The Devil's Assassin (15 page)

“All right.
But I
still want to be there when his brain is looked at from the inside.”

June gets up
leading Linus out of the room. The old hound starts to get up.  “Stay
boy,” says June. “You’ve done
good
tonight. I’ll be
safe with Linus.”

As they walk down
the hall June continues talking, “It’s very eerie that you were having a dream
about the very thing that was happening to me. I’ve never believed in all this
paranormal stuff.”

“It is
disturbing. I hope it doesn’t mean I have some kind of psychic connection with
the Maero.”

They arrive at a
cold examination room and June opens the door and walks in. It is darker in
here and the one light she turns on doesn’t chase all the shadows away. It’s
enough for them to see, though.

“Maybe your
connection was with
me
in your dream.”

Linus smiles.
“I’d
prefer it was that.”

June smiles and
hands him a lab coat. “Button this up over your clothes. We’ll wear gloves and
masks as well.”

“I thought we
weren’t going to open him up.”

“Gowns, gloves
and mask are required in this room. Protocol is important to follow even if you
think the precautions won’t be necessary.”

After they don
the safety clothes, June goes to a cooler, a typical 3 x 3 morgue door, opens
it and slides out the tray. The two of them get it onto a rolling examination
table.

“We’ve been
calling the creature a “he” the whole time, is it?” asks Linus.

“Yes.”

June moves the
exam table over to an MRI unit. They slide the table into the unit. Linus
points to the creature’s beard. “I wonder if the females have beards.”

She chuckles.
“That’d be attractive.”

The two of them
walk to a set of computer monitors and keyboards a few feet away from the MRI
unit. Once there, June turns the unit on. “Okay, we’ll be seeing the brain in a
moment. What you’ll see won’t be as dynamic as a living brain would be, but
it’ll still be instructive.”

The image is
being built on the screen by the computer, slice by slice.

“I see what you
mean,” says Linus. “I’ve seen MRIs of people’s brains and they’re more colorful
and dynamic.”

›

At the back
entrance of the Primate Research Facility, where the employees park their cars
the door closes behind an unauthorized visitor. This visitor makes its way up
the stairs to the second floor of the lab. At the top of the stairs another
door is easily pulled open allowing entrance to the second-floor hallway. The
visitor walks down the hallway and turns into a doorway to its left a few steps
from the stairwell.

›

In June’s office
the phone rings. The office is empty except for Falstaff, who raises his head
from sleep. It rings four times before the dog gets up and barks.

›

The Maero has
found the laboratory where Sahar, the young scientist was killed. It looks
around the room, sniffing subtle odors and sensing things that humans can’t. This
creature is slightly different from the first one Linus had caught and that
June had brought to the lab and the dead one that is presently in the cold
examination room. This Maero has less masculine facial features including no
beard and wider hips.

It is a female
Maero.

She scans the
room, goes to the cage where the other Maero had been kept and sniffs the area
around the cage. Sensing that another Maero had been here, she growls. Then she
follows the path that the captured Maero had taken when chasing Sahar. She
squats where it had killed Sahar, sniffs again and suddenly exposes her lance,
licking it as if sharing the kill, or anticipating another.

The Maero then
gets up and continues to follow the path the other creature had taken through
the room. When she gets to the door she looks right, down toward the end of the
hall where he had gone. She has just come from there. She turns left.

›

In the dim light
of the morgue/examination room Linus and June are in front of the monitors,
studying the dead creature’s brain.

“You see this?”
says Linus. “These animals are definitely not
bilobal
like humans. They have four definite hemispheres.”

“Maybe it’s a
reflection,” says June. “Let me clear it and start it again.”

She clears the
screen and presses the rescan key. After a couple of minutes the same image is
drawn onscreen. “You’re right. He appears to have four hemispheres where humans
have two. What do you think it means?”

“You’re the
scientist,” says Linus. “You tell me.”

“At this point
all I can do is
hypothesize
. His brain is obviously
evolved to do different things than ours.”

›

The creature is
in front of the door of the cold examination room. It cannot see in the window,
though light spills into the dimly lit hallway. She hears muffled human voices.
Her hand goes up to the doorknob and turns it slowly. She opens the door with
all the caution and care she and her kind can muster.

›

“Those two extra
sections of the brain may have to do with their hunting of humans,” says June.
“I’d hate to call it more evolved than the brain we have, but it is certainly
differently evolved and highly so.”

“I suppose you’d
really have to call them
quadrispheres
then, wouldn’t
you?”

›

The Maero stands
in the doorway and lets the door close slowly behind her. She takes in what she
sees. She sees two humans sitting in front of two bright computer monitors and
a dead Maero on an exam table sticking halfway out of a machine. Instinct
generally told her not to attack more than one person, but seeing the dead
Maero - perhaps her missing mate - she disregards caution and moves steadily
toward the two people. Her breathing becomes louder, more unsteady. Her bare
human-looking feet do not make a sound on the tile floor. The mechanical drone
of the computers and MRI unit are loud enough to mask the sound of her near
hyperventilation. She is closer to them . . . closer. Almost close enough to
launch into an unstoppable attack.

Suddenly,
something makes the human female look up.

›

June looks up and
sees the creature. She screams. The creature launches itself toward her. Linus
tackles June to the floor, underneath the leaping Maero. The creature is
airborne when Linus and June hit the ground, so that she crashes into the table
on which the monitors sit, jarring them enough so that one of them falls very
near the creature where she lands.

She rolls away
from the danger, out toward the middle of the room. The room is somewhat darker
now that one monitor is wrecked.

June and Linus
are scrambling to put distance between them and the creature, but the way they
have gone and the way that the creature recovers leaves her between the door
and them. The best they can do for the moment is to get behind an examination
table.

The creature
rises from the squat she had been in and looks at the two humans and then over
at the dead Maero. She looks at Linus as if he has said something and he
returns only a confident defensive stance, knowing that if it comes down to a
strength against strength battle that he has the edge over the smaller creature.
The creature looks back at the dead Maero.

Linus is looking
at the creature and at the same time remembering the scene in Argentina where
he killed the creature that now lies on the table in this room. He remembers
the darkness and the dampness of the grasslands and his struggle with the Maero
as he launches it over his head with a strong kick to the groin. His hand holds
onto the lance arm. He is on top and soon has the creature’s head in his arms.
He breaks its neck and it dies in his tired arms.

The creature
looks at Linus with clear malevolence. She projects a picture to Linus’s mind
of her standing over two dead humans, blood dripping from her lance.

In the
examination room he speaks under his breath to June. “She’s reading my
memories. She knows I killed her friend here,” says Linus at a normal volume.
He gets angry as well. “Come on baby. I’ve fought prisoners twice as
scary and
three times bigger than you. And don’t forget what
I did to your friend.”

The Maero seems
just about ready to leap at
Linus,
it is so trembling
with rage. Suddenly, there is barking outside the door. The two humans look and
the creature as well. June brightens. The creature seems momentarily confused.

“Falstaff!”
shouts June. “Thank God! We have to let him in, we could use his help.”

Linus points at
the Maero which stands between them and the door. “I don’t think she’s going to
let us get near the door.”

Falstaff’s
barking continues raising the pressure level in the room, and disconcerting the
Maero.

“Okay,” says
Linus quietly to June. “We have to both make our way to the door. You behind
me, I’ll shield you and when she’s busy with me, let the dog in.”

June doesn’t like
this plan. She shakes her head. “You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for
me.”

“If we stand
here, she’ll kill us both.” Rather than wait he puts her behind him and starts
moving sideways toward the door, toward the dog’s constant, worried barking. To
avoid the Maero, their path toward the door traces a crescent shape.

Rather than
attack, the Maero runs quickly to block the door, cutting them off from their
would-be rescuer.

“Ah, shucks!”

“What now?” asks
June.

“
Shhh
,” says Linus quietly. “Let me try something. I have to
clear my mind.”

Linus is staring
at the creature now. He mostly looks it in the eyes, but he also appraises her
from top to bottom. He looks without thought at its hands, feet, stomach, its
legs, arms, its ears and again its face. The barking continues. June stands
behind Linus wondering what’s going to happen next.

The Maero is
uncomfortable. She is unable to read Linus’s mind and the nearby dog won’t be
quiet. She fears Linus now because she doesn’t know what he is thinking. She
begins to look nervously around the room for an escape, but there’s no other
way out than through the door and past the dog.

After what seems
like a long time to June, something happens. The creature had been looking
nervously away when suddenly Linus dives toward it. His hands are aimed low.
Before the creature can react, Linus has two ankles in his hands. Unfortunately,
this leaves the creature’s hands free and although she has fallen from the
force of Linus’s dive so that she ends up lying on his back, she stabs him in
the back with her lance.

June, seeing the
stab, screams, “
Nooooo
!”

She rushes
forward and kicks the creature hard in the head. The Maero groans from the
force of the blow and she dazedly stabs the lance into Linus’ back again. He
screams in pain.

June is sent into
a frenzy
at seeing the Maero stab Linus again. She
kicks the head again, kicks the creature’s back and then reaches down for the
now limp lance arm and bends it back behind the creature, its lance still
extended, struggling to break it and leave the Maero defenseless. Changing her
mind, she drags the creature off of Linus. She hears him grunt as the
creature’s foot is dragged across the last stab wound. The sound of Linus’s
pain redoubles her determination. Once she has the half-conscious creature
lying on the floor near Linus, with both hands she guides the creature’s arm
toward its chest. Realizing through its stupor that she is going to stab it
with its own lance, the creature makes an effort to retract it. But June is
squeezing those
retractive
muscles in the creature’s
arm too tightly. The Maero tries to gather strength against the stronger
woman’s push. She tries to bang her head into June’s, but only connects with
June’s chest. This causes June a moment of pain but she recovers quickly.

June is
determined to kill this creature. The Maero’s free arm is hitting June and its
feet are flailing with little effect. Then it is using its free arm to prevent
June’s pushing. Finally, with a shove using all of her weight, June’s strength
overcomes the Maero’s and the lance bites the flesh in the center of the
creature’s chest, causing it to scream in pain and blood to come pouring out in
a thin stream. The creature’s blood stains June’s T-shirt.

When she is
certain that the still animal is dead, its eyes open and pain its last
expression, she rolls off of the beast toward Linus. He is still on his stomach
as blood stains two spots on his shirt. She pulls up his shirt and puts her
thumb on the one that’s bleeding more heavily.

“Linus, are you
okay?”

His arms are
still out in front of him and June slaps his face lightly. He is almost
unconscious. He says something which is barely audible over Falstaff’s
continued barking, “Put out the dog, Mom. He wants to go out…”