Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  Over the past month, the Western Rift of the Great Rift Valley had been rocked by a series of mini-earthquakes that culminated in a giant quake that tipped the Richter scale at seven-point-four five days ago as the Somalian tectonic plate slowly broke away from the Nubian plate. The Western Rift itself, a monstrous oblong crater formed by the resultant gap, cradled Lake Tanganyika, the world’s deepest freshwater body, which featured more than eighteen hundred kilometers of shoreline shared by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia. Hydrothermal vents released scalding water from small chimneys in the lake and numerous geothermal springs scattered throughout the countryside. Monitoring stations had registered a four degree increase in the lake’s temperature within hours of the quake. Thousands of rainbow-colored cichlids had washed up onto the banks. Wildfires had broken out in the forests along the southwestern fringe of the lake. GeNext had dispatched a scientific team the moment the news crossed the wire, but it wasn’t until a native stumbled into the port town of Mpulungu just over forty-eight hours later, carrying his wife’s bleeding body and holding closed an abdominal wound that appeared to have been torn by teeth, that Pike had received the call. He had been airborne on a corporate jet in a matter of hours. They had landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania, where he transferred to the contracted Huey.

  The man who had escaped this fate had died in a hospital bed next to the one in which his wife had passed, but not before babbling in his delirium about his village coming under siege by demons during the night.

  A dark-skinned man Pike didn’t recognize emerged from the hut wearing Hazmat gear. This was presumably their Lunda translator. Another man with no such protection followed. His wide eyes and shocked expression spoke volumes about what he had endured over the previous days.

  “He says they trapped the demons in a cave,” the translator said with a stilted British accent. “In that plateau over there to the northeast.”

  “Keys,” Pike snapped.

  “They’re still in the ignition,” Brazelton said.

  Pike sprinted away from the others toward where the Jeep waited. The oxygen tank on his back dramatically slowed him and made it difficult to situate himself behind the wheel. He cranked the ignition and pinned the gas pedal. Brazelton barely had time to lunge into the passenger seat. In the distance to the right, the other Jeep was returning from the geothermal springs at the edge of the forest. Pike found a footpath that led in the direction of the high rock plateau, a great red crown thrust up from the terra, and straddled it with the tires. The entire vehicle bounced and bucked. Mopane bushes scraped through the paint with a screeching sound. Dust bloomed behind them. Pike sighted the escarpment down the rusted hood and urged the vehicle faster.

  The shadow of the stone monolith settled over them. Vultures wheeled overhead. Pike saw a fan-shaped swatch of carbon scoring on the sandstone face and made a beeline for it. The golden grass was trampled in lines darkened by blood.

  He slammed the brakes when he reached the plateau and leapt out. What at first appeared to be a haphazard jumble of rocks from a landslide resolved into a hurriedly stacked pyramid of soot-stained stones. The ground was gray with ash, highlighting bare human footprints.

  “Clear these rocks!” Pike shouted. He threw himself against the pile and tossed the stones aside as quickly as he could. They were still warm to the touch. Fingers of smoke drifted out from the gaps behind them, issuing a scent not dissimilar to the one they had left behind in the village, only with the undercurrent of an alcohol-based accelerant. They hauled the rocks away to reveal a black maw in the stone, a dark tunnel filled with swirling smoke rushing to escape to the outside world. Pike couldn’t see a blasted thing. “I need light.”

  He heard Brazelton’s footsteps recede toward the car as he cleared a section large enough to squeeze through.

  “Here.”

  Brazelton held out a long Maglite.

  Pike grabbed it, clicked it on, and scrabbled over the stones. Beam pointed ahead of him, he shimmied into the mountain. The earthen walls were coated with charcoal, the ground with ash and burned kindling. There was just enough room to advance on his hands and knees. His light merely stained the smoke. He tried to piece together what had happened. The men had tracked their demons to this cave. They had then piled debris in the tunnel, doused it with alcohol, and set it on fire, which had served to pin their adversaries deeper in the cave while they barricaded it from the outside and listened to those trapped inside burn even as they suffocated in the smoke. That could only mean one thing.

  The bodies were still here.

  That revelation spurred him to crawl faster. His tank clanged from the solid stone overhead. Singed bones and pebbles pressed into his palms and knees. His light flashed across a charred ribcage where the tunnel widened. He saw branch-like arms and a skull in profile. There were more skeletons in a heap to his left, saved from the worst of the blaze, their flesh desiccated by the smoke and heat. More victims. Bones broken. Gutted.

  His rapid breathing echoed inside his helmet in time with his racing pulse.

  He swung the light to his right, and there they were. Pressed back into the corner. Two bodies. What little remained of their flesh was crisp and charcoaled, crumbling away from bones that had obviously undergone a degree of remodeling. He crawled closer and shined the beam onto their bared teeth, into their vacant black eye sockets. The sandstone behind them was carved and bloodstained.

  Pike cursed in frustration and hurled a disarticulated tibia against the wall.

  He heard a scraping sound and glanced behind him in time to see Brazelton scuttle into the cave. The biochemist looked past him at where the light was focused on the two corpses that had tried to claw their way through the rock.

  “Jesus,” Brazelton whispered. “We were so close this time.”

  Pike returned his gaze to the corpses.

  “I want these two bodies out of here. Seal and box them, and get them on that truck right now.”

  Brazelton turned around and started back down the tunnel.

  “We were never here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. No evidence. No witnesses. And the village?”

  “Burn it to the ground.”

  Brazelton scurried away. Pike listened to the man bark orders into microphone on his headset until his voice faded and he heard the roar of the Jeep’s engine.

  He directed the beam back onto the remains he had traveled thousands of miles to find. They hadn’t gotten here quickly enough. Forty-eight hours earlier and these baked carcasses would have still been alive. Regardless, Dr. Bradley was going to be pleased. Their theory about the method of exposure had proven correct, but they were still no closer to isolating the microorganism that was responsible than they were before.

  With any luck, the samples from the hot springs would bear fruit, although he didn’t hold out much hope. The damn natives had cost them what he feared might have been their one best chance.

  Turning his back on the vacuous stares of the dead, he crawled the length of the tunnel and emerged into the ferocious heat. The cloud of smoke over the village had darkened. Flames rose from the straw perimeter and roofs.

  There was a crack of rifle fire, then another. Pike counted six shots and knew the deed was done.

  The final report echoed across the savannah like the harbinger of a coming storm.

  Eight

  Feni Islands

  South Pacific Ocean

  52 km East of New Ireland Island, Papua New Guinea

  November 30th

  10:16 a.m. PGT

  Present Day

  The old harbor tugboat, its hull more rust than metal, rose and fell on the rough sea, the breakers slamming the ancient tractor tires chained to the gunwales with the sound of thunder and throwing arcs of spray over the bow. Bare steel showed through what was left of the white paint on the cabin. Half of the windows of the wheelhouse were boarded over with warped plywood. All that matt
ered was that the forty-ton tension winch was functional. With most of the local seafaring vessels out of commission and the rest commandeered to aid in the disaster relief efforts, they’d been fortunate to find even this piece of junk on such short notice. A cold wind battered them first from one direction, then another, assaulting the old vessel with blinding sheets of rain. The normally aquamarine South Pacific was a muddy brown. Tatters of vegetation tumbled beneath the waves. Gray clouds hung low over the bay, an oppressive ceiling reminiscent of smoke. Through the swirling mist and the sheeting rain, Roland Pike watched Ambitle Island, the larger of the Feni Islands, alternately appear then disappear a thousand meters to the east. Steep, densely forested slopes climbed up into the clouds where its long-dormant caldera hid from sight. The beaches were strewn with debris. Tangles of metal littered the sand like dinosaur bones amid the trunks of uprooted trees and the carpet of severed branches and withered leaves. A satellite tower and warped steel panels clung to the skeletal arms of the kapok, batai, and rosewood trees lining the shore, the yellowed trunks of which marked the level of the ferocious tide high up into the stripped canopy. The smaller Babase Island to the north, separated from its sister by the one hundred meter-wide Salat Strait, had fared little better.

  Just over forty hours ago, a submarine megathrust earthquake that tipped the Richter Scale at 8.4 had rocked the region. From its epicenter at the subduction zone of the Pacific tectonic plate and the Bismarck microplate in the notorious Pacific Ring of Fire, it had generated a tsunami that raced outward toward Oceania at a rate of nearly one thousand kilometers per hour, fueled by the smaller quakes of 7.3 and 6.8 that followed three minutes apart. By the time the massive wave hit the Feni Islands and the rest of the Bismarck Archipelago, the easternmost land masses in its path, the wall of water was more than twenty-five meters high. It slammed New Ireland Island, fifty kilometers to the west, on a westward course that tore a swath of destruction across Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Reports of flooding had come in from as far south as Brisbane, Australia and as far north as Hong Kong. A picture of a capsized trawler riding a wave that towered over the treetops, preparing to crash down upon a park filled with panicked, motion-blurred men and women fleeing for their lives in the coastal city of Madang, led off every global newscast and typified the horror of the worst catastrophe to strike this region since the Indian Ocean Earthquake of 2004. While corpses were still being prized from the muck and untangled from trees, the confirmed death toll had nearly reached forty thousand with estimates of doom-and-gloom forecasting as many as three times that amount still to be culled from the ranks of the missing. Relief workers from all across the globe had converged upon Oceania, establishing makeshift triage and treatment centers in areas still flooded nearly knee-deep. And identifying and burying the dead, of course. There were no such relief efforts here on Ambitle, which was inhabited only by a lone small Tolai village on the northwestern shore of the teardrop-shaped volcanic island. The vast majority of the island was leased to a mining corporation out of Sydney that had only recently begun geological surveys. So while the rest of the world held its breath as it watched the disturbing footage rolling in from west of here and every free hand was sifting through the detritus in search of bloated remains, Pike and his men had this bay all to themselves.

  Pike could barely feel the cold through his neoprene wetsuit. He confirmed that the SART transponder beacon was stationary fifty meters beneath them on the shipboard radar for the hundredth time and joined the others at the stern. Avery Brazelton and Barrett Walker sat with their legs dangling over the brine, their fins cutting through the foamy waves. Both men were already clad in black scuba gear, diving helmets drawn over their heads, compact free-shaft spear guns strapped to one thigh and knives to the other. Mounted to either side of their helmets were a spotlight and an underwater digital video camera, the feeds from which were being relayed eastward across the Pacific to where the twin to the research vessel torn apart on the reef below them raced in their direction.

  He seated his helmet over his Norwegian-blonde hair, adjusted the clear shield over his face, and readied his video recorder. His gut tingled with anticipation. After more than thirty-five hours in transit from Washington to New Ireland Island, where the old tug and its even older Papuan captain had been waiting in the ruined harbor, it was finally time to get down to work and see what could be salvaged. The Research Vessel Ernst Mayr, part of the global exploration fleet owned and operated exclusively by GeNext Biosystems, had been investigating a surge in seismic and geologic activity at the Kilinailau Trench more than one hundred and twenty kilometers to the east-southeast of the Feni Islands when the earthquake had struck. Their last communication had been more than forty-eight hours earlier, and all attempts to hail them had proven futile. The pulse from the Mayr’s EPIRB distress beacon had allowed for satellite triangulation to this bay, far from its last charted location. Aerial footage had shown nothing but open sea and beaches strewn with metallic debris. Pike and the two members of his team had been dispatched to serve as the forward party that would begin the investigation into its sinking while awaiting the arrival of the mobile research platform. Forty-six souls had been commissioned to the Mayr. While he intended to make sure that each and every one of their corpses were recovered, that endeavor was secondary to his mission. The way he saw it, the chaos on the more populous islands had bought them roughly four days with the wreckage before the world would turn its eye upon the loss of life here and the families back home would demand answers. He would need every bit of that time to search the sunken ship and strip it of all of the proprietary research and equipment housed in the submerged laboratories. What had befallen the crew was a tragedy, but he was still responsible for the security of a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical corporation. Protecting its secrets and vested interests was paramount.

  There would be plenty of time to mourn the deceased afterward.

  Pike seated the rebreathing mask over his mouth and nose and dialed up the flow. He nodded to his men, who followed his example, then dropped over the edge and splashed into the roiling brown sea.

  Nine

  The Research Vessel Ernst Mayr had struck the reef on its side and been dragged along the ocean floor until it ultimately lodged against the jagged rocks and coral. Debris covered the seafloor as far as Pike had been able to see to the east. Brazelton and Walker were now searching what remained of the upper three decks while Pike worked his way into the hold. The plan was to clear the peripheral areas and meet back on the main level where all of the research suites were housed once they were through.

  Pike raised his head toward the stairwell and the spotlight affixed to the right side of his helmet followed. The scales of fish flashed through the murky haze. Crabs already scuttled across the silt that had settled on the starboard side of the main corridor below him. The stainless steel airlocks to the science labs all stood open; dark, gaping pits filled with millions of dollars worth of useless electrical equipment and shattered glass that glittered like submerged jewels. He paddled upward, conscious of the constricting metal around him and the weight of the tons of water overhead. His respirations echoed hollowly in his ears. The entire ship groaned as it settled, punctuated by the wrenching sounds of buckling seams and rivets. A silvertip shark cruised languidly past him from the shadows with a swish of the muscular tailfin that brushed his hip. The fact that it showed no interest in him confirmed what he suspected. The beast was already sated.

  He followed the stairs up to the landing, then bent around and upward once more before emerging into a hallway framed by the doorways to the engineering rooms both above and below him. A dark shape drifted through the cloudy brine toward him, arms splayed to its sides, legs hanging limply. Long hair wavered around its head like kelp. He shined his beam toward its face and glimpsed pale, bloated features with milky eyes before forcing himself to look away. Straps of flesh had been torn from the woman’s high Asian cheekbones by scavengers to expose her teeth
in a macabre grin. Her entire abdominal cavity had been absolved of its contents, leaving a macerated maw surrounded by shreds of clothing through which he could see the white hint of her spine. Shouldering past her, he kicked deeper into the darkness, away from the stairwell.

  The corridor walls fell away as he swam into a forest of large white and gray pipes with pressure gauges and release valves that funneled fuel and lube oil, coolants, bilge, and air throughout the vessel. Electrical conduits lined walls with circuit boxes and generator controls. Hooks dotted the pegboards above workbenches where tools had once hung.

  With a metallic shriek, the entire vessel shifted toward him as the tide drew its metallic carcass inexorably toward the shore. He could see pulverized coral, stone fragments, and mud through tears in the steel hull below him, through which schools of orange and red fish darted back and forth. Past the maze of pipes, the door to the cold storage hold stood open. He turned in that direction and his beam cast shadows from more floating forms against the steel wall. Another shark startled at his presence, its eyes reflecting gold, before it cruised out of sight. A ragdoll man twisted in its wake, pointing with his lone remaining arm as if in accusation. He’d been similarly disemboweled. Pike’s pulse raced as his mind flashed back to the accursed Zambian village. Was it possible…?

  Between the scientific staff and the ship’s crew, nearly fifty men and women had been aboard when the research vessel set sail from Seattle. As he pressed deeper into the hold, he found the majority of them.

  A mass of humanity twisted and writhed in the water as though performing a dance choreographed in the fires of hell. A pall of silt swirled around them. Arms and legs tangled. Bodies bumped against each other only to twirl away and ricochet from the next. Blanched, swollen faces. Blue lips parted by cracked teeth and engorged tongues. Haloes of stringy hair. Lab coats fluttered from researchers, stained with Rorschach blots of suffering. The navy blue uniforms of the crew were nearly black. Some were missing shoes and articles of clothing, others digits and entire appendages. Broken bones poked through sloughed flesh. And all of them—each and every one—had been gutted. Ropes of bowel still trailed from a few, frayed and severed.