This Green Hell

by Greig Beck

  Maria shrugged. ‘No. I mean anywhere.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘Look, a single flagellum gives it mobility, but only when in suspension … And there, another smaller one; rigid – not sure what that’s for – could it act as a potential virulence factor?’

  She sat back again and Aimee crouched down to look at the computer screen. ‘Well, it’s big enough that we can trap it,’ she said. ‘Filter it out maybe?’

  Maria and Michael talked together in rapid Greek, completely ignoring Aimee for a few moments. At last, as if suddenly remembering the question, Michael said over his shoulder, ‘You’re right; it’s enormous – way too big to pass through skin. It’d need to enter via the respiratory system, the eye or any other orifice, or perhaps an open wound. A vector could probably inoculate it directly into the body – and round here there’s no shortage of biting insects. But the stiffened filament … strange … it’s too highly developed to be a superfluous vestige.’

  Aimee crossed her arms. ‘Maybe direct epidermal introduction …?’

  ‘Hmm, interesting … You’re thinking maybe that rigid filament is some sort of delivery mechanism – like a genetic injector? Could be used for some type of nucleic material transmission … acting like a virus? No, no, no, that’s impossible for a bacterium.’

  Michael shook his head. Aimee could tell that his mouth was turned down behind his mask.

  Maria clapped her gloved hands together, making a dry, muffled sound. ‘Why not? It could attach to the skin surface and simply inject its biological or genetic material into the cell. Michael, think … Remember chlamydia – it’s a bacterium but in some ways it acts more like a virus. It is virus-like, because it’s dependent on molecules from its host organism to reproduce. When it enters a host cell, it uses supplies from that host to make copies of itself inside the cell. The new bodies can grow, divide and metabolise, and once there are enough copies they burst the cell open and escape to infect new cells or new people – just like a virus.’

  She swung around in her chair, opened another case beside the desk and withdrew a couple of items. The first – a small, flat black square she stuck to her chest – digital flash recorder, thought Aimee. The other was something smaller that she kept in the palm of her hand. She looked first at Aimee then Casey.

  ‘You, soldier girl, come here.’

  Franks just looked at the CDC woman, her only movement the slow chewing of her gum. Aimee knew Casey Franks wouldn’t follow any command given to her that didn’t directly parallel the orders she had received from Alex.

  ‘What do you need?’ she asked the scientist.

  Maria scowled at Casey and slid her eyes to Aimee. ‘A blood sample, and these suits need to remain unbroken. Come on, quickly, this is vitally important.’

  Aimee could see now that the object in Maria’s hand was a lancet. ‘I’ll give you one,’ she said, ‘but give me the lancet and I’ll do it back in my cabin where I can clean up.’ She knew the lancet was sterile and sealed, but needed to ensure she had a sterile solution to slap on the skin immediately after it was pricked.

  She held out her hand to Maria. Maria grabbed her wrist and, in one swift motion, pricked the skin of her forearm. A spot of blood welled up like a small polished ruby.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Be a big girl now, Dr Weir – you know this is important.’

  Maria wiped a glass slide over the blood, then released Aimee’s hand, ignoring her intense glare. She handed the slide to Michael, who took it to the isolation cube.

  Aimee grabbed a bottle of iodine from the table top and splashed some on the red dot.

  Casey Franks leaned in close. ‘That’s why I gave you the gun, toots.’ She sniggered softly and went back to chewing.

  Michael pushed the slide into a small chamber on the side of the cube, inserted his hands in the mounted gloves, retrieved the slide and moved it up to the small raised work surface.

  Maria focused on the new medium and spoke over the top of her screen. ‘Add in a small amount of the bacterial fluid in the D-900 lateral quadrant.’

  Michael did as he was told. Maria’s screen now contained gridlines cutting the sample up into defined quadrants. She touched the black square on her chest to turn it on, then began a commentary as she focused in on the sample.

  ‘It’s not red,’ Casey Franks said.

  Maria swivelled in her chair to look patronisingly at Franks for a few seconds before turning back to her screen. ‘That’s right, dear. Blood at this magnification is more a pinkish-yellow. That’s because the red blood cells are suspended in plasma, which is about ninety per cent water. Here we are: plenty of healthy corpuscles, nice shape, though a little pale.’ Maria turned once more, this time to Aimee. ‘You need to eat more red meat, and get some rest; you’re low on iron, and oxygen as well, I’d say.’

  She gave a small smile and pulled back on the magnification so the near-transparent, biconcave circular discs could be seen floating within the fluid. She moved her cursor around and navigated to the upper left quadrant of the screen where Michael had placed the bacterium.

  ‘Dr Weir’s Hidden Key – although I think I prefer Hades Bug as well, Hades for short. Anyway, it survives deep below ground and therefore measures its life in geological terms. After being locked beneath miles of stone, in the dark and heat, it probably finds us as alien as we find it. The only difference is, where we see it as a lethal little germ, it sees us as an accidental or opportunistic food source. No malice, no planning, it’s just doing what it has evolved to do – ingest carbon, and … oh, my God …’

  It appeared as though a shadow was falling across the screen as a black stain moved across the field of small red discs. The Hades’ small filaments whipped them furiously through the serum towards the blood corpuscles, just like semen rushing to fertilise an egg. Once they made contact, they rotated until their smaller rigid spike was lined up with the red blood cell wall, then punctured it. Instantly, the blood cell’s pink turned to grey, then black, before exploding to release a stain of black fluid into the pool of blood.

  Michael screwed up his brow. ‘That’s odd; I was expecting a bacterial plume to be released. It doesn’t seem to be using the blood cells for replication. It’s just destroyed them without any defined outcome.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Maria. ‘Look at the Hades Bug that just ingested that cell.’ She pointed the cursor at a body of the bacteria that was vibrating inside and wrestling with itself. After another second, a small dot appeared on its side. ‘Replication bubble – it’s hiving off some of its DNA and preparing to launch a daughter cell. So this is how it multiplies, by binary fusion. It’s not acting like a virus and using the cell as some form of brood nest to create duplicates from within. It doesn’t live within the cells either; it’s way too big for that. Instead, it’s raiding the contents of the cell and sucking out what it needs to use as an energy store for its own growth. It’s using Aimee’s blood cells as a grocery store … and doing it very efficiently.’

  The bacterium had finished splitting; now two dark cells existed where only a few seconds ago there had been one.

  Michael was literally on the edge of his small chair. ‘No wonder it can spread so quickly through our physiology – it’s using our bodies as a highway and a food source at the same time.’

  Aimee peered over Maria’s shoulder to better see the detail. ‘Move to the lower quadrant,’ she said. ‘There’s always a shepherd to guard the sheep – let’s see if we can find it.’

  Casey Franks stepped up behind her. ‘What are you looking for?’ she whispered.

  Aimee nodded at the screen. ‘White blood cells – our last line of defence – humans have billions of them: some coded for specific invaders – fungi, parasites; and the most powerful reserved for viruses and bacteria. What type is it, Maria – an NK or neutrophil?’

  ‘Looks like a lymphocyte … nice big NK …’

  ‘NK – Natural Killer cell,’ Aimee translated for Casey.

&nbs
p; ‘Yeah, that’s my type of cell; game on.’ Franks pushed her gun up over her shoulder so it rested against her back and leaned in to look at the screen.

  The NK cell was twice the size of the red blood cells and looked slightly granular around its edges. They all watched in complete silence as the black stain raced towards it. The explosions of the tiny cell walls as it advanced made the screen look like a battlefield, with all the heavy artillery stacked in the invader’s favour. When the battle line reached the large white orb of the NK cell, everyone held their breath.

  The first of the Hades Bug cells crowded up against the white blood cell. It attempted to swivel its spike around, then stiffened suddenly as though it had received an electric shock. The entire cell body shuddered, and crumpled like an aluminium can in the hand of a giant. More NK cells appeared, seeming to have been called to arms by their single advance soldier.

  Aimee smiled and folded her arms. ‘Chemical warfare on a micro scale – the NK have a battery of armaments, the most potent being an ability to release specific cytotoxic granules that target invading cells. Think of it as a mother ship sending out attack drones to destroy a target.’

  Aimee’s smile broadened as more and more of the dark bacteria crumpled and floated away in the yellowish medium. The NK cells crowded in, almost forming a solid wall against the black tide. More of the Hades cells crumpled and drifted away as micro-fragments.

  ‘Chalk that up as one for the good guys,’ Franks said. ‘Hey, you’re pretty tough on the inside, Dr Weir, as well as—’

  She cut off as, on screen, the black invaders overwhelmed the white blood cells’ defences. The familiar internal storm began within some of the NKs’ own walls, then a round of soundless micro explosions tore the infected white blood cells into a cloud of dirty liquid. After another few seconds, the inky blackness spread further across the screen. Of Aimee’s blood cells, nothing remained other than some cell fragments floating freely in the dark, cloudy fluid. The small one-sided war was over as fast as it had started.

  ‘Ahh, shit.’ Aimee’s smile had vanished. She leaned back and exhaled.

  ‘So much for our shepherds … and last line of defence,’ said Maria. ‘I’m afraid it’s what I was expecting, and I’m surprised you weren’t as well, Dr Weir. Why do you think that no one has recovered once infected? Eventually the body’s defences are overwhelmed by an ever-growing invading force – there could only ever be one result.’ She gave Aimee the kind of look a college professor gives a student who shouts out a dumb answer in class.

  Aimee crossed her arms. ‘I don’t agree. In fact, the immune response was good considering the advanced state of infection from a totally unique bacterium. It just wasn’t quick or powerful enough, that’s all. If we could boost it somehow, or maybe catch the infection earlier …’

  ‘If, somehow and maybe are not words we use often at the CDC, Dr Weir. Our fields of science … and expertise are obviously vastly different.’

  As Maria Vargis turned away, Franks nudged Aimee’s arm and motioned to the pistol in her belt. Aimee rolled her eyes and mouthed back a silent curse.

  Michael glanced at Aimee then turned to his mother with a look of indecision on his face. ‘Maria, Dr Weir is right – to a degree, that is. I agree it looks bad, but not all bad. It is good news that our body recognises the Hades Bug as a foreign body. And I agree that one line of investigation could be to somehow give our immune system a little help to marshal its troops faster and in greater numbers. Perhaps—’

  Maria leaned towards him. ‘That may be possible given enough time and appropriate facilities – neither of which we have here. So that’s bad. But what’s very bad is that this thing delivers total cellular destruction in a matter of hours, not days. By the time overt symptoms are manifesting, it has already destroyed a significant amount of the organic matrix. If it got to a vital organ or the brain in the first few hours, the immune response would be too late. The last time I saw something this lethal and infectious was in a military bio-hazard laboratory. From my reading of the data, once infected the patient is as good as dead.’

  ‘Yes … once infected…’ Michael let the words hang in the air.

  Maria narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips together, obviously thinking. After a moment she raised her eyebrows and began to slowly nod at her son. Michael smiled, as if some form of communication had just passed between them.

  ‘Okay, okay, I see where you’re going. You’re thinking we might be able to mount an immune response before it takes hold – create some sort of vaccination shield against it?’

  Michael sat forward. ‘Why not? It’s big and aggressive, but our body recognises it as being foreign. The problem is, by the time we’re ready for it, the bugs have already scaled the walls and blown up our armoury. If we can create an immune system memory, then as soon as it enters the system, we’ll be already taking aim.’

  ‘Of course, you’re right,’ Maria said. ‘I’ve been so caught up in the lethality and uniqueness of the microbe, I’d forgotten that it’s just another bug. After all, we’ve done it successfully for cholera, bubonic plague, polio, hepatitis A and numerous others. Yes, it’s just another bug, Michael.’ She patted him on the leg, as though rewarding a puppy for good behaviour.

  Aimee noticed there was no apology coming her way, even though it had been her idea. Oh, well, she thought. She was way too tired to really care.

  Michael flexed his fingers, as though itching to start but not really knowing where. ‘Okay, it’s going to have to be a primary prophylaxis – a vaccine that prevents the development of the disease. Once it’s established into the system, any secondary measures would be too late. We need our NK cells to be ready and waiting.’

  Michael half-turned to his mother as if seeking approval of his method. Maria just nodded.

  ‘An attenuated vaccine would be best,’ he continued, ‘but we just don’t have the facilities or the time to engineer a less virulent microorganism. Given the constraints, there’s only one option: generate Hades relics – pieces of the dead bacterium.’

  Maria mouthed yes, as if happy with her pupil.

  Aimee knew a little about vaccine creation through her biology research. She also knew Michael was right about their options. Vaccines could be created in a dozen ways these days, from bioengineering to synthesising artificial dumb-bugs to trigger the desired human immunological response without any of the detrimental consequences. Nearly all required significant lab space, equipment and time – and even then, most only produced a minuscule amount of useful vaccine. Still in this situation, any amount would do, Aimee thought.

  ‘How are you going to terminate the bacterium? Do you have the necessary equipment?’ she asked.

  ‘Standard techniques are heat and chemistry. I thought I’d try heat first as we’re not exactly sure what to use on the chemical side just yet.’ Michael was scribbling notes as he spoke.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dr Weir, we know what we’re doing,’ Maria said.

  Aimee found her air of superiority both unwarranted and annoying given how little they really knew about the bacterium. Even though Aimee knew Michael was using the correct logic and procedure, she couldn’t resist needling the older woman a little.

  ‘Heat? I’m not so sure. This thing came up from over a mile below the surface and actually needs heat to trigger its own micro metabolism to degrade and digest the trace hydrocarbons from the rock. Exposing it to more heat could, in fact, cause some sort of aggressive metabolic acceleration.’

  Michael looked from Aimee to Maria, who rolled her eyes. ‘Given the time and facility constraints, there are no other options. Proceed, Michael, using heat as the first choice attenuation trigger.’ She folded her arms and looked squarely at Aimee, daring her to object.

  Michael gave Aimee a look that could have been a plea not to get in a fight with his mother. ‘Umm, Dr Weir, I don’t think even the hardiest extremophile could withstand prolonged exposure to a naked flame. Then again, I don’
t want them incinerated, just dead, so I can use their shells.’ He compressed his lips into a tight, nervous smile and tilted his head, obviously hoping she would agree with his logic.

  Aimee couldn’t bring herself to give up just yet, even though, deep down, she knew the two disease experts would make the better decisions. ‘Look, I acknowledge you two know much more about this than I do, but at this point none of us know what this bug is capable of doing or withstanding. You brought some nuclear material for the X-rays – why not try it first? In fact, I’ve read about research work undertaken by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that proved radiation attenuation worked far more effectively in the trials on an aggressive strain of Listeria. Basically, the irradiated bacteria was found to retain the properties needed to evoke a broad immune response – and it proved vastly superior to other methods of killing infectious pathogens.’

  Maria’s eyes slid to the silver suitcase in the corner of the room, then narrowed as they returned to Aimee. She spoke in a soft voice that carried a hint of steel. ‘Dr Weir, not only have I seen the research, it was one of my teams that was responsible for it. And just what do you suggest we use as shielding while we work with the radioactive material?’ She looked Aimee up and down. ‘Dirty linen and sunglasses?’

  Aimee felt her face going red-hot, and not from embarrassment. She glared at Maria, her mind working furiously. Perhaps she was overly sensitive because she was tired, or perhaps she was envious of the woman’s calm professionalism and authority while all she felt was panic – the infection, the men dying horribly, the heat, the quarantine … the list seemed endless. Whatever it was, something made her want to stand and fight.

  Maria pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Weir … Aimee. We’re all tired and on edge. We’ll see to the attenuation process – it’s our job – that’s why we’re here. It’ll take us a while to set up, so …’ She made a shooing motion with her hands.

  Aimee looked at Michael, who made a small placatory gesture behind his mother’s back. Deciding that her anger wouldn’t help the situation, Aimee shrugged and turned to leave.