Pearson pulled back the tarp to find the remains covered in crabs. Dozens scuttled away across the sand, but the majority brazenly continued to nip at the rotting flesh. One man’s nose had already been plucked to a skeletal nub.
“Christ almighty,” Pearson said. He kicked one away from a man’s eyes.
“When you’re finished,” Pike’s voice said through the speaker, “call…retrieval and hurry your asses up. You should be able to follow our trail…easily. Radio in once you reach the stream…crosses our path about a kilometer west of where we originally split up so we…arrange a rendezvous.”
“Copy,” Montgomery said.
“You sure you want to put these bodies under there with the others?” Pearson asked. “There’ll be nothing left of them by the time anyone arrives from the ship to collect them.” He stomped on the ambitious crabs that advanced toward his boots. “Where the hell did all of these things come from?”
“You have a better idea? I’m not about to drag that dead weight any farther.”
“All I’m saying is they’d have been better off where we found them. I’d hate to think we nearly killed ourselves dragging them all the way down here just to feed the bloody crabs.”
Montgomery switched the channel on the transceiver and brought it again to his lips.
“Come in Huxley.”
“Huxley, copy.”
Pearson spread out the silver blanket and arranged the carcasses side by side. They were muddy and disheveled and it looked like one of them had dislocated its shoulder in the tumble.
“Hell if I’m putting them over there with the others,” he said.
“We need pick-up service for five on Ambitle,” Montgomery said.
“Tell them to bring a net and have the cook start melting the butter.”
“Would you shut up about the damn crabs already?”
“Copy that, Ambitle. Leave…light on, would you? We can’t see…noses on our faces out here in this fog.”
“They’re like the ocean’s version of spiders,” Pearson said.
“Copy, Huxley. Out.” Montgomery shoved the communication device back into its holster. “You going to cover them up or what?”
“What’s the point? Fat lot of good it did the others.”
Montgomery shed his backpack and rummaged through the contents until he found a flare. He took off the cap and, with a flick of the wrist, summoned a blinding pink flame that chased a gout of black smoke into the air. After waving it over his head for good measure, he cast it down onto the sand and headed back into the jungle. The wind whistled past them through the trees, bringing with it an assault of raindrops and the scent of the rotting meat left behind.
Both men lowered their goggles again to transform the night into digitally enhanced twilight. Best Montgomery could figure, they had about two and a half kilometers to make up, and Pike’s patience will have exhausted itself before they even halved that distance. The last thing any of them wanted was to incur his wrath tonight, which promised to be more than long enough as it was.
Montgomery broke into a jog, balancing his pace against the weight on his back and the way the goggles bounced over his eyes. Any faster and his vision through the scope was like shaking his head rapidly back and forth and up and down; any slower and he feared Pike would have his head. He still wasn’t convinced that whatever was out here in the jungle was the same kind of thing they had found in Zambia. Granted, the similarities between the gutted remains were remarkable, but, really, what were the odds? Lord only knew what kind of creatures stalked this island already without throwing their mythical Chaco Man into the mix.
Pearson’s tread slapped behind him in the mud. Bushes swished against his thighs. Both men had fallen into the metered breathing of the long-distance runner, their breath pluming violet from their mouths.
The occasional gold and orange creature darted through the canopy above them with a screech or a hoot. Flashes of lightning stabbed through the dense leaves and branches, striking the ground in almost palpable white columns. Vipers hung from branches, distinguishable from the vines they tried to imitate by subtle shades of blue and the sporadic flicking of forked tongues. While disorienting, the odd color schemes were vastly preferable to charging blindly through the pitch-black forest.
At the crest of the first hill, they paused to survey the vast expanse of jungle stretching across the deep lowlands and up the sharp mountainous outcroppings in hopes of catching a glimpse of movement or the heat signatures of their group in the distance. They had to settle for the nearly indistinguishable break in the trees at the bottom of the next valley, where presumably the stream flowed just wide enough to halt the advance of the forest, if only for a few meters.
Without a word, Montgomery jumped from the crest and slid down the rapidly eroding slope, using his hand for balance. At the bottom, the trees and bushes closed around him once more. It was difficult to fathom that in this day and age of global overpopulation that a place like this could still exist. The jungle was positively primeval. He knew there was a small village with a Catholic mission on the other side of the island, but outside of the holes drilled higher on the volcanic slope, he had seen no sign of man’s trespass. It awakened something primal inside of him. Instincts honed in the heat of conflagration resurfaced. His senses sharpened. He heard every distant bird call, every howl of a monkey, every crinkle of the detritus—
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The only sound of footsteps had been his own.
Montgomery turned around and stared back down what passed for a path, through screens of leaves and looping vines, toward the muddy hill, where thin brown streams channeled through the soft earth.
“Pearson?” he called.
The only response was the clamor of raindrops on the canopy above him.
Slowly, he walked back in the direction from which he had come, carefully brushing aside branches and placing each step so as not to make a sound.
A flash of lightning glimmered on the wet leaves.
Where the forest faded at the foot of the slope, he saw a poorly defined orange and purple shape on the ground through the rustling bushes.
His footsteps made a slurping sound in the muck, forcing him to slow his pace even more to compensate. The shape became clearer as he passed through the shrubs and rounded a tree trunk the size of an overpass pillar. A human form was sprawled prone in the mud and standing water, an amoeboid fuchsia glow diffusing around it. Even as he watched, the concentration of yellow in the head and chest softened to a reddish-orange.
He silently withdrew his Taser from its holster and eased to the edge of the cover.
Pearson’s face was invisible below the level of the runoff. Only the base of his head, his shoulders, and his buttocks breached the surface. His backpack lay a dozen paces uphill where the mud was disturbed by more than footprints. It looked like Pearson had lost his footing and tumbled down to where he now rested.
Pearson made no effort to rise from the mire.
Montgomery’s instincts channeled an electrical current through his veins, sensitizing him to even the most subtle change in the air around him. He moved his head slowly from side to side to compensate for his narrowed field of view. Leading with his weapon, he pressed through the foliage and stepped out into the rain.
A strobe of lightning preceded the sound of thunder, which rumbled down from the caldera like an avalanche. Momentarily blinded, he held his breath and waited for his enhanced vision to clear.
Something struck his back, driving him forward.
His feet left the ground.
He tried to reach out to brace himself, but his face struck the water first.
The horn of his goggles embedded itself in the mud, snapping his head sharply backward.
A heavy weight landed on top of him. Claws carved into his neck.
He drew a breath to scream and filled his lungs with fluid.
Twenty-Seven
R/V Aldous Huxley
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
On the monitor, Ty retreated from the advancing men until his back met the rear wall. He slid down to the floor and buried his face in his hands.
She stifled a sob and all eyes in the room turned in her direction. Bishop rose from his stool and hurried to her side.
“Dr. Martin…” She recognized Dr. Graham Bradley right away. “I’m terribly sorry. That must have been very difficult to watch.” He stood and gestured to his chair. “Please. Have a seat.”
Courtney could only shake her head. The video playback ended and froze in a black rectangle scarred by lines of static like a bar code, but still she couldn’t make herself look away.
Bishop wrapped his arm around her shoulders and attempted to delicately guide her back into the hallway.
“We should get you back—”
“No,” she said with such force that Bishop stopped in his tracks. Their stares met for a long moment. He acquiesced with a nod and stepped out of her way so she could enter the room.
“Can you tell us what we just witnessed, Dr. Martin?” Van Horn asked.
“Have you found my brother yet?”
“No. Not yet. But that’s a good thing. Since he wasn’t among those found in the wreckage, there’s a chance he’s still alive.” Van Horn glanced at Bradley, who gave a hardly perceptible nod. “We found one of the work boats on Ambitle Island. Our men are tracking the survivors as we speak.”
Courtney felt such a swell of relief that her legs nearly gave out underneath her. If there was even the slightest hope that Ty had managed to survive, then nothing on this earth would keep her from finding him.
She wiped away her tears and steeled her resolve.
“What can I do to help?”
“We expect to hear from our team on the island anytime now, Dr. Martin,” Bradley said. “You’ll be the first to know when we do. In the meantime, it would help us tremendously if you could assist us in piecing together the timeframe leading up to the sinking of the Mayr.”
She slid past him and sat in his vacated chair. One of the other men hopped out of his so Bradley could sit beside her.
“Would you replay the recording, Mr. Barnes,” Van Horn said.
Courtney described the scene for them in painstaking detail. The others listened silently until the video ended.
“After my brother was finally released from the isolation chamber, he spent the next four hours undergoing a painful period of decontamination that left his skin red and abraded. The doctor took all kinds of samples and treated him for the erythema and the burn on the side of his face. Ty started feeling nauseous the next morning. The headaches and the skin condition developed shortly after that.”
“What about his assistant, Devin Wallace?” Van Horn asked.
“I don’t know. I was preoccupied with everything that was happening to Ty. I saw him a couple of times right afterward, but I don’t remember seeing him after that.”
“Where was your brother when the Mayr started to founder?”
“Under observation in the infirmary.”
She caught a shared glance between Bradley and Van Horn.
“You found bodies in the hospital suite.”
“Just one,” Bradley said. “Dr. Walter Partridge.”
“Then where’s my brother?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Van Horn said. “His wasn’t among the bodies recovered on the Mayr.”
“I should have been with him.” Courtney bit her lip to keep from crying and smeared the tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands. Now was not the time to fall apart. Ty was out there somewhere, and right now he needed her more than ever. She shook her head and laughed. “Instead, I was holed up in the lab isolating heme that’s now at the bottom of the ocean. Time well spent, wouldn’t you say?”
Bishop rested a hand on her shoulder. She unconsciously leaned her head against it.
“Dr. Martin,” Bradley said softly. His eyes met hers. In them she saw a measure of compassion, but also something else. A twinkle of excitement, maybe? “What was in your brother’s bioreactor?”
“Hydrothermal precipitates from the Medusa vent, but no one had a chance to analyze them. He was in the process of transferring them to the batch reactor and the continuous culture module when the accident happened.”
Bradley turned to the man on his right, whose leathery skin and sun-streaked hair made him look out of place in his expensive suit.
“Dr. Reaves, would you mind checking with the diving team to see if we could get Dr. Partridge’s hard drive from the hospital suite? And see what you can do about procuring samples from the batch reactor.”
Reaves nodded and headed directly out into the hallway, where he collared one of the waiting seamen and ducked out of sight.
“You really just came here to make sure that all of your research remained intact, didn’t you?” Bishop said. His face flushed and his grip tightened on her shoulder. “All of those people dead, and you’re worried about some goddamned black smoke. Where are your priorities? You want more? I’ll go down and get it for you myself. For now, maybe you could spare a thought for those who lost their lives in your service.”
“Mr. Bishop—” Van Horn started, but Bradley silenced him with a wave of his hand. After taking a moment to compose his thoughts, he answered for himself.
“Regardless of what you may think, Mr. Bishop, right now my only concern is for the crew of the Mayr. You’re right. These men and women died because I sent them here, which makes me ultimately responsible.” He sighed. “And part of that responsibility is determining exactly what happened. Their families—the entire world for that matter—will demand that someone be held accountable, and I willingly accept my role, but more importantly, they’re going to want to know why. When I tell them, I need to be able to look them in the eye and explain why their husbands and wives, siblings and children will never be coming home again. Anything less would be unacceptable. Not just for them, but for myself, as well.”
Bradley shook his head and rubbed his red eyes.
“Here’s how I see the situation. Roughly a day and a half before the Mayr ended up strewn across the reef nearly a hundred kilometers from her last charted location, there was a Level 3 biohazard emergency involving exposure to as-of-yet unclassified biologic agents that left a man in the infirmary. We have a lifeboat that reached the island, its passengers somewhere in more than a hundred and fifty square kilometers of steep, heavily wooded tropical forest that ascends right up to the rim of the volcano. And other than the security footage we have yet to watch, all we have to go on is the information we can glean from the wreckage and what two people we found on the verge of death seem unable to clearly remember. If we’re going to assemble this puzzle, we need all of the pieces.”
“What aren’t you telling us?” Bishop asked. “Something else happened on that ship, didn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what I intend to find out, Mr. Bishop.” Bradley turned to the man at the computer. “Mr. Barnes, would you kindly show us the files recorded when the Mayr’s eme
rgency systems came online?”
Twenty-Eight
Ambitle Island
Pike had caught up with Brazelton and Walker at the edge of a basalt cliff that overlooked the entire southwestern slope of the island. The ocean was barely visible beyond the trees and through the fog and sheeting rain. He imagined the survivors standing on this very precipice, gathering their bearings and plotting their course. Their pace had slowed dramatically, as evidenced by their tracks, where they could find them. They were much closer together, and deeper and more clearly defined to suggest an advancing level of fatigue. The rain was already erasing their path. What had they been thinking as they stared down upon acres of untamed and uninhabited jungle and the vast expanse of the tumultuous sea, bereft of any craft they could hail for help? Had their hopes been dashed when they saw not a single vessel in the aftermath of the tsunami? Had they despaired, or had they bolstered their resolve and forged ahead? Upon determining that this high ground held no advantage, they would have definitely headed for the western beach, where they could have built a bonfire both for warmth and to signal seagoing ships and any airplanes that might fly over. Not that anything other than Bradley’s chopper had since he and his men had first chugged into the harbor in the tug so many hours ago. It was imperative that he take into account their state of mind. If they had seen what he suspected they had, it added an element of unpredictability to their flight. A smart man with a level head would leave false trails and choose the least likely path to throw off his pursuit. With the rate at which their tracks were deteriorating, such a maneuver could cost Pike and his men valuable time trying to find the real trail, which might no longer exist. If they were instead spurred by panic, however, they’d make a bee-line directly toward the most accessible beach and pray to be rescued before whatever stalked them caught up.
Pike favored the latter theory, but there was no room for assumption. They needed to decipher the clues left behind in a hurry before they were washed away forever.
Vector Borne Page 13
