Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (23 page)

“You said I was getting out of here.”

“I did. I made a promise to you.”

“Just like that?”

“I will personally escort you. But first, I would like to make an offer to you.”

“An offer I can’t refuse?”

“You may refuse. But I think my offer is a generous one.”

Jamie shrugged. The soldiers around them seemed human enough, without any of the recent mutations that seemed to have afflicted the rest of Kresevich’s troops.

They had to believe that she was pissed off and highly dangerous. Kresevich wasn’t a fool, and probably realized that she held him responsible for Jordan’s death, and everything else that had happened to her. But there were too many people she
could
blame, and there was no use wasting her breath or her emotions on it anymore. Her dad would have said that God wanted it this way, that no matter what, she was supposed to endure this struggle. She had to believe in her heart that she was going to survive. There had to be a reason for all of this.

Besides, Kresevich might really have the key to escape. Of course, nothing ever came easy, and he was going to ask her for something in return. Why else would he so willingly bail her out?

Kresevich walked with his hands behind his back, every bit the gentleman who had surprised her at the airport with his penchant for butchery. The Russian had sabotaged a multi-million dollar tourist resort, and he had to know he was a small player in a bigger game. Like the men around him, he was a soldier fulfilling orders.

Why was it so hard to hate this guy?

There were fewer soldiers rushing about, and Jamie noticed the men accompanying them were not visibly mutated. She wondered about the kid for a moment and hoped he would be okay. As annoying as he was, there was no reason for him to suffer anymore.

“What’s the pitch?” Jamie asked.

Kresevich smiled like a grandfather quietly amused by his grandchildren. “It is not so simple. The question is simple, and I think your answer may be simple, but I must explain why this is the best choice. I must explain why I made the choice.”

“If you know me so well, then you know I’m going to say no. I’m just humoring you, and you’re gonna try to recruit me anyway. You’ve got balls.”

He shook his head and chuckled. “My favorite match of yours was the one against Vikki Saint. I remember the lead-up to the fight. She was the boxer, and you were the martial artist. She was going to be patient, wait for you to make a mistake. You made her pay.”

Jamie smiled. “I can’t wait to find out why you’re flattering me.”

“Now, we are soldiers,” Kresevich said, “and we are against a new foe, whether we want to fight or not.”

The man was a walking stereotype, with his vague philosophies and hidden agendas all mixed into a penchant for ambition. Good for him to have goals and the means to achieve them. He had to believe that he was right, that there was nothing “evil” in his intentions, but rather, his actions were a result of complicated principles. Kresevich was not a gambler, but a careful organizer, and he exuded the confidence of a man used to experiencing victory.

She was comfortable standing next to him as he ushered her into a room full of large computer monitors and soldiers relaying orders into headsets. Fingers tapped commands into consoles and the radio static of voices reporting from the field accompanied the smell of sweat.

A man approached Kresevich with a clipboard and the Russian excused himself to glance at the paperwork. Jamie watched the video monitors. Dinosaurs clomped through the jungle and the ruins of the island resort, all of them coming under heavy fire from Kresevich’s commandos. Each monitor was offered another perspective of the battlefield outside; it appeared the whole damn island had become a warzone. Men stood atop the dead carcasses of a
Triceratops
and posed for a picture, all of them in various modes of mutation; monstrous millipedes hung like trophies from tree branches; a herd of raptors fought over the remains of a dead body until two extremely large shadows covered them—the small creatures looked up at the looming shapes, and Jamie could only guess what those shapes were. Jamie thought about those brochures again, the ones she had found in the lobby at the hotel. A never-ending supply of game for hunters, and a never-ending supply of meat.

Kresevich signed the paper and turned back to Jamie. “My apologies. I wanted to explain what kind of data we are collecting. I am sure it was explained to you what we are doing here.”

“You got an army of mutant men and you’re testing them out for Mother Russia.”

Kresevich threw his head back with laughter this time. He laughed so hard his eyelids squeezed shut and he began to walk away from her.

“Mother Russia,” Kresevich said. “You mean Mother Putin? No. Mother
Fucker.
This is not for him or any country.”

“You’re the mastermind? You sabotaged the project so you could take over the world?”

Kresevich sighed. He waved her over to him, and she willingly approached. She wanted to accompany him; he seemed to want to share the complexity of his designs, and she found herself wanting to hear them. What was it about him?

“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who would be interested in conspiracy theories,” he said.

“Not really. It’s usually bullshit.” She was reminded of something, and felt compelled to share it with him. “I remember there was a fighter in my division who said something about the Sandy Hook shooting. Everyone seemed to care about her opinion. She talked about some kind of conspiracy crap. Anyway, I don’t remember what she said, but this was before I met Jordan. Of course, some genius got it in his head to ask me what I thought about Sandy Hook. I remember wondering why the hell my opinion mattered. I said that to him. The guy told me about the other fighter’s conspiracy shit, and I just said I wish the killer was still alive so I could break his fucking neck, and that’s all there was to it. What else was there to say? There’s a special place in Hell reserved for him.”

“I can respect that,” Kresevich said. “Children have died here. Entire families.”

He paused, waiting for her response. She processed the idea, realizing that he was testing her. How strong were her principles? Would she go nuts and beat the shit out of the Russian without any sort of explanation, just because he was commanding an operation that had caused innocents to die?

“You get to burn right next to that bastard,” Jamie said.

Kresevich smirked. “Then everything that has happened cannot be my fault, Ms. Rock. If there is a Hell, there is a Heaven. If there is a Heaven, then this is God’s will, no? I suppose it does not matter. We say there are children dying in Africa and nobody gives a damn, but there really are children dying in Africa, and nobody gives a damn. We must only save ourselves, Ms. Rock.”

“My name’s Jamie.”

She had never corrected Kenshin. Rock wasn’t even her real last name, but it had become a part of her, had become her identity over the years. She wanted Kresevich to say her first name, the one name that really belonged to her.

“Jamie,” the burly old Russian said. “Dmitri, then.”

“You showed me a bunch of dudes fighting dinosaurs. Why was I supposed to care?”

“You weren’t.” His tone became serious. “Everything you see around you was inevitable. Tanaka’s operation was funded by two very prominent investors who wanted two very different things. Kenshin likely told you that Tanaka wanted to use the money to help save the world?”

“Cure cancer.”

“Yes, that’s right. I forget. Cure cancer. Well, Kenshin does not know there was no such plan. The biotech was started by the United States military, and many of the project codes were handed down to Doctor Israel. He was intelligent enough to solve an equation, but he does not know exactly what equation he solved. Tanaka believed he
could
cure cancer, but he knew there would be a terrible cost. He accepted it. He was a partner, not the founder.”

Kresevich led her down a flight of stairs, into another narrow corridor; this one was empty, and had all the sanitary aesthetic of a hospital hallway. Hand sanitization stations with appropriate directions posted near the doors.

“The families who came to our island were provided injections,” Dmitri Kresevich said. “The same injections you have received. Their dosages were different, of course. It is too expensive to clone the beasts and take care of them. Better to establish the environment and modify human genetic code. There was never a proper reason to clone the beasts. We travel into space because we wish to build colonies on other planets and create new wealth. We discovered new continents for similar reasons. Money is invested in science, and science must produce more money than the initial investment. Billions of dollars should equate to trillions of dollars, and so on. None of this should be a surprise to you, Jamie.”

“I smell a conspiracy.”

“It is not a conspiracy. It is not a secret. There is no hidden agenda. If we have the perfect audience of human beings who may be controlled through instinct and behavior modification, then we have the perfect population. We can have the perfect army. Humanity was not meant to overpopulate this planet. Humanity was not meant to rule.”

“God made it for dinosaurs, right?”

“Earth can be mastered, like all environments, like all machines, like all programs. The Earth is a system. With the right people in charge, we do not have to battle with morality. We do not have to struggle with conspiracy theories, or terrorism. Idealism has achieved nothing. Peace and love are nothing in the face of human destiny. Our destiny is death. Our leaders do not have to worry about morality or principles. It is the people who worry about such things. It is the people who learn to love or hate. It is the people who must be removed from the equation.”

Words formed in Jamie’s mind, but nothing seemed right. What could she possibly say? She was along for the ride. Kresevich held the keys to the kingdom, and all she could do was listen to his blathering. Like it or not, she had to participate in this dialogue, otherwise, he might change his mind and forget his promise to her.

He was talking about a world without hope, a godless place ruled by a power-elite who would could not be questioned or challenged. The rest of his words were a bunch of bullshit, no matter how hard he tried to convince her that his high-minded philosophies were nothing more than the words of a simple soldier who followed orders. If he was trying to recruit her, than he had to know it was a useless endeavor; she was nothing more than a fighter, or at the very least, an entertainer. There was no higher cause worth fighting for. Maybe, for a few moments, she had wanted revenge against Kresevich and anyone else she could convince herself was responsible for Jordan’s death. Kicking the ninja-man out of the window had satisfied that need in her, and she had tried to make peace with the guilt she felt for being such a bitch to him before he died. Jordan had been a man of ideals, too; maybe he had wanted this for her. Maybe he had brought her out here to participate in this grandiose plan. Jordan might have known there was a very dangerous plot that involved dinosaurs, and Tanaka had wanted to use Jordan to help him claw a way out of the hole he dug for himself, and Jordan brought her along for the ride…or did he have another reason? Jordan wanted the best for her, always.

But he had lied to her. Jordan kept things from her, and in his death, he apologized for it. His final message to her was an apology.

Kresevich led her into another expansive, dark chamber. Every narrow corridor led to a huge room that had a terrible purpose. They walked across a bridge, and below it were cylindrical prisons filled with liquid and fleshy, distorted shapes.

The awful ringing in Jamie’s head attacked once again—loud, piercing, painful.

“Fuck.” She stopped walking and pressed her hands to her head and realized she had become vulnerable.

“You can feel them all around you,” the Russian said. “You are part of them. You are linked. Their will shall become your own.”

Jamie clenched her jaw. “And your soldiers operate on their own?”

“My soldiers? They are not mine at all. They follow a genetic program. Before, they were passive. All of the beasts on this island were people, once. They made great sacrifices for the project. This entire island has been here a long time, since before the Second World War. But that should not come as a surprise.”

“Get on with it. What do you want? What’re you showing me?”

Kresevich bowed his head sadly, his lips tightening. “I admire you. You know that I admire you, Jamie. You are beautiful, and you are a warrior.”

“Ah, fuck, here it comes…”

“I want you to be with me, Jamie. I will be alone. I will be surrounded by war and chaos for years. I will have to witness almost the entire human race die. The creatures that once dominated this planet will have it once again, but there will be order. And it will be a lonely place. I could…I have searched for a woman to spend the rest of my years with. I have been married twice. I have six children, two grandchildren. None of it is enough. They will all die.”

The pain was too much. Jamie dropped to one knee, her body shuddering. “This place. What is it? What’s happening to me?”

Kresevich shrugged and turned his back to her. “Command center. Laboratory. It is everything and nothing. It will be gone soon. Kenshin comes for us. The beasts have responded to him. His vengeance will not be denied.”