by Greig Beck
He bent to examine the box again, then frowned, and turned back to the equipment pack. He took out a glass slide and swab, replaced his gloves, then wiped the swab down the side of the glass cube. He transferred the sample to the slide, squeezed a drop of sterile water onto it, and placed it under a manual microscope. He twirled the focus dial several revolutions until he had his desired clarity. Hmm, that’s not good. The solution showed traces of the Hades Bug dust – somehow its incinerated fragments had extruded through the thick glass of the isolation cube.
Michael sat back, thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Well, I’m out of ideas.’ He exhaled and stood up slowly. Much as he hated it, he needed to ask Maria what to do next, and inform her of the failing isolation cube.
He stretched his back and turned to the door, pushing the hood of his suit back to expose his perspiration-slicked hair. He pulled off his gloves and, with one hand, opened the door. With the other, he wiped his brow, transferring a small black smudge from his finger to his forehead.
If he had looked one last time through the microscope, he would have seen something that might have worried him more than a broken piece of equipment. On the glass slide, among the floating fragments, sub-microscopic buds were beginning to appear on some of the biological splinters. Gradually, the buds opened and extended cytoplasmic stalks; a moment later, cell division restarted.
Maria listened to her son with an impassive face as he told her about the bacteria’s development of a protein seed coating at lower temperatures. She knew that their options had been limited to start with; and were now probably exhausted. Without any form of realistic, natural or derived immunological defence, the human race had no hope of winning a microscopic physiological war with the Hades Bug. And losing to this particular microorganism meant a very unpleasant death. For the first time in her life as a scientist, Maria considered euthanasia as an option.
Michael broke her concentration. ‘What now? Should I try to chemically attenuate? We didn’t bring many compounds. I’m still thinking the radiation option would—’
‘No!’ Maria yelled, and Michael recoiled as though slapped.
She immediately regretted using the sharp tone, and exhaled wearily. She wished she could tell him. The radioactive material she had brought wasn’t the simple shortwave Röntgen radiation used for X-rays. Instead, it was the infinitely more powerful lithium-deuterium particles required for an elastic collision – a million times too much energy for simple bacterial attenuation.
She softened her voice. ‘No, Michael, for now we document our results and concentrate on other, less elegant defensive mechanisms. We can still consider gross amputation for extremity contamination, and, out of the body, surely it must be vulnerable. Let’s look at what kills it – sodium hypochlorite should at least explode the cell walls.’
She reached over and rubbed her son’s arm, smiling into his face. She was often brusque with him, but in her heart she knew he was the only good thing to come out of her marriage. One day she’d tell him that. He frowned, probably not understanding the reason for the sudden show of maternal affection.
‘You’ve done a good job,’ she went on. ‘But I think its rapid transmission is a good thing – as long as we can totally isolate the infected men, then we can let the disease run its course; let it burn itself out.’
She knew that probably wasn’t true anymore – the genie was out of the bottle. Unlike South Africa, there would be no simple sealing of a hole in the ground here. This wound had ruptured and cauterisation would not be enough; total excision of the necrotic flesh was needed. There was no way of knowing for how long the Hades Bug could go dormant; it could remain in that state for weeks, years … centuries? They still knew next to nothing about it.
She felt she was being pushed towards a precipice. A paragraph from Protocol 9 leapt into her mind: In the event of possible border or boundary extrusion, initiate total CZS. Comprehensive Zone Sterilisation meant leaving behind no hosts, no vectors, no transmission – and no survivors.
She looked at Michael, her only child. There must be another way, she thought.
TWENTY-FIVE
While Alex went to talk to Franks and Mak at the start of their rotation, Sam performed one last outer perimeter sweep of the camp. The jungle was making all its usual chirps, whistles and squeaks, and small creatures scuttled from his path as he pushed through the damp foliage. Though the constant noise made it difficult to detect an intruder, Sam didn’t mind – it was somehow comforting. Silence in a jungle was unnatural and unwelcome, usually heralding predation.
Only a few dozen feet out from the camp, the light was completely swallowed by the jungle. That, the cloud cover and an intermittent rain meant Sam moved more by feel and instinct than sight. He used his flashlight for rapid observations only, and not at all if he could help it. He stopped and stood silently, a hulking figure in tiger-stripe camouflage, just as invisible as other creatures of the forest. Nothing – all good.
He turned back to the camp for a few hours’ downtime; he needed it. He trod cautiously to minimise noise, but instead of the regular spongy green carpet underfoot, he felt something hard and flat – too flat to be natural. ‘Hello.’ He bent and retrieved the object: an ancient-looking leather-bound book with what seemed to be a faded gilt crucifix carved into the front.
He opened it and flicked on his slim flashlight for second. The pages were handwritten … in a combination of Spanish and Latin, he thought, and also contained some detailed illustrations.
Hmm, not a Bible then – maybe somebody’s journal. The priest’s?
He tucked it under his arm, looking forward to pitting his formidable language skills against its contents.
‘You’re quiet tonight, big guy,’ Franks said, popping her gum.
‘This is not a good place.’ Mak stared into the dark jungle.
‘It’s just a fucking jungle, Mak. Jeez, be a big boy now.’ She raised her eyebrows briefly. ‘Let’s do another perimeter sweep. Rendezvous back here in twenty.’
Mak ignored the jibe. ‘It is not the jungle. It is what I feel in the jungle that concerns me.’ He frowned again, then said quickly, ‘Copy that. Twenty, and back here … and you should not swear so much.’
Casey watched him go. Every now and then, he’d stand stock-still for a few moments and listen to the sounds of the dense green around him. She shook her head and said softly to herself, ‘For fuck’s sake, stop doing that – you’re freaking me out.’
She turned her back and started off in the opposite direction. The camp clearing was fairly large, designed to accommodate over a hundred men, their equipment, a few cabins and assorted makeshift offices. It was like a mini-town carved out of the jungle. Without their constant attention, it would only take about two seasons for the jungle to totally reclaim it.
Casey scanned the jungle – listening and looking for anything out of the ordinary. She breathed in heavily through her nose, searching out smells too. She was good, she knew it; she never missed anything. Like all HAWCs, Casey Franks was completely focused at her job; and when that job became combat – armed or unarmed – she revelled in the physical challenge.
She couldn’t see Mak anymore; he was shielded by a row of cabins. She expected him to reappear in a few moments. The skin on her neck crawled and she looked over her shoulder … there was something … She stood still and waited, not even breathing. There was nothing. She frowned – that fucking Mak had her freaked out; soon she’d be seeing witches on broomsticks and dancing goblins. She looked across to where he should have come into sight again – there was still just empty clearing. Huh, what’s going on?
She pressed her ear stud. ‘Hey, Mak, you takin’ a leak? Where are you?’ She waited in annoyed silence. ‘Mak, come in. Over.’
The line opened, signalling a response, but instead of Mak’s voice she heard a grunt and gurgle.
‘Fuck!’ Casey sprinted across the clearing.
Alex sat upright in his bunk
as though jolted by electricity. That sensation of dark desolation he had felt before blacking out had returned.
There were faint sounds of a skirmish taking place on the far side of the camp.
He pressed the stud at his ear. ‘Uncle, we got contact.’ Before he had finished the last words, he was out the door.
Casey saw Mak struggling with a single combatant. She pulled her sidearm and a blade and rushed to support him. At forty feet, she saw Mak get smashed to his knees; even in the dark she could see his face was battered and bloody. She could hardly believe anyone could take down the big man so easily – Mak was a HAWC, and a good one.
The Iraqi attempted to raise his gauntleted arm and bring it around into his attacker’s face. With impossible speed, the assailant grabbed his arm and twisted, fast and hard. The crack of bone and tendon echoed across the quiet camp. A spray of needle-sharp ice projectiles raked the ground beside Casey and she had to swerve to avoid being shredded by the deadly thorns. The spray stopped abruptly as Mak’s attacker ripped the gaunt-let free and threw it away.
Twenty feet out and still moving, she lifted her gun arm – just as the man brought his fist down onto Mak’s face. The front of the HAWC’s skull crumpled as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer. The man pulled his hand free from the broken flesh and watched as the Iraqi’s large body fell to one side.
‘Motherfucker!’ Casey fired three times, with three strikes to the upper torso – at such close range she was never going to miss.
The man didn’t fall. Must have a vest, she thought.
She stopped and planted her short, muscular legs wide apart in a shooter’s stance, preparing to put another volley into the man – this one targeting his head. Instead, the last ten feet separating them became one in the blink of an eye. The man moved up into Casey’s face almost supernaturally and tore the gun from her grip as easily as an adult would take an annoying toy from an infant. A large hand closed around her neck.
Her eyes went wide in alarm. It’s the fucking priest.
She brought the Ka-Bar blade around and embedded it in his torso – and got as much reaction as if she’d stabbed a hanging side of beef. The hand at her neck tightened and she felt her eyes start to bulge as the blood flow to her brain was cut off.
The man smiled at her. Or, rather, his mouth split unnaturally wide into a shark-like grin. A black hole ringed with needles leaned in towards her. She mouthed the word motherfucker and found the strength to twist her blade. The mouth opened wider. As her vision started to cloud, she saw something in the depths of his gullet; something waiting inside that needle-ringed cavern. It was the first time in her life she’d ever been frightened.
As her misty vision started to turn from red to black, something hit the priest. Hit him hard.
Alex raced across the clearing so quickly, those trying to follow him must have wondered whether his feet even touched the ground. He took in the scene with a single glance: Mak was down, dead, and Franks was under attack by a single powerful assailant. He knew who it was – the priest. González had Franks by the neck, crushing her throat, as he leaned in towards her.
Alex’s great strength was usually more than an adversary’s physical frame could withstand, and he’d learned to pull his punches. Not this time. He wanted this man dead, destroyed.
The blow knocked González’s head sideways.
But the priest didn’t go down, as Alex had expected. Instead, he dropped Franks and turned to stare at Alex. From the angle of the man’s head where it flopped against his shoulder, Alex could tell his neck was broken. The mouth dropped open and a roar emanated from its black hole – a howl from the depths of hell itself. Alex had heard the sound before: on the recording of Captain Michaels’ last transmission.
González moved far quicker than Alex anticipated, striking him in the centre of the chest with such force that Alex felt the impact deep in his ribs. He was thrown back ten feet to land on the dried fronds that Tomás and the men had been spreading over the mud.
Fool! Alex screamed at his own stupidity. He had let himself be taken by surprise.
He rolled quickly to get to one knee … and into the waiting hands of González. The blows raining down on his head were clearly meant to crush his face and skull. They came hard and fast, and Alex only had time to catch the fists in his own hands. He grunted from the effort. This guy is far too strong for a normal man; far too strong for anything on two legs, he thought.
He released one hand and swung a fist towards the priest’s midsection, intending to break most of the ribs underneath the dark cassock and make it impossible for him to breathe. Instead, his hand was caught in the air before the punch connected, and crushed in what felt like a steel vice.
Each man struggled against the other’s strength. Alex looked sideways into the priest’s face, which lay at that sickening angle on his shoulder. It was composed; no strain, no pressure – it was as though he was wearing a mask. Then he noticed that only one of the priest’s eyes was fixed on him – and it bulged and strained as if wanting to join the fight by itself.
Alex pushed and pulled, but for every ounce of force he applied, an equal or greater measure was pushed back. He was locked in an embrace that was sapping his immense strength.
Slowly, the priest forced one of Alex’s hands towards his face; the mouth behind the beard dropped open and a grey tendril snaked out between the bristles. Alex’s eyes widened as he saw needle-sharp teeth surrounding an almost totally spherical orifice – like the mouth on a lamprey eel or a leech. His hand was being drawn towards this disgusting maw.
Alex became aware of sounds all around him – some emanating, strangely, from the core of the priest; some from the cabins, and also the ground beneath his feet. It was a chorus of mewling desire and hunger – for him, for his flesh. The calling he had heard in his dream.
He gritted his teeth, grunted and managed to halt the slow pull on his hand, but his shoulder ached from the exertion. The priest had his other arm held tight, so it was out of action – for now, at least. Alex brought his knee up into the priest’s side and was satisfied to feel bones crunch. But it had little effect – the man didn’t even seem to register the strike.
The grey tendril had unfurled further from the priest’s mouth and was now touching Alex’s exposed flesh just behind his glove. Revolted, he pulled with all his strength and brought his knee up again. At the same time, he heard a shout from beside him. A stream of razor-sharp ice projectiles raked up the side of the priest’s body – and also through Alex’s thigh. Alex jolted from the pain and, in the brief second he was distracted, the priest let go – and was gone.
Alex couldn’t believe it. The man had somehow ripped himself from Alex’s grip and disappeared back into the jungle as fast as a lightning flash.
TWENTY-SIX
‘We need to cut her,’ Sam said.
He hadn’t needed to check on Alex – the HAWC leader was up and sprinting into the jungle after the priest the moment he realised he’d disappeared. Sam’s priority was Franks and her crushed windpipe. Her tongue protruded like a fat slug between lips coloured a deep crimson-blue. Sam could tell she was suffocating.
The drill workers crowded around, Maria and Michael Vargis hovering behind them. Aimee, after taking one look at the female HAWC’s condition, had rushed back to her cabin. She returned now with a length of rubber pipe, tape, a scalpel and a small brown bottle. She kneeled down beside Sam, who had drawn a shortened Ka-Bar blade and was feeling Franks’s neck for a position just below her larynx.
Aimee gently grabbed his knife hand. ‘You’ve done this before?’
‘A few times – not exactly a perk of the job, or one I enjoy. And my work wouldn’t be as tidy as yours.’ He sat back, happy to let her take over.
Aimee splashed the contents of the bottle onto Casey’s neck and Sam’s eyes stung from the smell of the surgical cleanser. She expertly sliced into the flesh, and was immediately rewarded with the wet sound of air being sucked
into the wound. Franks’s chest inflated and she started to struggle beneath them.
‘Hold her down,’ Aimee said.
Sam held the HAWC’s shoulders as she writhed on the ground; the return of consciousness was rapidly bringing pain and memory with it. Aimee pushed the tip of the tube into the wound and cut the end off with the scalpel, leaving just an inch protruding. She covered the tube and wound with tape.
The crowd parted to let Alex through. He kneeled next to them and looked at the wound and the rise and fall of the HAWC’s chest, his face blank of emotion.
Casey Franks opened her eyes. Her lips moved but no sound came out; a small red bubble popped on her lower lip.
Alex reached down and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Don’t speak … he’s gone now. But don’t worry, we’ll find him and finish him – that I promise. You just concentrate on getting better; we need you.’
Alex took Sam by the arm and led him out of the group. ‘That wasn’t a man, Sam. It looked like a man, but it wasn’t. It was too strong, too fast, and I couldn’t hurt it.’ He shook his head as though in disbelief. ‘Did you see what it did to Mak?’
Sam looked around, then back to Alex, his eyes wide. There was no sign of Mak’s body.
Alex was shaking with rage and disbelief. His soldier’s body had been stolen – and while they were all just a few dozen feet away. There was a short slide mark into the foliage, then nothing. It was as if the body had been consumed by the jungle itself. It had taken all Sam’s and Aimee’s combined influence to prevent Alex from charging after it – even though he had no idea where to look.
Now, he tried to calm himself as he focused on the jungle, trying to sense some trace of Mak’s body and the creature that called itself González. But there was nothing; the priest was either too far away, or gone for good. Alex didn’t believe the latter. He hadn’t hurt the man at all, and, if not for Sam, he might have ended up as dead as Mak.
