South China Sea by Jeff VanderMeer

Author:Jeff VanderMeer [VanderMeer, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595821409
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Published: 2008-08-31T21:00:00+00:00

FORTY

Eyes leaking green tears, Nikolai woke in the crook of the banyan tree, the sleeping bag wrapped securely around him, and for a second had a quick fragment of memory: of being wrapped in his foster mother’s embrace around age five or six, before he’d run away; he could even smell the flowery perfume she always wore, feel the rough scratch of the cheap fabric of her blouse against his face.

But then the wound on his face began to hurt and he remembered where he was and how he had gotten there. Stuck on an isolated island in the South China Sea, with a mission of recovering as much information from John Gustat about the Predator and its technology as possible. Only: there was an actual Predator on the island, which made Gustat either less or more important, depending on how you looked at things. And Marikova had gone away for a while for reasons he couldn’t remember, but which he thought had to do with Rath leaving the lodge for his temple-bunker.

Nikolai shivered and swallowed. His throat felt dry and the furrows in his cheek pulsed. Every time they pulsed, he could feel that sensation deeper in his body. He knew that there was such a thing as phantom pain, but he could have sworn that now the infection had spread down to his neck, and across his back.

Never, when he’d imagined how this mission might go, had he imagined this happening.

But now it had, and he had to come to terms with it. Their medi-kit could dull the pain, but basically the best guess was that he’d been infected with alien bacteria from under the Predator’s claws.

“Given the way bacteria travel across even interstellar distances, it might still be treatable, most of our bacteria having come from outer space,” Marikova had told him, or he thought she’d told him; he’d been having odd visual hallucinations. Like right now: directly across from him, highlighted by the tree trunk behind it, he saw what looked like a hovering gigantic green-and-gold starfish. He blinked and it was gone.

So he didn’t think the condition could be treated, not really. Nor did he think it was manageable. How could you manage something that had come from another world?

Nikolai had told Marikova she should stay away from him, but she’d just laughed and said, “If it’s that communicable, just having this creature come to the island has doomed us all.” Spaniards and Indians alike. “But I don’t think it works that way.”

He’d also asked for a mirror, but Marikova hadn’t given him that. Instead, she’d looked at him strangely, washed the afflicted area and dried it, then slowly undressed him, pulled off his underwear, and touched him until he was hard, used her mouth until suddenly, almost painfully, he’d trembled, cried out, and was silent in the dark, looking up at her, and she staring down at him with a sad smile.

Volya.

Even now he knew that all he had to do was say that

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