Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission (Jim Chapel #1)

Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission (Jim Chapel #1) Page 29

"What problem?" Chapel demanded.

"Nuclear winter," Taggart said. "You're young. You might not remember what it was like back then, during the Cold War. We were locked in a stalemate with the Russians for so long. They hated us, wanted to conquer us. And we would do anything-anything-to stop them from taking over the world. After the Cuban Missile Crisis we understood that if either side started a war, it just wouldn't stop. Nuclear missiles would launch. The world would be reduced to ashes. There were generals back then, smart men, really, who thought we could still win. That even after a nuclear exchange America could prevail. By the seventies, though, we scientists had figured out that was wrong-simply untrue. A thermonuclear exchange on a global level wouldn't just turn cities to rubble and give a few people cancer. It would fill the sky with dust that would linger for years. It would change the planet's climate and make human survival-not just American survival but the future of the human race-next to impossible. If the Russians launched against us, it would be the end of humanity."

"But the Russians knew that, too," Chapel pointed out. "That's why they never launched."

"It's why they didn't launch when they could still control their people," Taggart said. "Even then, even in '79, we could see the Politburo wouldn't last forever. The Soviet Union was crumbling. The Pentagon was convinced, absolutely convinced, that if a coup or a popular uprising began in Moscow, then the Kremlin would start a war just as a last-ditch attempt to consolidate their power. At the time it was taken as gospel-a nuclear war was coming and could happen at any time.

"The generals came to me with an idea. A crazy idea, I thought, though it had potential-and they had money to make it happen, more grant money than I'd ever seen before for a project like this. What they wanted was . . . visionary. They wanted to create a new human race, a new phenotype based on good American DNA. A race of men and women who could survive even through a nuclear winter. People who were highly resistant to radioactive fallout, who were strong enough to live on polluted water and whatever food they could dig out of the ground. People with the immune systems of gorillas, people with the healing factors of lizards, people with the vision and the resistance to ultraviolet light of hunting birds. People to survive the apocalypse."

Chapel glanced at Ian. "You gave them chimeras."

"If you want to skip ahead, then, yes," Taggart said. "The work was fascinating. It was incredible-Helen and I invented whole new fields of genetics and even basic biology. We had the money, the equipment, anything we wanted, anything we needed to do work that would have been unthinkable at the time. No one back then had even considered transgenics. The idea of splicing together disparate genomes to create a functional organism was pie in the sky, it was science fiction. Nobody understood homeotics at the time, work on atavisms was partial and hesitant at best, and we had barely begun to experiment with plasmids and gene therapy. But we knew it could work."

" 'We,' " Julia said, softly. "You and mom both signed off on this."

"Helen . . ." Taggart's face grew wistful. "She was a genius. She and I together were . . . something more." He shook his head. "We would stay up all night, hurling ideas back and forth, tearing holes in each other's hypotheses, spinning out new trains of thought, building on each other's brilliance. It was-it was the most satisfying relationship any two human beings could ever have. She understood what we were really doing. We weren't just working for the Pentagon. We were working for the future. Both of us should have gotten Nobels out of that work. But it had to be kept secret, utterly secret." He shook his head, but then he smiled as if he was reliving a happy memory. "DNA sequencers were so primitive back then, it was like coding genes by hand, like writing computer code on a legal pad." He laughed. "We had to do all the basic research ourselves, compile our own library of sequences. There was no Human Genome Project to consult. I remember the night we finished writing down the final strings. When we had the recipe for what would become Ian and the others. It was well past midnight. We were tired, but we were also so full of As and Cs and Gs and Ts that we couldn't sleep. We were talking in code, in genetic code, making jokes about our favorite proteins and dreaming of ribosomes hard at work. We went outside and looked up at the stars. We watched the moon set. It was like we had become something more than just human beings. Like we were little gods, at the dawn of a new creation."

"And then you created two hundred embryos, which you implanted in the wombs of mentally ill women without their consent," Chapel pointed out.

"Hmm. Yes. All right, we did," Taggart admitted, waving his hands in front of him as if he'd like to argue the moral niceties but didn't have time. "We ended up with two hundred perfect little organisms."

"Babies," Chapel said.

"Hardly. These weren't like human infants. They could walk within weeks of being born-almost as fast as horses. They had teeth and they could eat solid food after a few months. No, these weren't babies. They were the children of a new race. A new species, almost."

"You locked them up in a camp in the Catskills. You gave them basic medical care, a little education, and nothing else," Chapel said. "You raised them like children, but then they started killing each other." He looked over at Ian. The chimera's face was totally passive, unreadable. "They tore each other to pieces. They were too aggressive. Too violent. So you sealed up the camp and abandoned them."

"Is that what you think we did?" Taggart asked, looking offended. "You think we made a mistake? That we were surprised and horrified that they were dangerous? Please. The world they were created for-the world under nuclear winter-was going to be a harsh and dangerous place. We made them aggressive so they could rule it. So they could own it. That was always part of the plan, Captain. They were always supposed to be that way."

Chapel's blood went cold. He couldn't believe it.

"You wanted us to kill each other," Ian said. It was the first time he'd spoken since Taggart began.

"We wanted you to be fighters. And when you fought each other-well." Taggart made an expansive gesture. "That was just Darwinian selection. The strongest survive. The most fit. We needed you fit."

"Not everyone agreed with you," Chapel pointed out. "Dr. Bryant seems to have changed her mind about things. She left you and went on to spend the rest of her life trying to make amends for what she'd done."

"She lost her detachment, yes," Taggart agreed. "She started thinking of the chimeras as humans. As children. Well, she was a woman. She was genetically coded for that kind of sentimentality."

Julia leaped up, her face red with anger. "Dad-" she began, but Chapel gestured for her to wait a moment.

"Not just Dr. Bryant. The CIA didn't like it, either. They decided at some point, maybe when Malcolm ran away, that the project was too dangerous. Especially since there was no more Soviet Union, and no real possibility of nuclear winter. They decided to shut you down. Kill everyone involved to keep it secret. They've spun a cover story, claiming the chimeras are infected with some kind of virus. They're killing anyone who might possibly be infected, even though we've figured out there is no virus."

Taggart said nothing.

He didn't need to. His face went white. His hands stayed frozen in the air.

"There is no virus," Chapel repeated.

"Dad," Julia said. "Dad-answer him! Tell him there's no virus!"

Taggart slowly shook his head. "I can't do that," he said.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:44

"There is a virus," Chapel breathed.

He'd been so sure. He'd been certain it was a ruse. But they'd told him the truth all along. The chimeras were carrying a virus, a man-made pathogen, and they could infect anyone they came in contact with.

Laughing Boy wasn't using it as an excuse. He was cleaning up a very real mess.

Ian leaned forward against the cables that bound him. He looked very interested. On the other side of the room, Julia let out a little whimper.

"There had to be," Taggart said, softly.

"What do you mean?" Chapel demanded.

"It's . . . it's how it's done. There was no other way. We wrote the code, the one percent of the genome that had to change to create a chimera from human gametes. We assembled the code in a virus. A virus doesn't reproduce on its own. It needs a host. It latches on to a cell and injects its DNA into the cell's nucleus. The cell has no defense against this; it can't tell one strand of DNA from another. So it replicates the viral DNA exactly. Over and over again. The virus we used to create the chimeras was designed to target egg and sperm cells only. It takes over the normal egg, say, and turns it into a chimera egg. When the egg is fertilized, it develops into something like Ian here, not a human embryo. Look, this is all very basic stuff, it's the foundation for gene therapy and-"

"Then skip to the part where the chimeras are still carrying the virus," Chapel told him.

"Well . . . they have to. To do what they're designed for. The chimera DNA has to be copied exactly, or the much more robust, more proven human DNA will take over. The chimera virus has to spread so that any normal human who reproduces with a chimera will bear a chimera child."

"Wait-you wanted them to reproduce?"

"Yes, of course," Taggart said, blinking. "Oh. I see. You thought our insurance policy was supposed to survive on its own. You thought our two hundred male specimens were supposed to be the entire batch, that they would survive when the rest of us died." He seemed to find the idea amusing. "That wouldn't do us much good, would it? They're all male. They would only last one generation."

"Wait," Julia said. It looked like she'd figured this out. "Just wait."

"In the event of a nuclear war, the chimeras would have been released into the survivor population," Taggart explained. "They would have mated with female survivors-human female survivors-and produced chimera offspring, which would breed true. We couldn't afford to have their children be human. So the virus remains in their systems. It looks for other hosts, hosts that can allow it to reproduce. It looks for human sperm and egg cells."

"And it spreads through any bodily fluid contact," Chapel said.

"Well, yes. It would be nice if it only passed on through sexual contact, that would be more elegant, but-"

"Anyone who gets infected has chimera babies?" Julia demanded. "Anyone? And all their babies are chimeras like him?" She jabbed a finger toward Ian. "Dad-you fucked up. You really fucked up!"

"Julia, sit down and watch your language," Taggart commanded.

"No. No, I will not," she said, striding toward him.

Chapel grabbed her arm. "Dr. Taggart. You and your wife, and Ellie Pechowski, all had constant contact with the chimeras at Camp Putnam. How is it you were able to avoid becoming infected? Is there a vaccine against the virus?"

"Not exactly a vaccine," Taggart said.

"Then-what? A cure? A treatment?"

"You could call it that. I had a vasectomy and Helen had her tubes tied. Ellie was already in menopause when she came to work at the camp."

A chill ran down Chapel's spine. So that was the nature of the virus. Angel had been told it had a long incubation period and it was hard to detect. She couldn't have known the whole truth. The virus would sit dormant in the body of anyone it infected, lie there waiting for them to have children. Only then would it manifest itself. There would be no symptoms, no warning. Just, one day, a little baby would be born . . . and blink its nictitating membranes. That would be the only way to know you had it.

"Dad, I always knew you were an asshole, but-"

"What are you going on about, Julia? Why are you talking this way?"

"Because I probably have it, Dad. I probably have your fucking virus! Tell me, were you looking forward to having grandchildren? How about grandmonsters instead?"

"What? I . . . what?" Taggart said, his face as white as the snow outside.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:44

"Enough," Chapel said.

They all turned to stare at him.

"This isn't getting us to where we need to be. So there is a virus. That's good to know, but it doesn't change anything. We still need to get you out of here, Dr. Taggart. I have no doubt the CIA is sending men here right now to kill you. They're trying to shut up anyone with knowledge about the chimeras or Camp Putnam or Project Darling Green. They're done trying to pay you off with grant money-the virus, and the escape of the chimeras, has given them the excuse they need to just kill you. Julia and I are in the same boat."

"So you came here to protect me?" Taggart asked.

"I came here to extract you," Chapel said. "We need to move you to a safe location. The problem is, we're still not sure exactly where that might be. The CIA has a long reach. Moving you to Canada won't be enough . . . I need to talk to somebody."

"Angel?" Julia asked.

"Yeah," Chapel said. "Excuse me." He holstered his weapon and took out his phone. "Julia-you watch Ian. If he tries to get free, just shoot him."

"I guess I don't get to be protected," the chimera said. He didn't sound particularly offended.

Chapel ignored him and walked over to the door of the shack. He dialed Angel's number and put the phone to his ear. Waited for the cheap phone to find a signal.

And waited. And waited. Eventually the phone beeped at him three times to say his call had failed.

"You won't get reception out here," Taggart said, looking mildly amused. "The mountains are in the way of the nearest cell tower."

"This is Angel we're talking about. She's very good at getting around obstacles." Chapel tried the call again. "Huh," he said, when the call failed again. The third time, he said "Damn," instead.

It took him a while to realize that the phone in his hand was just a cheap disposable. He'd been working with Angel so long he'd come to think she was magic. That she could communicate with him anywhere. But that hadn't been the case, had it? In Atlanta, when he'd gone too far underground, she couldn't reach him. In Denver, her signal had been jammed.

Crap. He'd lost his arm. He'd lost the backing of the DIA. Now he'd lost his guardian angel. He'd been reduced to just his own, natural resources. He had to think this through. Pick his next step very carefully.

"Okay," he said, walking back over to the others. "Okay. We just have to do this the old-fashioned way. I'm going to go outside and scout the road, make sure we have a clear route out of here. Then we're all going to get on the snowmachines and head for the nearest town."

"That's Healy, back at the highway," Taggart told him. "It's just a little tourist trap of a place, though. They sell things to the tourists who come to see Denali."

"If we can just get to civilization, any kind of civilization, we can hide in the crowd there. That'll help," Chapel told him. He looked at Julia-then at Ian. He didn't like the idea of leaving her in the shack with the chimera. The alternative wasn't great, but it would have to do. "You," he said, pointing at Ian. "You're with me."

"Okay," the chimera told him.

"You try anything, I will have to kill you," Chapel said.

"Understood. Just make sure you understand-that deal goes both ways. You try to execute me, and I'll twist your head off."

"I don't doubt it," Chapel told him.

Chapel untied the chimera and let him grab his parka. Then he went to the door and cracked it, peering out into the afternoon light. He saw nothing but snow out there-it had been falling the entire time they'd been inside talking. A thick layer of snow sat on top of the snowmachines, and more snow had fallen against the door so it tumbled inside around his shoes and started to melt instantly. The weather could be a problem, he thought. If they got back to Fairbanks only to find the airport shut down while it was snowing, they could be stuck, vulnerable and alone, waiting for the CIA to show up.

Nothing for it.

"Come on," he said to Ian. The two of them pushed their way outside, shoving the door open against the new-fallen snow. Outside, visibility was cut down considerably by the snow in the air. Their feet made loud crunching noises with every step. If someone was out there, waiting to ambush them, they would never know it.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:55

Chapel's feet sank deep into the snow with every step, slowing him down to a crawl. If he'd had snowshoes, maybe it would have been different. "Why did it have to be Alaska?" he asked.

The question had been rhetorical, but Ian answered anyway. "For the grizzlies. If you're going to study hibernation, you need to understand why small animals do it so well but large animals have a hard time with it. And why grizzly bears, which are very large, can do it while primates can't. And if you want to study grizzlies in anything like their natural habitat, you need to be right here."

"Taggart told you all that?" Chapel asked. He headed through the clearing, intending to make it as far as the road before he turned back. "You and he are getting along pretty well. Considering you were supposed to kill him."

"The Voice wanted me to do lots of things," Ian replied. "But I'm not a machine. I don't do things just because someone tells me to."

"The Voice got you out of that camp," Chapel pointed out. "Some people would think maybe you owed it."

"People, maybe. Not chimeras. We know better than that."

"How did you get here so fast?" Chapel asked. "You can't have come over land. You must have flown. The Voice must have arranged things for you."

Ian stopped in place and seemed to have to think about it. "I stowed away in the cargo hold of a plane that brought me as far as Fairbanks. From there I walked. The Voice gave me directions. As long as it was helping me, sure. I did what it said. When it wasn't helping me any more, I stopped listening."

"Stay in front of me," Chapel said, gesturing for the chimera to walk ahead of him on the path.

"You don't trust me," Ian said. "I don't blame you. You met some of the others. Malcolm, and Quinn, and Brody. I'm different."

"I met your old gang," Chapel pointed out. "The ones who helped you kill Alan and his gang." Ian said nothing. For a while they just kept wading through the snow, headed south, toward the road. Chapel thought about Samuel. The Voice had told Ian to kill Samuel, and Ian had refused. Maybe-just maybe-there was something to what Ian claimed. Maybe he was different from the others. Maybe he could control his impulses. Maybe that meant Chapel couldn't treat him like the others. Couldn't treat him like a monster.

That was a dangerous line of thought. But if Ian really was able to control himself, to act like a human, then Chapel had to treat him like one, too.

"I met Ellie Pechowski, too," Chapel said, finally.

"Miss P," Ian affirmed.

"Yeah. She said you were different. And I'll admit, you showed a lot more leadership potential than the others. A lot more emotional stability. But you're still a chimera. You're still genetically programmed for violence and aggression."

"You're still a human," Ian said. "You're still programmed for mercy and compassion. It didn't stop you from killing the others."

"I did that to protect other humans," Chapel said. "You did what you did-why? So you could escape from Camp Putnam? See the real world for once?"

"Would that be an unacceptable reason to you?" Ian asked. "Would you have done any differently?"

Chapel thought about it. The chimeras had been created for a purpose they didn't understand. Then, simply because of what they were, they'd been locked away from the world forever. In that situation, yeah. He would have done almost anything to get his freedom. But he would have wanted something else, too.

"They gave you books to read in there. Did they ever give you Frankenstein?"

Ian shook his head.

"I read it after I lost my arm. I felt like I was made out of spare parts, then, and I thought maybe I'd find some answers there. It's the story of a man, a scientist, who creates a new life form. In the book he builds it out of parts of dead people. Dead humans. Then he animates it with life, but he's so horrified at what he's done that he runs away from his own creation. Refuses to accept it. The creature ends up killing everyone he loves, and then pursuing him halfway across the world to hound him to his death."

"Why are you telling me this?" Ian asked.

"If I was that creature, I'd want to kill my creator, too."

Ian was quiet for a while. The two of them waddled through the snow, not covering much ground. There was no sound but the crunching of the snow. No smell in the air but the smell of snow.

Maybe the weather would help them, in the end. Maybe it would slow down the CIA even more than it slowed down Chapel.

When Ian spoke, it was like the air had frozen and his words broke the ice. "But that's not true. You don't want to kill God, do you?"

"What?" Chapel asked. "That's insane."

"You were created by God, weren't you? Do you want to kill him? Look at what he's done to you. He took your arm."

"That wasn't God. That was the Taliban."

Ian shook his head as if it didn't matter. "This creature, in your story. He's upset because his creator was horrified by what he'd done. His creator hated him. Your God loves you, I'm told. He created you and he loves you for it. Don't you think he's proud of you?"

"I . . . I guess I hope he is," Chapel said.

"Dr. Taggart is proud of me," Ian said. "He sees in me what I am, and to him, that's good. Worthy."

"The reason you were created doesn't exist anymore. You were supposed to replace us in case of nuclear war. But there was no war." Chapel glanced up at the mountains, at the sky. He reached for his cell phone, but that meant putting away his weapon.

Too late he realized he'd made a mistake. Ian was already moving, already rushing toward him.

"I'm sorry," Ian said. "It has to be this way."

Chapel dropped the phone and reached for his pistol. He managed to draw it from its holster-but even as he brought it around to fire, Ian smacked it out of his hand. It went spinning off into the snow.

Ian's other hand was already coming toward his face. It was balled into a fist.

Bright flecks of light exploded in Chapel's head. He could feel the cartilage in his nose snapping, feel the bones of his skull shifting on their sutures. He flew backward, propelled by Ian's inhuman strength, and landed on his back in a snowdrift, dazed and unable to move.

"You would have killed me, eventually," Ian said. "You would have had to."

Chapel waited to die.

But he didn't. Nothing more happened. Eventually he regained enough strength to lift his head, to look around.

He saw nothing but snow, nothing but pure white light reflected back at him by a trillion crystals of ice.

Ian was gone.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+84:14

"What's taking Chapel so long?" Julia asked. She was pacing back and forth in front of the door of the laboratory shack, holding CPO Andrews's pistol in both hands. She'd been doing so almost every second Chapel and Ian had been gone.

Behind her, her father was busy tending to his experimental animals. If he had to leave his lab behind, he'd said, he at least wanted to make sure his pets were healthy and had plenty of food and water in case they woke up. He seemed to think he'd be coming back in a day or two. Julia hadn't bothered to tell him otherwise.

"I wouldn't worry," her dad said. "He has Ian with him."

"That's a reason for me to not worry?" Julia asked.

"Ian's quite strong and capable," Taggart replied. "If your friend gets stuck in a snowdrift or falls over and can't get up, Ian will help him. For a chimera he's really quite helpful. Can you hand me that spray bottle?"

Julia looked around and found the bottle he wanted, a plastic spray can half full of something straw colored. She tossed it to him. "You lived with them. For years. You spent every day at Camp Putnam. And then you would come home from work and I'd get back from school and we'd sit down to Shake 'N Bake pork chops or maybe Mom's stew for dinner. And you would ask me about my day and what I was learning."

"I remember that time fondly, dear," Taggart replied. He spritzed a little of the yellow liquid on the wings of a caged bat. "The happiest time of my life."

"I never thought to ask you anything about your day," Julia said. She couldn't believe this. She couldn't believe what her life had become. "I could have asked how many of my brothers died that day. How many of them tore each other to pieces."

"You never had any brothers," Taggart said, with a little sigh.

"It's hard not to think of them that way. You and Mom spent more time with them than you did with me."

Taggart put down the bottle and dragged a stool over so he could sit and look at her. "You're an adult now, Julia. You're almost thirty."

Her eyes went wide. "I've been thirty for a couple years, now," she said. "You can't even remember how old I am?"

"Old enough, I am certain," Taggart said, "to stop blaming everything in your life on your horrible parents."

Julia wanted to scream. She wanted to throw something at him. "I'm not allowed to blame you? I'm not allowed to blame you because one of your experiments killed Mom? I'm not allowed to be angry that one of them tried to kill me, and maybe infected me with his tiny weird-eyed babies?" She put the gun down so she didn't accidentally shoot him in her rage. "I'm not allowed to be upset that now the CIA wants to kill my entire family?"

"I assure you, if I'd know any of that in advance-"

"Oh, no. Oh, no, you don't get off that easily. Let's put aside what you've done to my life. I know what you did to those women, Dad! I know how you took advantage of all those women, those mentally ill women. And I know what you did to the chimeras-studying them, testing them-and then walking away when they got too violent. I've found out all your little secrets. I know exactly what you've done, and now-now-you-"

Tears crowded up in the corners of her eyes and refused to spill over. She was shaking with rage, filled up with excruciating anger. She had to get it out of her body, had to vent it or she would explode.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she demanded. "Why would you do those things? Didn't anybody, even once-didn't Mom ask if what you were doing was moral? Not even once?"

"Your mother was my partner in all of it," Taggart said, in a very small voice. Clearly he'd never expected this. Everything he'd done had been top secret. He'd never expected that anyone would call him on his actions. Much less his own daughter.

But who else had the right, more than she? Julia felt like she was a sword of vengeance wielded by some indignant archangel. She was going to make him pay. She was going to get even for all those women. She would-

"You want to know why I did it?" he asked, finally.

"Yes," she said, blazing with wrath.

"I did it for you," he said.