Species II (10 page)

Beneath the shining strawberry blond hair, Laura’s face and her china-blue eyes blazed. “You thick-headed jerk—who the hell do you think you are, coming into my lab and questioning my motives? You—who have all the conscience of a rattlesnake!”

Press opened his mouth, but Burgess stepped between them. “Both of you, knock it off,” he barked. “You know we have a national emergency on our hands, and you
will
work together—that’s a direct order from the Pentagon.” He stared at them, and both Press and Laura finally dropped their gazes. “You killed one of these aliens before,” Burgess continued. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion or concern for the female life-form still watching them avidly from across the laboratory and who could no doubt hear their every word. “Do it again.”

The three of them automatically turned toward the glass enclosure. Press felt himself clenching his jaw and forced himself to relax, despite the awkward silence that followed Colonel Burgess’s brutally direct order. He pulled his gaze away from the habitat and made himself look at Laura again, who finally met his eyes. He gave her a sarcastic smile and allowed himself one final bit of derision.

“You heard him, Laura. Piece of cake.”

7

W
histling along with the radio, Dennis Gamble pulled his Explorer into the private driveway of Patrick’s Georgetown townhouse. Bright red, loaded with enough extras to jack the price up to where no normal Joe Schmoe could afford it, the four-wheeler had less than two hundred miles on it and was a comp, courtesy of Ford Motor Company. No fools there; they’d jumped on a tie-in between space exploration and the name of their best-selling product immediately. Wait till Patrick sees this baby, he thought gleefully. Me and Air Mikey—this’ll teach Mr. Conservative what endorsements can do for a guy. After all, a fellow had to plan for his future.

Dennis shut off the engine and climbed out, careful to set the car alarm even in this area—if this vehicle was a babe magnet, it would also draw attention from other not so desirables. It never hurt to take precautions.

A quick glance at his watch and he knew he was right on schedule. When they weren’t flying around the universe together, he and Patrick always met at Patrick’s townhouse on Tuesday mornings, when they’d buzz off to their favorite health club for a game of racquetball. After working up a good sweat, they’d have a long, hot session in the sauna, complete with about half a dozen other regulars and at least an hour’s worth of guy talk, covering topics that ranged from cars—today Dennis planned on monopolizing that subject to which woman had been the hottest one on the exercise floor that particular day.

That was always a heated discussion, and the memories brought a grin to Dennis’s face. He and Patrick made a great-looking pair on that racquetball court, which was on the lower level of the club and surrounded by an overhead glassed-in walkway. They were both in tip-top shape and competitive as hell; the walls shook with the energy of their games and their shouts of enthusiasm and verbal sparring were guaranteed to draw an audience—mostly female—to the windows. While Patrick had eyes only for Melissa, Dennis had no reservations about taking advantage of the hero worship that had surrounded both of them since their return from the Mars landing mission.

Taking the stairs three at a time, Dennis rang the bell and waited impatiently. He was itching for a workout today, feeling the strain of too many hours in too many meetings. He hated being stuck indoors—how the heck did people survive in those grueling nine-to-five office jobs? He’d go nuts in that kind of rut, and maybe a similar feeling made Patrick instinctively shy away from the prospect of a permanent political career. What faster way was there to get pinned behind a desk and the accompanying mounds of paperwork than as an elected official? The idea made Dennis shudder.

He rang the bell again and rechecked his watch. Damn, where was Patrick? They had reservations on the court, and while Dennis didn’t doubt for a moment that the club wouldn’t hold the slot for them—after all, this was Patrick Ross and Dennis Gamble—he hated being late.

Backing up to the edge of the small concrete porch, Dennis tilted his head back and inspected the front of the building. Everything was shut tight despite the cooler-than-average, beautiful weather—Patrick probably had the air conditioning on automatic and didn’t want to fool with raising and lowering the windows. There was, however, an air of desertion hanging over the place, and the longer Dennis stood there, the more convinced he became that Patrick simply wasn’t home. He rang the doorbell a third time just for giggles, but he didn’t believe anything would come of it. Something must have come up and Patrick hadn’t been able to reach him—belatedly, Dennis remembered that he hadn’t turned on his cell phone all morning.

He stood there for a moment more, then shrugged and headed back to the Explorer. He’d give him a call later on; no sense dialing up Patrick now unless he wanted to talk to the answering machine.

H
e heard the chime of the doorbell all three times that it rang, understood what it was and what the sound meant in some part of his brain that had remained detached from whatever was misfiring right now in his mind and his body. Sick, so very,
very
ill—he couldn’t stand or walk, probably couldn’t even crawl. And talking? Answering the persistent call of that doorbell? Not a chance. All he was good for right now was sitting in the corner of the master bedroom upstairs with one hand on the window sash while Dennis walked away, sweating and shaking while some kind of unidentifiable fever raged inside him. If only he could’ve reached out to his friend, asked for help, somehow let his longtime partner know that something was horribly wrong . . .

But he couldn’t.

He’d tried, fighting so hard to speak against something he couldn’t comprehend, a physical feeling of restraint that wrapped around his muscles and kept him pinned to that spot on the carpet and prevented him from so much as knocking against the windowpane to let Dennis know that he was inside. There was a strange, selective binding around his throat, one that kept his vocal cords paralyzed and soundless but still allowed air to wheeze in and out of his windpipe. His vision was skewed, fragmented. Gone was the rich red-and-blue Southwestern design of his home—everything in the bedroom, from the yellow-pine furniture and his football trophies to the framed photographs of his family and Melissa—had taken on a twisted, unnaturally brownish-gold tinge that made it look dark and wet. And so much
pain,
pulses of it spiraling through his insides and head, jabbing along his nerve endings like unseen lightning. It made him want to do nothing more than pull off the clothes that seemed to be cutting into his skin, stretch out his arms and legs and fingers, reach on and on and on until he got beyond even the boundaries of his own flesh.

But he didn’t.

He
wouldn’t.

Now that Dennis had gone, the belt around his throat loosened and disappeared. He’d wakened this morning covered in blood, and the pain had already started, blotting out the reason that should have sent him to the police; he’d climbed into the shower instead and washed it away, searching vainly for the wound that must’ve been the source. Cleansed, he found nothing, and logical thought afterward had been blotted out by his suffering. Now he groaned and sucked in a lungful of air, feeling his voice gather strength, fueled by the agony, ready to just let go—

But . . . no.

He wouldn’t.

Patrick Ross didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he wasn’t about to give in. He was a fighter, damn it, a United States astronaut and a hero. Whatever this was, he knew he could beat it. He had to.

He bent his head and bit savagely into his knuckles to keep silent the screams within.

8

“I
f this wasn’t so frightening, I’d be laughing right now,” Laura said.

Settled on the driver’s side, his eyes fixed on the road, Press said nothing as he drove a government-issue sedan past the familiar checkpoints within the boundaries of the National Space Exploratory Group’s facilities.

‘‘I feel like I’m reliving an old nightmare.”

‘‘Oh, come on,” Press quipped. “Our relationship wasn’t that bad.”

“Bad is a relative term,” Laura replied gloomily as he pulled to the curb outside the Goddard Flight Center’s main building. She unbuckled her seat belt and started to climb out, but Press’s hand on her arm made her stop.

“You seeing anyone?” he asked softly.

“That’s none of your business.”

But she’d waited just a measure too long and she damned herself as one of his eyebrows raised. “Oh, let me guess,” he said. All the gentleness had gone out of his voice. ‘‘He’s got family money and he’s tall, blond—after me, you’re probably ready for a change—and handsome. He’s got a Ph.D. in B.S. from M.I.T., a weekend house in Connecticut, he jogs a whopping two miles every morning, and I’ll bet he even he drives a BMW. Oh, yeah—and sleeping with him is about as exciting as watching mold grow in a petri dish.”

Laura felt her cheeks flush in spite of her determination not to let Press get to her. Still, she managed to keep her voice steady as she pulled free of his hold and got out of the car. “You never fail to surprise me, and this time is no exception. The return of the male chauvinist pig—I thought your species became extinct in the late eighties.”

Always the jokester, he gave her a conciliatory grin and she knew he was hoping she’d smile in return. Instead, Laura just looked at him and when she did respond, she couldn’t hide the sadness in her voice. “You might not believe this, Press, but I’ve learned a lot working with Eve. You look at her and see nothing but a monster, but in technical terms, she’s half human and half alien. Built into her are two distinct strands of DNA, and that ancestry fights a constant battle within her body.”

She waited but he didn’t say anything. “Genetically speaking,” she continued, “she’s part of a never-ending struggle for dominance that can’t continue indefinitely—one will eventually win out. Alone and separate, those two halves of Eve would be fine; each would know and understand what it is and how it should act and survive. Side by side, they just can’t coexist.” She stopped and they stared at each other; then she shook her head and walked toward the building, letting him consider her final words:

“Sort of like us.”

W
hen the trio of military guards standing before the entrance to Dr. Orinsky’s laboratory moved aside the barricades and lifted the yellow tape so that Laura and Press could enter, they walked into a bloodbath.

“The last time I saw something like this was in Hollywood Hills,” Press said. “Remember Robbie Llywelyn? Sil killed him at his house when he tried to force her to have sex with him.”

The glance he sent Laura had all the markings of a class “I-told-you-so,” but she ignored it. “Sil’s dead,” she said shortly. “And Eve has never been out of her habitat. This isn’t her handiwork.”

“Sure looks familiar though.” Press followed her as she stepped over a long, smeared trail that bisected the room, then moved to inspect a door marked
MEDICAL SUPPLIES
on the other side. He hooked a finger around it and pulled it open, then bent and peered through the hole that had been smashed through it at knee height.