by P. R. Garcia
“Go left.”
The scene on the screen moved across the dead bodies, taking ten minutes until they reached a patch of clear water. As the camera progressed, more bodies were seen, then clear areas again. About two miles out from shore the dead were countless, packed one on top each other as the waves tried to wash them ashore. Along the shore, the variety of dead bodies increased. Now added in were all manner of invertebrates including snails, sea stars, sea cucumbers, worms and urchins. There were even several sea snakes scattered throughout. Each wondered if this was the scene on every coastline.
“Scan inland until we hit forest,” Dr. Q ordered.
Max moved the image across the landscape. The further he moved the feed from the shore the less marine life there was. But the screen quickly filled with the corpses of land life. As with the marine life in the sea, the further they went inland the greater the dead. Before long the corpses of predators were seen - jaguars, foxes, and maned wolves. Various species of birds littered the ground, including harpy eagles, hawks, storks, petrels, parakeets and brightly colored songbirds. They saw an entire flock of red macaws, apparently struck down in flight. Capuchin and howlers monkeys laid beneath the trees they had fallen out of. They even saw the bodies of capybaras, armadillos and opossums. The variety of dead animals species grew with each movement inland. Max continued to sweep forward until the jungle became too thick to see through. Throughout the surveillance, they could not find one living animal.
“The jungle’s too dense for us to see much of anything,” Dr. Q stated. “Move back out to the coastline, then northward. We should hit a town or city somewhere near the ocean.” After seeing the extent the animal world had been eradicated, he held out little hope that people had survived.
Max did as requested, moving the viewer northward along the ocean. After a good section of jungle, the trees finally began to thin out into fields. It wasn’t long before they saw their first dead human lying in a field. Then a second body, and a third until the screen was filled with the inhabitants of a small village.
“Max, can you zoom in on some of the bodies?” Dr. Q asked. “I want to see if they are any signs of insects.”
Without saying a word, Max zoomed in on a group of bodies. As with the research teams, the cadavers were covered in dried blood that had leaked out of every orifice. The ground was stained a dull crimson. Zooming in even closer to the areas where there should have been insect activity, none was found.
“No flies or maggots,” Dr. Q stated. “Apparently this virus attacks the insect world also. Go ahead and zoom back out, Max. Let’s see if we can find a large city.” The doctor knew after seeing the death toll in the village, there was little hope that life existed in a city. But he needed confirmation.
Max zoomed back out, this time viewing from farther away in hopes of finding a city. It didn’t take long before they spotted one. As he zoomed back in, the three held their breath, praying it would not be a repeat of what they had already seen. Even though they were prepared for the worse, all were shocked at what they saw. Thousands of bodies filled the streets as if some monster stopped them in their tracks. Some people hung from inside cars, half in and half out, as they tried to flee the dying city. The streets and sidewalks were littered with corpses, the concrete beneath them a dull crimson red. Apparently, scavengers in the area had still existed and entered the city to feast on the dead and dying. Their bodies were now mixed amongst the others. As before, nothing alive moved.
“I can’t watch anymore,” Gayle announced, as she stood and walked away from the screen.
“Max, check for insect life,” Dr. Q said as he watched Gayle walk down the hallway towards their room. “And make a copy of the viewing.”
“It’s being recorded as we watch it,” Max answered.
“I need to go see how she’s doing,” Dr. Q announced. “Do you have the stomach to continue up the seaboard and observe a few more cities?”
“I think I can, Dr. Q,” Max stated. “Stomach’s a little upset.”
“Do the best you can,” Dr. Q responded as he stood, tapping Max lightly on the shoulder. He proceeded down the hallway. Even before he reached their room, he could hear Gayle crying. “Those were some pretty bad images,” he said as he entered.
“All those people are dead because of me,” Gayle sobbed, barely able to speak. “Alex and I did this. We should have known.”
“Known what? That sixty-five million years ago a deadly virus wiped out the majority of life on this planet?” Lachlan asked. “That it was so resilient that it survived millions of years inside the carcass of a dinosaur? I can assure you, Gayle, that no person alive on this planet could have imagined such a thing.” He walked over and shook her, making her look at him. “I am going to tell you the same thing I told Alex. This is not your fault or his fault. It’s EVERYONE’s fault. Every politician that voted against the environment. Every commerce tycoon who put profit over being environmentally safe. Every grandmother who sprayed her yard and garden year and year with insecticides. Every cow, chicken and pig farmer who dumped animal sewage into our streams, lakes and oceans. Every human who used a plastic bag at the grocery store and never felt guilty for doing so. Every man, woman and child who believed global warming was a farce, or not important enough to be concerned with. Of the nine billion people living on this planet, eight billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, seven hundred and fifty people are responsible for this. Do you understand me?”
“But we could have stopped this,” Gayle cried.
“Oh, Sweetheart, no you couldn’t have,” Lachlan said, sitting down beside her and taking his fiancée in his arms. “If your team had not found the Stevosaurus, global warming would still have exposed its body. It would have thawed out, allowing the virus to drain out onto the snow and ice and enter the sea, where it would kill everything just as it’s doing now. The only difference would be that we would have no idea what was killing us. By uncovering that dinosaur, you gave us a chance to live and rebuild Earth for the better. Can’t you see that?”
“No,” Gayle answered. “All I can see are all those dead bodies.”
“I know, I know,” Lachlan softly said. “I regretted my decision that we have a big breakfast even before we reached the city. I thought for sure I was going to heave up everything I ate.”
“That was a bad decision,” Gayle said, a slight chuckle in her voice. “I threw up as soon as I got in here.”
“So that’s what that smell is,” Lachlan teased. “I thought you were going for the penguin guano aroma.”
“I guess we weren’t as prepared for the worse as we thought,” Gayle added.
“No,” Lachlan sighed. “Knowing it and actually seeing it are two different things. Something I am grateful for. Never should we become so complaisant that the sight of so many dead does not move us to illness.”
“Do you still believe there is life out there?”
“With all my heart. We’re alive. Walter and his vultures are alive. Life still exists out there. It will just take a little more effort to find it.”
A SICK BIRD
Over the next several days, Twinkles continued to enjoy the company of his new automated robotic friends. Occasionally he would leave them to check on his human friends, get something to eat or share a shower, but for the most part, he stayed in the storage area. Lachlan happily moved back into the room he shared with his fiancée, grateful that the penguin decided to sleep with his own kind.
To help Twinkles with his isolation, Max found the remote controls of several of the robotic birds and had them waddling, bobbing their heads and squawking just like the real thing. Gayle found an old metal tub behind the shed that she hauled in and filled with snow. As the snow melted, she added more until she had made a swimming pool for her little friend. It was her hope that he would forego showering with them and bathe in the pool. But since Emperor penguins are such large birds, the tub offered him no room t
o dive and little ability to swim. After being placed inside twice to try, Twinkles avoided the tub, circling around the room so he wouldn’t pass it. Gayle had to concede that as long as Twinkles remained with them, she’d have a shower partner.
When the small team wasn’t fussing with Twinkles, they concentrated on the satellite images Max had taped. Since Lachlan and Max were pathologists and more accustomed to gruesome scenes, they screened the video of the cities and villages. Gayle was assigned the footage of the ocean, shoreline, forests and animals. She searched through the bodies and recorded what species were present. Any animal not on the list was hopefully still alive and carried an immunity to the virus. Lachlan assured her that it was not because she was a female that she got the less gruesome job, but that her expertise would better be served cataloging the animals. She didn’t believe him.
Max and Lachlan viewed eighteen cities: seven in South America and eleven in Africa. None showed any signs of life. The bigger the city, the larger the carnage. In each, the population had tried to flee the onslaught of the virus with no luck. The scene remained the same - streets were filled with cars, trucks and countless bodies. The areas around medical facilities were especially congested with the dead. Almost no insect activity around the corpses was observed except for a few of the larger ant species. No small ants were seen. Nor were flies and maggots. This fact was a puzzling find, and one of great concern. Flies and ants were engineered to devour the dead, impervious to deadly diseases. Then why did this one affect them?
The tapes revealed large sections of some cities were burned down or still burning. For one reason or another, fires had started, and there was no one alive to extinguish them. Occasionally the fire spread into nearby jungles burning everything in its path, reducing the animal corpses to bones and ash. This made it impossible to determine which species had contracted the disease.
Everyday Lachlan checked Gayle’s reports, searching for that one animal that was still alive. But if it existed, it still eluded them. Why? In the last mass extinction, twenty-five percent of all life had survived. Where were the survivors now? That one question began to haunt the team’s dreams. They proposed many hypotheses, but none satisfied their need for an answer.
Accepting that nothing alive still existed in the cities, they started concentrating on the areas far outside the city boundaries. They assumed any human life would have fled the municipalities of death and destruction. Unfortunately, on both continents their search ended in the dense jungles making the detection of life seemingly impossible. If only they could see further north of the equator in Africa where the deserts and savannas started. There they would have a better chance of spotting life. But so far Max had not determined a way to connect to other satellites to view those locations.
Gayle’s job of writing down which animals had died was an endless job. She had twenty-six legal size pages of names already recorded, and she was finding more each time she looked. Almost all of the big predators in the surveyed areas of South America and Africa were amongst the dead. The only ones missing were crocodiles, hammerhead sharks, honey badgers and monitor lizards. But she realized their absence didn’t mean they had survived. More than likely, they just hadn’t scanned an area where their corpses laid. About half the bird species were represented, including the large raptors and the smaller seed eaters. Mammals on both continents and in the ocean took a substantial hit. As Max had told them, the large cats in Africa were gone, as well as the large grazers such as eland, wildebeests, giraffes, rhinos and elephants. The smaller mammals seen were various forms of monkeys, meerkats, anteaters, warthogs, gazelles, bushbuck and various rodents. Several corpses of chimpanzees and gorillas were observed, marking their survival as unlikely. Fish were so numerous that Gayle only wrote down “small blue and yellow fish” or “medium gray fish.” Without the internet to reference them, she had only a small fish reference book that the Australian team had at the Station. It was an old version and not very helpful. And, as in the city, there were no signs of insect life.
Leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes for a moment, Gayle shouted out, “Who’s turn to cook tonight?”
“I believe it’s mine,” Lachlan stated. “Unless you two would rather keep working and have field rations.”
“I need to look at something besides dead bodies,” Gayle replied.
“Me too,” Max added.
“I think after dinner we should forget viewing the tapes and watch a good movie,” Gayle suggested, looking over at the stack of films the Australians had brought with them. “Give our poor minds a rest. What are you cooking, anyways?”
“I thought I’d make some good old bangers and mash with some damper,” Lachlan replied. “I think I found enough ingredients that I could make a halfway decent batch.”
“In that case, I might stick with the field rations,” Gayle said. “But I still want the movie.”
“Don’t knock it until you taste it,” Lachlan replied back.
“Taste it, I don’t even know what it is,” Max laughed. “What did you call it? Wangers and diapers?”
“Bangers and mash with damper,” Lachlan repeated.
“In English, it’s sausages and mashed potatoes,” Gayle explained. “Damper is a traditional bush bread that’s a little on the bland side.”
“Well, when you explain it like that it doesn't sound too bad,” Max confessed. “I’m willing to try it on the principle of international cooperation.”
Suddenly, Gayle let out a huge scream. “Yes. You two get over here NOW.”
Both males ran over to their team member fearing something was wrong. “Gayle, what’s wrong?” Lachlan asked.
“Look,” was all Gayle said as she pointed to her screen.
“What?”
“Movement.”
“Where? I don’t see it.”
Gayle rewound the recording and zoomed on a tree in the lower left corner. As the three watched, barely breathing, they saw a greenish blob moving down the tree.
“What is that?” Max asked.
“A sloth,” Gayle answered.
“Max, can you zoom in any closer?” Lachlan asked, adrenaline pumping through his veins.
Doing his magic they had come to expect, Max quickly entered some keystrokes to reveal an adult male sloth slowly climbing down the side of a tree heading towards the ground.
“Is he sick?” Max asked. “Why is he so green?”
“It’s algae,” Gayle replied, glee audible in her voice. “Sloths move so slow that algae covers their fur. I would say that we are looking at a very healthy individual.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Lachlan said. “Sloths are such slow-moving animals I would have thought they would have been wiped out immediately. Plus, they do also eat insects, small lizards and sometimes carrion that probably would have been infected.”
“But remember, Lachlan, they have unique, multi-chambered stomachs filled with specialized bacteria,” Gayle reminded him. “They are used to eating toxic leaves. It’s possible that certain bacteria can destroy the LO virus.”
“Damn, I wish we could check out the koalas in Australia,” Lachlan said. “Their diet consists of highly toxic leaves of the eucalyptus tree.”
“If the koalas survived, and we add in the sloth and vultures, we may have just found a significant piece of the puzzle for a cure,” Max shouted. “There must be a commonality in their stomach acids that allows them to resist the LO virus.”
“Not so fast,” Lachlan warned. “One sloth does not confirm that sloths are surviving. We need to find more. Max, start concentrating tomorrow on South America. We need to find more surviving sloths. Focus your efforts on the trees.”
“They’ll look like green blobs of moss,” Gayle added. Suddenly, a twinkle filled the professor’s eyes as she remembered something about sloths. She looked over at Dr. Q. “Lachlan, do you remember what else is unique about sloths? Something we’ve had no luck in finding?” She saw the perplexed look on t
he doctor’s face. “What else exists in the sloth’s fur?”
For a moment, the doctor’s expression was blank. Then a smile spread across his face as he too remembered. “Insects. Moths, to be exact.”
“Moths?” Max asked.
“Yes, moths,” Gayle replied. “There are several species of moths that live exclusively on sloths. Max, can you zoom in really close so we can see if there’s any insect activity on our friend?”
“I’ll try,” Max stated, adjusting the views on the screen. “The closer I zoom in the more distorted the pixels will be.” As they feared, when he got down to the fur the picture became blurred. “Sorry. There’s no way to examine him that close.”
“There,” Dr. Q yelled. “Slowly zoom back out over this area.” Taking his finger, he indicated a point on the screen. When Max zoomed back out, a brownish oval appeared. “See it? Our first indication that insect life still exists.”
“I don’t know, Dr. Q,” a doubtful Max stated, staring intently at the brown blob. “That could be anything. A stick or piece of dirt.”
“No, that’s a sloth moth,” the doctor replied. “I’m sure of it.” He looked at his watch, then over at the kitchen. “I don’t know about you two, but I really don't feel like sausage tonight. Besides, three pairs of eyes are better than one. How about we chow down on some field rations while we scrutinize this recording for more sloths. At the end of two hours, we’ll watch a movie like Gayle suggested, a sort of celebration.”
“I’m in,” Max smiled.
“Me too,” Gayle beamed.
They became so engrossed in watching the satellite feed that they actually went three hours before stopping for the evening. In all, they located fifteen living sloths, six of which they were able to confirm had sloth moths. And happily, no dead ones were seen anywhere. Bubbling with excitement, the trio sat down on the couch to watch Star Wars XVII. The sloths and moths were the first good news they had had in almost a month. Finally, there was a real reason for hope.
