Holt appeared at the mouth of a tent nearby, shielding his face from flying dust.
Brian Tomes jumped out of the helicopter, followed closely by Brenna Hauff. She spotted Holt, quickly stormed over to him, and punched him square in the jaw.
Chapter Nineteen
Martha
Martha shot out the door and ran toward Holt and the two NASA employees, Harbin and Fravel behind her. When they reached them, Hauff was beating on his chest with her fists. Holt had one hand on his nose and was attempting to block her blows with the other. Tomes had his arms wrapped around her waist and was trying to hold her back.
Martha grabbed Hauff by the wrist, but she was surprisingly strong. Her clothing and protective gear were stained with blood; Tomes’, too.
“This bastard lied to all of us!” she spat out, her face red. “He told us he didn’t know what happened to the rest of the people from that village!”
Holt took his hand away from his nose and looked at his fingers. There was a little blood, but not much. She hadn’t broken it. “I never said that.”
Back at the landing pad, a ramp opened on the rear of the helicopter. Two soldiers in green fatigues walked out carrying a black body bag. They crossed the small field and disappeared into the mouth of one of the tents. A small sign near the door read MEDICAL. A moment later, two other soldiers appeared, went to the helicopter, and retrieved another. From where Martha stood, she counted at least a dozen more similar bags inside the chopper’s cargo hold, stacked floor to ceiling.
All eyes went back to Holt.
Hauff fumed, her face bright red. “There must be a thousand people down there!”
“Down where?”
“In that crevasse!” she replied. “Me and Brian, we rock climb. He just had us rappel down the side into…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “What the fuck was that?” She lunged at him again, nearly broke free from everyone.
Holt stood his ground and wiped his hand on his pants. “I’m just following orders, same as everyone else here. You have a problem, take it up with Washington.”
“That’s a bullshit excuse, and you know it. You could have warned us!”
Martha held up her palms. “Let’s all calm down.”
Brenna Hauff gave Holt one more icy glare, then shrugged off the others and stomped off to the side, wiping her nose and eyes. “We couldn’t get to the bottom, it’s too deep, but there are bodies everywhere. Impaled on the rocks, caught up in cracks and outcroppings. Pieces and chunks of flesh on the walls…” She looked down at her bloodstained gloves, peeled them off, and tossed them on the ground.
The soldiers walked past them carrying another bag. They vanished in the tent.
Harbin eyed Holt. “You said there were about a hundred people in the village. How can there be a thousand down there?”
“She’s exaggerating.”
“Fuck you,” Hauff shot back.
Holt lowered his voice and spoke slowly. “There’s no way to know how many are down there. Like she said, the crevasse is too deep. We’ve tried thermal, but the crevasse was caused by a fissure. The escaping heat screws with the sensors. We’ve pulled out twenty-seven so far, brought back half. The others are in a chopper behind us. We’ll retrieve as many as possible. In the meantime, I need to file a progress report in twenty minutes, and someone is bound to ask me for a cause of death. I intend to have an answer.”
He started for the tent. “Dr. Chan, you’re a medical doctor, you’re welcome to join me. I want the rest of you back in the ranger station. You’ve been debriefed; you’re free to discuss your findings. I’ve been authorized to share additional details with you—I’ll be there shortly to fill in blanks.”
“Where’s Reiber?” Harbin asked.
“Studying vegetation and ground samples taken from the anomaly site,” he called back over his shoulder before disappearing inside.
Martha looked back at the others.
Harbin offered her a soft nod and silently mouthed the word go.
She turned and went after Holt.
Chapter Twenty
Martha
Inside the tent, Martha found Holt in a small antechamber changing into scrubs and a mask. He tossed a set to her, sealed in a plastic bag. “Put these on.”
She tugged the scrubs on over her clothing and followed him through a narrow hallway lined with a series of heavy plastic curtains—each weighted and sealing automatically behind. The temperature dropped between each, and when they stepped through the last one, she estimated the air to be in the fifties.
The tent was much larger than it appeared from the outside, at least sixty feet in diameter with halogen lights hung from cables strung across the ceiling, bathing every inch in bright white. Several operating areas had been set up in the center of the room. Lined on the floor to the left of several large support poles were black body bags, far more than the ones that came in on the helicopter with Tomes and Hauff. Each bore a number written in blocky letters on white tape. The highest number she spotted was 106, but they didn’t appear to be in any kind of order.
Martha followed Holt to a man huddled over one of the tables. Three blinking video cameras were positioned on tripods, angled down toward the center.
She expected introductions, but none were made.
Even in the chilled air, the man’s forehead glistened with sweat. He’d been working awhile. He glanced up at them for a moment, his eyes fixating angrily on Holt, then turned back to the table. “This is the sixth one I’ve examined so far, a male, thirties or forties, subjected to extreme trauma. Nearly every bone is broken. His rib cage is damn near pulverized. Scapula is dust.” He shuffled down the table and pointed at the remains of his leg. “The femur is the hardest bone in the human body, look at it—it’s a splintered mess. This man was crushed. All of them were.”
“Was he pulled from under one of the houses?” Martha asked.
The man looked up at Holt again. “Has she been cleared?”
Holt nodded. “Dr. Chan came in this morning from San Francisco under special request of Frederick Hoover. She’s toured the site and been vetted. You’re clear to speak freely.”
He sighed and looked at Martha. “I’m Dr. Fitch from Grace in Seattle. Got here a few hours ago.” He moved back to the head of the table. “Look at the skull,” he said. “See these breaks? Most impacts have a central point of collision, and the breaks branch out respectively—worst at the center, less so as distance increases. What you’re looking at was caused by thousands of pounds of force applied equally over every portion of his body and sustained for at least a minute, maybe longer. Like he was placed in a large vise or one of those machines used to crush cars.”
The first two soldiers pushed through the plastic curtain, carrying another black body bag. When they started toward the others along the wall, Holt stopped them. “Place that one on the table here.” He gestured toward a wide aluminum gurney beside them.
Fitch glared at Holt with frustration. “I need to finish all the others first. You promised me more help. Where is it?”
Holt ignored the question. He stepped over to the body bag and tugged the zipper open.
Martha swallowed and covered her nose as the smell lofted up.
The body inside was of a woman, maybe in her sixties. It was difficult to tell. Her clothing was shredded. Her right arm and most of her face were covered in abrasions. She was missing a shoe. Her ankle on the other foot was bent at an unnatural angle. No obvious signs of bruising there, so the break had occurred postmortem.
Fitch’s gray eyebrows were bushy, unkempt. He stepped closer. “What’s that odor? That’s not decomp. Where did this woman come from?”
Holt told him.
“Interesting.” He reached down with a gloved hand and raised her right arm, his fingers inching tenderly from her wrist to her elbow. “There’s a break here, in the ulna. This feels like a standard fracture, not from extreme pressure like the others.”
Reaching to his
left, he picked up a device that looked like a large camera with a dome over the lens. A MaxRay portable X-Ray machine. Martha had used one before in Honduras and more recently at the crash of an Airbus A310 outside Houston. This unit was a little smaller, appeared new.
Fitch raised the device, pointed it down at the woman’s body, starting at her head and working his way down. He stared at the digital display for several seconds, scrolling through the images. “We’ve got numerous fractures, but these appear to be related to her fall.”
Her eyes were open slightly, both lined with red. He reached down and pulled back her left eyelid. “This is peculiar.”
Holt stepped closer. “What?”
Martha saw it, too. “The blood came from her lacrimal.”
“Her what?”
“Her tear duct,” Fitch said. “This woman was crying blood in the moments before she died.” Turning her head, he studied her ear. “There’s blood in the ear canal, too. She was hemorrhaging.”
Martha ducked down and looked at her mouth. “Here, too.”
Fitch pressed a finger into her cheek and frowned, did it again. From there, he moved down to her neck, his fingers walking down the line from her chin to her clavicle. He peeled off one of his gloves and did it again. He looked up at Holt. “When did this woman die?”
“We’d estimate within the last four to six hours.”
This seemed to confuse Fitch. He located an infrared thermometer on the table at his side, pointed it at the woman’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. A red dot appeared on her forehead. He frowned at the display, scanned her again on her neck, then her arm and also an exposed portion of her thigh. “I’m getting a consistent temperature of 102.8. If she’s been dead that long, her temperature should be much lower, not feverish.” He cocked his head at Martha. “What does that odor smell like to you? Be honest.”
Martha didn’t want to say it out loud, but she did anyway. “Barbecue. Cooked meat. I’ve smelled it at crash sites. It’s familiar, but I don’t see any burn marks on her body.”
She found a box of gloves, pulled on a pair, took up a pair of scissors, and began cutting away the woman’s clothing. They found signs of hemorrhaging at all orifices.
Leaning in close, she smelled the woman’s skin. “I think the odor is coming from her sweat glands. It’s consistent across the woman’s body.”
Holt, who had remained silent through most of this, finally said, “What does that mean?”
Martha looked at Fitch, who simply shrugged his shoulders. She told Holt, “This woman’s body temperature rose significantly prior to death. She was cooking from the inside out.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Tennant
The smell of baked beans drifted up out of the small pot on the propane stove and seemed to inch up the walls of Fallout Shelter Number Two, to the heavy crossbeams holding the ceiling up, and back down to the dirt floor like a sentient investigation of their new surroundings. Tennant fully understood baked beans and cooking odors were not alive, but it helped her to think of them that way. If Poppa were there, he’d tell her to use the creative portions of her brain, turning this into a little game, an adventure, even.
Curled up under her feet, Zeke’s tail thumped against her ankle. He’d remained close since they got here, insisting on physical contact. If she moved a foot or two in either direction, he shuffled over and pressed against her, his soft whimpers saying all that needed to be said.
“Sophie, you can have the bacon if you want it,” Tennant said over her shoulder, slowly stirring the beans. “I know that’s your favorite part.”
Momma had told Sophie manufacturers used the least desirable bits of swine in these cheap cans, parts better left unknown. That didn’t seem to sway her in the least.
“Do you want the bacon, Sophie?”
Behind her, Sophie let out a soft grunt. This was followed by a guttural sound, deep and angry.
Zeke whimpered again and pressed his snout down into the dirt.
Tennant’s everything hurt, her nose most of all. When they got here, she found the first aid kit and took six ibuprofen tablets, then she located a small hand mirror and set the break herself. Poppa had taught her how, but he’d shown her on Tabby Mexler after Tabby fell out of a tree and busted hers good. Waiting a day or more could mean you’d have to not only reset the break, but also crack newly formed cartilage and bone—break the bone again—just to put it right. She’d done it fast, pressing her palm on the left side, then giving herself a hard slap from the right. She felt the damaged bone grind and lock into place. She’d heard it, too, a deep crunch in her head. The pain came a moment later, and she fell into the corner and screamed for nearly five minutes, until the pain returned to a dull throb.
Of course, all of this took place after she secured Sophie.
Inside Number Two, Tennant found some more rope and tied her sister to the wooden bench in the back corner. Her grandpa had made the bench out of an old oak tree that had been struck by lightning. She knew it weighed a ton, she remembered hauling it here with Momma, and there was no way Sophie would break the arms or legs, even if her fever was making her stronger.
She was burning up.
Tennant didn’t have a thermometer, but there was no question about a fever—a hundred something for sure—and it was getting worse.
A thick sheen of grimy sweat glistened on her skin, but when Tennant tried to give her medicine to bring her temperature down, her sister refused to open her mouth. She clenched her teeth and jerked her head from side to side until Tennant finally gave up. When Momma and Poppa got here, they might have to take her down to the stream. Tennant remembered two springs ago when Abigail Cruther’s flu turned feverish and she didn’t respond to the meds, she had to be carried, thrashing and fighting, down to the spring near Borden Hill. She was only nine, but the adults had to work in shifts of three to hold her down in the water. That took nearly three hours, but her fever eventually broke. There was no way Tennant could manage Sophie on her own.
She had to wait.
Someone would come.
On the stove, the beans began to burn, and Tennant slid the pot off the flame before switching off the propane.
“Do you want a hot dog?” she asked her sister. “I’ll make you one if you’ll eat it. I’ll make you two, even.”
Tennant didn’t much like the freeze-dried hot dogs. Even when boiled in water, they never seemed to taste quite right, not like the refrigerated ones. She’d had those once, and they were so good. Sophie had never seemed to care. She’d eat those horrible protein bars Poppa liked so much, too, even though they tasted like sawdust. She scooped a serving of the beans onto a plate and turned back to Sophie.
Her sister had gone silent. Her head was cocked oddly to the left, her eyes rolled up to the side, staring at the ceiling.
As Tennant took a step closer, she noticed Zeke was looking up, too. His ear twitched.
Her heart jumped. “Is someone here, boy?”
He gave her a quick glance, then looked back up, a soft growl in his throat. His tail thumped once against the floor, then went stiff.
Like before, the ringing started deep in her head, as if someone tapped a fork against the side of a glass bottle off in the distance, barely audible. Instead of fading away, though, the ringing grew louder.
She dropped the plate of beans and frantically glanced around the room, her eyes landing on the first aid kit still open on the table. She shuffled around the contents, found a wad of cotton balls, and pressed two into her ears. Her sister remained still as a statue as she pressed cotton into her ears, too. Even Zeke didn’t fight her, but she had to work fast—he was trying to scurry under the table.
The sound grew louder.
Even through the cotton, that single tone increased. Tennant couldn’t tell if it was getting closer, amplifying, or both, but within moments the sound was everywhere, louder than her own screams.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tennant<
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Tennant dug her fingers into her ears, jammed the cotton in as deep as it would go, but it didn’t seem to help. The sound was as loud within her mind as it was everywhere else. The table began to vibrate. As she watched, the first aid kit shuffled across the table and fell to the floor.
Sophie tried to stand.
She got up in one quick, spastic motion as if every muscle in her body tensed at the same time. The rope around her hands, arms, legs, and feet all went taut, and somehow she managed to lift grandpa’s heavy bench off the ground for nearly a second before the weight of the thing won out and pulled her back down. Her lips were moving, not in a scream but words, a flurry of words, but Tennant couldn’t hear her above everything else. She pressed her palms tight over her ears as the sound grew louder—cacophonous and frantic—the screams of a million people in the worst possible pain—the shouts of those who would rather be dead—as if she were hearing those trapped in the fires of hell.
Tennant pressed her eyes shut, and when she opened them again she was on her knees with no memory of falling to the ground. The room pressed in on her from all sides, as if the underground space were filling with water and didn’t have enough room to contain it all.
Her heart pounded. Each beat a hammer blow.
Sophie jerked up again, and this time she managed to raise the bench up for nearly ten seconds before both she and the wood crashed back down to the ground.
Zeke backed away from both of them, scurried from under the table on his haunches and into the far corner even as canned goods began to jump off the shelves and land around him.
Tennant pressed her eyes shut, pushed her palms against her skull, tried to keep it all out, but the noise just grew louder.
A shelf toppled beside her.
Dirt rained down from above. Dust and chunks of earth breaking out from under the support beams and shattering on the ground, the pieces dancing away as vibration grew with the noise. Scrambling into a half crawl, she managed to get under the table with Zeke; more of the ceiling came down.
The Noise Page 7
