Bad Rain
A Sci-Fiction Thriller
Michael Mazzarelli
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A TYPICAL FLORIDA MIDSUMMER DAY—UNBEARABLY hot and dripping with humidity—beat down on the central part of the state. Cells of thunderheads scattered about as usual, and it was not uncommon to have rainfall let loose only in a hundred-yard area, with surrounding terra firma dry and sunny. Jeff Stabinski, Staff Meteorologist at WFTV Channel 9, had just finished his Wednesday morning shift as weather reporter, heading out to his favorite fishing spot at Fells Cove. According to the Doppler radar scans, an unusually large thunderstorm had been brewing all night but was listed as currently “trailing away from the central Florida area.” He figured the fresh rain, if it happened, would help his chances of catching that big bass he had always dreamed about.
Stabinski had worked at WFTV for ten years and routinely fished the site to break the monotony of back-to-work blues following his coveted weekends. Not hard to figure—he loved to fish, plain and simple. It was relaxing and took his mind off the hassles and backbiting at the TV station. Fishing relieved stress better than any prescribed pill.
The drive from the station to Fells Cove didn’t take long, and he could usually count on launching his boat at the secluded spot he had found and used many times. This particular occasion followed predictable course, except that soon after launching he noticed something was wrong, awfully wrong. He said it out loud as soon as figuring it out— Where’s the wildlife? What happened to the noise, the constant hum in the background? The incessant sound of nature was curiously absent. He poked his arm just to see if he could feel his finger push hard against his skin, then quickly cleared the reed line and broke into open water, watching, listening, all the while. The wildlife was gone, completely gone, and the silence was unnerving. No blue herons, egrets, coots or sand cranes were anywhere to be seen. Even the constant bullfrog-like groping of the alligators was not to be heard. What had happened?
As he approached the tip of Fells Cove, he noticed a small object trashing in the water, seemingly in a death throe. From a distance it looked like a bird, but what type was hard to tell. Closer examination revealed a Coot, but it was not like any he had seen before, dead or alive. The distinct red beak was missing, and from head to tail there was no sign of feathers, the exposed raw skin dark with red welts on it. Jeff knew this bird was suffering the unspeakable and would soon be dead, but the cause of such mutilation was unclear.
As he brought his boat around the point, he became increasingly uneasy about what he was seeing, and not seeing. Lilly pads that normally covered the waters were gone, as if a giant windstorm had decreed the area stripped of all former life. In fact, all vegetation leading up to the bank was missing, the tall reeds protecting the bank now brown and drooping into the water. As he scanned the bank and further inland, he noticed the grass was gone, the naked earth curiously exposed and desolate.
Fully completing the wide turn in his boat, he saw in no uncertain terms the full extent of the devastation. An area about the size of a football field was totally moonlike, eerily different, no vegetation, grass or wild life, nothing like before. Strangely, no sign of tracks could be found anywhere, and the site was miles from any roads. The earth was there, untouched but totally naked. Snakes, salamanders, a few egrets and coots were scattered about, dead as if it had been decreed all at once, deformed, defeathered, skinned. Along the shoreline, everything was dead.
Shocked, scared and confused, he thought he might be in the middle of a science fiction movie, as nothing he knew of could cause such immediate destruction. As a meteorologist, the first thought that came to mind was that a tornado might have touched down, but that wouldn’t explain elimination of the grass. The dead wild life certainly was not from a tornado, and, besides, what would cause the total disfiguration of the coot and red welts? He was scared of any possible explanation and knew it was time to get away as quickly as possible. For an instant, he feared an identical fate to that of what he witnessed, that he might be stranded or, worse, end up lying on his back, staring up at nothingness, red welts all over his exposed body. Tossing aside the plans of leisure, Jeff turned the boat around with purpose and headed back under full throttle.
What to do about what he had just seen played on his mind. He would check the morning radar readings and make sure a freakish tornado hadn’t passed through. Next he would call the Florida Marine Patrol (FMP) and have them meet him out at the site. Maybe the FMP had some idea as to what happened. Better yet, maybe they already knew something.
Once at the TV station, he reviewed every computer image of the area’s weather and found nothing except the one thunderstorm that had dropped a lot of rain on the predicted location. He called the Florida Marine Patrol and explained to them exactly what had happened. He was glad that they at least believed him, and Captain Stanley Sterno of the patrol agreed to meet him at his boat launch site and be driven out to see the area.
At 2:00 p.m. they were on their way in Jeff’s boat to the area described to Captain Sterno. As they approached the point, Jeff pointed out the Coot floating lifelessly where he had seen it earlier in the day. When they reached the primary point, Jeff drove the front end of the boat onto the shore bank with a soft thud. Sterno had a look of total astonishment and fear on his face, and told Jeff he had never seen anything like this in his twenty years of patrolling Florida’s waters. They considered stepping off the boat but hesitated, agreeing that whatever disintegrated the grass might affect them as well. Sterno suggested putting rubber boots over their shoes to at least go ashore and quickly look around. After ten minutes of walking the area, neither man was any closer to an explanation. Sterno suggested scooping up some soil into a plastic cup then heading back.
Although Sterno had no idea if the soil would yield any clue as to what had happened, he got an answer sooner than expected. About five minutes into the trip back, he noticed the cup starting to disintegrate, literally disappearing as if chemically changing bonding elements. Quickly scrambling around to find something else to put the cup and soil into, a metal bait bucket was grabbed and a quick transfer made at the last second.
As they pulled up to the boat launch, they tossed around a couple of ideas. If the soil was corrosive, did someone dump chemicals out there? If so, then how did one account for the devastating effect on such a large area?
By the time they reached shore and deboarded, they had put together a plan. Sterno would contact someone from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and then go back out and rope off the entire area so no one would disturb the site. Jeff would contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and take the soil to a friend at the University of Central Florida. They would coordinate their efforts, trying to keep the whole thing quiet until experts on such occurrences could get a handle on such things.
When Hurricane Andrew hit Homestead, Florida, Jeff was sent by the TV station to cover the event. While there, he had met several women in positions of authority from FEMA, ranking personnel coordinating the emergency relief effort. Jeff had immediately felt comfortable working with Janet H
arris and, though his stay was short, had he been able to stay longer their relationship might have grown into something more than just a working friendship. Both were about the same age, unmarried and uncommitted. Their jobs were their lives. Janet did a lot of traveling as a FEMA supervisor and never seemed to find time to socialize. She was a very attractive woman, with fiery red hair and a slender body, a person having no difficulties attracting men if she had wanted to put in even a cursory effort, but her job was her life, as was Jeff’s.
Jeff was a handsome six feet and on the strong side. His problem with establishing a relationship was his hobbies, loving to fish and fascinated with lightning, an obsession to a fault, becoming an avid lightning chaser and always looking for the perfect picture to snap with his 35mm. Not many women wanted to spend time fishing or watching the radar and racing to the next big storm.
Jeff was looking forward to calling Janet, not just talking about the weird events of the day but because he enjoyed the time he had spent with her. When he called he figured she would be off to some disaster area but lucked out and got through on the first try. He knew from the sound of her voice that she was pleasantly surprised to hear from him. She had worked for FEMA a little over ten years and had seen hurricanes, tornadoes, chemical contaminations, floods, blizzards, fires and just about every disaster Mother Nature and man could generate, but nothing like what Jeff described to her over the phone. She suggested coming down to take a look and would call him back after she did some research regarding the area in question and made some arrangements as to travel.
After he got off the phone with Janet, he called his friend, Professor Allen Brown at UCF, to inform him of the situation. Allen and Jeff had met under unusual circumstances. Jeff had been on one of his lightning chases and hit pay dirt with a large storm near Lake Nona. He had taken some great pictures and was about to leave when a lightning bolt struck some fifty feet away, scaring Jeff into a near heart attack with its brightness and tremendous crack of thunder. After he got back on his feet, Jeff walked over to where the lightning had hit the ground. The earth was still warm and a hole about a foot in diameter had opened up. Jeff decided to scoop up a can of soil and take it out to UCF, to gauge the effect of lightning on the soil. He was directed to Professor Allen Brown, head of the chemistry department. After explaining what had happened, Professor Brown became as curious as Jeff and said he would test the soil for any chemical reaction from the lightning. While working on the sample, Professor Brown questioned Jeff on his strange hobby. Jeff explained that as a meteorologist, he was fascinated with the awesome power of lightning but little understood, from a scientific viewpoint, thunderstorms and the lightning they produced.
Thunderstorm or cumulonimbus cloud formation was well documented but the tremendous buildup of positive and negative charges in the storm and why these charges suddenly discharged as lightning was still a mystery. He had long been taking pictures of storms to find out if lightning went from clouds to ground or visa versa. The more he got into it, the more he was fascinated to find that lightning went in both directions and from cloud to cloud. This information brought up new questions, such as was the charge buildup the same, depending on direction, and was there a certain point where the lightning always discharged. The more the two of them talked, the more Professor Brown became interested in helping Jeff do research. He suggested using some sensing meters that would attract lightning and measure the power of the strike. After an hour of talking and testing, Professor Brown found there was some molecular change in the lightning soil, but didn’t know if it was from the electrical charge or the stored heat. The professor was hooked and asked Jeff if he could go on his next trip. From that point on, Jeff and Professor Brown became a lightning chasing team, hell-bent on finding out the mystery of lightning.
But this call to his friend was not about lightning and storm chasing, rather a soil sample that came from a site totally different from anything Jeff had ever seen. Luckily, the call went straight through, as usually the professor was too busy to deal with such mundane things as ringing telephones. After Jeff explained what had happened, Al told him to bring the sample right over.
Captain Sterno finally got through to the district manager for Osceola County EPA, a Ms. Clare Russell. He went over the details as to what he had seen at Fells Cove and asked if she could meet him for a quick look-see. Clare immediately obliged, agreeing to meet right away. If this was some kind of chemical or hazardous waste spill of the magnitude described, she wanted the area contained as soon as possible.
Clare drove from her office in Orlando, thinking all the way as to what Captain Sterno had said, “There was total devastation of all forms of plant and animal life.” Clare was a young forty and had lived most of her life in Florida, earning her degree with honors in Environmental Science at the University of Florida, and highly recruited by the EPA to stay and work in Florida. The more experienced she became the progression up the ladder was swift and deserving. Over the years, she was never at a loss for interesting projects. The reason for this was that central Florida was an environmental nightmare, caused by the United States government and military presence during the ‘40s, where the land was used and abused, thought never to be developed. But then a great visionary by the name of Walt Disney decided that 27,000 acres of land in the middle of Florida was just right for what he envisioned would be the future home of a fantasy vacation for tourists from around the world. The vast swamp, alligator and bug-infested land had the right climate year round to be developed into a colossal amusement park. The land was cheap and Disney was determined to make it work. Disney World was developed and along with it came tremendous growth. As the land was bulldozed over for construction of new homes, hotels and a major airport, environmental nightmares started showing up as never before seen, and everywhere.
In her mind, Clare started reviewing old cases that might fit what Sterno had described in their brief phone conversation. There had been a problem a few years back where old army oil drums started leaking that had been buried at a formerly used military base. Actually they had been leaking for years, but only when the vegetation started dying did the EPA start investigating, where the plant life slowly turned brown and died. There also was the time a chemical truck carrying liquid nitrogen to NASA ran off the road and killed everything in site. But Sterno had reinforced the fact that the problem area was remote, with no roads within miles.
At 4:30 p.m., Captain Sterno and Clare met at Boggy Creek Road Fish Camp, where Stan had a FMP boat waiting to take them out to that remote site. The FMP often is forced into chase situations when patrolling Florida’s waters, so their boats are fast. This FMP boat was equipped with twin 125 horsepower Mercury engines, capable of reaching speeds of 100 knots. Because this boat was so much bigger, Stan couldn’t launch where Jeff had put in his small fishing boat, so he was taking a much longer route to get to the site.
As Stan eased the powerful boat away from the dock and headed up the canal that led to the open waters of Lake Tohopekaliga (Toho), he felt a small sense of security in this boat, especially since he knew what was at stake here in a way impossible to explain to Clare. On the way back from the morning’s trip with Jeff, Stan had felt uncomfortable in the small boat. Considering what he had seen and the knot it had created in his stomach, Stan had wanted to get away from there ASAP. Not that Stan felt that whatever caused this devastation was going to jump out of the bushes or down from the sky and chase them like a bad nightmare, but having a boat that could make an extremely fast retreat was somewhat reassuring.
Once clearing the short, reed-lined canal and into open water, Stan warned Clare to hold on and pressed the throttle handle all the way forward. The boat responded immediately by bringing the bow up skyward as the twin engines props dug into the water and forced the back of the boat down with such force that Clare thought the boat might flip. Within seconds, however, the boat began leveling off and picked up even more speed.
Lake Toho was approxi
mately 13 miles in diameter and almost completely round in shape. As are most Florida lakes, it was completely lined with tall reeds that prevented seeing the shoreline. Along the reed line were many secluded canals that allowed boats to pass behind to very isolated areas. Fishermen loved to venture behind the reeds and fish because it was the favorite spot for large mouth bass to feed. It was off one of these canals, around the cove and deep into an isolated area, where Stan took Clare and showed her what Jeff discovered in the morning.
Upon first seeing the site, Clare put her hand up to her mouth and said, “My god, this is worse than I thought it could be from what you described on the phone— What could have caused this?
“We’ll have to close off this area immediately and get a team out here to take tests. I mean the whole ten yards.”
Janet called Jeff on her digital GPS cellphone and said she would be arriving at 6:30 p.m. that night at Orlando International Airport, and then made arrangements to stay at the Airport Marriott. Jeff told her that he had showed the site to the Florida Marine Patrol and they were to contact the EPA. Janet suggested that everyone meet at the Marriott at 8:00 p.m. that evening to evaluate the situation and coordinate their efforts. Jeff agreed, then suggested that if she was up to it, he would meet her at the terminal and, after checking in, they could get something to eat before the meeting.
Janet already had a busy day and knew she would need something to eat before the meeting and it wasn’t going to be airplane food. Besides, the thought of seeing and having dinner with Jeff brought back some pleasant feelings. She replied that she would enjoy that and was looking forward to seeing him.
As soon as Jeff got off the phone with Janet, he called Stan and Al and told them about the meeting set up for 8:00 p.m. at the Marriott. Stan said he would call Clare and if there were any problems he would get back to him.
Jeff wanted to know if anything had showed up on the soil test. Al said he would bring a full report to the meeting, but his preliminary test showed an extremely corrosive chemical he could not identify. Al also asked if Jeff and Stan had stepped onto the soil. Jeff explained they had done so with rubber boots, which Al wanted to see along with their shoes at the evening meeting.
BAD RAIN: A SCI-FICTION THRILLER Page 1
