Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  “What are we looking for in the hanger?” Courtney asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  She twisted the handle and shoved the hanger door inward. With gravity added to the weight of the door, she had to lean her shoulder into it in order to squeeze through. Bishop caught it before it could close and followed her into complete darkness that smelled even worse than the corridor. Wherever the bodies were, he was thankful that he couldn’t see them. There were no exterior windows, and without power, there was no hope of turning on the banks of spotlights mounted up in the exposed rafters. He flicked the switch beside the door up and down a couple of times to be sure. Fortunately, he’d spent so much time in this hanger and its twin on the Mayr that he could navigate it blindfolded, a skill that until now he had never thought would come in handy.

  “Stay right there,” he said.

  “Where would I possibly go?”

  Bishop shoved away from the wall in a straight line toward the center of the industrial garage. The floor here was wet with condensation and might just be slick enough for what he had in mind. He faced the downward slant, took two quick steps forward for momentum, and slid like a batter into third base. Objects flew past to either side of him, close enough to sense but not quite feel. The garage door had to be coming up fast now. If he’d planned this right, he should strike the base of the two-story door dead-center. He maneuvered both feet in front of him and flexed his knees to absorb the impact. Instead of colliding with the lowest horizontal panel, his soles slammed into something soft and forgiving.

  “Jesus,” he groaned.

  His kingdom for a pair of shoes.

  He distinctly felt the torn fabric and the cool, distended skin that sucked in his feet like a garbage bag filled with oatmeal. Whatever part of the body his right foot had sunken into had renewed the stench with a vengeance. He struggled to stand, but only ended up slipping in the vile sludge and flopping back down.

  “Are you okay?” Courtney called. Her voice echoed in the confines.

  “Oh, yeah.” He scooted to his right until there were no corpses between him and the garage door, and finally rose to his feet. “Absolutely wonderful.”

  He followed the door to where it met with the roller track that raised it. Just to his left, at waist level, was the locking mechanism. He cranked it until the lock disengaged with a clang. When he finally found the handles, he raised the door as high as he could. He caught movement from the corner of his eye and nearly shouted a warning to Courtney, but it was just the bodies that had been wedged against the garage door continuing the journey that gravity had started. They rolled and slithered and tumbled down into the waiting ocean in a tangle of appendages. He caught glimpses of the gray cast to their skin, the gaping wounds, and the bloodstained clothing before the waves pulled them under and carried them away.

  Bishop was grateful he hadn’t seen any of their faces well enough to recognize them or for long enough that he’d been able to count how many of them there were.

  He located the pulley-and-chain system on the wall and used it to raise the door all the way up to the ceiling. The smell of smoke rushed in to at least temper the reek of decomposition.

  Straight down the stern deck, he could see the very top of the A-frame like the mouth of a flooded tunnel. The submersible’s rails ran straight toward it before vanishing underwater. The setup couldn’t have been more perfect. He turned to face Courtney with a smile so broad it hurt his chapped cheeks.

  “Well?” he said. “What do you think?”

  “Of what?”

  He gestured toward the port-side wall and gave a slight bow.

  “Your chariot, m’lady.”

  Seventy-Six

  Pike cruised against the current over the sharp reef. The coral formations were like a forest of dead trees coated with broken beer bottles on a mountainous landscape. He could hardly see the skeletal shapes through the cloud of silt that clung to them like a dirty mist. Fish darted from one enclave to the next, mere flashes of silver and then they were gone. Sporadic columns of bubbles flooded upward from the invisible holes in the ocean floor where the hydrothermal vents forced copious amounts of superheated hydrogen sulfide and cyanide, among other toxins, up from the mantle. A larger silver shape knifed through the reef below him too quickly for him to clearly see. His passage must have disturbed a shark riding out the storm in the coral cliffs, or scavenging the bodies with the crabs. He stayed as close to the surface as he could to keep from eviscerating himself on the coral, but far enough below it that he wouldn’t be battling the waves. His emergency oxygen tank only held two hours of oxygen, which was still far more than he would need to do what he had to do.

  He encountered the pilothouse of the Huxley first, where the ruined reef had crumbled down the steep ledge like an avalanche. The bulk of the vessel was shrouded in silt to such a degree that he couldn’t see the lower decks or the hull. Or the debris and remains scattered across the seabed. Not that he particularly cared, but those were distractions that he simply didn’t need right now. He was of singular focus. He needed to rig a setup to get Bradley, Reaves, and Barnes onto the boat before Bishop and Martin left. It made the most sense to deal with them all at once, in a location where he could control every variable, where there was no way they could escape. With any luck, Bishop would have everything set up perfectly for him when he arrived.

  He loved it when a plan came together.

  The roof of the pilothouse was already brown with settled dirt. Through the bank of windows he could see several bodies floating in the flooded bridge, where schools of fish had already found them. He didn’t even slow as he passed over the naked roofline and the bent metal posts that marked where the satellite communications array had once been mounted. The windows of the 02 and the 03 Decks had shattered. He caught the occasional twinkle of broken glass below him under the rubble and sediment. It looked almost like a normal ship sunken nose down until he reached the point where the ship had been torn in two. From behind, it reminded him of an apartment building with one of its exterior walls removed. He could see into each of the rooms and the corridor between them. Bed linens fluttered from where they were still tucked into the mattresses. Drawers and bureau drawers stood ajar, their former contents hovering in the clouds of silt. An oily sludge that refracted the wan light in rainbow colors burbled toward the surface from whatever was leaking in the engine room, which hid below the fog of sand.

  He followed the trail of metallic debris up a cliff of purple and blue algae-coated live rock, from which ledges flourishing with coral of all shapes and sizes protruded. The rear third of the Huxley was perched precariously on top of it, canting in the opposite direction as it threatened to slide down the opposite side of the reef. The razor-honed, sheared metal of a bulkhead framed the open orifice of the hold. Globs of glistening oil and sewage trickled upward from the severed network of pipes. A steady stream of bubbles raced along the ceiling in search of the sky from the sealed storage holds still slowly taking on water. That was probably the only thing stalling the sinking of the stern. Once that air was replaced by water, the remainder of the vessel was lost.

  He swam all the way into the hold before turning on his headlamp, for all the good it did him. The light barely diffused into the murk, lengthening the shadows and creating more where there had been none previously. He knew exactly what he was looking for and where to find it. He just needed to make sure that his presence wasn’t detected. The problem was going to be getting everything he needed back to the beach fast enough to arrange their transportion and make the return trip before Bishop and Martin split. If they were allowed to reach the open sea, there would be no hope of catching them.

  Veering to his left, he finally saw the ladder bolted to the wall behind a mess of wires and broken pipes. He shoved them aside and ascended the rungs to the service hatch, which led into the oxygen tank recharge station off of the divers locker room, across the hallway from the submersible hanger. The w
heel of the airlock screeched when he turned it. With the pressure differential, it took all of his strength to open it and shove it upward. He climbed up into the slanted room and the water followed him, spreading across the floor and pooling under the massive reserve oxygen tanks.

  The ship groaned and shuddered.

  Silently, he crossed the chamber to the door, opened it, and entered the locker room. To his left, banks of lockers framed the door to the hallway. The impact had jarred their doors open and emptied their contents onto the ground around the benches bolted in the middle. The floor was covered with a thick rubber mat riddled with holes to allow water to pass through and into the floor drains. Directly ahead of him was a bank of shower heads, on the other side of which were the remnants of the main laboratory and the open air beyond. To his right were storage closets that contained all sorts of miscellaneous diving gear. He opened the door of the closet on the right and swept his headlamp through the darkness until it alighted on bundles of nylon rope looped over hooks. He took two ten-yard bundles, slung one over his head and left arm, and the other around his neck and right shoulder so that they crisscrossed on his chest and back in matching Xs.

  He turned a slow circle. When at first he didn’t see the most crucial component of his plan, he nearly punched the wall. After several slow, calming breaths, he saw its smooth yellow plastic shell, like the carapace of some alien insect, on the floor under a jumble of supplies thrown from the shelves. He shoved aside the clutter and there it was. The SeaBob RaveJet was like a miniature submersible jet ski. It was maybe half his height and as broad as his shoulders, and weighed just over a hundred pounds, but underwater that 3.3 horsepower impeller jet-propulsion motor would fire him like a torpedo at nearly fifteen kilometers per hour. Fully charged, the battery could only provide sixty minutes of use at depths to forty meters below the surface, but with the purpose he had in mind, he’d be lucky to get half that amount. Everything hinged upon the unit being fully charged.

  Pike hefted it to his chest and carried it back to the open hatch in the floor. He closed his eyes and listened for the sound of what he assumed was transpiring in the hanger across the hallway, but heard only another moan of the settling ship. He couldn’t take the risk of trying to get visual confirmation. Not yet. Not until everything else was in place.

  He lowered the RaveJet through the hole and let it fall into the water, then dropped down right behind it. Its nose had barely touched the ground when he took it by the handles, directed it into the main aisle, and thumbed the accelerator sensor. He weaved through the slalom of pipes until he was aligned with the ocean, tucked himself behind its hydrodynamic body, and launched himself toward the shore.

  Seventy-Seven

  Reaves stared out across the ocean toward where the life raft bobbed on the waves. Pike had appeared beside it as if by magic, clambered aboard, and then hauled a large yellow personal submersible unit of some kind up into the raft. As he watched, Pike shed two bundles of rope from around his shoulders, tied one end of each to the inflatable ring, and the other ends to the self-propelled motor craft. In less than three minutes, Pike lowered the unit back into the water and dove in after it. The raft gave a sharp jerk, spun sideways, and darted toward the beach to his left, where an exhausted Barnes huddled against the trunk of a rosewood tree, as far out of the rain as he could get. With the way he rested his forehead against his knees, Reaves couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not.

  He looked away and to the sky. Raindrops assailed his face and ran down the skin beneath his already saturated clothes, but he felt none of it. All he could feel was the cold steel of the pistol against his belly and the weight of the decision he would soon be forced to make. He’d never fired an automatic pistol, let alone pointed one at another human being. Drawing a gun wasn’t like raising a fist to strike a man. It was a choice that couldn’t be taken back. If he were to pull the Beretta on Pike, he knew he had better be prepared to pull the trigger, because Pike wouldn’t hesitate. Was this really the path he wanted to take anyway? Perhaps the other men would listen to reason. He’d barely even tried, after all. But how could he explain the evolutionary and anthropological ramifications of their discovery to men for whom history began at their birth and the future only extended until their deaths? In the grand scheme of the universe, mankind was but a mayfly on the earth. Like his predecessors homohabilis and homo erectus. Like the dinosaurs. Surely the Maya, Champa, and Anasazi had expected their bloodlines to flow forever, even lacking the arrogance of modern Americans, who expected to rule the world indefinitely as the Roman Caesars must have. How could he convince the others to see that the decision the four of them made right here on this island would impact the fate of their entire species?

  He realized that Bradley was talking to him and turned to face his old friend.

  “Welcome back,” Bradley said. “You were somewhere else for a few minutes there. I was just about to go looking for a sharp stick to prod you with.”

  “Sorry.” Reaves offered a meek smile of apology. “Just thinking is all.”

  Bradley turned his attention to the sea, where the life raft raced toward them across the waves, firing spray in its wake.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Bradley said, still facing the oncoming craft.

  “Then you know we don’t really have much of a choice in the matter.”

  “There’s always a choice, Brendan. It’s just a matter of making the right one.”

  “And what is the right choice?”

  Bradley sighed and shook his head. When he turned to face Reaves, Bradley appeared to age before his very eyes.

  “There are shades of gray between the black and white, old friend. I’m confident that the two of us, together, could find the right one.”

  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  The faint hum of the submersible’s motor reached their ears. The orange raft was only twenty yards from the shore now, and closing fast.

  “We could improve the lives of millions.”

  “Or eradicate billions.”

  “Don’t you think I recognize the potential for that?”

  “Then stop this before it’s too late.”

  “If I do, then all of these people will have died for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing. Don’t you see? Their deaths have shown us why we need to bury this secret where no one will ever find it, no matter how hard they look. A hundred lives lost in exchange for the perpetuation of our species? Their sacrifice is monumental.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily have to play out the way you envision. How many nuclear bombs have we built, but never used?”

  “All it would take was the wrong country detonating one—just one—to trigger a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world.”

  The crown of Pike’s head and his shoulders breached the water behind the whale-like nose of the RaveJet.

  “This is different. If we did this the right way from the start, we could control the outcome. We could be the ones to isolate the proper traits and use them for the good of humanity.”

  “We could end up destroying it in the process.”

  Pike reached a point where he could stand, let the yellow unit sink, and splashed through the shallows toward them.

  “A long time ago,” Reaves said, “you and I embarked upon a quest to unravel the world’s greatest mystery, knowing full well we might never do so. We’ve already accomplished more than we ever dreamed we would, but at what cost? We still have the opportunity to make amends, the opportunity to end this quest in the same spirit with which we began it. We can save the world, Graham. You and me. Right here. Right now.”

  Reaves stared his old friend dead in the eyes and proffered his hand.

  “Get into the life raft,” Pike said. “We don’t have time to screw around.”

  “The two of us,” Reaves said. “Just like it was in the beginning.”

  “You would stand by me?” Bradley said.

&nb
sp; “Until the bitter end.”

  “Get in the damn boat!” Pike snapped.

  Bradley hesitantly raised his hand from his side and reached for Reaves’s, but Pike grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward where the life raft tossed on the surf.

  “You, too.” Pike seized Reaves by his outstretched hand and jerked him into the water nearly hard enough to topple him to his knees. “We don’t have all day.”

  Barnes staggered into the sea beside him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. They were waist-deep in the ocean when they reached the boat and climbed up behind Bradley, who was already sitting on the taut fabric with his back against the inflatable ring, facing to the west. Pike threw his backpack in beside Bradley. The moment Reaves clambered aboard, he noticed the ragged gashes. The rain must have washed away all of the blood, but not the memories. He’d barely plopped down beside Bradley when he heard the whine of the RaveJet and the raft whipped in a half-circle, nearly throwing Barnes overboard. The computer technician crawled over beside them, and together they watched the Huxley growing larger against the smoky horizon. Pike was invisible beyond the point where the ropes angled into the water, save for the occasional yellow flicker beneath the waves.

  Reaves glanced back at the island, and the fiery crown from which all of the smoke and ash originated. Perhaps this was nature’s way of protecting her secret. Maybe the island would ultimately make the decision for them.

  He could only hope so.

  His hand trembled as he shifted the butt of the pistol against his abdomen.

  In the end, he feared he wouldn’t have the courage or the strength to do what needed to be done.