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Part 3


I closed my eyes, waiting for the crack of a gun being fired, but instead I felt something rough land on my face.

My eyes jerked back open to see the hewn contours of a rope dangling in front of me. It had been looped for me to slide over my head and body for ease of lift.

I looked up again, squinting as more snow drifted into my face, but needing to see why I was being rescued instead of sent to a bottomless grave.

Curiosity turned to relief as I saw Pete Thornton’s round, and slightly red features staring back at me through the storm. He waved and smiled as he saw the recognition on my face.

“Have you out in a jiffy,” he shouted reassuringly.

I nodded and risked moving enough to get the rope around my body, and then tugged.

But could Pete pull me up on his own? And heck, should he even be standing that close to the edge of the crevice given how fragile it was?

My heart told me to shout up and tell him to move away and to not risk his own life for mine, but he’d vanished.

Resigned to the somewhat dangerous rescue, I tried to help by using my feet to take some of my own weight on the ascent, being ever-careful not to cause anymore of the chasm sides to cave in.

Eventually, I was close enough to the surface to reach out and dig my hands into the edge of the opening and help hoist myself out.

I instantly rolled over and away from the precarious maw of the ravine and lay panting.

A shadow fell over me and I looked up to see Pete smiling at me again. “Just what were you doing down there, MacGyver?” He asked, only half serious.

I smirked back. “Oh, just hanging around…”

Pete held out his hand and pulled me up, and it was then I noticed the rope he’d used to save me had been strung out way into the distance, and was actually wrapped around a tree.

Pete hadn’t been taking any chances with safety after all.

It was at that point I noticed something – no someone, undoing the rope and re-coiling it.

For a second, I thought the goons had found us, but then my eyes refocused and I realized it was Dr. Allcott.

As she walked to join us, I jerked a rather frozen thumb back to the rift in the ground. “So how’d you two find me?”

This time, Pete couldn’t resist a chuckle. “We saw you running across the snowfield and the ground open up beneath you…”

I rolled my eyes. “You know that’s not what I mean. How’d you know it was me?”

“Oh that…” He pointed to my head. “How could we miss you, when you’re wearing that thing? It sticks out like a sore thumb. Literally.”

Pete was talking about my favorite wooly hat that I go climbing and skiing in sometimes. It’s kinda a little loud, given that it’s bright red. I really should have taken it off with those bad guys after me, but right at that moment, I was glad I hadn’t.

“You’re just jealous,” I quipped as we joined the doctor.

“Right now, I’m just glad you’re alive.” Pete gestured to Philipa with a gloved hand. “You two have already met.”

“Still sure you don’t want me on the mountain with you, MacGyver?” The doc looked at me strangely as she spoke, and I wasn’t sure whether it was sarcasm or something else I detected in her voice. “C’mon, my cabin isn’t far. We can get shelter from the storm there until morning and get you warm and dry.”

She began to trudge into the tree line without saying more, and was quickly leaving Pete and me behind with the speed of her gait.

Did I mention, sometimes I can really tick the gals off without even trying?

“You sure know how charm them.” Pete glanced my way and then picked up his own speed until he was puffing just to keep up with the good doctor.

“Right now I’m not worried about Philipa,” I warned. “I’m worried about the two guys who were waiting for me up here and were quite willing to kill to keep me quiet.”

Pete nodded as he clambered over a fallen tree trunk, almost stumbling in the darkness. “That’s why I came up here, Mac. Shortly after you left for Colorado, the foundation got word that Zalister and several other prominent ZaliPharm board members had left the country for China to supposedly inspect one of their pharmaceutical factories over there.”

“Pretty convenient to be in a non extradition, communist country just as I started digging around,” I surmised.

“I figured something you’d found out here had put the wind up them enough to get them to run, and that also meant you might be in danger.” Pete stopped, catching his breath as the snow continued to pelt us from the heavens. “When I got into town and Dr. Allcott said you’d come up into the mountains alone, I knew I had to follow.”

“With her in tow?”

“Aw, come on, Mac, she knows this place like the back of her hand and I don’t. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t have found you without her.” He started to walk again as Allcott’s form finally seemed to slow ahead of us. “I’ve also informed the local sheriff of all I know, and he’s going to follow with a couple of deputies. Although, I’m guessing the storm may have held him back.”

“Let’s hope not for too long. Those guys back there are going to keep looking for me, and they have guns, Pete. We could be leading them straight to Philipa’s cabin. Now do you see why I didn’t want her up here?”

“Exactly what did you find?” Pete stopped as we finally reached a wooden, stepped veranda that lead to the cabin’s door.

I wanted to go inside, to warm my frozen body and hands, but some thing’s had to come first.

“I found an old lab, Pete, and from what I saw in there, more than just animals had been used for test subjects.” I shuddered, and for once, not from the whiteout around me. “There’s no direct evidence leading to ZaliPharm there, but for some reason, those guys still wanted me out of the picture. Now you and the girl are in danger too.”

Pete patted my shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry; we can both look after ourselves. C’mon, let’s get you inside and warmed up. Then we can figure out our next move.”

I wanted to argue and tell Pete we should carry on back down the mountain, that we should forget the storm around us and get the girl to safety, but the chill in my bones and the ache in my bright red hands argued otherwise.

I took one last, long look behind me into the night, and then wearily climbed the steps into the cabin.


* * * *


I’m not really sure what I expected inside the small lodge, but I guess I’d imagined the doctor to have been using the place for skiing during the winter months.

Instead, the bare wood walls were dusty and the smell of must filled the air, as if the place hadn’t been used in years. Here and there, a rogue cobweb confirmed this theory.

There was a little wood on the fire, but not enough to keep it going for long once lit.

Philipa must have read my thoughts. “There’s more wood out back. I’ll go get some. Why don’t you two tough guys get the fire going?”

I opened my mouth to argue that I’d go get the wood, but she shook a finger at me. “You’re frozen, and your head needs attention. Stay, get warm, I’ll be back before you know it.”

Alarm bells rang in my brain telling me that no way should I be letting a lady go fetch logs when there were bad guys out there, but I had the feeling if I defied her, she’d deck me herself.

To confirm my thoughts, she tossed a woolen blanket my way from the couch. “Dry and warm when I come back,” she chastised. “Or else…”

I sank down into a chair as she vanished from the back door to the cabin. The seat seemed warm and inviting after the snow, and I felt almost sleepy.

Pete watched me for a second, and then began to light the fire, gently prodding it to encourage the flames once it had ignited. “You okay?” He finally asked.

“Nothing a month of thawing won’t cure,” I quipped. “But that’s the least of our worries.”

Pete moved to a small kitchen area and began rummaging through cupboards. “How long do you figure we have before they find us?” He asked, continuing to search until he found half a bottle of scotch.

He waved it at me, and I shook my head as he knew I would. “We don’t have long. The snow might hide our trail, but this place is lit up like a Christmas tree…”

Pete put the whiskey down on the counter and delved into another cupboard, coming out with a can of instant cocoa. This time he didn’t ask, but simply boiled some water and made me a mug of the stuff, not caring how long it had been hiding at the back of the shelf.

I took the mug gratefully when he eventually passed it over, letting the warmth from it sooth my sore hands.

“So, any ideas on what we do next? Seeing as you’re our resident ideas man.” Pete poured a scotch into another rather dusty mug and took a sip.

I took a deep breath.

We couldn’t run, and I couldn’t see how we could hide.

That really only left standing and fighting.

But with what?

Time to check out what this cabin has to offer…

I pushed myself wearily up out of the chair and began to look around more closely, making a mental note of every item I saw in my head, no matter how insignificant it seemed on its own.

Of course, a radio would have been nice, but there was no such luxury.

I walked over to the back window and was considering checking out what was on offer outside when something caught my eyes through the flurry of snow and the blur of the swaying treetops.

I blinked, trying to convince myself the bright red glare in the heavens actually hadn’t been a flare.

“Did you see that?” I was on alert now, my senses scouring the night sky for more flashes, but there was nothing. My eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me, had they?

Pete joined me at the window. “See what?” He asked, but I could tell from his face he hadn’t a clue what I was talking about.

“Nothing. I guess.” I brushed it off for the moment, and was about to suggest we secure the cabin’s shutter windows and doors, when the doc finally returned, her arms flailing around as she tried to carry far too many logs.

I took some from her and dropped them on the floor, before firmly shutting and bolting the door after her. Even if it only bought us mere seconds, a locked door was way better than an open one.

I tossed some of the logs from the floor onto the waning fire and watched as the flames licked around them, growing again until they flickered and danced, casting long, eerie shadows up the walls.

Perhaps the fire could be our ally?

First things first, though, because lots of little pieces had finally come together in my thawing mind until I had a pretty big picture I didn’t like.

I let Philipa settle the rest of the logs into a nook by the fireplace she obviously used to store them, sipping my cocoa while I picked my moment.

“So how long have you had a cabin up here?” I let it sound innocent enough a question.

She moved back to the kitchen area, pulled out a small first aid box and sauntered back over to where I’d sat back down. After a quick look at the cut on my head where I’d landed in the incinerator, she began to clean it. “Oh, five or six years,” she answered as she worked. “Although I really haven’t used it much…”

“Not since those skiers went missing on the mountain, huh?” I felt the sting as she applied a couple of butterfly strips just a little too forcefully – I guess my little jab at the truth had hit home.

I could see Pete watching, and I guessed from his expression he hadn’t a clue what I was doing, but he knew something was off. Automatically, he began to move closer until he was almost by my side.

Philipa noticed it too, and backed up slightly, looking between us both, her eyes narrowing but her face still playing the innocent. “I…I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“You knew I was coming up here and where I was likely to start looking. What? Was I already too close to finding the truth that you had to call the ZaliPharm goons in?” I pushed, wanting her to cave and fill in the blanks.

“You’re mad.” She shook her head, edging further back into the kitchen. “I don’t know anything about this mess. I was trying to help…”

“Except you weren’t trying to help me and Pete. You were helping your old boss, weren’t you, Doctor Allcott?” I emphasized doctor to make my point. “Six years ago you were up here working for ZaliPharm, weren’t you? Labs like that need good medical staff. And not ten minutes ago you let off a flare out there to let those company goons know where we are, didn’t you? Didn’t you, doc?”

She simply glared, her eyes brimming with a ferocity I hadn’t expected. “You don’t know anything about me!”

I continued my little rant. “Back at your office I knew there was something “off” about the break in and Stirling’s’ body, but it didn’t hit me until just now why. The pellets from the shotgun should have been embedded in the other side of the door frame if it had been an outside job. You busted that frame yourself and disposed of the body, didn’t you?”

Finally, she cracked and just laughed.

It wasn’t a crazy or hysterical laugh, but more the controlled snigger of someone who thought they had won.

That worried me.

“Alright,” she admitted. “I once worked for ZaliPharm up here, so what?”

“Why did Stirling and those skiers have to die?” This time it was Pete who was doing the asking, and I could tell from his face he was both shocked and disgusted by what I’d gotten the doctor to admit to.

And I knew there was more for us to hear yet.

So much more.

“Stirling poked his nose into company business one time too many,” Philipa huffed. “He not only discovered Project Reaper, but he connected it to those poor dead busybodies we’d had to dispose of.”

“The innocent skiers, you mean?” I snarked. “Exactly what did they do to tick ZaliPharm off so much?”

“One of them strayed from Wolf Creek resort enough to find the lab. Normally we were camouflaged enough for stragglers not to see anything other than an old derelict ghost mine, but that day we got caught with our pants down taking in a new delivery of the VX490 strain. We couldn’t let some tourist go blab what he’d seen up here. Maybe the authorities would think he was nuts, or maybe they’d actually investigate…” Her voice trailed as if she was reliving the moment.

“So you just murdered the guy and all the others for good measure, and then Stirling when he found out?” Pete was incredulous.

Philipa on the other hand seemed to now be relishing her narrative. “Not exactly murdered,” she purred. “More like infected. We were so short of good test subjects for the Reaper project, why lose such a good opportunity?”

“Reaper? Exactly what was that?” It was my turn to question again. Pete and I were making a great tag team as always.

“ZaliPharm had gotten bored with manufacturing drugs that saved lives. There’s just not enough profit in it these days. Too many do-gooders wanting the treatments cheaper and cheaper for the general public, and too many law-suits when those treatments go wrong. Biological warfare, now that’s the market to be in. Kill a few million and nobody sues you, they actually pay you money, and lots of it! Reaper was the cutting edge of that market, and the strain we were working with, VX490, well, it was unstoppable. We’re talking a 100% mortality rate within hours.”

“My God, you’re actually serious,” Pete sputtered, his face a rosy red color that I attributed more to anger than the cold outside and the fire in the room. “Just tell me this wasn’t sanctioned by our own government?”

Pete knew as well as I did, that anything was possible. Rogues within government agencies had been doing stuff like this for years, and they were the hardest to try and find and stop.

Philipa thought the suggestion, however, was more entertaining than serious. “Don’t be ridiculous. Those pencil-pushers in Washington wouldn’t want to pay for something like Reaper. At least, not as much as some of our more, shall we say, less moral clients.”

I shook my head. “So you killed those people over money?”

“No, the virus killed them. And believe me, it has no interest in anything other than death…” The doc stopped her slow retreat into he kitchen and her hand exited her right coat pocket, complete with a small automatic.

I could tell she couldn’t make her mind up which one of us to point it at, but after a millisecond, I found it waving in my face. I guess she thought I was younger and was the biggest threat.

“So now what? You kill us?” Pete held up his hands in submission, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he had a weapon of his own somewhere. I may not carry a gun, or use one if the chance arises, but Pete has no such convictions.

Philipa looked at the automatic a second. “Killing isn’t my job. I swore an oath as a doctor, and despite what you might think, I’ve never actually taken a life. Not by my own hand. The others will take care of everything.” Her eyes darted momentarily to the nearest window, and I knew she meant the goons she’d called with the flare.

Somewhere in her warped sense of logic, she actually thought her conscience was clean if she didn’t pull the trigger or stick in the syringe with her own hands.

How anyone could call themselves a doctor that upheld the Hippocratic Oath after what she’d done, was beyond me. But then, that was one for the counselors and shrinks out there to figure, not me.

I held up my own hands and decided to test her resolve by taking a step slowly forward. Maybe if she didn’t like doing her own dirty work, I could get close enough to grab the gun, or at least knock it clear. “So what happened to Reaper?” I asked quietly as I moved.

“ZaliPharm shut us down. They had to after all the fuss with the missing skiers and then Stirling. I don’t know what happened to VX490 after that.” Philipa’s eyes narrowed as she realized I’d moved. “I wouldn’t try anything, cowboy. I don’t want to kill anyone, but believe me, I will if I have to.”

I stopped.

The perspiration on her skin, and the way her hands were shaking told me she was getting edgy, panicked.

Maybe panicked enough to pull that trigger and worry about it after.

The doctor fumbled with her free hand behind her back, unlocking the door I’d bolted. “I’m leaving now and you better not try to follow.” She gulped hard and hesitated just a second, as if she were deliberating something, and then had finally made a choice. “In fact, maybe I better make sure you don’t.”

I saw the gun in her hand move and her finger to pull back on the trigger, and then time seemed to stand still as the sound of a bullet exiting the automatic’s barrel filled my ears and told me I was probably about to meet my maker.

I had no time to dive from its path, no time to say any last words to Pete, and all that I could think of in that moment was maybe I’d be seeing mom and dad again real soon…

TBC