Pathosis (A Dark Evolution Book 1)

by Jason LaVelle

  Before he or the camerawoman behind him could react, the large, lightly striped shark had swung her snout into him and clamped multiple rows of serrated teeth into his upper arm. The pain must have been horrific, but then it got even worse. With a single, sharp shake, the tiger sheared Jeromé’s arm completely off his body. The shark did not make a big fuss out of it. With his arm in her mouth, the tiger seemed to look right at him, making eye contact, and then proceeded to swim lazily away with the arm.

  As you might expect, there was a bit of a panic. We were only in 10 feet of warm, blue water, but that’s plenty to kill a man. Jeromé wasn’t moving toward the surface. He was staring down at his missing limb, presumably in a state of shock. Dark blood leaked out of his shoulder where his arm had been separated. In only moments, the sea around him was pink, a wakeup call to any other predators in the area. Jeromé started screaming (this is a problem in scuba gear).

  The camerawoman was torn between filming this exciting, once-in-a-lifetime attack and going to help him, but when Jeromé’s regulator popped out of his mouth while he was screaming, she decided he needed her. She dropped the camera, letting the heavy set-up catch on the tether attached to her waist. She grabbed the floundering, bleeding man and dragged him to the surface.

  I was on deck when they dragged him aboard. He was screaming, bleeding and vomiting all over the place. What a mess! Two minutes later, he bled to death on the fore deck of the ship. Good thing I got paid in advance, huh? Never did see the footage of the attack, though I’m sure it was pretty incredible. I figure they used it for some Shark Week program or something. Other than Jeromé’s death, I thought it was a nice trip.

  This crew is much different. They aren’t action junkies like those crazy shark hunters. These kids are lab rats, though some of the strangest I’ve ever seen. As per my contract, I hired an engineer and first mate for the charter, which is to last a month. The engineer is an ugly Scandinavian brute named Andi. I’ve worked with him several times now. Although I have a feeling that the man hates me (I actually can’t understand a damn word he’s saying), he’s a competent fellow who can wrench on anything from an engine to an oven. When the shit hits the fan on a ship, that’s the type of man you want around.

  My first mate, Jens, is a forty-year-old bar brawler. He drinks hard and loses his sense. He’s had a few teeth knocked out for his troubles, too. Not while he’s on the clock, though. I can’t captain a thirty-day charter on my own. I need to sleep, eat and plan. For that reason, Jens will sit in the captain’s chair part time. I just have to keep him off the booze. Oh, I almost forgot, he’s had a few problems with women, too.

  “We’re on a research mission!” That’s what the young scientists in my care say. They are so young. They look like I did forty years ago. That is, if I were smart, funny and wealthy. I never had the little social niceties that make someone popular or even very enjoyable to be around. I do think that only one of them is really wealthy. It’s the Arabic one, or maybe he’s Indian, I really don’t know, in any case he’s a pleasant enough young man named Raj. These young scientists (researchers?) are all idealists. That’s not a bad thing, except they’re probably all democrats, too. Not that I even vote anymore, but come on, stupid is stupid!

  “As long as the check cashes, I don’t care.” That’s what I always used to say. Nowadays I don’t need the checks as much - I just need a purpose.

  In any case, this is a nice group of kids. I like them very much, especially the bearded one with the giant black Maori tattoos on his shiny bald head. None of these kids are in too much of a rush, and they aren’t demanding at all. In fact, they seem to be a gracious bunch. Two of the guys seem to be a tad bit more on the macho side than the rest, but overall they were still hippies to me.

  After leaving Port Charlotte this morning at 0600, the scientists settled into their lounge-style cafeteria, drinking fair-trade coffee and eating Dutch biscuits. Outstanding! No, really, they brought some up to me on the fly bridge and they were fantastic!

  I had a little chat with Mr. Beard this morning. He’s an interesting fellow, and actually named Kuma. He filled me in on some of their plan for Isla Perdida. It’s a tiny island in the Canarreos Archipelago. The archipelago is a wide swath of small islands just South of Cuba. He and his colleagues are concerned with some animals there. Honestly, I don’t remember anything else he said because some jerk in a sixty-foot yacht cut me off just outside the bay.

  There was a lot of traffic coming out of the harbor. Now that we’re clear of Boca Grande, most of the locals have faded away and we’ve finally got room to start steaming along. For the past hour, the Darwin has been cruising at a brisk 18 knots. The engines were recently rebuilt on this old fishing boat. That took place at the same time as the hull retrofit, which changed the ship from a drop side fishing vessel to a sleek (almost) research ship, complete with a large lower level to accommodate the laboratory and lounge. Quite a step up from the usual utilitarian kitchen and bunkroom most of these old ships sported.

  So, we’re on day one of a thirty-day charter and I already want a drink. It’s only been five hours. How am I going to get through this?

  Mr. Beard came up (I like that name better than Kuma), shared another cup of coffee with me, and then left. The way his voice occasionally quakes and his hands tremble just a bit makes me think that he may also be an alcoholic. Too bad, he seems so young to be an addict already. Then again, at that age, so was I. Next time we talk, I’m going to ask him what the hell is up with his beard. I don’t feel like a man should need to take more than thirty seconds to brush his facial hair. Even I have a beard. It’s white, about an inch long, and keeps my face from getting chapped in the wind. At the length of his, at least a foot, it just seems like it would get in the way. What the hell does he do with it when he’s, you know, “with” a woman? Guess I’ll ask him that as well.

  I did ask him again why we’re going to Isla Perdida. Being uninhabited by humans, it’s not a common place to stop. The island is full of animals, though. The reason we’re going is geckos. No, lizards. Giant lizards are all over the island. Well, they were all over the island. According to the environmental agency of Cuba, which controls everything that happens in the archipelago of islands to its south and has been studying the island from a distance, most of the island’s population of large lizards has disappeared.

  Good riddance if you ask me. I’ve got no love for reptiles. My brother and I caught a large painted turtle when we were just boys. We were swimming in the shallows of a lake when we came across it. The turtle was about ten inches in diameter, which was huge to us, but you can’t really trust a memory that old. Anyhow, I was sitting down on the deck holding the thing and I put it down on my lap. Well sure as shit, that turtle reached out its nasty reptilian head and snapped down on my pecker, right through my bathing suit! Can you believe that? Goddam thing had been a snapper all along.

  I stayed out of the lake for a few days after that. I still have a very strange scar, too. So, the lizards on the island are dying, and these kids want to know why. I think there’s probably more to it than that, myself. They spend a lot of time studying satellite maps, and I saw they had a few areas circled on them. Not that I care a whole hell of a lot. A job is a job.

  Emily set the journal down and folded her long hands on top of it. The man who had written it (she pictured the Gorton’s fisherman) was an interesting guy. He had a very personable voice, as if he were sitting next to her and telling the story. He was, however, very long-winded. Though Emily was enjoying the old man’s small talk, she had a job to do and wanted to get to the meat of what went down aboard the Darwin.

  It was time to go home, but before she did, Emily made a decision that would alter the course of history forever. Instead of placing the notebook inside the manila envelope she had prepared for the FBI field agents, Emily slipped the captain’s journal into a nondes
cript black bag that she slung over her shoulder. As she stepped out into the black warmth of night, she heard sirens in the distance. Sirens were never far in Miami, and Emily walked to her car without giving them a second thought. She was determined to get through the journal that night, before she was forced to turn it over to the FBI the next morning.

  Emily had no idea that she would never make it in to work the next day.

  As Emily was exiting her office, something else close by was also exiting. In the bowels of the deserted Darwin, sharp spindly legs crept forward. When the exterminator left earlier that day, he had not secured the door to the lower decks, and now it was slightly ajar. Six hundred eighty-eight long, black, jointed legs crept through the doorway that night, and a species that had never before been off its island crossed over onto the North American mainland. They didn’t communicate using sound. Their mouthpieces were designed for only one thing, killing prey. As they moved, following each other via a trail of pheromones that they smelled using the tiny receptors on their feet, they literally tiptoed around the areas of insecticide that the Spiderman had haphazardly left all over the deck.

  Then, the palm-sized arachnids were up over the gunwales and shimmying across the guy lines that secured the large vessel to the stout wooden dock. The smells here were all different. Some new, some dangerous, some delectable. The spiders moved en force over the docks, a light wind rustling the hairs on their fat abdomens.

  They were heading for land, heading for the outskirts of a dark city that lie waiting, open, unprotected. If they could feel an emotion, it would be eagerness. And hunger, for they were always hungry, always hunting, their jet black eyes always looking for prey. This would be a great new world.

  The spiders spread out like roaches as they left the docks. Some of them headed into a wooded lot nearby. Some walked out onto First Street, where they were not destined to live long. A few of the hairy arachnids crept up the tires of parked cars close by. One specimen, a female, only about three inches across, stretched its thin legs out to the black rubber tire of a small blue Toyota. The license plate read “LtsCar.”

  Spiders can’t read of course, and wouldn’t care if they could. Someone would care, though, and soon, for she was walking out to her car at around the same time the orange and black spider was squeezing in through a partially opened window. For one, a new beginning. For another, the end.

  Chapter 6

  Marc wasn’t doing so well. It was only seven in the evening, and he was exhausted. After his encounter with the spider on board the Darwin, he had gone to the lieutenant’s office for a meeting, after which she sent him home early. He told her he could tough it out, but then he had a dizzy spell right in her office. She promptly ordered him to report to the medical office then to return home.

  The physician’s assistant told him he was dehydrated. He also gave Marc some antihistamines just in case he was having an allergic reaction to the spider bite.

  “Since we don’t know the identity of the spider right now, there’s no telling what toxicity its venom holds and what possible histamines could be reacting at the envenomation site.”

  That sounded reasonable. The physician’s assistant also gave Marc an injection of antibiotics and put a topical ointment on the spider bite on his neck. It had become angry-looking and was now bright red. He felt flushed and the area felt like it was being pricked with a thousand little needles. It was hard for Marc to keep his hands off it because he felt like if he itched the bite, broke it open maybe, the pain would go away, like popping a pimple.

  Marc had no way of knowing that the painful bite held so much more than a little painful spider venom. No one could have known, not Marc or any of those to follow. The demon was already in him, swimming happily through his bloodstream, being pushed by the right ventricle up through the carotid artery and toward his brain.

  Now he leaned against the kitchen counter. The fluorescent overhead was too bright and Marc was feeling dizzy. He had gotten through dinner – barely. The creamy green bean casserole was rolling uncomfortably in his stomach. He was willing the nausea into submission, or trying to anyway. He told his wife what had happened and dismissed it as a little thing, nothing to be worried about. He didn’t know if she bought it or not. She kissed him on his clammy cheek, frowning slightly as she did so, and then left him to himself.

  Marc could hear her and Abigail talking in the living room, about him. He couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, and straining to hear made the nausea worse. Abigail was his wife’s fifteen-year-old younger sister. Her parents were on a whale-watching trip in Alaska, so his wife, Mariah, had volunteered to let Abigail stay with them for the ten days they would be gone. Not that he minded, Abigail was a nice enough girl. She was pretty and dark-skinned like Mariah. She had a quick wit, but a sharp tongue – also like his wife. He wished they would stop talking about him - it was rude. All he wanted to do was have a peaceful night after a hard, hot, strange day at work.

  Marc turned around and opened the freezer. His head felt extremely hot so he leaned into the partially empty box. The cold air circled about his head in nearly tangible waves, cooling his burning ears but not the heat that seemed to come from within him. He grabbed two handfuls of ice out of the half-gallon-sized bucket and pressed them against his bare skin. The ice started melting against his cheeks immediately, and soon there were rivulets of water running down his face and neck. His vision was getting blurry. He tried to blink the blur away, but whenever his eyes closed, it felt like they were slamming in his brain with a loud audible thump. His head felt so hot, but nothing topical was helping.

  Marc’s brain felt like it was on fire. He pulled his head back out of the freezer, and a bunch of stuff fell out and clattered to the floor. He put his hands up to his skull and squeezed, trying to, he didn’t know, relieve the pain, or maybe reduce the heat.

  “Marc,” his wife’s voice came rolling through the house. “What was that? Did you drop something?”

  Marc shook his head. He could not answer. His head was thudding hard in his skull. He could see, but every time his head pounded, his vision blurred a little before coming back. He tried to respond to Mariah.

  “I’m fine!” is what he attempted to say, but what he actually did was shout something more like, “Iare raaght!”

  His own voice was so loud in his head, and the girls’ voices sounded even louder. They were still talking about him, and although he still could not make out their words, he was becoming angry. His fists clenched and unclenched so tightly that he felt his knuckles popping under the pressure. He slammed a fist on the counter and a piece of the Saltino tile broke away from the countertop and clattered loudly onto the floor.

  “Argh!” Marc was trying to yell, but it came out as more of a growl. The beating, screeching pain in his head reached a crescendo and his back spasmed. He arched backwards, his head snapping back and over down past his shoulder blades, like a contortionist limbo contestant. His back jerked several more times and Marc’s body slammed into the tall cupboards that encircled his modest kitchen.

  Then something broke in him. All he could feel was blinding pain at the base of his skull. All he could hear was a loud buzzing noise. His back stopped spasming and Marc stood still, stooped over. His hands were clenched into white fists, which would soon begin to bleed.

  When his eyes opened at last – they had slammed shut during the seizure - they were bloodshot and unfocused. Marc felt angry, very angry. It wasn’t an anger any human person could understand, because it was undirected and unabashed anger. His body began to shake with the ferocious energy that was pouring through him, seeming to come out of nowhere. It was an all-encompassing, wild, feral, rage. Just then, Mariah walked around the corner.

  Mariah Velez was a slight woman of only nineteen. She and Marc were married very young (too young, her mother would say) at only seventeen. It wa
s true love. As high school sweethearts, they attended many dances together. Then, after prom, Marc professed his undying love for her. Mariah was a desperate romantic and pleaded for her mother’s permission to marry the young Puerto Rican man.

  Now she left her sister Abigail in the living room to find out what was going on with him. Marc was usually so mild and easy-going, but since he came home today he’d been standoffish. He had lied to her about not feeling well (that was obvious) and it sounded like he was breaking all sorts of stuff in the kitchen.

  Her sister eyed her curiously as she got up.

  “Just stay in here,” she told her. “I’m going to go put him to bed, okay?”

  Abigail nodded. She wasn’t worried. Uncle Marc was a super nice guy. He was cute, respectful to her parents, and even let her try a sip of his beer one day. He was a perfect cool uncle.

  “Just don’t forget I’m out here while you’re ‘putting’ him in bed.”

  “Abbie, really, inappropriate.”

  “Whatever.”

  Five seconds later she heard Mariah scream.

  “Marc, ahh!”

  When Abbie saw Mariah try to dash away from the kitchen, she was immediately in motion. She sprung off the couch and ran toward the hallway where Mariah just ran, only to be cut off and jostled out of the way by Marc, who was in pursuit. He slammed into Abbie as he ran after his wife, sending her crashing into an old wooden piano at the corner of the living room and hallway. Abbie pulled herself to her feet in time to see Marc catch Mariah.

  It was awful; it was sickening. Nothing happened in slow motion. In fact, the speed and brutality of the attack was almost too much and too fast for her to follow. Mariah looked over her shoulder as she ran, terrified, down the hallway. As she did, Marc’s long, tanned arm shot out and caught her by the back of her hair. She let out a short scream that was cut off by a gruesome guttural growl from Marc. There was no civility and no made-for-TV censorship in what followed. Marc pulled the flailing Mariah to him, repositioned his hand so that it was behind her neck, and then slammed her face into the hallway wall.