“Sir,” Melvin said, spittle dripping from his mouth. “What are my orders... sir?”
Mason looked back at the rest of the group, his free hand dropping to the survival knife on his belt of its own accord. Were any of them moving? He thought not. They weren't that far gone. He was their commander, and by Christ, they would listen.
“I know this isn't what we were expecting,” he said, tossing Melvin aside, “but that's all the more reason to hold it together. Now this ain't the worst shit we've been in, and since most of you guys were out east in the sandbox, I know it ain't the worst you've seen either. We're still in the dark, but intelligence isn't part of our job. Securing the platform is our job, and I intend to see that through.” He nodded towards the doctor. “Now, me and the doc here are going to chat, and we may get to the bottom of this yet, but in the meantime, we don't get sloppy. We can't afford to get sloppy. Our lives depend on us working as a unit. Right? Jesus Christ guys, that's been drilled into your head since basic.”
He scanned their faces and saw the words sink in. Some of them even looked embarrassed. That was good. Morale was an engineering marvel, like a bridge. When it held together, it was solid; when one column fell, the whole damned thing might collapse.
He nodded towards Hal. “McHalister!”
“Sir?”
“Get back to the helipad. I want to know what the hell happened to our Delta chopper. Jin Tae?”
“Aye?” Jin said.
“How's your arm?”
The man shrugged. “I'll live.”
“I want you to see if you can get the dish on this goddamned place up and running. We have no radio, no phones, and no way to talk to anyone on the outside. Think you can manage?”
“I'll have a look, but no promises.”
“Vy?”
“Yeah?” Christian said.
“Round up our guests. I want everyone back here in ten minutes, got it?”
The man nodded.
“St. Croix, you're with Jin. Give him what he needs. You got it?”
“Yeah, boss.”
Mason looked at the rest. Nicholas was still resting on his box. He supposed he'd have to stay. That left—
“Where you want me?” Calle asked. The usual laughter had gone out of his voice.
“You stay with me. But your job isn't to flap your mouth, do you get me?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Now Doc?”
Gideon looked up as if he had been oblivious. “Uh, yes?”
“You better start talking.”
3
When Christian returned with the civilians, they stared at the doctor as if they'd never seen his ilk before. The McCreedy woman looked like she wanted to start running her mouth straight off, but before she could, Gideon started to speak.
“It gets inside your head,” the doc said. “That's the way these things work, isn't it? Like the movies. But this is worse. You can trust me on that.”
“Are you saying this is a virus, Doc? Because if you are—”
The man was shaking his head. “Not a virus. A fungus. A blastocladiomycota. At least, that's what it looks like. It's not like any species I've ever seen. This thing is a work of art. It's a survivor. Like a cockroach of the detritivores. ”
“A what?” Melvin asked.
“A cockroach,” the man said, putting his fingers to his head and making antenna motions. It should have been ridiculous, but Mason felt his skin crawl. He hated bugs, had stomped every goddamned beetle and cockroach he'd seen since he was a kid. Comparing that stuff under The Aeschylus to one... it fit, somehow. The stuff crawled. He didn't know how that was possible since it stayed in one place, but the word fit. It crawled.
“I call it The Carrion,” Gideon said. “That's not right, exactly. It's more like a carrion feeder than a piece of meat, you understand?”
No one said anything.
“It's funny, because if you were to see it under a microscope, it looks crazy inefficient. Its sole purpose is to generate heat. Oh, and I have, by the way. Seen it under a microscope, I mean.”
“What kind of doctor are you?” Mason asked.
“An environmental microbiologist. I study the molecular content of crude. To determine purity and asset use. It's a precursor to the filtration process, the heating and separating of—”
“I get it,” Mason said, “and I don't give a shit. Why don't you tell me what I want to know.” It wasn't a question.
“What?”
“He means that bullshit down there. The Carrion, or whatever it is,” Melvin said.
“How dangerous is it?” the kid asked.
Mason looked at his crew irritatedly, then back at the man. “You managed to survive, Doctor Grey. Why don't you tell us about that?”
“There was a fire about two weeks ago. It was right after Whitman bought the farm. Do you remember?”
Mason's mind drifted back to the briefing reports. Hank Whitman was a rope access technician who had fallen out of his harness while scrubbing the damage ballasts. He had hit his head on the way down, crashed into the water, and drowned. The incident report was labeled as unrelated, but Mason had read it anyways. “I remember.”
“Right. Well, he fell off scrubbing the side of the steel supports on the lower level. What do you think he was scrubbing?”
“You don't mean—”
“It started small, just splotches on the supports. He went down there to get a closer look, and the next thing we knew, he was in the water. We didn't hear a scream. Nothing. Just the bang of him hitting the struts and the splash below. It took four guys to find him and haul him up. It was a hell of a mess.”
Mason looked at him skeptically. “So what are you telling me, Grey? That somehow, a fungus caused this guy to lose his footing? Or worse?”
When the doctor looked up, his eyes were dead. “Oh no, Mister Bruhbaker. Not The Carrion, not that time. It was either an accident, or one of the crew helped him on his way.”
“What?” Melvin asked, piping in again.
“The fire,” Gideon said. “That's what I was trying to tell you. After his body was recovered, someone set a fire in the medical lab. The whole place burned up. I'd say whatever knocked him off was probably of a similar cause. You get me?”
Mason grimaced. “I don't remember reading anything about that.”
“Of course you don't,” Gideon said. “I bet you also don't remember reading anything about someone sabotaging our communications tower, either. Or wrecking one of our cranes. Or bringing The Carrion into the barracks to make sure every last man on here was infected with it. Do you?”
“Slow down,” Mason said. “You're not making any sense. Your communications has only been down for, what? Thirty-six hours?”
Gideon laughed shrilly. “That's what they told you, is it? I bet they're trying to make this whole thing look like a goddamned accident.”
Melvin looked at Mason in a way he didn't like. He could feel everyone's eyes at his back. “The how and why isn't our concern, here, Doctor. Our mission is to secure the site and prep it for Valley Oil environmental.” So, it's back to that old mantra, is it? It felt like a lie. As much as he wanted it to be the truth, as much as he kept repeating it to himself, it felt like a lie.
“We have to get out of here,” Gideon said, pointing to the bandage on his head. “I can't stay out here. Are you listening?”
“Hold up,” Melvin said. “So you got people sabotaging shit now, huh? Is that what you're saying? That somebody helped this stuff along?”
“That's right,” Gideon said. “That's why they burned the lab. It took us days to realize what was happening. That it wasn't an accident, I mean. By the time we did, it was everywhere. The Carrion had grown up through the water. It was spreading, you see. And besides, a saboteur is the only thing that does make sense. The alternative is even crazier.”
“Oh?” Mason asked.
“The Carrion works by generating heat inside your central nervous system.
Don't you get it?” He was near shouting now. “It starts as a fever. And then it spreads, raising your core temperature over a day... or two. Your body sweats. Your brain swells. It doesn't stop you from thinking, but your forebrain... that's the front part of your brain,” he said, tapping a violent finger into his forehead. “It starts to melt. And there's something else. I can't prove it, but I think it... it plants something inside. A message. Like a Trojan, a worm eating its way through your body and spreading to all of your subsystems. It's like... it's like it's looking out for its own survival.” He looked at them. “And so the alternative, gentlemen, is that Whitman was already infected when they brought him back. The alternative is that Whitman waited until they dragged him up into the med lab and zipped him into a body bag. The alternative is that he waited until it was good and quiet in there, climbed out of the bag, and then set the blaze himself. You see, we never found his body after the fire.”
The silence that followed hung in the air like a fog. Mason didn't know whether to laugh or smash the doctor in the mouth. Because they all knew how it sounded. It sounded fucking crazy, just like the doc said.
“He was just the first,” Gideon said. “You see, that's where my theory comes from. As it got more of them, things started to happen. At first, we thought it was just the flu. Guys were coming down with a fever. Their bodies were heating up, you see? One guy registered a body temp of a hundred and eight. A hundred and eight, and he was still walking around! Do you believe that? Because if somebody had told me that, I would have sent him to the goddamned funny farm.”
Mason felt his fists clench. He wanted to shut him up, needed to shut him up, but he couldn't. He was glued to the deck, just like the rest of them.
“They had to reorganize the shift. The men who were sick kept to themselves, but then things got really weird. At first it was just little things. Long-term supplies disappeared. First aid kits went missing. Then, it got worse. The sub-sea repeaters went down, so we had no cell phones.” He laughed again, that giddy, madman's laugh. “You mind telling me how they managed that? And then... then it appeared. It was just a couple of days after the fire.”
“What do you mean, 'it appeared?'” Nicholas asked. He was on his feet now. On his foot, Mason corrected. He was pale, still biting back pain, but he didn't look like the devil himself could keep him away.
“One of the storage tanks burst,” Gideon said. “The fungus had been growing inside the whole time. If I hadn't been so distracted, maybe I would have kept up with the pressure readings and caught it.” He looked to the ground then, his eyes red. “It was too late by then. It was growing out of the water, the tentacles were. They were encircling the supports. They were claiming us.”
They all looked around, feeling the weight of the tendrils somewhere down beneath them. Mason shivered as he pictured the bottom of The Aeschylus, again seeing that stuff crawl as it held together.
“We had a few days left on our rotation,” Gideon said, “but we were done, all of us who weren't sick. We wanted out. We knew, you see. But then the com tower went down.” He made an exploding sound with his mouth, something like a five-year-old kid would do at the dinner table. “Somebody... well, they blew it to pieces. You've seen the wreckage. I know you have. As to how they managed to get demolitions into security like they got here?” He answered his own question with another laugh. “But it went down just the same. I bet they told you it was an accident, didn't they?”
“This is pointless,” Mason said, but he was sweating. He could feel it. This guy was a madman, or he was lying, or both.
“Most of us thought we could wait it out. The next shift should have been coming, and they could have gotten us out. Right? But I guess VO had other plans. I don't know how deep it goes, but somebody knows something. They must have been calling the shots. They must have waited until the rotation was up before declaring an emergency. Am I right? That's when they contacted you, told you some story about a downed com tower and a massive accident, right?” He looked at all of them as if vindicated. “I bet they didn't expect any of us to be alive. They just wanted to send you in to make sure. Right?”
They all just stared at him.
“They were working against us by then. The Carrion was. The crew had turned, you see. It'll grow through you. It'll grow right out of your goddamned skull if you let it.”
“Say what?” Melvin said.
“We holed up in the barracks. They couldn't get to us at first. If you don't believe me, I've got the documentation. I brought everything I could into the kitchen before we walled ourselves up. I've got the field reports, the security assessments, the records of the visitors from Valley Oil. They were here right before Whitman died. Did you know that?”
The woman looked like she was about to speak, but AJ opened his mouth first. “What else did they say?”
Gideon acted like he hadn't heard. “We would have lasted, but someone... they took crude and spattered it over the walls and floors. You see, that's what it needs. It needs dead matter to feed on. With all that steel and concrete, it couldn't reach. But then, they brought it in. They brought it to us. They were all working together then, The Carrion and the men it had taken. We should have been safe, but we were scared. And they didn't know how to protect themselves.”
“You're mumbling,” Nick said.
“We were scared!” Gideon screamed. He was unhinged. “A few people got away. They took one of the boats and headed to the island.”
“What island?” Kate asked. She was looking at him intently. “The place out to the east? That island?”
Mason felt his teeth clench. He was suddenly sure that Reiner was at the island, that his chopper was at the island. They had flown over there and found something. Or something had found them. “What about the rest of you?”
“We got hungry. They went out for food, Adam and Jerry, and they never came back. The Argentinians had showed up by then. When they found me they... they locked me back in the kitchen. They didn't know what they were up against. It infected them just like it infected the others.”
Mason felt his jaw working. He forced it to move. “Enough.”
“I thought you said this wasn't a virus?” Melvin said.
“It's not. Viruses aren't multicellular, you see. The Carrion spores, they're more like a defense mechanism, something it releases when it's threatened. And that's what they did, at first: they threatened it. They tried to cut it down, and it sprayed them. The wounded ones turned first. It gets in easier if you're hurt or sick.” He looked at all of them in turn, his eyes dancing. “Are any of your hurt? Are any of you cut? Tell me!”
Nick smiled uneasily. “Well, I got shot,” he said, pointing to his foot. “You telling me I'm in trouble?”
Gideon looked at the boy as if seeing him for the first time. Hell, maybe he was; he was so bent, he probably didn't notice half of the things right in front of him. “Stay back. You stay the hell away from me! All of you!”
Melvin put a hand on his shoulder, but he was too slow—or too dim. Gideon lashed out, hitting him with a clumsy fist.
It broke the paralysis, and Mason lunged forward. “Goddammit! Get a hold of him.”
“You take a look at him!” the doctor was screaming. “You see if it's black! You see if he has a fever!”
Melvin, who had regained himself, grabbed the skinny man and tossed him to the ground. “Of course he's hot, you dumb motherfucker. Boy only got half a foot left.”
“Don't you—”
But that's as far as he got. Mason slammed his head into the deck. It didn't put him out, but it knocked him stupid, and that's all that mattered.
“What are you doing?” Kate yelled.
“Back off.” Mason looked at each of the others and saw the doubt in their eyes. It wasn't the doubt in the man's story, but doubt in him. Doubt in the mission. He wondered again how something that started so easy could turn into such a mess. “Calle, I want you to see to him.”
“And do what?�
�
“Sedate him, for Christ's sake.” Jesus, he had to hold everyone's hand today. “We're wrapping this up. I want the site secured. I want communications reestablished. And I want you to find my other goddamned chopper!”
“How are we going to do that?” Nicholas asked.
“You're not doing anything, son. You're quarantined.”
“What?”
“You heard the doctor, and I'm not taking any chances. Since you're broke-dick anyway, I don't expect an objection. Do you get me?”
When the kid held his tongue, Mason nodded, satisfied. He turned to Christian. “Vytalle, I want you to find a spot for the kid.”
“Where?”
“Well, considering how much of this place has been infiltrated, I'd say it's either the med lab or the helipad. And the med lab is burned.”
“I'll take the helipad,” Nick said. “I ain't breathing in burn fumes all day waiting for you guys.”
“Fair enough, but you're making the climb on your own.”'
“I don't like this,” AJ said.
“I don't care what you like.”
The man coughed and muttered something under his breath, but Mason pretended not to hear.
“You want to make yourself useful, AJ, you can tell me if that boat below deck is drivable.”
And now the test: would the man fall in, or would he be a problem? Either way, it wouldn't matter for long.
“Yeah, all right. I'll check it out.”
“I want a full inspection. I want to know if it's drivable, and I want to know if it has enough fuel to make it to the island.”
AJ grunted and began heading towards the stairs. He turned at the last. “I'd say this is turning into a bad luck day pretty fast here, Mason. What do you say?”
“Day's not over,” he answered.
4
It's not your fault son, it's just bad luck. You got a bad luck wound on a bad luck day.
AJ didn't remember the first time he rode with Mason, but he remembered the last. He was twenty-six back then. Too young to know better, too old to play naïve.
They had been escorting a high value target across the Pakistani border, fifty clicks west of the Chapri Forest. The crew was different back then, but the men—the men—were the same. All piss and fire, and not enough brains to power a light bulb between them. AJ hadn't been the only one with a college degree, so they didn't have an excuse. It was just the way it was. Moving from one assignment to the next, big paydays and fast vacations. Blackout drunk in Istanbul, then neck deep in mud in Baghdad. Some leaders brought out the discipline in their crew, and some brought out the beast. Mason brought out the most vicious kind of beast. That he cared for his men, however, was never a question. AJ learned that in the mountains of Behsud when they got ambushed.
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