Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  The wind shifted and he smelled rotten eggs.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “What?” Walker asked.

  “You smell that?”

  “Wasn’t me,” Brazelton said.

  “Yeah,” Walker said, turning his face into the breeze. “Sulfur dioxide. Either a warm-water slough, or, more likely with the level of geothermal activity on the island, a hot spring.”

  “Hot springs?” Pike said.

  “Ambitle’s riddled with them,” Walker said. “There are even shallow-water hydrothermal vents off the northwestern coast in Tutum Bay. They spew one and a half kilograms of arsenic into the coral reef ecosystem every day. In its concentrated form, that’s more than enough arsenic to kill ten thousand adult humans each and every single day.”

  “Full of trivia, aren’t you?” Brazelton said.

  “I’m a geologist. What can I say?”

  Pike could barely discern a cloud of steam clinging to the canopy about half a kilometer downhill where the ground leveled off. The wind rose again and the cloud dissipated into the rain. Without a word, he started down the slick path. The tracks they’d been following were all but obliterated now. Were it not for sections of forest where the branches were so intertwined they blocked out even the sporadic flares of lightning, he might have thought they’d lost their quarry. Here and there, amid tangles of roots, the moldering detritus was compressed into a jumble of tracks, one overlapping the next. Add to it the snapped branches and the occasional tatter of fabric, and he knew they were still moving in the right direction.

  The ground trembled with a faint rumbling sound. All eyes turned to Walker.

  “Rock and roll,” the geologist said through a smirk.

  Saved from the worst of the monsoon winds here, moss flourished on the limbs and bearded the boughs. The humidity seemed to be trapped in an oppressive mist that made sweat bloom from Pike’s pores. Mosquitoes hummed in swirling swarms around stagnant puddles that reeked of flatus. His attempts to swat them away from his face were met with stingers to the back of his neck. Bats swooped across the path, picking off the insects with such speed that they appeared as little more than orange blurs in his peripheral vision. Pygmy parrots squawked from enclaves saved from the tumult. Deafened to the complaints of the men at his heels, he picked his way through the overgrowth and around basalt pillars draped with vines from the steep jungle above them, which felt as though it could come cascading down upon them at any moment in the muddy streams that carved through the slope.

  The smell of rotten eggs intensified. Wisps of steam curled through the ceiba trees ahead of them. Through the goggles, it was a churning miasma of pinks and purples. The tracks in the mud grew closer together to such a degree that they canceled each other out. He imagined the survivors slowing to appraise the steam, whispering as they debated forging ahead or circling around it. Their decision evident by the continuation of the trail, Pike pressed forward through the trampled undergrowth and stepped out into a small clearing. The steam was so thick, the colors so vibrant, that he could see nothing else. He shed the goggles in favor of his flashlight and his own two eyes.

  An oblong pool roughly the size of a koi pond filled the majority of the gap. The rain had raised the water level so that it spilled over its banks and flooded a marsh of barren trees, their trunks stunted and deformed. Nearest the edges, there were concentric rings of lemon yellow and flame orange, while closer to the center where the superheated fluid was forced up from the mantle the water was a deep blue. The microorganisms aggregated in the various temperature zones that radiated outward from the hydrothermal vent. There were no grasses or weeds along the banks, just bare limestone thriving with chemosynthetic and photosynthetic bacteria alike.

  There was a body lying across the edge with its torso in the shallows.

  “And then there were three.”

  Pike followed a pair of Reeboks to filthy, ripped jeans and an untucked, red and green flannel shirt. He knelt over the remains and directed his beam down into water the temperature of a spa. The hands were swollen and the flesh had begun to slip away from the exposed bones in wavering strips. Cellular dissolution and adipose tissue clouded the water. The gold ring around the fourth digit on the left hand was unadorned and too large to belong to a female. He guided the light along the length of the arms to the shoulders and the neck, through which the ridges of the spinous processes of the cervical spine jutted like the spikes on an iguana’s back. Most of the man’s hair had already boiled away. The few clumps that remained were short and black. Sections of the skull showed through the skin, and what little he could see of the face was devoid of flesh. The bared teeth grinned at him from underwater.

  “Drag him out of there,” Pike said.

  He stepped back and watched his men each take an ankle and haul the man up into the steaming overflow. Pike slid the toe of his right boot under the man’s chest and rolled him over. Hollow orbits stared up into the heavens as raindrops beat on his skeletal features.

  Brazelton shined his beam onto the man’s forehead.

  “Depressed fracture of the frontal bone,” he said, “which suggests blunt-force trauma.”

  “He hit his head on the rocks in the shallows.”

  “It would have taken significant force above and beyond a simple fall.”

  “I think whatever carved up his chest should have been able to supply it.” Pike shined his light across the man’s shirt, which had been torn to ribbons. While the majority of his pectorals had rotted away in the water to reveal the horizontal slats of his ribs, the lower chest and abdomen were gouged by parallel lacerations so deep they had peeled apart to allow the yellow fat to bloom out.

  “This one isn’t disemboweled.”

  Pike nodded. It wasn’t as though this was the first body they’d found with its abdomen intact. The one thrown high into the treetops by the tsunami and the one that had been burned alive had been spared that fate. And now this one, whose head had been smashed down against the bank and his body left to decompose in the scalding water and swirling steam.

  “Over here,” Walker said.

  Pike walked away from the corpse and joined Walker on a small knoll that stood above the water level. A dead sapling twisted through the steam at an impossible angle. The geologist directed his flashlight down at the mud, highlighting a single, bare footprint.

  “I don’t think that’s normal,” Walker said.

  “Get a shot of this,” Pike said to Brazelton, who removed the digital camera from his vest and snapped several pictures from various angles. The imprint was identical to those Pike had found paralleling the survivors’ path through the jungle, only this one was more clearly delineated where the long toenails cut through the muck. “I’ll radio Montgomery and Pearson to let them know they have another pickup. You two start scouting the area. Either find me the rest of their bodies or where their trail leads away from here. We’ve already wasted too much time as it is.”

  He removed the transceiver from its holster and watched his men fan out into the mist, holding their flashlights against the sides of their Tasers.

  “Montgomery,” Pike said into the communication device. “Montgomery. Do you copy?”

  The static fizzled and hissed through the primordial mist like some primitive creature skulking through the shadows.

  “Montgomery!”

  The crackle droned on.

  Twenty-Nine

  R/V Aldous Huxley

  Bishop couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more going on here than these men let on. Maybe five years had passed since he left the Navy to find his own way in the world, but his training was still intact. They didn’t let just anyone into Uncle Sam’s fleet. Well, maybe they did. Like every other branch, they needed fodder for the cannons, but were it not for what he had seen in a war that had never been his to fight, he’d undoubtedly still be among its ranks. He had never truly believed in the ideals of the imperial government that had rushed him thr
ough Boot Camp in Great Lakes, Illinois to get him on a carrier bound for the Persian Gulf where he’d been sent to protect people who didn’t want his kind of protection and wage war against an enemy his side had armed and taught to kill in the first place. All he’d wanted was to escape a situation at home where his father beat him for no other reason than he could, while his mother looked the other way in a vodka-induced fugue. Sure, a part of him had wanted a little adventure on the high seas, but never had he thought that he would be confronting the enemy from closer than the distance of a Tomahawk strike, nor had he contemplated the prospect of wading through the bodies of the women and children who’d been the recipients of its fiery vengeance. Two tours and he’d called it quits. But even after the years spent on these private research vessels and in training for the submersible dives to the bottom of the world, it was startling how quickly the distrust that had been beaten into him returned. He wanted to know what was really going on here, and he wanted to know right now.

  There was no reason that the helicopter that had ferried Bradley and his associate from the mainland hadn’t picked up Courtney and him while it was here and flown them back to Rabaul where they could receive proper medical attention, at least more attention than could be provided by a single company physician in an infirmary ill-equipped to handle anything more traumatic than the common cold. He understood their need to find answers. They were potentially dealing with a massive amount of lawsuits despite the waivers all personnel had signed before boarding, especially if something had gone wrong on the Mayr before the tsunami swamped it. A part of him almost felt as though he and Courtney were being kept here for more than their ability to help figure out the events prior to the sinking, even though he personally doubted their capacity to do so. It felt like they were being held hostage to a certain degree to prevent them from sharing their experience with the rest of the world.

  He watched Bradley from the corner of his eye. The man’s expression was indecipherable. While his tone and his words reflected a measure of compassion, the way he masked the physical manifestation of his emotions convinced Bishop that Bradley was hiding something. And the sooner he figured it out the better. He could positively feel a storm brewing on the horizon, and every instinct insisted that he didn’t want to be here when it arrived.

  Courtney’s hand found his. Her cold fingers laced between his. He glanced at her face. It appeared to have been an unconscious gesture on her part. She had put on a brave front for her brother’s benefit, which did little to mask the fear she tried to hide behind it. If they even thought about using her brother against her, he would make sure they regretted it. That was a large part of his uneasiness. The way they talked about Ty, their fascination with the nature of his accident in the lab, suggested they suspected something they weren’t prepared to divulge.

  So far, none of the security footage they had watched betrayed any of the details Bradley and his men were obviously seeking. They had watched men and women stampeding each other in the hallways under the crimson glare of the emergency lights, which appeared gray in the black and white scale. Bradley had grown impatient with viewing the videos in the order in which they’d been downloaded and made the executive decision to go right to the first file from the pilothouse.

  While they waited for Barnes to find a file that was more than a screen filled with jumping static, Van Horn, who had been called away perhaps fifteen minutes ago, returned.

  “We’re bringing the ship as close to the shore of Ambitle Island as we can without riding her up onto dry land in order to expedite the process of ferrying the salvage aboard.” Something unspoken passed between Van Horn and Bradley. “The sooner we can have our team evaluate what we’ve collected from the island, the sooner we can compare it to the findings in our database.”

  “The Zambian database?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Has our forward team on Ambitle reported in?”

  “Yes, sir. Pike is still following the trail toward the western shore.” Van Horn leaned down and whispered into Bradley’s ear. Bishop witnessed a quick widening of Bradley’s eyes before he suppressed his surprise. His tone took on a sharp edge when he spoke.

  “Then once everything from the beach has been loaded, that’s where I want this ship. We’re wasting time over here if there are survivors looking for rescue over there.”

  “You didn’t see anything when you flew over, and we had the chopper pilot scan the shoreline before he returned to the mainland.”

  “At least eighty percent of that coast is nearly vertical and covered with jungle. Just because we didn’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

  Barnes opened a file that appeared to be of more than just shivering horizontal bars and turned to Bradley for permission to let it roll.

  “I expect this ship to be headed around the island in under thirty minutes. And I want updates from the lab by the time we’re moving.” His fingertips tapped a tuneless beat on the table in front of him, and for a moment he appeared lost in thought. He finally spoke in little more than a whisper. “We’ve been given a second chance. We can’t afford to mess this one up. We might never get another.”

  A second chance? Bishop thought. A second chance for what?

  “What about the tugboat?” Van Horn asked.

  “Thank the captain for his service on such short notice and let him know that he is free to return to the mainland, with the standard non-disclosure contract and fee, of course.”

  “Yes, sir.” Van Horn hurried out of the command center and into the hallway, where Bishop heard the sound of the man’s footsteps break into a sprint.

  “Please play the file, Mr. Barnes.” Bradley’s voice was taut, his thin lips white. “Dr. Martin, please tell me about this skin condition that you mentioned Tyler developed.”

  The monitor displayed an image Bishop immediately recognized as the pilothouse from a vantage point on the ceiling that showed the bridge against the backdrop of the slanted wall of glass, which looked out over the bow and the sea beyond. Lightning reflected from the rivulets of water on the windows, through which the distant storm clouds flashed with gray electrical arcs. A skeletal crew manned the helm for the third shift. Even through the bars that traveled up and down the screen, Bishop identified Second Mate Ellis Rivers standing in front of the ocean view. The horizon tipped from side to side as waves hammered the Mayr broadside. Shipboard technician Jeremy Erskine darted from one console to the next in an effort to do the job of three men. Both glanced up at the emergency light housed in the Plexiglas and wire cage on the wall. They must have just heard the first klaxon blare.

  “Dr. Partridge called it a ‘systemic outbreak of psoriatic plaques’,” Courtney said. “He said he’d never seen such an aggressive form of psoriasis.”

  The video skipped and static reigned. When it cleared, Erskine was nowhere to be seen, but Rivers was looking across the room toward the door to the chart room and shouting something they would never hear. Erskine stepped onscreen a heartbeat later with the fire extinguisher he must have liberated from its glass housing in the hallway and tossed it to the Second Mate. Erskine turned back in the direction from which he’d entered, then appeared to throw himself to the ground and slide out of the picture with his arms trailing across the floor behind him. Rivers stiffened and held up the nozzle of the fire extinguisher.

  Bishop glanced at the ocean on the digital horizon, which continued to rock to the same fierce rhythm.

  “Did Tyler have a preexisting condition of psoriasis or was it possibly caused by an adverse reaction to whatever was inside the bioreactor?” Bradley asked.

  “That was the first time Ty had developed any kind of skin condition, as far as I know.”

  “You said systemic, not local, correct? Describe it to me.”

  Rivers shouted something and stumbled backward toward the windows without noticing the flashing warning lights on the bridge, which was lit up like a Christmas tree. He raised the nozzle of the
red canister and fired a burst of chemical smoke toward the door just below and to the left of the camera. The chalky pall hung over the room like fog, through which Rivers appeared as a silhouette against the windows, which burned a brilliant white with lightning before fading and forcing the aperture of the lens of rationalize the sudden shift to darkness.

  “It started as erythema, just little red patches of dry skin that itched to no end on his forearms and legs, but soon enough he was scratching at similar outbreaks on his chest, neck, and cheeks. His skin took on a silver cast and his epidermis started to flake away. The patches looked like a trout’s scales.”

  “And eventually they covered his entire body?”

  “More or less.”

  “You said he had headaches, too?” Bradley’s voice grew more animated. The other computer technicians looked up at him from their workstations. The constant clatter of keystrokes ceased. “What else?”

  “They were migraines. He became hypersensitive to light and felt nauseous all the time. And he said his bones hurt, deep down, like something was trying to burrow out.”

  Bishop was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. Bradley’s excitement was not only inappropriate, it was a tell. Proof positive that he knew what had happened to Courtney’s brother. He wanted to shake Bradley and demand answers, slap him around a little if he had to. His temper rose like a coiled rattlesnake and he was about to round on Bradley when Rivers blasted two more clouds of ammonium phosphate across the bridge and pressed himself back against the flashing bank of windows.

  Another dark form streaked through the settling haze directly toward the Second Mate.

  “What else?” Bradley asked.

  “That isn’t enough?” Courtney snapped. “He was in nearly constant pain. Were it not for whatever happened to the ship, Dr. Partridge was planning to call you and convince you to have Ty airlifted to the nearest hospital.”