Deadly Memory (Living Memory Book 2), page 19
Prey shook his feathers. “That seems unlikely. Diseases exist to make copies of themselves, not to provide new skills to their hosts.”
“My point is, however it happened, this isn’t the first time we’ve changed ourselves dramatically to meet an extinction threat,” Distant Rain said. “We’ll get through this, and we’ll still be us. A thousand years from now, they might not even remember what we did, but our species will still be here.”
Prey looked at the last organic blank of Distant Rain. It was heavier than the real Rain, with an extra layer of fat and a thicker coat of feathers. Its teeth had been altered to allow it to eat a wider variety of food, and he knew its digestive system had been similarly changed. It didn’t look much like the Distant Rain he knew. “I hope you’re right,” he said.
When she came to herself again, Samira started to tell Alex, but Charlie’s scent had reached both of them, and he had seen the same vision.
“Why did you show us that?” she asked Charlie. “Are you telling us there might be a way to cure him?”
“Yes. Might.”
“Meaning you could engineer a drug? One that could cure anyone who has the virus?”
“Might.” Charlie approached the spot on the floor where Dad had thrown up blood. He ducked his head and circled, sniffing it. “I need pit.”
Samira glanced at Alex, then back at Charlie. “You want us to dig you a pit?”
“No. Real pit. Made by my people. With chemical tools in.”
“But those pits are in Thailand,” Samira said. “They’re on the other side of the world. Not to mention that it’s been millions of years. Can’t you do it without that?”
“You go my home and my time and build truck? With none of tools?”
“No, I guess not. But Thailand—”
“Might not even then,” Charlie said. “I not know much. Not like Rain.”
“Wait a minute,” Alex said. “Where’s Trevor?”
Samira looked around. She’d been caught up in the vision, and she hadn’t been paying attention to the young intern.
“He’s gone,” Alex said. “This is bad.”
Samira gripped the back of her neck and groaned. “He’s going to tell someone. I don’t blame him for panicking, but what are the chances he’s going to keep this quiet? Even forgetting about Charlie, we’ve got someone with the Julian virus in here. He might have been exposed. He probably called 911 the second he stepped out the door.”
“And they probably notified the military’s virus hotline. Which means the CIA might already know where we are.”
“We have to go. Now.” Samira yanked open the door to the glass enclosure. Her dad looked up in surprise. “Change of plans,” she said. “We’re running again.”
They heard the sirens as soon as they burst through the doors. A group of college students on the other side of the street—five white boys with virtually identical T-shirts, fraternity ball caps, and bottles of beer—gaped at the sudden appearance of a dinosaur.
“Whoa. Check this out,” one said. He strutted across the street with the others close behind.
“In the truck,” Samira said. “Ignore them.”
The fraternity boys blocked her way. “Hey, baby, slow down. What is that thing? Is that yours?”
“Out of our way,” Samira said, but they didn’t hear her. They had frozen, their eyes wide. She caught a familiar whiff of petroleum. For her, the smell brought no terror, just a feeling of deep loyalty to Charlie. For the fraternity boys, it was a different story. They shook where they stood, and a dark wet patch appeared on the front of the leader’s pants. Charlie lunged in their direction, snapping his teeth, and they fell to the ground, groveling and crying.
He stalked past them toward the truck, and Samira followed, impressed but also a little horrified at Charlie’s display. What would become of the world when all its petty leaders and bullies had that kind of power?
The frat boys would remember seeing a dinosaur, and would tell others. They were at least somewhat drunk, so they might not be believed by most, but the CIA would believe them. Even if Trevor kept his mouth shut about Charlie, they would know he’d been here. How could they possibly hope to hide a dinosaur? Anywhere they went, someone would see them, and word would get out.
Someone would see them. An idea started to form in her mind as they ran for the truck and clambered aboard. Dad insisted on riding in the back with Charlie this time, so Samira took the passenger seat. As Alex gunned the engine and headed away from the sound of sirens, the idea grew in her mind. It was crazy, and possibly catastrophic, but they were beyond caution. And it just might solve all of their problems at once.
She dragged her phone out of her pocket and dialed Kit’s number again. He answered on the first ring.
“Kit, it’s me,” she said. “I need some help.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They raced westward toward the mountains, with Alex at the wheel and Dad and Charlie hidden in the back of the truck. The peaks and cliffs of the Rockies shone with the light of the sun rising behind them, as glorious and aloof as every other morning. The mountains had stood tall before there were humans, and maybe would still after humans were gone.
Alex had a pass in his wallet for Rocky Mountain National Park, so they decided their best route would be over Trail Ridge Road, straight through the mountains. They drove through Estes Park, and the road started to climb steeply, hugging the sides of the mountains in sweeping switchbacks. To their left, steep rocky cliffs rose toward the sky, while on their right, the ground dropped away to distant valleys and gorgeous vistas.
Samira called Beth before she lost phone service. “Beth? Did you find Mom?”
“I’m here with her now. She’s fine. Seems like she just had a cold or something. No signs of Julian, though she’s pretty worried about Dad. Are you still at the university?”
“No. We’re on the run.” Time to come clean. “We rescued Charlie, Beth. We got him out of there.”
“Oh, Sami.”
“We had to. They were going to hurt him, probably kill him before long. I couldn’t just do nothing. And Beth…” She could hardly get the words out. “They shot Paula. Bowman and his goons. They killed her.” She choked up, and tears spilled down her face.
“No. Oh no. Samira, where are you? How can we get to you?”
“I can’t tell you. They’re after us. They’re probably listening in.”
“Is Dad still with you?”
“Yes. Okay, listen. You remember Pinky and the Brain?”
A pause, then Beth said, “Yes.”
“Not the cartoon. The joke. You remember?”
“Are you talking about—”
“Don’t say it. Not on the phone. That’s where we’re going. The place where we told that joke. Can you meet us there?”
“I guess.”
It was the best option Samira could think of.“Pinky and the Brain” had been a ridiculous and short-lived nickname for Arun and Gabby, awarded late one night at an ichthyosaurus dig site, when Arun had been sunburned and Gabby couldn’t stop going on about what sunburn did to the body. No one else but the two of them and Beth could possibly know the joke, or where they had been when they’d made it.
“We’ll meet you there,” Samira said. “Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Leave your phone where you are. Mom’s too. I’m going to get rid of mine, so you won’t be able to contact us. Just meet us there, okay? And try to make sure you aren’t followed.”
“You’re scaring me, Samira.”
“That’s because I’m scared.”
A beat of silence from the other end, then: “Okay. We’re coming.”
“Good. I love you, Beth.”
“When we get there, you’d better tell me the whole story.”
“I will. Everything. I promise.”
Samira called Gabby and gave her the same cryptic message. After hanging up, she used Google Maps to look up the route to Tijuana, Mexico. She studied it carefully, took note of the major turns. It was a long way, but it just might work.
She flipped her phone over, but there was no way to take the battery out, and she wasn’t convinced that just shutting it down would stop it from being tracked. She rolled down the window. She drew back her arm and sighed. This phone had cost her $500. Oh well. She flung her arm forward and let go. The phone arced out over the gap and disappeared, falling out of sight to the rocks far below.
“What are you doing?” Alex asked.
A big curve in the road ahead featured a parking lot with bathrooms and coin-operated binocular stations to look down into the valley and at the mountains on the other side. “Pull over,” she said.
“I thought we were in a hurry.”
“I think they can track our phones. We have to get rid of them. Dad’s too.”
He parked so the back could be opened without any tourists getting a look inside. She opened it long enough to explain the problem to Dad and get his phone. Then she threw it off the edge.
“You next,” she told Alex.
“How can I navigate to where we’re going without my phone?” he complained.
“Hang on a sec.” Samira rummaged in the truck and came up with a pen and an old receipt. She wrote down the directions, looking them up on his phone to double-check. Then she handed the phone back to Alex. “Your turn,” she said.
Reluctantly, he drew back his arm and let it fly. It glittered in the sunlight as it fell.
Back in the truck, they continued their ascent. Great walls of snow rose to their left, evidence of the massive drifts that had covered the road before the huge plowing machines dug their way through. Finally, they came over a rise, and a whole new range of mountains rose into view, snow caps striking up at the clear blue sky.
“We’ve reached the Continental Divide,” Alex said. “It’s all downhill from here.”
Samira nodded. “Only nineteen hours of driving to go.”
Dan Everson arrived at the ornithology lab with six soldiers and an FBI forensics expert. The police had already been through, and so the crime scene—if it could be called one—had already been examined by the locals. They’d found paper towels with bloody vomit in the trash can, some traces of the same on the floor, a cot, sleeping bag, and pillow, and a lot of scientific equipment that had likely been there already.
They also had Trevor Cameron, who was either playing dumb or was the most dimwitted kid ever to attend college. He talked like a surfer on marijuana, and seemed to forget more than he remembered about the things Alex, Samira, and her father had discussed when hiding in the lab.
“Did they want something here?” Everson pressed. “Were they here to get something they needed, or just to hide?”
Trevor swept hair out of his face. “I don’t know, man. They just came in, and then the old guy was like, ugh, right on the floor, and I was like, I’m getting out of here.”
Everson rolled his eyes. He was dominating the kid, so he was pretty confident he was telling all he knew. “Did they say anything about where they were going?”
“Dude, there was a frickin’ dinosaur in the room. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Everson’s assistant, Michelle, pushed through the doors. “I got the university to give us access to Paula’s staff voicemail,” she said. “Listen to this.” She picked up a phone in the lab, pressed a button, listened, waited, and then pressed another one. She pressed the speakerphone button, and an accented voice sprang out of the phone’s speaker into the room. “Dr. Shapiro, we received the picture you sent of the product you have available for sale. As you suggested, we are interested in owning a matching set. We will meet you at the location you indicated in two days’ time and arrange for transportation from the harbor there. We will guarantee you safe passage and payment in full upon delivery.”
After the message finished playing, Everson said, “No way she made that contact in the last twelve hours.”
“You think Paula and Samira have been working for China all along?” Michelle asked.
“It’s possible,” he said, though he didn’t really think so. Samira might not be as patriotic an American as he could have asked for, but she called too much attention to herself to be a spy. Unless she was far more talented than he’d given her credit for.
“I had the call traced,” Michelle said. “It originated in Dusit Palace in Bangkok.”
“Thailand,” Everson said, rubbing his chin. Like the rest of Southeast Asia, it was rapidly turning into a Chinese protectorate. Had Paula and Samira really been willing to hand over the most powerful weapon of the war to their enemy? If China gained enough power to seriously contest the United States, there could be a real shooting war, with millions dead. She would risk that to save a dinosaur?
“What harbor could they be headed for?” Michelle asked. “Surely not in the US.”
“No,” Everson said. “I can’t imagine how they would pull that off. There are dozens up and down the coast, but they’re all crowded places with constant traffic. They could put him in a shipping container, I guess, but they’d need a lot of help to make that happen secretly. Too many checks, too many people involved.”
“Mexico, then?”
“That’s more likely. US Border Patrol is a lot more interested in trucks coming into the country than going out. A Chinese ship could take on mystery cargo there with fewer checks and fewer questions.”
“I’ll contact Border Patrol and alert them to be on the lookout.”
“Might not help if they can dominate their way through,” Everson said, sighing.
This whole thing was a disaster. Somehow Bowman and his team had managed to shoot Paula, though how that had happened he would never know, since the dinosaur had torn them apart shortly afterward. He was angry at Samira, and even angrier at Paula, who he thought would have known better than to pull something this foolish. There was no way this was going to end well.
“She’s headed for China, one way or the other,” he said. “We have to stop her.”
“What if we can’t?” Michelle asked.
“It’ll be up to the Director at that point, or maybe the President, but I think we either intercept this delivery, or we put special forces on the ground in Yunnan Province. I can’t emphasize the severity of this enough. If we lose this creature, we lose the war.”
Samira rode with her cheek resting on her hand, staring out the window at the darkness. At first, she and Alex had managed some conversation: the virus, the likelihood of their escape plan working, the resources of the people chasing them. After the first few hours, however, the conversation ebbed, and she was left with her own thoughts.
What was happening in the back of the truck? She imagined her father jostling around back there, getting sicker and sicker. She would gladly have given him her seat, or he could have used the little bench in the cab behind the seats, but he had insisted on the back, presumably so that he wouldn’t spread the disease to them. Could he spread it to Charlie? The disease crossed species lines, after all. But the memory Charlie had shown her implied that his species might be immune.
Maybe she should have left her dad at the university. When the police came, they would take him to a hospital and see that he was cared for. But as her dad had pointed out, they couldn’t really help him at the hospital either. They couldn’t heal the disease, and they were so overwhelmed with patients they probably couldn’t even help with the symptoms much, either. Even so, she felt horrible about shutting him in a dark box for hours on end without so much as a bed or a seat. She tried not to imagine opening it and finding him dead.
Her mind flashed back to the image of Paula lunging forward just as the guns began to fire. She saw her body spasm as bullets punched into her, saw bloody wounds appear as if by magic. The images repeated on an endless loop, obscuring the dim scenery outside. In her mind, she screamed every time, even though she wasn’t sure she had screamed at all when it had actually happened.
In fact, she couldn’t remember what she’d done. It hadn’t even occurred to her to throw herself in the line of fire. Who did that? Who could possibly make the decision to die for someone else so quickly that they could get there in front of the bullets? No hesitation. The reaction of a moment, and then she was dead, with no way even to know if her sacrifice had been worth it.
Would she, Samira, give her life for someone else? For Beth, for instance, or one of her parents? She’d like to think she might, but when it came down to it, could she really go through with it? To be snuffed out, forever. What could possibly be worth that?
She didn’t realize she was clenching her fists until she felt her fingernails digging into her palms. With an effort, she relaxed her hands. She hated to be helpless. She wanted to do something, to fix it, but no one could ever fix Paula again. She was gone, and it was wrong, and there was nothing at all Samira could do about it.
The best she could do was to make her death count for something. Paula had died to save Charlie, so Samira would make sure Charlie survived. She would make sure Charlie lived long enough to save everyone else.
A few hours after sunrise, they stopped at a convenience store in Beaver, Nevada, between a post office and a Mormon meetinghouse. It was a drab, flat town with dirt lots and stunted trees, and the convenience store had the same prefab aluminum look as the rows of trailers behind it. The town’s only saving grace was that the flat and treeless landscape gave an unobstructed view to the Rockies in the distance. The Mormon church parking lot was empty at this time on a weekday morning, so Alex parked there, facing the back of the Isuzu toward a dirt field containing nothing but a few abandoned propane tanks, a shed, and beyond that, some railroad tracks.
Samira opened the rear door, her muscles jittering with fear, terrified she would find her father lying on the floor of the container, dead or almost so. Instead, he jumped out almost as soon as she opened the door.
