascinated. Lauren went in first, ready at every turn of the steep jagged cave to fire her laser. Gary fol owed two inches at her back;

there was not enough room to walk abreast.

Lauren sensed heat. A faint red light began to glow up ahead. It was a peculiar shade, very depressing. Something about it said quite firmly that

there was no going back. Even if you were sorry that you hadn't been born a believer. The crucifix that swung around the neck of her pressure suit -

two plastic sticks stuck together with medical tape - didn't glow with the white light promised in the books on vampires. If she died in this pit, she

thought, and if she did have a soul, it would never get out.

The narrow cave ended abruptly. They emerged into a fascinating room. It was shrouded in fog, bloody eddies of vapor that whirled in hypnotic

circles. Pools of dark water and bubbling soups of red mud weaved around the floor. Although Lauren breathed bottled air, the stench was

overwhelming - maggots consuming a corpse that had lain too many days beneath a hot humid sun. Sudden despair entered her heart, and she

had to hug the wal to keep herself from jumping in the pits of lava.

Then I'm going to make you take your bath.

The floor was made of the same black substance as the floor of the cave, but the wal s were gray and uneven, apparently softer and undoubtedly

younger. Gary indicated they should explore the perimeter of the room. Lauren crept forward slowly, scanning the fog for the least trace of motion.

According to Gary's horror books - and they were the only reference material that spoke even

indirectly about what they were facing and she might as wel admit it - the vampires' reflexes were blindingly fast. Constant anticipation had

stretched Lauren into a taut wire. When Gary touched her arm a few minutes later, she whirled and almost blew his head off.

'Oh!' she cried. Then, 'Shit. Don't do that again.'

Gary glanced at the tip of the weapon pointed at his chest. He pushed if away. 'Shh,' he said. 'Look there. Jim's tools.'

At her feet were Jim's favorite hammer, chisel, and brush. He must have been working here when he died, she thought. She glanced back the way

they had come and decided, by the curve of the wal , that they were on the far side of the room, opposite the entrance. Gary stepped a few feet

toward the center of the room and began to ready the warhead not far from a pool of glowing mud. Lauren knelt to col ect Jim's tools.

It was then she saw the ring.

It was a simple silver band embedded halfway in the stone wal . Although flecked with gray dust, it appeared to shine with a soft white light that had

nothing to do with demons and hel .

'We've al read fantasy stories about magical rings and the wonderful powers they give to those who possess them. I guess being where I was, I