The Black: Arrival

by Paul E. Cooley

  An embarrassed grin lit his face. He felt stupid, knew he was being stupid, but that didn’t stop his hands from quivering. He put his thumb inside the bag so he had some leverage and kept his palm and fingers on top of it. Jay took in a deep breath and then pressed the plastic bag down atop the black drop.

  The smell of burning plastic wrinkled his nostrils before his mind accepted what he was seeing. The plastic in contact with the oil curled and boiled. He pulled the plastic bag off the shelf, but held it in front of him like a shield. The droplet had burned through the first layer of the plastic bag. He stared at the droplet. It was no longer tear-shaped. Instead, it had become a tiny, circular dome.

  Jay stepped away from the shelf, eyes still focused on the black. “Sufferin’ succotash,” Sylvester whispered from his mouth. Flecks of spittle flew with the words and landed next to the little blob of black.

  Well, plastic isn’t going to work. What’s next? He turned back to the supply cabinet. He clucked his tongue and scanned the well-organized trays and boxes. Wrenches, hammers, plastic, socket sets, fasteners…

  He turned around and faced the shelves. The blob seemed…bigger. A shiver ran down his back. He took a deep breath and chuckled. This was asinine. There was no reason to be afraid of it. It dissolved plastic. Lots of chemicals did that. Hell, even some common hydrocarbons could eat through certain plastics.

  Melt, idiot. Not burn.

  Jay tried to ignore the sarcastic voice in his head. Tried, but failed. It was right. Melting wasn’t the same as burning. And that shit had burned through the plastic like a flame.

  He needed something. Pyrex. Metal. It obviously couldn’t eat through either substance. It had traveled all the way from Leaguer in a regular old oil drum and they had transferred it using Pyrex. The oil… No, he told himself, the M2. The M2 hadn’t dissolved any matter with densely packed molecules.

  Jay eyed the door leading back to the lab hallway. He didn’t want to go all the way out there just to come back in. But what else was there he could use to get a sample of what had infected Marie?

  Fuck it, he said to himself. He walked to the shelf and picked up the cap-removal tool. The lid still had a film of M2 on it. That should work for what they needed. He’d worry about cleaning up the blob later.

  He picked up the tool by the handle and held it away from his body. Something twitched in the corner of his vision. Jay’s eyes flicked back to the black blob on the steel shelf. It was still a dome of impossible darkness. A small, circular patch of shining steel was next to it. Jay blinked at it.

  The metal was old. The rest of the shelves looked weathered and, in some places, rusted. The gleaming circle of brightness was as out of place as the black blob.

  Jay stepped back from the shelving, stripped off a glove, and palmed his phone from the lab coat pocket. He pressed his naked thumb against the sensor and it unlocked. Afraid to lose eye contact with the drop of M2, he held the phone up so he could keep it in the corner of his eye while he scanned the icons on the screen.

  He found the camera icon and pressed it. The phone’s screen flashed and then showed the shelves. Jay focused the phone on the blob and the shining metal next to it. He took a step forward to get them both in the frame, and then pressed the shutter icon.

  The phone’s impossibly bright LED flashed. Just to be sure, he hit the icon again and the phone took another photo. He didn’t think anyone would quite understand the importance of the shining metal. Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood it. But at least he had some photos.

  Jay turned from the shelf, pocketed the phone, slipped on the glove, and made his way to the security door. He pressed his key card against the reader and it beeped. A slight push and the door was open. Before he entered the hallway, he turned once more and stared at the shelf.

  From this distance, he shouldn’t have been able to make out the blob. But there it was, sitting on the shelf. Something so black that light seemed to slide off its surface. Shaking his head, Jay closed the door and headed for the bio-lab.

  *****

  She listened as the ringer buzzed on the other end of the line. Pick up, Darren. Ring. Ring. PICK UP! Finally, the ringing stopped.

  “You have reached the voicemail of Darren Strange. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

  Kate sighed. When the line beeped, her voice came out in a rush of words. “Darren, this is Kate in the lab. We forgot to tell you that Marie may have been infected by something in the barrel from PPE. She cut her hand. Tell the EMTs to check it and call me back here in the lab.” She left the number for the lab’s landline and hung up the phone.

  She tented her hands on the desk and stared at it. How long ago had the ambulance left? Ten minutes? Less? What had happened?

  Stop panicking, she told herself. If Darren was in the back of the ambulance with Marie and an EMT, he probably couldn’t even hear his phone ringing. She hissed between her teeth. Or maybe he was talking to Mike.

  Mike. She sighed and picked up the phone again. She dialed Mike’s extension and waited.

  The phone picked up on the third ring.

  “This is Mike.”

  Kate smiled. It didn’t matter how tired he was, how pissed he was, Mike always sounded like an old friend you’d missed talking to. On the phone, anyway.

  “Mike, it’s Kate.”

  “Hey, Kate. Can I call you back? I’m on the phone with Darren.”

  She blew a sigh between her teeth. “Well that explains why he didn’t answer my call. We need him to know something.”

  “What’s that?” Mike asked.

  “This may sound crazy,” she said, “but Marie cut herself on the PPE barrel. We think she may have been infected by something on the cap.”

  There was a pause. She imagined him in his office, leaned back in his chair, and studying the ceiling while his mind raced around in circles. “Infected,” he repeated. “Okay. I’ll tell him. Let me call you back in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Mike.”

  The line went dead. Kate hung up the phone and pulled out her cell. She made sure the WiFi signal was still strong and it was. Kate typed out a message to Maeve and sent it. She just wanted to make sure her daughter wasn’t freaking out.

  When Maeve replied with a goofy face emoji, Kate couldn’t help but smile. She was proud of the girl. Maeve took care of Marie the best she could, and sounded the alarm when things went bad.

  Bad. The word kept echoing in her skull. What if Marie died? What if whatever was on the cap of the barrel was airborne? What if they were all infected? What if—

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Kate turned to the glass wall. Jay walked down the corridor between the two labs, the removal tool held in his hands. He was white as a sheet. She moved to leave the chair and head out into the hall, and then remembered Mike was going to call her back.

  Whatever Jay had seen in the secured area had obviously frightened him. Or maybe he was just scared of catching whatever Marie was infected with. Or maybe—

  The phone buzzed. Kate flinched. It rang again. She smiled and picked up the receiver. “This is Kate.”

  “Kate. Mike. Darren says Marie is in bad shape. He’s going to call me again as soon as they get to the ER.”

  “You tell him about the barrel? About the cut?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “I did. He told the EMTs and they’ve made the ER aware as well.”

  “He going to call you when he knows something?”

  Mike cleared his throat. “Yes. And as soon as I can speak with the doctors at the ER, I will. For right now, though, I think it’s best if your team uses all caution with the PPE sample until we figure out what happened with Marie.”

  “Jay took the top of the cap to Neil and his team. They might be able to at least see if there’s some kind of bacteria on the lid that cut her.”

  The line went silent.

  “Mike? Still there?” she asked. />
  “Yes.” He sounded tired and frustrated. “If you have any worries about continuing your tests, then stop. I’ll tell Simpson he can wait.”

  Stop the analysis! A voice said in her mind. Quit fucking with this stuff until you know what’s going on!

  “I’ll think about it, Mike. Let me talk to Jay and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Okay. Just be damned careful. I don’t want anyone else going to the ER tonight.”

  She grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  She heard a beep on Mike’s end. “Fuck. Call me when you guys make a decision. I have another call.”

  “Will do,” Kate said. But the line had already gone dead.

  She swung her head toward the sample delivery spigot. Between the barrel and what had been vacuum-pumped into the pipes, they still had gallons of M2. Gallons. If the oil itself was the cause of the infection, they were sitting next to a goddamned bomb.

  Kate stood from the desk and looked through the glass. In the other lab, Jay stood next to Neil’s bio-chemists. Neil was sitting at a workstation with a microscope. She wondered how long it would be before they knew something. If anything.

  She glanced at the distillation tower and wondered if the oil was cool enough to take a peek. The computer console announced the temperature of the oil. It was only 24°C. She smiled. Time to see what the stuff looked like after it had been heated up.

  *****

  Neil pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up on his aquiline nose and peered into the microscope. Jay stood a few feet back next to Bill Field.

  Just getting the remaining oil off the lid and onto a slide had been a chore. When Jay had brought the sample in and explained to Neil how corrosive it was, the bio-chemist had merely blinked. Neil and Bill, however, hadn’t bothered asking questions. Instead, they appeared welcome for the distraction.

  Neil sat back in the chair and swiveled so he could face them. “I can’t see anything.”

  Jay cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean you can’t see anything?”

  Neil scratched at the remaining hair on his scalp. “Not enough light, maybe. I don’t know. This stuff… Light just seems to fall into it.”

  “And we can’t use an electron microscope,” Bill said.

  One of Neil’s team, Bill was probably the oldest person working at HAL. He had three PhDs and seemed only happy when he was in the lab. Jay had beers with him once or twice a month. In addition to his love of the lab, the old fart was also an incorrigible dirty old man.

  “Why’s that?” Jay asked.

  Bill shrugged. “We need a biological sample. Or something we can freeze. Unless—” Bill’s words trailed off.

  “Unless, we create an emulsion,” Neil said. His smile displayed his crooked, dingy teeth. “We can suspend the oil in water and create a slide the SEM can actually analyze.”

  “Yup, that’ll work,” Bill said. He turned to Jay. “Shouldn’t take us too long to prepare it and fire up the SEM to take a peek.”

  Jay nodded. “Okay. But I want to tell you again how corrosive this stuff is. I know the sample is small, but one drop of this crap ate through a plastic bag.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Neil said. “You really think this will help Marie?”

  Jay shrugged. “I don’t know. But the more information we can send to the hospital, the better off she’ll be.”

  Neil clucked his tongue. “Okay. Mike will have a heart attack. I mean we’re already late on the analysis for the museum. But I think this takes priority.”

  Jay clapped Neil on the shoulder. “Thanks, man. And if there’s any flak from Mike, just send it my way.”

  “Will do,” Neil said. “Give us about an hour,” he wiped at his bloodshot eyes, “and we should have something for you.”

  *****

  When Jay re-entered the lab, Kate was pulling apart the bottom distillation tray. “Don’t!” he yelled at her.

  She flinched and turned to him. “Jesus, Jay. What the hell?”

  He walked to her in quick steps, his mouth set in a grim line. “Look. I just got the lid from the secure area.”

  “So?” She stood up and faced him.

  “There was a drop of M2 on the shelf,” Jay said. He gulped as he remembered the inexplicable fear he’d felt when facing it. “I tried to pick it up with a plastic bag and it melted the plastic.”

  Kate blinked. “What?”

  “Yeah. It melted it.”

  Her eyes tilted toward the ceiling and then flipped to the dispenser station. “Melted?” Kate flipped her eyes back to his. “So what kind of hydrocarbon melts plastic?”

  “Gasoline can melt certain plastics. Toluene, hexane.”

  She nodded. “The lighter hydrocarbons can damage thin plastics. Right. And M2 is damned light.”

  “And,” Jay said, “it might have something else in it. I mean, we haven’t exactly been able to determine what this shit really is.”

  Kate thought for a moment. “Okay. But I want to see what it looks like after the distillation run. We boiled it. Nothing came out. No gas, no particles, nothing. So what happened to it?”

  Jay opened his mouth to reply and then stopped. What did happen to it? Did it break down into other components? Did it still have corrosive properties? A grim smile lit his face. “If we’re going to examine the remains of the distillation, we need to be damned careful. I suggest we get all the safety gear we use for acids and toxic gases.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “You worried M2 turned into sulfuric acid? Or H2S?”

  He nodded. “Why not?”

  “The analyzers didn’t pick up any changes like that.”

  “Why would they?” Jay asked. “If it didn’t actually turn into gas under heat, M2’s molecular structure could have changed into something toxic. Maybe not in a gaseous form, but it’s certainly possible it turned into an acid.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, Jay. We would have seen evidence of the chemical breakdown in the heat signatures.”

  “Exactly,” Jay said. “And how fast did this stuff heat up?”

  Kate thought for a moment. She fingered the distillation table’s metal surface. “Okay. I still think you’re wrong, but let’s do it your way. Regardless, I think we need to run the light test as well as the NMR.”

  “Agreed,” Jay said. “Neil’s team is going to use a scanning electron microscope to analyze the sample I brought back from the secure area.”

  “How soon they going to have results for us?” she asked.

  “He said in less than an hour.”

  Kate’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Jay asked.

  She bit her lip. “I was hopeful we’d have something sooner than that.”

  “You talk to Mike yet?”

  She nodded and raised her eyes. “He was on the phone with Darren when I called. He told Darren about a possible infection from M2. Last I heard, they were nearing the hospital.”

  Jay blew a sigh between his teeth. “Good. Man, I hope she’s going to be okay.”

  “So do I,” Kate said. She turned her gaze back to the distillation tower. “Let’s gear up and see what we can see. We can’t help Marie until we have as much information as possible.”

  “True,” Jay said. He eyed the rack of safety equipment on the wall. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter 4

  The ambulance was screaming through the intersections and passing the sparse vehicles on the Pasadena streets. After Darren told the EMTs that Marie may have been infected by a biological agent, they scrapped their plans to head to the nearest ER. The dispatcher insisted they take their patient to the medical center.

  Ever since Ebola-stricken people had entered the country, major hospitals had been trained in rapidly deploying quarantine protocols. Darren had no idea what that entailed, but the blond EMT had explained it as he hooked up another IV bag.

  Marie was in bad shape. Her skin was so white, it was impossible to tell she’d ever been anything else. Stran
ds of long, kinky hair had fallen out of her head. She looked as though a three-year old had given her a haircut with a pair of pliers.

  “Okay. We’re almost there!” the driver yelled from the ambulance cabin.

  Darren was still holding Marie’s hand. The flesh was so hot, she might as well have been boiling from the inside. The heart monitor hooked up to her chest beeped in an arrhythmic beat. “Stay with me, Marie,” Darren said. He didn’t know if she could hear him, but it made him feel a little better to talk to her. When they first entered the ambulance and started their journey to the ER, he’d felt stupid talking to her. Now, he wondered if his voice would be the last thing she ever heard.

  The heart monitor flatlined for a second and then resumed its stumbling beat. “Hang on, girl,” Darren said.

  The ambulance took a sharp turn. The metal stretcher rattled along with the other gear. “Jesus, man, don’t kill us in getting there!” the blond EMT shouted.

  Darren listed backward and then snapped forward as the vehicle came to a stop. “We’re here!” the driver yelled.

  The doors opened and bright light streamed into the ambulance. Darren blinked as his eyes adjusted. He stifled a surprised yelp when he saw what had opened the doors.

  Three figures, dressed in blue hazmat suits, stood outside the doors. Their faces, full of concern and concentration, stared at the stretcher. The blond EMT groaned. “You fucking kidding me?” he said to no one.

  Two of the hazmat suited figures strode forward and grabbed the stretcher’s edge. They pulled it out of the ambulance and the wheels unfolded as it hit the concrete. The two figures quickly rolled the stretcher out of sight.

  Darren moved to get out of the ambulance, but the remaining hazmat suited figure held up a hand.

  “Mr. Strange?” a woman’s voice said through the helmet.

  Darren nodded. “Yes.”

  The fiftyish woman in the suit frowned at him. “I need to get some information from you before we put you in quarantine.”

  “Fucking quarantine,” the EMT murmured.

  The woman shot him a glaring stare and he immediately shut up. “Are you feeling any symptoms? Fever? Joint pain?”