EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 11
The Games We Play
 

Wyatt told Halley of the night spent with Julie. It would have been impossible to hide that something had occurred as in her own throes of heated passion, the other savannah cat had dug her claws into Wyatt’s back as she was overcome with pure bliss and abandon. The young woman was understanding, though and showed that all was forgiven, particularly given the rather extreme circumstances, by tending the somewhat deep perforations in her lover’s back and shoulders in one of the many examination rooms located throughout the bunker system.

“I’m surprised that you and Julie didn’t hook up before this,” Halley told him as she dabbed antiseptic on the last of the holes in the skin beneath the hybrid’s fur, not only to make sure the medication was properly applied but also that there were no signs of infection. “She’s as beautiful as you are, after all. That and I’m fairly sure there are going to be pheromones where the two of you are concerned that you wouldn’t detect from me.”

“You’re being very understanding,” Wyatt responded cautiously.

Halley laughed lightly. “I have a sister that joined the neo-hippie movement and she has a relationship that she calls ‘multifaceted polyamatory’. That means she’ll sleep with anyone, guy or girl. She says it’s a liberating lifestyle while I think it’s emotional compensation for what happened to our parents. Needless to say, my sensibilities were shocked at a very early age.” She applied the last of the antiseptic and wound adhesive and stood. “There. That’s got them all.” As she busied herself with cleaning up, Halley looked over at the anthrocat curiously. “So, why tell me? Apart from the claw marks in your back, I would have probably never have known.”

Wyatt shook his head as he leaned back on the medical bed, his arms behind him for support and watched the elfin woman. “I’m not like that. I don’t play loose with other people’s feelings. ‘Course I sort of expect the same in return.” He shrugged by sinking his head between his shoulders. “I like honesty. It keeps things from getting complicated. That and I care about you, Halley. Like you and Julie said, we don’t know how much time we have, but maybe making the most of it isn’t a bad idea.”

Halley smiled and stepped slowly to where the cat reclined, her head lowered as she looked through her lashes at the savannah cat. “Oh? And seeing we have a few minutes at least, what do you think we should do to live to the fullest?” When she reached the hybrid she placed her hands on his knees and twisted a little so that she stood between his thighs and placed the tip of her nose against his, her blue-green eyes filling his field of vision. “Anything come to mind?”

Wyatt grinned, his ears twitching upright in interest as his arms slid around her body. “Lots of things come to mind.”

“Pity we won’t be able to get to see what that might have been,” Lesko’s voice said from the doorway.

Halley and Wyatt separated with a start. The immediate area was filled with the scent of Halley’s fear while Wyatt felt the old dread that the woman filled him with returned so strongly that his arousal vanished completely while his genitals drew tight against his body. It was only through supreme effort of will that he kept his lips from peeling back and letting loose with the hissing growl that bubbled in his throat.

“We do have several video clips, though, so I can only imagine that whatever it is you two would have done would have been quite tawdry and disgusting.” Lesko gestured to the two figures in the medical lab and the mercs that flanked her moved forward, their Kriss sub machineguns pointing at the lovers. “Put them both in isolation chambers as far from each other as possible. Once they’re secure come back to me for further orders.”

“No! Wait!” Wyatt said, slipping off the table, his padded feet landing silently on the cold flooring. “I…I did this, Doctor Lesko! It was my fault! Halley had nothing to do with this!”

Emily Lesko’s face softened for a moment before her mouth split into a malicious grin, shattering the fleeting fragment of hope that the savannah cat felt at possibly saving his lover from punishment. “Wyatt, do I look like a fool?” She gestured curtly and Halley was roughly pulled towards the door by her arms, the hybrid prevented from responding to the young woman’s cry of pain and surprise by the grinding of a gun barrel into his ribs. “Right now you’d say or do anything to protect her. To be honest I always knew you were soft and sentimental. It makes you easy to control, to manipulate and twist as I see fit.” Lesko waited for the girl to be taken away, the whole time her eyes bored through her creation’s. “Because of what’s transpired, Halley will now become a part of this experiment. If you do what you’re told, I might even decide to make her an addition to your group. But then I forget. You already have a backup waiting for you, don’t you? So, was Julie Valance as good as Halley? Come now, Wyatt. How do they compare? This is for science, after all.”

There was no possible way for Wyatt to keep from baring his teeth this time and a low growl rumbled in his throat. It was cut off by the butt of the Janissaries’ machine pistol as it slammed low into his gut, the blow doubling him over. Before he could catch his breath his vision exploded into stars as the same weapon impacted the back of his head, driving him to the linoleum tiles of the floor.

“Humans are your masters now, Wyatt. It just wouldn’t do to have you think of yourself as an equal, would it? My pets will know their place. As for your relations with Miss Kane,” Lesko paused as the guards bound the hybrid’s wrists with plastic binding strips and hauled him to his feet. “Well, what the two of you did was rather unnatural, wasn’t it? Almost something that could be considered a crime against nature, wouldn’t you say? A human bedding an animal. It was quite repulsive. It did, however, give me an idea for certain fertility experiments that might be interesting.” She nodded to the guards. “Take him away.”

Wyatt’s head hurt enough to cause low level nausea but he rolled it around so that he could look at the woman, the smoldering hatred in his heart for the monster before him flaring into a pure, white hot rage that pushed his minor injuries away from his awareness. “I want you to know that I’m going to kill you and it won’t be quick and it will most certainly not be merciful,” he spat, his voice still flavored with a growl of loathing and anger.

As the hybrid was hauled out of the room, Lesko felt her heart skip a beat with the conviction of Wyatt’s word. He might have been her thrall at one point, able to do what she demanded or asked out of fear, but she saw that that time had passed. She’d pushed him too far. Now it seemed the time had come to destroy what had been one of her favorite creations. It was disappointing, but in an instant Wyatt had gone from complacent to dangerous. And when she looked into his eyes she did see her death and felt the first alien pangs of fear. 

*** 

The isolation cell was a five foot by five foot room that was padded with a material that refused to tear even under the sharp claws of Wyatt’s paw-like hands. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was convinced that if he could tear it away from the walls that there might also be a way of escaping his prison and enable him to get to both Halley and Julie. He paced as much as the closet sized chamber allowed, slept when exhaustion took him, ate when ration packets were slipped through a one-way slot of the door and relieved himself in the cold steel bowl-like construct in the far right corner. Day and night were even more blurred as the only illumination was the red LED that indicated the camera mounted under a glassteel bubble was active, though his feline eyes had little problem making out the details of the chamber with that little bit of light.

His mind was tormented with things that Lesko might be doing to Julie, and he was near frantic with the fear that Halley would be put through the same process that had taken him from human to some kind of freakish humanoid monstrosity. Perhaps it was just an overactive imagination, but there wasn’t much that Wyatt could conjure that he wasn’t sure Lesko would do to the woman and other savannah cat. At times it was enough to make him violently ill. To top his apprehension off, there were the horrific images of things he’d seen on the way to the isolation cell that he knew would haunt him until the day he died.

He’d been taken through a room that was well lit and filled with tall tubes and long transparent boxes that had their own illumination sources. At first Wyatt didn’t know what he was seeing, then he recognized the partially transformed face of Gino Torelli. It almost looked as if the little mobster were sleeping. At least until he looked further down and saw the man’s body precisely cut open with his internal organs displayed, the flaps of skin and muscle peeled back so that things that should have never seen the light of day were exposed for all to witness. Then there was Carla Weems. She floated in the clear viscous fluid of an upright container, small, brightly colored plastic beads marking the path her Lap Band had taken as it was violently rejected by her slowly mutating body. Her heart, or at least Wyatt thought it was her heart, looked more like a chunk of cubed steak than what he knew a heart should look like.

There were other bodies as well. Dozens of them.

Some resembled completely hairless humans, others had been further along in their transformations so that the animals that they’d been combined with were clearly evident. Other feline hybrids he’d never met or knew existed, foxes, wolves a few recognizable dog types, bears…all of them floating in their tanks, dissected vivisected and put on display. Each tank also had a small computer screen giving the basic data of the subject, hybrid type and cause of death. Further on there were other things, and judging by the number, they weren’t something that Lesko planned on making again.

Wyatt saw fully formed hybrids that resembled nothing he’d ever seen, though one looked like it might have been a rabbit, though there wasn’t much soft tissue left to really give it definition. The electronic placard said it was lupine, but that the cause of death had been getting eaten by other hybrids. The same went for one that looked like a deer, but again, Wyatt couldn’t be sure with what little remained.

Why make what were essentially prey animals in a facility where everything else he saw had been based on hybrid predators?

One of the guards laughed at Wyatt’s obvious queasiness. “Yeah. The Doc decided to try and make complacent animal people once. The rest of the ones that were hunter types attacked and ate ‘em,” the man guffawed callously. “Guess the whole prey animal thing ran true, huh?”

Looking down, Wyatt fought his rising gorge, swallowing down the urge to vomit as the implications of something that had once been a person had been attacked and eaten by other test subjects. The feeling of impending purging was only intensified when he saw containers with the remains of still more test subjects, though these bore obscene deformities where something had gone terribly amiss in their transformations.

When he was finally led into a different corridor and eventually to his cell, it was with a sense of relief, though the images of the freak show that he’d seen wouldn’t let go and it was all Wyatt could do to make it to the in-floor toilet to heave noisily before sitting with his back in a corner and weeping at the nightmare that there was no escaping. 

*** 

“On your feet, sunshine!” the guard that opened Wyatt’s cell shouted, grinning as the savannah cat hybrid cowered into the corner and away from the relatively blinding light from the corridor’s LEDs. “Let’s go, pussycat! We got a special surprise for you today!”

Wyatt let two men haul him to his feet and be pulled blinking into the concrete reinforced hallway. He sneezed once with the intensity of the LED fixtures and kept his head lowered until his eyes adjusted to the magnified illumination. He tried to calculate how long he’d been in the cell, but the lack of discernible time left him with the notion that it could have been a week or more, most likely longer. He felt slightly dizzy despite the regular dispensing of ration packets and water and knew that it was his mind and senses getting used to something larger than the cell.

“Whe…where are we going?” Wyatt choked out, depending less on the men that flanked him for support.

“Nah. Ain’t gonna tell you. Like I said, it’s a surprise.” Fortunately the guard led him further down the hallway and not back towards the room of hybrid medical nightmares.

It was almost a straight shot to the room that the savannah cat was taken to, though the small group did pass through several points where the remnants of heavy steel doors were once mounted. These confused Wyatt until he recalled that the bunker complex had been built to withstand the blasts from old nuclear weapons. He doubted that it would hold up against modern weapons, but when it was built the average yield had been much less and the primary mode of delivery was gravity bombs dropped by aircraft. It might have survived one of those blasts directly over it.

The room that he was deposited in was almost posh compared to the naked rock, concrete, aluminum and steel that he’d grown accustomed to. Here the floor was covered in grey carpeting, the old style, low pile industrial grade for durability. The concrete and rock walls were covered with wood paneling. Some effort had been made to modernize this particular portion of the bunker and to the far side of the chamber was a bar, modern smart screen TVs and thickly padded chairs with low tables scattered about. The lighting wasn’t as harsh as the LED fixtures throughout the rest of the facility that Wyatt had seen, these comprising recessed cylinders with colored diffusion plates so that the illumination cast out was softer and a little less harsh on the eyes.

There were five men embroiled in an animated conversation that stopped when Wyatt entered the room. All of them had drinks of one form or another and Lesko, with a glass of white wine stood off to the side. She smiled like the owner of a thoroughbred racer being brought out for show to potential buyers. “And here is one of our star candidates, gentlemen.” The woman moved closer to the savannah cat, though not to close as he glared at her with renewed fury. “You might recall Wyatt Renner. He was scheduled for execution last year for killing his mother and several others in a Florida nursing home. You can see that the process I was describing has worked quite spectacularly where he’s concerned.”

“This was Renner?” the most well dressed of the men asked incredulously.

His suit was an expensive one, cut for his frame, and in the lighter colors that people in the South were partial to. I took a few minutes for Wyatt to place a name with the man’s face and was surprised that Senator Harold ‘Hap’ Bingham from Louisiana was in the same room with him. At the time of his execution it had been bandied about that Bingham was the preferred Republican candidate for the next Presidential election.

Bingham continued to stare. “Even after the pictures that Andre showed me I wasn’t sure that y’all weren’t blowing smoke up my skirt.” He took a step closer. “You really did it.”

“That we did, Senator,” Lesko answered with a proprietary note of pride in her voice. “The McEwen Process can do far more than just cure various cancers and defects. With it I can completely restructure people and animals into a form I want and choose.”

“I don’t think he likes you very much, Senator,” a man with clean shaven scalp and thick biker mustache said with a wicked grin. “If anything, I’d say this thing hates your guts, Doctor.” He set his glass down and walked right up to Wyatt, moving around him while scrutinizing every detail. “I have to agree with the Senator, though. It’s certainly impressive.”

The man continued to visually examine and measure Wyatt as another group entered the large room. Just from the scent alone the savannah cat knew that they had another hybrid, and didn’t have to turn around to look to know who it was.

“I’m also positive that all of you remember James Pinkerton. He was arrested and confessed to the highest number of murders this country has seen in this century.” Lesko sipped her wine before continuing. “These are the two that I have selected, for various reasons, to participate in the tests that Senator Bingham wishes. Do I have any objections?”

“I think they’ll do just fine,” the bald man said as he moved to inspect Pinkerton. “What says you, Dom? Think the kitties will be a challenge?”

The man that had stood with the bald one shrugged. “So long as they don’t act like cats. No challenge in huntin’ animals. Want a dangerous hunt? Use a man.” He looked from one hybrid to the other, his long salt and pepper hair was caught up in a braid and hung down his back. “What are the rules and time limits?”

The lead Janissaries officer, a man that baldy and the one with short brown hair both eye with contempt stepped forward. “We felt that a proper test would best be performed in a location that both hunters and prey were unfamiliar with, but would offer enough resources so that the test can quite literally go either way. As such, there is an island that lies six miles from here and is well wooded with rocky beaches and fresh water supplies. Hunters may select one weapon to go with their kit of tent, rope, canteens, knife, hatchet and sleeping bag. The prey. Renner and Pinkerton, will each be given a single canteen and twenty feet of rope along with a thermal liner. The prey will then be deposited at a point on the island to be determined, given a half hour head start before the hunters are dropped off. At that point, the prey will have to make its way to the opposite side of the island where the hunt will end and then returned to Fort Freedom. The window is forty eight hours. If the prey can elude death for that time, it will be declared the winner and returned to the facility here. Any questions?”

“I got one,” the bald man asked with his malicious grin returning. “You wanna be stuffed and mounted, pussycat? Or would you rather become a rug?” he asked Wyatt.

The savannah cat wasn’t intimidated. He would either make it, or he would die cleanly. Either way it would be an end to his terror. Wyatt did feel a pang of regret that he wouldn’t see either Halley or Julie and some of the others again, but this had been the expected outcome all along. Wyatt looked at the bald man, his gaze unflinching.

Baldy moved closer and chuckled in a manner that was typical of boorish male bravado when another refused to back down or give in to threats and posturing. “Oh! You an’ me’s gonna have some fun, pussycat. I think I’m gonna really like this.”

“Stand down, Pete,” a man with short brown hair that had stood away from the others said in a voice that sounded like the man was used to giving orders. He turned back to the Janissaries operative and Lesko. “I assume that Pete and I will track one while Mister Pugio and Mister Gaines track and hunt the other?”

Peterson, the mercenary that led the contingent of Janissaries, nodded and looked at the two pairs of men. “It will be a random draw.” While he didn’t doubt that the two professional hunters were adept at stalking and killing mundane animals, Peterson’s money was on the two NWS veterans. “We’ll begin at first light in the morning.”

More was discussed between the quartet, Senator Bingham and Emily Lesko, but Wyatt wasn’t able to pick up more than a word or two as he and Pinkerton were ushered from the room. Casting a look back at the anthropanther, Wyatt saw that the other hybrid’s face was passive, almost serene, but almost imperceptibly the black furred male flexed each one of his fingers casing the claws to slip out slowly one at a time. When Pinkerton realized Wyatt was looking at him, the panther let a smile pull his face into an expression that was far from humorous as his eyes took on an evil glint.

Wyatt knew then and there that the four men that would be hunting them weren’t the only ones that he would have to survive.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.