by Bill Schutt
“All of my maruta have been burned up,” Kimura had responded matter-of-factly when confronted. The volunteers were evidently women living above the fog line. “Alone in huts,” he explained, “just like the two witches and the boy.” According to Kimura, they were easy pickings for his men. “Outcasts. No one will miss them.”
Wolff was not so sure. He knew that up until now, their reluctant Indian allies had been placated by generous gifts that included crates of canned meat and fruit, and finely honed German steel. But now the locals were dying at the hands of his own people. And that was definitely not a recipe for appeasement.
To make matters worse, there was the realization that securing the specimen had come at a steep cost, seven men, valuable men, including Schrödinger, and quite possibly Vogt and Kessler. The two guides were never seen again. Then there was the unfortunate Private Schoeppe, catheterized by an even more unfortunate catfish. Neither of those two specimens had made it back to the base, which was doubly disappointing. He had looked forward to seeing a candiru up close.
What an interesting interrogation aid, Wolff thought, just before stepping into Kimura’s Bio Lab.
“The bacterium has proven to be surprisingly cooperative,” the Japanese scientist announced as the colonel entered. “Especially for an organism that was completely unknown to man until only a week ago.”
“Cooperative?” Wolff asked, picking up a surgical mask.
“Well, once we learned how to control and muzzle your little horror, obtaining saliva from it was not much of a problem.” Kimura understood, already, that what he really needed was another half century of technological development to truly comprehend how the draculae microbe worked. No one knew what a genetic code really looked like, and yet the secret of how the draculae symbionts caused rapid bleeding was down there somewhere, in the bacterial genes, the secret code of life. The microbiologist discovered, however, that he did not have to know very much about bacterial genetics to isolate a biological weapon from the beast’s saliva. Ignorance had turned out to be no obstacle to application.
“The challenges became interesting but never serious,” he explained to Wolff. “I’m guessing that this bacterium normally resides in the bat’s salivary glands. Nothing too interesting there. Initially, I was puzzled by the microbe’s strange reproductive cycle. But as is usually the case, getting this one to multiply was not at all difficult. In fact, once I infused the agar growth media with fresh plasma, the bacterial cultures experienced exponential growth. Just as suddenly, though, they died.”
Wolff interrupted. “Yes, yes. I was there. Remember? But isn’t that the problem? How can you culture the pathogen and prevent it from entering the self-destructive phase of its life cycle before it can be packaged and launched?”
“Ah, the unique microbial suicide that follows soon after the bite of your winged nightmare.”
“The same,” Wolff said, beginning to lose patience.
Kimura puffed himself up slightly, and with a wave of a chubby hand he dismissed a challenge that had, in reality, taken his team several days of nonstop work to overcome.
“We know that when the bat bites, the bacteria enter the victim’s blood—”
“Yes, yes,” Wolff interrupted again, making a cutting motion with his hand. “Would it be too much to ask for something I don’t already know?”
Kimura bowed slightly. “Of course; my apologies. It appears that there are factors in the blood of an adult victim, and even in juvenile blood, that initiate the autolytic phase of the bacteria’s life cycle. As the bacteria disintegrate, something they release causes the prey to bleed out. Now, by using fetal plasma, even umbilical extract works nicely, we have successfully bypassed the bacteria’s exposure to ASF.”
“ASF?”
“I call it Autolysis Stimulating Factor.”
“And where did you get this fetal tissue?”
Kimura smiled. “More volunteers,” he said cheerfully, gesturing to an examination table where a gore-stained sheet lay crumpled into a ball. “Savages.”
He’s using our useful allies as lab rats as well as bat food. Wolff put the thought away, nodded, and simply said, “Proceed.”
“I was able to determine that bacteria cultured in ASF-free growth media multiply explosively but then enter a dormant phase. I would expect to find a similar dormancy taking place somewhere in your pet.”
“Like a seed,” Wolff said, as much to himself as to Kimura. But there was no mistaking the rising excitement in his voice.
Kimura smiled again. “Very much like a seed . . . an apt analogy. A seed waiting to be planted . . . waiting to hatch out once it enters a victim’s body.”
“But a seed that will never grow into a tree,” Wolff added.
“True. Once the seed is watered, it dies and spreads its poison. The original culture carries on in the host.”
“So there’s absolutely no chance that this seed will multiply and show up at our front door once the enemy has been destroyed?”
“Correct, again.”
After savoring his moment of one-upmanship, the Japanese biologist gestured toward two rows of small, pod-shaped structures—mission-ready components from his lab in Manchuria that he had brought aboard the Demeter. Now, pulsing with life’s surge, they had been mounted under a climate-controlled isolation hood.
Wolff was about to ask how he planned to infect entire populations with the bacterium when Kimura brought an index finger up to his lips.
“Shhhhhh,” he whispered. “The children are sleeping.”
By the morning of February 8, two days after his rescue, R. J. MacCready was up and about, no longer needing reassurance that his friends were not ghosts.
“Gotta stop Wolff,” MacCready said. “Gotta blow that place.”
“Of course, Redundzel,” Thorne said. “Just like you’ve been ranting for the last two days. Although walking ten feet without falling on your face is usually a requirement for attacking a missile base.”
“You need to walk at least twenty feet, Mac,” Yanni added.
The trio had kept a low profile since their reunion. Yanni had built a well-camouflaged lean-to and nursed MacCready back to health with a combination of leaves, tree sap, and smashed seeds. Thorne was assigned sentry duty and did what little cooking they dared over a small campfire lit for the briefest periods each day.
“With you in broken-record mode, once we deciphered this crying Wolff thing, we took the liberty of procuring you some very interesting supplies.”
MacCready glanced over at Yanni, who gestured toward a backpack set a conspicuous distance from their tiny camp. “Tick tick boom,” she said with a smile.
“You guys got me explosives? How the—”
“Seems this gold miner we ran into was more than a little intrigued by my recent trade proposal,” Thorne said. “A sack of mushrooms I collected for a sack of TNT.”
MacCready shot his friend a puzzled look. “Mushrooms?”
“Funny mushrooms,” Yanni added. “Got it?”
MacCready nodded.
“So what’s your plan, Stan?” Yanni said. She was carving a long, skinny piece of wood.
“We need to get a message out to Major Hendry. Enlist his help.”
Bob and Yanni began laughing, simultaneously. “Look around you, Mac. Mushrooms and TNT we got, but shortwave radios? They are not in season. So now what is your plan?”
“The plan is I’m goin’ back to that Nazi base . . . real sneaky-like. Then I’m gonna blow that fucking place up.”
Thorne shook his head. “You really don’t want to do this, do you?”
“What’s your alternative?”
“Head to Cuiabá, radio your pal, Hendry.”
“That’ll take days. And we don’t have that kind of time. With me missing, he’s probably sent in another team. Maybe they’re closer than Cuiabá, but who knows what direction they’d be coming from?”
“Yanni can help us solve that problem.”
> “That’s fine, but even if we find them today, it’ll be days before they can send in the proper ass-kicking gear.” Mac slammed his fist down on the dirt with determination. “And that’s why I have to go in there.”
“Okay, Mac,” Yanni said. “One thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“We are goin’ wit you.”
MacCready started to object but Thorne held up a hand. “Do not bother yourself. We will not budge on this topic.”
“Nope.” Yanni put down her carving and began stirring the cooling contents of a wooden soup bowl.
“That smells delicious,” MacCready said, hopefully. “Whatcha cookin’, Yanni?”
“Mac, you do not want this soup.”
Thorne finished for her. “Poison arrow frogs.”
CHAPTER 25
Preparations
The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.
—A FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM OF INFORMATION THEORY
February 11, 1944
At daybreak, the engineer Maurice Voorhees stood beside his monorail track as Dr. Eugen Sänger ducked beneath the undercarriage of the rocket sled. It was covered by moisture-protective tarps.
“Very nice, Maurice,” the older man called out. “The groove you designed into the track’s upper surface was a brilliant idea.”
“Thank you,” Voorhees responded, sounding distracted. He had been scanning the tree line that ran along both sides of the track. The jungle plants were already sending out runners and tendrils, thin green arms reaching out for the rebar and wood rail. Only a few months from now, they’ll have it completely covered.
“In fact I have no idea why I did not think of it myself,” Sänger said, as he emerged from under the tarps. “Maurice—” The older man stopped momentarily, noting that his audience had wandered away from the track.
Voorhees was staring at a spot deep within the tangled foliage.
“There is no noticeable sag in the track, either,” Sänger said, then he kicked at the ground with his heel. “It is clear that using this ancient stone road for a base was a brilliant decision as well. The last thing we need is for the Silverbirds to sink with their launch track into this miserably thin tropical—”
Maurice Voorhees heard none of it. He was imagining a Silverbird tearing along the rail atop the rocket sled he had designed.
Something slapped Voorhees hard on the back and he spun around with a start, relieved to see that it was only Sänger.
The older rocket man shot him an odd expression, then continued. “But the real test will come tomorrow. Won’t it? That is when your friend Hanna Reitsch uses the Dragon and my pulley system to seat the Silverbirds onto your sleds.”
“She is not a friend,” Voorhees snapped.
“Yes, but she is an extremely gifted pilot,” Sänger countered. “To have landed one of those shit-propelled V-1s in one piece? The skill involved?”
“Yes, and she also proposed a squadron of suicide aircraft,” Voorhees said, dismissively. “How very heroic of her.”
The younger engineer said nothing more, trailing off into thought again. He had been a very young man when the bombs fell on Peenemünde, but the past few months had aged him many years. The work appeared to have the opposite effect on Sänger, who seemed to be getting stronger. The man would have been perfectly happy to carry the war from central Brazil through Europe down to the Nile and Jordan rivers, until the end of civilization itself, if requisite, until finally it was fought with sickles and knives, and sharpened sticks.
Unmoved by Voorhees’s condemnation of the female test pilot, Sänger simply continued his monologue: “Once that’s done, I estimate that fueling the rockets and their sleds will take the better part of two—at most, three days. After that, our work here will be nearly completed. And then it will all be up to the pilots. Of course, all of this depends upon the completion of the weapon by that fat little Jap . . . I can never remember . . . what is his name, Maurice?”
But Voorhees never replied. My sleds, the beautiful control systems I designed, the guidance systems, all of it will soon be destroyed.
“Maurice . . . are you listening to me?” Sänger said.
Wasted.
Despite all of it, there had to be a better day coming, he tried to convince himself. He just did not know how to get there yet.
But, he told himself, I’ll think of something.
In the Bio Lab, Dr. Akira Kimura had just put the finishing touches on the six pathogenic reentry vehicles, or “cluster bombs.” Three for each of what’s-his-name’s Silverfish.
The bacteria within each bomb now rested (comfortably, Kimura imagined) in beds of ultrafine sand, sand that would be dispersed for miles in every direction once a whole series of cylindrical “bomblets” popped apart, high over their targets.
Until then, his “children” could sleep peacefully, safely isolated from exposure to the damp tropical air. Their nurturing and safety had been his primary concern for the past week.
Who knows what disgusting thing might try to contaminate them as they sleep?
To minimize the risk, the little incubation chambers themselves had been outfitted with parachutes, thus becoming the bomblets, dozens of which would be parceled into the six cluster bombs, each designed to “blossom” at a predetermined altitude. Like the Silverbirds, Kimura’s bomblet system had almost been launch-ready on the day the Nostromo arrived at Hell’s Gate, with the only modification being substitution of vampire bat pathogens for his Unit 731 anthrax strain.
What will the Americans think when they see the parachutes? Kimura wondered. And the insignia we’ve designed.
He hoped they would be frightened—although not to death. That would be too soon, and it would spoil the fun.
Kimura was satisfied that all the difficulties of testing and preparing the bomblets were conquered. The other bit of good news concerned the draculae, who had doubtless taken care of the MacCready problem. The disease warrior imagined that the plateau at sunset must have been like a violently shaken hornet’s nest, after Wolff and Reitsch helicoptered out with their specimen.
“We yanked the dragon’s tail,” Wolff had told Kimura, “then left the American to burn.”
Nightfall, in the forest two miles outside Nostromo Base
FEBRUARY 15, 1944
* * *
MacCready had told Yanni he would do better than walking twenty feet without collapsing. He was determined to cover twenty miles. And by now he had done just that.
“So what is he really doing in there, Mac? This so-called Wolff and his pals?”
“I have no doubt at this point that they’re trying to multiply whatever the bats are carrying in their mouths—some form of hemorrhagic shit—quite possibly a bacterium.”
“And what makes you think this, again?” Thorne had heard his friend’s explanation several times already but he was apparently still trying to convince himself that Mac was no longer delirious.
“Look, the wrecked submarine they found downriver was a Jap design—and there were Japs in that camp. It isn’t a coincidence that Japan is running the world’s largest biological weapons program.”
“And what, they are in cahoots with the Krauts to develop germs?”
“Bioweapons, disease bombs. Same shit they’ve been experimenting with somewhere in Manchuria. We’ve had reports of unnatural plagues breaking out in occupied regions of China.”
“This is low of them,” Thorne replied.
“These guys probably have a new delivery system going as well. There was fuel all over that base. From the smell of it, I think they were farming methane.”
“So, you are thinking that any day now, this Wolff flings a missile at London or New York, full of something he grows out of your bats?”
“Something like that.”
“Mac, not to be a pain in the neck but did you also consider that this might be worse than disease-bombing a city?”
MacCready g
ave a funeral laugh. “I’m trying not to think that far ahead. But go on.”
The botanist continued. “Once these bacteria are out in a new environment or under the microscope of some other lab jockey, that is where the real trouble starts. Shit mutates, Mac. This is a basic law of living things.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Let’s speculate that there’s maybe a thimbleful of this bacterium in nature, in all the bats that are alive. It’s no stretch that Wolff and his goons are already able to isolate this thing. If so, they could be multiplying it by the pound. Now, what if they tamper with it—progress it beyond its natural host?”
“That would be bad.”
“Real bad. And if this stuff doesn’t bite him in the ass, if someone carries any of it to labs outside Brazil . . .”
MacCready finished the thought. “Then we could be looking at the biggest shit-stomping of all time.”
“Okay,” Yanni said. “Like you need one more reason to blow it all up.”
“But how?” her husband asked.
“I keep thinking back to those fuel reserves I saw back at the base,” MacCready said.
“Fuel blows up,” Yanni added.
“Well, this is a good start,” Thorne said with a clearly forced grin. “I suppose we’ll just keep making up this famous plan as we go along.”
“You got a better idea, Leaf Boy?”
The botanist did not answer, instead allowing his gaze to fall on the pristine forest just beyond their tiny shelter. “What civilized person builds a disease weapon from something they pluck out of a place like this?”
MacCready remained silent.
“Civilization,” Thorne said. “Interesting concept, piss-poor execution.”
MacCready appreciated the sickening irony of Thorne’s statement. He had long ago accepted the fact that his old friend was one of the world’s most powerful shit magnets. So, naturally, once Bob Thorne decided to get away from civilization, civilization in its worst incarnation would plot to set up camp in his backyard. The odds of it happening that way were probably one in millions. And that seemed just about right to Mac.
