Pathosis (A Dark Evolution Book 1)

by Jason LaVelle

  “That’s confidential, I can’t discuss the situation in detail until you’ve come in and signed an NDA.” She paused and then added, “I would really appreciate it.”

  “Okay, okay, appeal to my better nature why don’t you. Anything I should know before I come out?”

  The woman cleared her throat again. “These aren’t like any spiders you’ve seen before.”

  Jack chuckled. “Well, there’s no spider I can’t handle.”

  Marc watched the lieutenant warily. She was shaken, and in a foul mood. From the sounds of it, her conversation with “The Spider Man” was frustrating. He knew she was prone to snap whilst in a mood like this, and to be fair, he was as well. This was one of many phone calls the lieutenant had made, each one just as strange as the last.

  “He’ll come out tonight?”

  The lieutenant nodded silently.

  Marc shifted from foot to foot. They were all sweating like crazy from spending hours on the ship in the heavy Kevlar suits. Once they reached the docks, they had stripped out of the suits but they were all drenched. The humidity was 83 percent and the daytime temperature had been 92 degrees. They hadn’t spoken much on the walk back up to her office.

  “Are you all right, staff sergeant?”

  Marc reached behind his shoulder and rubbed his fingers across the sore on the back of his neck.

  “You look… pale.”

  “I think I’m fine, ma’am, just a bite after all,” Marc said. He couldn’t see that he was pale, but he certainly felt clammy. His hands were a little sweaty – but then they had spent the last three and a half hours in a thick Kevlar suit climbing over and between corpses, so his clothes – a gray t-shirt and blue trousers - were damp with sweat. He was uncomfortable all over.

  As his fingers passed over the sore, he could feel the tender raised spot was growing, and it hurt as well. When Marc was young, his stepfather, Nicos, would put out cigarettes on his back. He was a drunken bastard and the cigarettes hurt like crazy. They were like hot beestings that left not only a scar on his skin, but on his soul. That’s what the bite felt like now, a burning sting that was worsening, deepening. When the bite happened, the pain wasn’t so bad – not right away. Marc shivered involuntarily as he remembered seeing the arachnid that bit him for the first time.

  The team was on the ship, coming down from the bridge on the top level of the superstructure. Lieutenant Brisbane was carrying the ship’s log, a battered yellow journal documenting the ship’s movements and stops on its last journey. There were no bodies in the wheelhouse, thankfully, and Marc would have preferred just to stay there, but the lieutenant insisted that they continue their inspection.

  Sweat rolled down his back under the heavy suit, but he led his team down the stairs into the bowels of the mid-sized ship. There were many doorways, crew quarters and offices equipped with phones, computers, a long bank of microscopes on one wall, including a large SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope). Most of these rooms received a cursory glance as they made their way through.

  It seemed that the majority of the bloodshed had happened up on deck, though here and there Marc saw a bloody streak on the steel walls. Someone who had tried to escape the massacre, perhaps. Marc didn’t dare to hope there were any survivors. It was when walking through the hallway that Ian, a private, commented on the spider webs. Marc paused a moment to observe. The deck of the ship had a ton of large webs on it, but that wasn’t unusual. Spiders loved the water, that’s where their prey items were found. Now, as Marc looked, he saw that throughout the offices, there were thick sticky webs spun over the phones and hanging down from the walls. He shrugged. Whatever.

  As they came to the end of the long hallway, the corridor turned and led down to another level. This is where any cargo bays, large lab rooms, or moon pools might be housed.

  “Oh God,” Marc groaned as he descended the last step. The lights were still on down here, sort of. There were long rows of metal halide bulbs hanging from the ceiling over a spacious room in front of him. They were emitting a dim orange half-light, as if it was just before dusk perpetually.

  “The ship’s batteries are wearing down,” he thought aloud.

  The room itself was perhaps one hundred feet in length, almost the overall length of the ship itself. It was an enormous laboratory. It was perhaps thirty feet wide, and against the walls were stacked rows of clear plastic cages. At least they looked like cages. They were each big enough to house a large dog. As Marc led his crew into the lab, he heard the lieutenant behind him.

  “Do not touch anything.”

  Her voice was short, the words staccato. She sounded frightened or nervous. In truth, so was he. The clear cages were not all occupied, not even close. The ones that were occupied held strange creatures – all dead. The same silky webs covered most of the surfaces down here also.

  Marc felt cold shivers run up and down his spine as he walked, trying not to look into the cages. Some of them held the limp bodies of exotic birds, others looked like reptiles. Death was quiet and clean in the cages – some of the cages. Others, others were coated with smeared and spattered blood. The bodies inside, be they furry or scaled, were torn asunder, reduced to bits and mutilated pieces.

  There was a hurried noise behind him and Marc and Emily turned to see Ian whip his face respirator off and vomit on the floor. It made a thick splattering sound as it hit the sticky gray tile underfoot. That tile was drizzled with different unknown congealed fluids. In the center of the room were long counters and desks. They had a variety of glassware on them – beakers, test tubes, vials, and jars. Many of them were broken – their contents making up most of the mess on the floor.

  “Get that respirator back on, now!” the lieutenant yelled at Ian. He could not, though, for the retching did not stop after the first bout of vomit. The rest of the group watched in an awkward silence as Ian puked in front of them. Finally, he finished. After several heaving breaths he spoke.

  “I – I’m sorry. I’ve never seen anything like this. It was all I could do to hold it together up on the deck. I just can’t take any more of this.”

  It was difficult to read the lieutenant’s face through the ebb and flow of fog in her respirator facemask.

  “You are dismissed, private.”

  “Yes ma’am, thank you ma’am.”

  “Anyone else?” the lieutenant’s stern voice rose.

  Marc listened to the commotion but continued to study the room. He approached the macabre line of clear cages. He was trying to understand, trying to make some sense of – everything. What on earth happened on this ship? There were too many unanswered questions. He was lost in thought when a slight movement from above his head drew his attention.

  Marc looked up then startled. He first saw its eyes. Six perfectly round eyes in a semicircle atop a hairy face. The eyes were a glassy black and were fixed intently on him. He saw the chelicerae in the front of its hairy face, they were moving in and out, as if contemplating eating a meal. At the end of each of the furry chelicerae was a shiny black fang. The fangs were long, at least a half inch each, and a chill erupted through Marc. He took a little step backward when he saw the front two legs begin to twitch.

  When Marc had backed up five feet from the spider, he spoke.

  “Lieutenant, there’s a big spider over here.” Marc sighed inwardly as soon as he said it, he knew it sounded stupid and wimpy.

  “Is that a priority, petty officer?”

  “Well,” Marc said, “it could be.”

  For as he watched, and he couldn’t really be sure if it was his imagination or not, Marc thought he could see tiny, hairy movements of arachnids all around them, and then he started to think of all the cobwebs he saw throughout the ship.

  “Jesus, that is a nasty looking spider.” The Lieutenant had walked up next to him, and now sh
e peered up at the large arachnid.

  It was orange and black – covered with bristling coarse hair. It was not quite as large as the giant South American tarantulas; but this spider was five inches in diameter, about the size of a man’s palm – sans fingers. Though its body was covered with hair, the spider’s legs weren’t thick and meaty, and it did not look slow. The legs were slender and bent at acute angles. He watched them tremble slightly, and Marc got the impression that those angular legs could propel the nasty looking beast at great speeds.

  Marc’s breath was loud in his respirator and he was unable to break away from the large spider’s predatory stare. He had decided that yes, it was definitely a predatory stare, there was no fear in those glassy eyes. Then, noiselessly, the arachnid dipped down and disappeared. Marc watched for a moment longer and then started feeling very silly. He glanced over at the lieutenant, who was watching him curiously.

  Trying to act nonchalant, Marc shrugged his shoulders. He then sighed, further fogging his respirator mask, and turned away from the line of cages, pulling the respirator off his head as he did so, to wipe off the fog on the inside. With his back turned, Marc didn’t see the spider reemerge, didn’t see it crouch down low, then force all of its body’s blood into its legs causing them to flex out violently, propelling the spider 4 feet through the air.

  Marc heard the sharp intake of breath from the lieutenant beside him, and then felt the spider land on his back. Marc shouted in surprise then flailed his arms back behind him to try to smack the spider off. With his respirator off, Marc’s head, face, and neck were exposed.

  “Get it off him!” a male voice shouted. Then, “It’s going for his head.”

  Marc was having a near all-out panic attack now. He had no idea how arachnophobic he was until this creature leapt onto him.

  “Hold still, Marc, so we can get it off you!”

  Marc wasn’t listening; he was twirling around, flapping his arms, his head whipping quickly from side to side. Then the spider bit him. It was like a shot of acid directly below the base of his skull, just below his hairline on the back of his neck.

  “Argh!” he cried out, and then his twirling trajectory sent him careening into the line of large glass cages. His head hit the tempered glass first, and then Marc saw only black. When he came to minutes later, he hoped he had just had a terrible dream, but there were two people in Kevlar suits with respirators pulling him to his feet. His neck and head were throbbing with pain. As he stood and things came into focus, he saw the lieutenant’s face in front of him.

  She was examining him and pulled one of his eyelids up. “His pupils look dilated to me. Let’s abort for now and get him seen by a med tech.”

  “And call an exterminator,” the seaman added.

  “Seaman,” she said, “that’s an excellent idea.”

  Even as he was guided out of the macabre laboratory, Marc thought he could feel hundreds, if not thousands, of cold black eyes watching him.

  Chapter 3

  Kala Wolfgang looked at the dish, a 9x13 glass baking dish that was encrusted with cheese and filled with a sludgy mixture of chicken, rice and some type of creamy soup mix – probably cream of mushroom. Disgusting.

  “Mom, I can’t eat this.”

  Marti Wolfgang was a slightly plump woman of fifty. She was generally a happy person, working as a paralegal during the day, then cooking and caring for her family in the evenings. She turned from the kitchen doorway to swoop back toward the table. Kala’s brother, Luke, looked nervous.

  “Look here, little miss bossy. This has no gluten and no pasta, just like you tell me you need. It doesn’t have eggs in it, and no nuts either. I didn’t put any onions in it, nor did I use olive oil while making it. I bend over backwards, frontwards and sideways to accommodate you,” her voice was growing louder, “and all you do is complain about it. So you can – and you WILL eat this casserole, because until you’re eighteen, you will do what I say!”

  “Ugh, God, Mom, I was just kidding!” Kala huffed at her, shook her head in disgust, and slopped a small spoonful of chicken mush onto her plate. Why does she have to be so bossy about everything?

  Her mother stalked back toward the kitchen, clenching and unclenching her fists as she went.

  The phone started ringing.

  “Kala, grab that, please,” her mother called to her.

  “God, you just told me to eat this!”

  Her mother didn’t turn or speak but stopped and stood still with her back to Kala, who huffed again and stood up from the table, making sure to bump her plate so that it would make a loud clattering noise. She reached the phone mounted to the beige wall and popped it off the receiver.

  “Wolfgang residence,” she said without much enthusiasm. She wished she could ditch the Wolfgang household and move in with her friend, Autumn. Autumn’s parents let her stay up every night as long as she wanted, and she wasn’t lectured if she got a B on a test.

  “Well, hello my little darling,” a deep but jovial voice said.

  A tiny smile crept up on Kala’s smooth face. She unconsciously brushed a small lock of hair away from her face. “Hey Daddy, how are you?”

  Kala heard her mother give a snort from the kitchen and silently stuck her tongue out at her.

  “I’m fine, Kal. I miss you guys, though.”

  “Yeah,” Kala said, looking at her brother sitting quietly at the dinner table. “We all miss you, too.” Then, she added in a whisper, “Mom’s driving me crazy!”

  Her dad chuckled, “I have a feeling you’re probably doing the same to her, huh?”

  Kala rolled her eyes and tilted her head up. “Ugh, well, maybe, I guess so.”

  “Ha, that’s what I thought. Listen honey, I need to talk to your mom.”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “But Kal, please try to get along with her. You and your mom are a lot more alike than you know.”

  “Whatever, Dad. Mom, Dad’s on the phone!” she yelled.

  As her mom walked up and held her hand out for the phone, Kala gave her the best fake smile she could, then went back to the table.

  Luke was looking at her with his six-year-old eyebrows raised. She reached out and squeezed his arm, which elicited a small, comforted smile from him. Luke was a special boy, all sweetness. That was definitely not Kala. She never intended to be bitchy, it just sometimes happened, especially with her mom.

  Kala sighed and spoke quietly to Luke.

  “I’m going to have to apologize to her later, aren’t I?”

  Luke nodded, causing his light brown hair to sway shaggily on top of his head.

  “Are you going to look at stuff through the microscope tonight?” Luke’s warm, high-pitched voice asked her hopefully.

  She pretended to ignore him for a moment, then, glanced at him sideways and grinned.

  “Maaaybe.”

  “Please, Kal!”

  He was too old for whining but his little voice was just so darn cute, and even more so when he unconsciously batted his long eyelashes at her. “I’ll think about it. What would we look at tonight?”

  Luke put his elbows on the table then cradled his small head in his palms. Moments later, his eyes lit up.

  “Frog blood!”

  Kala chuckled, shaking her head slightly. Most fifteen-year-old girls would be grossed out by the thought of handling a frog, let alone its blood, but Kala was a closet science junkie. She wore the nicest threads, toted the right backpack, and always had a banging hot pair of shoes for any outfit. Entering her bedroom, though, her lair as she liked to call it, one would have never guessed she even attempted to be a girly girl at school.

  Covering the walls of her generous bedroom (thanks to more than a little whining, bargaining and stomping her feet) were several pictures of the great scientific
minds of the last 100 years, the periodic table of elements, and one very large framed collection of arthropods her father had helped her to collect. She had a six-foot long worktable with a four-foot fluorescent work light hanging above it. On the table were two scopes. One was a run-of-the-mill department store model, the other was her prized possession, a 40 – 2500x EmScope Biological Binocular Microscope. Her father had bartered his pest control services with a local community college to acquire the used equipment. It was a compound scope with dual lights and eight magnification settings.

  She had stacks of slides that she had put together herself, everything from human hair follicles and cross sections of grass to smears of earwax and thin gobs of snot. She was enchanted by the microscopic world. The nano-verse, as she called it, was fascinating. Even the human body, which seems so solid and strong is an intricate and delicately balanced structure of tiny particles so small that they cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The nano-verse mirrors the greater earth in every way, with friendly bacteria that eat plant matter, larger bacteria or amoeba that prey on the plant eaters, and blood cells within our bodies that attack and destroy the bacteria. Even more deadly predators are viruses, creatures so mysterious that science hasn’t even classified them as living or dead, but these tiny pieces of protein, a fraction of the size of a blood cell, can infiltrate and destroy a human body in a matter of days or years. Fascinating.

  “Well, there’s a problem with that idea, isn’t there, Lukie?”

  “What, what is it?” he cried.

  “Figure it out on your own, Luke.”

  “Come on, just tell me!”

  “No, you need to learn to figure this stuff out on your own. Besides, it’s easy. What do we need so we can look at a frog’s blood?”

  “The microscope?”

  Kala sighed and shook her head.

  “A frog?”