Callsign: King

16.

The Elephant Graveyard, Afar District, Ethiopia

King eased his finger off the trigger and glanced at Felice from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t tell whether she was telling him not to shoot, or screaming at the zombie-like figures shambling toward them. Regardless of her intent, both happened; he checked his fire and the zombies froze in place. He kept the MP5 trained on the nearest one a few moments longer, but none of them so much as blinked.

It was actually kind of creepy.

“What just happened?” he asked, without turning to look at Felice.

He realized that she was sobbing. “I did this. To them. I made them that way.”

His first impulse was to console her with words of denial, but he knew such claims would offer little comfort. She knew what had happened; somehow, she just knew, and if she believed that she was somehow responsible for turning the others into cannibalistic beasts, that was something he could ill-afford to dismiss. “Felice, honey, whatever has happened, we can talk it about it later. Right now, what do you say we just move very slowly back outside?”

She let out another wet sob then sniffed loudly. “No. It’s all right. They’ll do whatever I tell them.”

“O-kay,” King answered slowly. “But if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d prefer to discuss this somewhere else.”

Felice got to her feet, ignoring King’s extended helping hand, and walked toward one of the men. She stopped directly in front of him, and then reached out and placed her hand on his cheek. The man didn’t react at all. “This is Bill Craig. He was a zoologist. He also liked to write science-fiction stories.”

She lowered her hand and moved to another of the motionless figures. “This is Wayne Skiver. He was the lead geneticist. He was also planning to open his own restaurant someday.”

King noticed her conspicuous use of the past tense. “Felice. This wasn’t your fault. Let’s get out of here.”

“It was my fault. I found it. I unleashed it.” She filled the words with such anger that King felt a chill shoot down his back.

“What did you find?”

“A ghost. An evil spirit. The Old Mother. She drove these elephants into the cave four hundred thousand years ago. And when I found her, she destroyed their minds, took control of my friends; Bill, Wayne…all of them.” She turned back to him. “I know you won’t believe me, but I can feel her in me.”

King strode cautiously over to stand in front of her, just as she had done with her co-workers. He took her hand in his. “Felice, I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I’m sure we can find some way to deal with this. Let me help you.”

This time she complied, but the look she gave him was one of resignation, not gratitude. King didn’t really care, as long as it got her moving. They moved away from the shrine and down the path through the bones. The seven zombies remained still as statues behind them.

He had hoped that her distress would ease once away from the shrine, but it was not to be. “Did you see the bodies?” she asked as they negotiated the tunnel back to the surface. “They turned into cannibals. My fault. All my fault.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Felice. You’re a scientist; think about this rationally. Something caused it to happen; a virus or a prion or something. That’s what you’ve got to focus on; that’s what Manifold wants to control. And if they can figure out how it works, then they can make other people like that.”

She gazed past him, unresponsive. He decided to try a different tack.

“Felice. That’s who you are; Felice Carter. Where did you say you’re from? Somewhere in Washington state?”

“Kirkland,” she murmured.

“That’s near Seattle, right? Have you been to the Space Needle.”

A laugh escaped her lips, cracking the mask of despair. “That’s for tourists.”

King smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you what. When you’re back home in Kirkland, I’ll come visit you and you can take me to the Space Needle.”

“Elvis,” she said, unexpectedly. “Your shirt.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“I’ll take you to the Experience Music Project. You might like that.”

“It’s a date.” He grinned. It was working; he’d broken through whatever spell she was under. “Right now, though, we need to figure out what happened to you in there. Can you do that?”

Her face clouded again, but she nodded.

“Something happened when you found that skull, right? You were exposed to something?”

“Maybe. But what I saw…that wasn’t from any virus.”

“What did you see?”

He listened as she struggled to find words to express what she had seen and experienced-a vision of a proto-human woman and her evolution of consciousness, and how that had led to the mass death of thousands of elephants, more than four hundred millennia previously. “Those memories didn’t come from exposure to a pathogen,” she concluded. “Don’t you see? I was… possessed, somehow. And it spread to the others; I was controlling them, just like she controlled those elephants.”

“What if there’s another explanation?” King was desperate to find that alterative, but he was out of his depth. Sara would have known. “Isn’t there such a thing as genetic memory? Animals are born knowing how to do some things, right? Birds follow migration patterns to places they’ve never been before.

“When you first told me about the elephant graveyard, you mentioned collective behavior. What if this is a manifestation of that?”

Her brows knit together in contemplation, but he could tell that she was finally thinking rationally again. “I suppose it could be something like that.”

“Now, tell me what Manifold would want with something like that.”

She pondered this for a moment, and then her eyes grew wide. “Control. Turn people into robots, or mindless zombies like…” She gestured back down the passage.

“Good girl. Figuring out what they’re after is the first step toward fighting it.” He gently turned her so that she was facing the mouth of the cave. “Now, let’s get out-”

The words died along with his brief elation as he saw the barrel of an AK-47 aimed at his chest.