Trainer switched on his light and found Dobbs. Without his buoyancy compensator vest, he floated near the bottom of the cave. His eyes were wide in shock, not at his recent expiration, but that Trainer had returned. Trainer dove over and offered him his old regulator. His desire for oxygen overwhelming the need for explanation, Dobbs took a deep swig of air. Trainer quickly turned and swept his flashlight towards the origin of the other light. It grew brighter until a large man in scuba gear swam gracefully into the chamber. Trainer immediately recognized him by his trim beard and confident eyes as diving tour instructor Danny Riggs. He had five fresh air tanks trailing him.
As Trainer and Dobbs dumped their old tanks and fitted their regulators into the new ones, Riggs scribbled on his dive slate, “You headed this way when comm went out. You couldn’t make it in time.”
Trainer gave him a thumbs up. When it became clear they wouldn’t have enough air to reach the nearest exit, Riggs took it upon himself to save them. Having seen the soul-shaken look on the man’s face after his encounter with the mutant, Trainer couldn’t believe he’d dare venture into these dark waters again. Shame pulled at the scientist’s heart as he knew he could never be so selfless.
After probing every corner of the chamber with his flashlight, Riggs wrote out a question: “Where others?”
Dobbs solemnly shook his head. Riggs swept his light through the cave again, this time with a shaky wrist. Trainer figured he’d brought five spare air tanks because he’d expected more of them. Imagine what he thought when he realized that four men weren’t coming back, and then saw Dobbs’ injuries. Riggs didn’t need to ask what happened. His intimidated sideways glance showed he understood. Riggs spun his finger in a circle, signaling for them to wrap it up so they could move.
Eyeing the two used air tank on the bottom of the cave, Trainer itched to scoop them up and drag them with him to the surface so they wouldn’t pollute the sensitive habitat. He glanced at the dark opening through which they’d left Pierre. Trainer didn’t have to imagine what lurked deeper inside, or the sounds his body would make if its hooks caught him. Better not have anything weighing him down on the swim topside. The longer he stayed in these caves, the more likely they would become his tomb.
Having traveled this way dozens of times, Riggs led them, with the hobbled Dobbs in the middle and Trainer in the rear. Riggs gave him his personal spear gun for protection, but it couldn’t bag anything larger than a bass. Every so often, Trainer ducked his head and turned his flashlight for a glimpse of the water behind him, expecting to find that vicious face. The glorified fishing line wouldn’t restrain that monster for long. He hoped for a miracle beyond all miracles, to see a victorious Pierre emerging from the black soup, perhaps surviving on the tank of one of his fallen men. Seeing neither of them, he felt both relief and heartache.
They followed a yellow dive line until it disappeared into a small hole, like the fleeing rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Approaching closer, Trainer estimated it was barely big enough for them to enter. They floated through the narrow space carefully, mindful of not kicking the loose rocks and causing a cave in. He’d had enough of those for one day. The ascending passage had chunks of rock strewn about, like they’d tumbled down from above. Trainer couldn’t believe his eyes. A tree branch, the first sign of native life he’d seen in so long. He thought he’d never see a tree, or breathe in the fresh oxygen produced by their leaves, again.
Up ahead, he spotted a faint blue glow. Natural light. With a newfound burst of energy, Trainer paddled toward it. His hand whacked into Dobbs’ flipper, most unfortunately, the one on his injured leg. The SEAL grunted, but nothing would slow his race for daylight. The men squeezed through the tunnel and emerged into the sinkhole, no wider than the typical swimming pool, though more than 30 feet deep.
Not taking his time admiring the tree roots and leave-covered rocks of Olsen Sink, Trainer propelled towards the surface. Something seized his ankle, yanking him back down. He whirled around, hoping to catch the mutant in the eye with the spear gun. He found Riggs with a firm grip on him. Dobbs, even with blood seeping from two wounds, wasn’t going anywhere either. The SEAL scrawled a message on his dive slate: “Decom.”
Damn terrible time for a decompression delay, but nearly unavoidable. Trainer’s haste to escape had nearly given him a case of the bends. He’d been more than 50 feet deep for so long that his body had absorbed too much nitrogen. Surface too fast and that gas would bubble, damaging his soft tissue. To avoid this, he had to wait a few minutes and ascend gradually so the gas in his body could decompress.
Trainer tried focusing on the sunlight filtering through the surface of the water. A frog paddled along with its four webbed feet and tadpoles clustered around the tree roots. Yet an anchor of dread tugged at Trainer, pulling his mind below where the monster hunted down in the caves. If Pierre had killed it, he would have said something by now. The mutant wouldn’t let Trainer leave, especially after he sliced off its tendril. He couldn’t wait there staring at the blissful sunlight waiting for it to fillet him.
Trainer’s attention shifted down to the cave opening. It lingered like an all-black eye at the bottom of the sinkhole. The creature could be there right now watching them from the darkness, a second away from wrapping its tendrils around their feet and dragging them below. Was risking that worse than suffering excruciating joint pain, seizures, hearing loss and vertigo?
After a bit, the Lagoon Watcher faced Riggs and tapped on his watch. The dive instructor shook his head. He checked the cave. The sunlight from above reflected off the whites of a pair of eyes. His heart caught in his throat, Trainer fumbled for his flashlight. It illuminated the face of Lieutenant Louis Pierre. The SEAL had survived. Trainer swept down and offered him his hand. The man didn’t look directly at him. Was he distracted by something? As Trainer approached, he saw it, a deep gash on the side of Pierre’s neck. His body hung stiffly.
Trainer pumped his legs and shot upward. He smacked Riggs on the way by, hoping he’d understand they needed to get the hell out of there. Something black shot past him. Pierre’s severed upper torso had been jettisoned from the mouth of the cave like a cork, with a crimson mist of blood behind it. His remains floated on the surface, arms wide and entrails dangling. He heard the sharp tendrils digging through the rocks below. By the way it had followed them through the caverns, he knew it would reach him soon.
Kicking off the rocks, Trainer heaved his body upward. His fingers dug into the dirt and leaves on the shoreline. They wouldn’t give him much leverage if the mutant decided to play tug of war with him. He spit out his regulator and sampled the fresh air. Damn, that never tasted so good. Before he could leave, he heard a big splash behind him. Riggs and Dobbs had surfaced together. Trainer delayed his escape and helped the diving instructor lug the injured SEAL towards the shore. Dobbs seized a firm grip of the tree roots with his good hand and hoisted himself on land.
A fourth figure lifted its oily head from the sinkhole. Daylight didn’t make it any prettier. Trainer and Riggs were a few feet from land’s edge, but not close enough. It raised two spines full of meat-rending hooks behind them. Wishing he’d have left the water faster, Trainer closed his eyes and pictured his son’s face from that chilly night fourteen years ago.
A gunshot rang out. The bullet cut harmlessly into the water, yet the mutant recoiled. It quickly disappeared down the sinkhole.
“That’s right, get out of here!” shouted NASA astrobiologist, and closet badass, Leonard Ho, as he ran over with a pistol in hand.
Trainer thought the only time Ho got his hands dirty was when the printer malfunctioned. He couldn’t imagine he’d lift a finger to save the life of a man who’d been a first-class asshole to him.
“Normally I’d chew out a civilian who handled, much less fired, a service weapon,” Dobbs said as Trainer and Dobbs finally set foot on the forest floor. “But I’ll let it slide this time.”
“You need an ambulance,” Ho said. “I’ll
call 911.”
“We need to call every soldier we got on that bastard,” the SEAL said. “I got lucky. My team…” He stared at Pierre’s waterlogged body with a pained expression of guilt. “They fought hard defending their country.”
Trainer patted Riggs on the shoulder as he caught his breath. “And this man showed incredible courage coming for us. You knew what’s down there. After seeing it, I don’t think I can ever go back.”
“I wish I could have done more.” The diving instructor shook his head and bit his lips in remorse. “I should have brought more weapons, or at least set up an armed welcoming committee topside. What your little NASA friend did was completely unplanned.”
“What? I thought you were more by the book than a space shuttle control manual,” Trainer told Ho.
“I’m NASA. I must take drastic action to protect our most valuable assets,” Ho said.
“Of course, like me.” Trainer smiled at Ho for the first time ever.
“No, not like you,” Ho replied. “More like whatever samples of alien activity you found down there. Because if you didn’t return, the next best qualified scientist to send was me.”
42
The giggling college girls couldn’t keep their eyes off Aaron. A Chinese chick with blue streaks in her hair and a Latina with a pixie cut exchanged whispers as they watched Aaron from across the lab of El Paso State University’s Pathobiology Research Institute. Months ago, hot items like these two would give him whiplash staring back. Now, they were like kittens compared to the lioness he’d watched the desert sunrise with. He dwelt on how the orange sunlight reflected off Moni’s longing eyes. Only if he succeeded here, would he see them again.
Aaron turned his attention back to his screen, which displayed a 3D model of the mutated version of thiobacillus bacteria that the alien nanotech produced. Moni’s body contained millions of them – millions of reasons why he couldn’t put his arms around her and draw her close.
He smelled a peach body splash and looked up. The short-haired Hispanic girl hovered over him with a playful grin while her friend stood behind her gawking.
“Just in case you’re curious, I’m a research assistant, not an instructor,” Aaron said. “So flattery won’t get you anywhere.”
“Yeah, I got that. What I want to know is…” She held up her phone. Aaron watched a boxer-clad lunatic corralling a cat in an amusement park. “Is this you?”
“Ah, well.” Aaron’s cheeks flushed red. “There’s a perfectly rational, scientific explanation for that.”
He hoped they wouldn’t require elaboration.
The girls scoffed like he was a drunken frat boy who didn’t belong in a lab with graduate students. He’d gotten that look before, when his professors in Florida assumed he was more about surfing than marine research.
“And that scientific experiment was what, to see how many cats fit down your pants?” the Chinese girl asked.
“Of course not,” he replied. “To figure that, all I had to do was take the volume of space inside my jeans and divide it by the size of the average cat. That wouldn’t have required getting almost naked in front of small children.”
“So you got naked in front of kids because?” Their faces went from amusement to revulsion as the long-haired girl finished him off. “Perv. Didn’t they give you a background check?”
Aaron broke off eye contact with them. They kept on yapping about him until Aaron threw his hands up. He grabbed his backpack and faced the exit. Aaron couldn’t take one step toward it. If he walked out that door, he couldn’t cure Moni.
“Mind your own business, ladies,” principal investigator Erma Nunez said as she marched into her lab and greeted them with a debilitating glare. “I approved Mr. Hughes’ hiring myself, so if you’ve got a problem with it, come straight to me.”
Avoiding further verbal evisceration, the girls sulked to their workstations heads down. Not a second after Aaron had thanked her, the veteran scientist narrowed her eyes at him.
“So what were you doing in that video anyway? Those aren’t the kind of headlines I want to make in this department.”
Aaron took a deep breath. How could he not tell the most brilliant epidemiologist in the Southwest, that the alien infection was on her doorstep? Her neighbors were at risk. One man had died, yet the government either didn’t know the cause or hid it from the public. If he told her, that would raise the question of how he knew so much. That would put Moni at risk.
“I saw the cat acting all whacked out. I thought it was infected, so I chased it into the park. Things might have gotten a little out of hand. Just a little, you know?” Aaron held his fingers an inch apart and shrugged. He summoned an anguished face. “It’s just that, in my hometown I saw so many people, people who were my friends, taken away. I’ve been chased by snakes, horses, even one mean-ass sea turtle. That cat probably had rabies or something. When it got aggressive I just freaked. I’m embarrassed, okay?”
After sending the two students a guilt-inducing stare, Nunez faced Aaron with sympathetic eyes. “Post traumatic stress disorder. It’s only natural given what you’ve been through.”
“Yup. PTSD. You totally nailed it, doc,” said Aaron, amazed she bought it. Either he’d gotten better at rewriting the truth or his mother was a human lie-detector machine.
Having at least temporarily preserved his job, Aaron turned the conversation to a minor matter called saving the human race. He asked her whether they tried antibiotics to slow or kill the thiobacillus because, after all, that’s how doctors normally fight a bacterial infection. Nunez said there were two problems with that approach, the biggest being that they didn’t have any live samples of the bacteria to test various antibiotics on. Her lab was one of a handful in the world with a high-throughput robot that could screen thousands of compounds for effectiveness against a target within a few hours. However, it needed an authentic source material for such a massive trial-and-error session. Until the government shipped them a sample from Florida, they were limited to computer modeling.
“Even if we hit the jackpot and found an antibiotic that could wipe out the bacteria from an infected creature, that may not be enough to kill the alien nanotech,” Nunez said. “The nanotech could always produce more bacteria.”
“No, if you blast all the bacteria, and keep them away, that should do it,” Aaron said. “Those little robots are hungrier than a pothead at a pizza joint. They can’t eat without the bacteria supplying their food source. Cut them off and I bet they starve.”
“And the host body probably starves too.”
“Oh, that’s not good.” Aaron lowered his head as he thought of Moni’s body withering away into degenerated muscles and loose flesh. “There are easier ways to kill them.”
“I know, but you’re hoping for a cure.” She raised a well-trimmed eyebrow suspiciously.
Nunez had made it clear the federal directive focused on prevention and eradication, because they appeared more achievable than removing an infection from a heavily-mutated being. From the outset, Aaron had been too transparent in his desire for a cure. That alone wouldn’t give him away, or it better not. He didn’t have time to start over in another lab. Every minute Moni spent scouring the desert she risked infecting something else, if she hadn’t already.
“I’ve seen the infection take hold of people before my eyes. A cure might reverse it before they lose hold of their brains,” Aaron said. “You said before you’d like to save as many people as possible if the infection got unleashed.”
“The earlier we intervene, the better the chance a cure like this could preserve the host. Based on the examples I’ve read, there’s a point after they inhabit the body that the changes become irreversible. The bacteria keep both of them alive.”
Aaron’s throat lumped up as he pondered what this meant for Moni. He might never again feel the tenderness of running his hand down her cheek as he did in Florida, in what seemed like a lifetime ago. The agony on her face as she’d sat in the
car beside him while the aliens tortured her body until she downed gasoline, she could never escape their torment.
Aaron held up a finger. “What if you force the nanotech to change the body back? Say you introduce a mild base into the bloodstream, like soap or baking soda. I’ve seen a strong base liquid kill the bacteria when it’s loose in water because the nanotech depends on acidity. Then, remove all iron from the blood. Those little bastards won’t have anything to feed off of, right? The nanotech must keep their host alive so they don’t perish. They’d make the body revert back to normal so they can survive.”
“That’s a great idea.” She nodded and crossed her arms. “If you want to kill the subject five times over through blood poisoning.”
“What if we scrubbed the blood clean of bacteria with a base, used a centrifuge to separate it out, and then transfused it back into the patient?”
Delaying her response, she tightened the bun holding her black hair. “Maybe, but we can’t test out a theory like that without a live sample. Same story with all my other ideas. For instance, when the alien bio-nanotechnology first enters the body, is there an autoimmune response to it like with a virus?”
“Well, based on the samples I studied in Florida, its interface with cells resembles that of a virus. It breaks them apart and reshapes them, probably rewrites their DNA too. Any autoimmune response from the body must be overwhelmed.”
“Or halted when they seize the host brain. But what if that autoimmune response continued and got amplified?”
“That’s how they make vaccines,” Aaron said.
“Exactly. Vaccines can be for prevention and sometimes cures. But without any live samples, we can’t even take step one.” She leaned close to his ear. “I like your ingenuity. Keep thinking.”
Silence the Living Page 22
