by Greig Beck
“Ach.” Nikolay physically jumped at Stefan’s greeting.
“Just in time,” Sara said. “We need your local biology expertise.”
“Oh yes. What have you got there?” Stefan came and leaned over him. “Big old dead bear?”
Nikolay shook his head. “Yes, at least most of it. Carter found it last night and wants us to examine it.”
“Why?” Stefan leaned forward to look the remains over. “It’s been dead for weeks, maybe months. It’ll stink the place up.”
Nikolay stood. “Carter said it was walking around last night. Walked into one of their booby traps.”
“How?” Stefan pointed. “The eyes are sunken as their optical fluid has shriveled. The gums and soft palate tissue are discolored as well as dehydrated. Classic characteristics of necrosis.”
“That’s what I thought.” Sara also stood and pointed. “Let’s winch it onto a trolley and get it inside. When it thaws a little, we can have a better look.”
Stefan grimaced. “This is not really why we are here.”
“I know. But one thing about Carter is he doesn’t make mistakes. And if this thing’s got him spooked enough to want us to take a look, then I think we should,” Sara said, still holding the pen. “He also said that he thought something was inside it. So we’ll make time for it.”
“Inside it?” Stefan put his hands in his lab coat pockets. “Well, I suppose it does give us a break from looking at fish and eggs.” He peered inside the empty gut cavity and sniffed. “Thawing already. Let’s get it on the steel bench before it leaks everywhere.”
The trio used the overhead lifting winch to heft the huge dead animal onto a trolley, and then wheeled it into one of the vacant laboratories. They then moved it across onto a stainless steel bench that already had drainage holes for leakage.
Sara and the pair of young Russians donned aprons, rubber gloves, and paper masks over their faces. It was all they had. Then they stood on either side of the table looking at the mountain of flesh.
“I want to look inside first,” Sara said. “Then I want to see how it is that this thing was supposed to have been walking around.”
Stefan leaned over it. “Male, so we can rule out it being a pregnant female that somehow lost the fetus.”
Sara kept her eyes on the thing. “Nikolay, come around this side and hold the flashlight for me.”
Nikolay joined her, holding up a plastic flashlight as Sara used a long steel probe to push inside the open chest and gut cavity.
“Hmm, it’s totally empty,” she said. “And I don’t think it was eviscerated by a blast as there is no bleeding, and no arteries draining out as there would be if the organs were torn free.”
Nikolay lifted the flashlight higher. “They looked to have been sealed or cauterized.”
“I agree, but I don’t think by heat. There’s no sign of burning or searing.” She probed some more. “It actually looks like it was totally emptied out and then each vein, artery, and even capillary was sealed with some sort of biological adhesive.
“Hello.” She craned in further. “There are holes in the cavity that aren’t normal. Over the areas of the head, legs, and arms—over all the extremities.”
“Wounds?” Nikolay asked.
“No, not really wounds.” She frowned. “The lower colon is also sealed over. This thing couldn’t shit even if it wanted to. It’s impossible.” She reached for a scalpel and extended probe, and then leaned into the beast, cutting around one of the holes. “Hold the light over here.”
Nikolay leaned in, shining the light where he was asked.
She pushed the long probe in and could now see that the holes traveled all the way into the limbs as if they were also basically hollow.
She then turned her attention to the neck area, and when he probed, the hole there went all the way up into the skull.
“Interesting.” She straightened. She tried to think what could cause what she was seeing, but nothing came to mind. She’d never even heard of anything that did this to an animal.
Sara shook her head. “Carter said this was moving around. And to do that it needed a brain.” She quickly put the probe down, turned about, and then moved to open and close cabinet draws until she found a set of mechanical shears. She plugged them in and proceeded to shave the large cranial dome and when finished, she stood back with hands on her hips.
She grinned at Nikolay. “Don’t suppose you have a spare bone saw in your pocket?”
Nikolay slowly shook his head and smiled. He snapped his fingers. “Hold on.”
He ducked outside to the open area and rummaged around for a moment, finding the metal toolbox. He quickly grabbed up a large screwdriver, hacksaw, hammer, and chisel.
She nodded; they were heavy-duty, but they’d work.
He raced back in. “I don’t think we need to worry about hygiene with our patient.” He still bathed them in bleach, then wiped them down with a cloth and laid them out for Sara to use.
“Oh no, no.” She held up a hand. “The heavy work is for younger muscles.”
“My pleasure,” Stefan said. “This has me intrigued now.” He used a scalpel to slice away the fur on the head and then rolled it back like a cap, exposing the skull. It should have been a pinkish-white, but instead was a dull, yellow-grey.
He looked up at Nikolay. “We take turns.” He then set to using the saw to cut right through the bone. It took him 15 minutes of sawing to go halfway around, and then he handed it over to Nikolay so he could catch his breath and rest his arm.
When Nikolay finished off the cutting, Stefan then used the hammer and chisel to bang along the cut-line until the top circle of cranium bone popped free. Stefan held it in his hand and stared.
Sara and Nikolay joined him, and Sara’s brows came together in confusion.
“This… is not possible,” she breathed out.
The skull was empty. And just like the stomach and chest cavity, it looked to have been totally cleaned out.
Stefan shook his head and rested his hands on the table as he stared down into the empty skull cavity. “Mr. Carter was wrong. This creature hasn’t been moving around for a long time.”
“There’s no forebrain, midbrain, or even hindbrain. It could never have had motor functions, and as the medulla is missing, there is nothing to regulate the involuntary life-sustaining functions such as breathing, swallowing… even its heart rate,” Sara said softly. “It could never have even been alive.”
Nikolay shone his light around in the cavity. “Hey, there’s some sort of excretion in there.”
“Get me a sample,” Sara said.
Nikolay went to a bench, lifted a swab, and came back to swipe it through the dark, viscous fluid, then handed it to her. Sara took it to one of the many microscopes in the laboratory, smeared it on a slide, switched on the reflection light, slid it onto the view plate, and then leaned over the eyepiece.
Stefan waited a moment and lifted his chin. “Well, what is it?”
She changed focus, and then lifted her head away, her forehead creased. “I’ve seen something like this before; it was something Carter brought back from the lake bottom. But this… this is different.” She looked back down into the eyepiece. “There’s something else mixed in there.”
“Is it at least biological?” Stefan insisted.
Sara stepped back. “You tell me.”
Stefan nodded and came around the table to lean over the microscope and adjust the focus to suit him. His brow creased deeply.
“I don’t understand what I am looking at. I see a lot of mammalian cells in there from several species, and all dead. But there are also living cells in there… I think that’s what they are. I see cytoplasmic fluid, but they have no mitochondria, nucleus, or ribosomes, and their cell wall is totally elastic. They are definitely not bear cells, and I have no idea what animal they could even be from.”
“I don’t know either. But like you said, it isn’t bear.” Sara exhaled. “Remember what Carter wrote? He thou
ght there was something else inside there.”
“Something not bear.” Stefan slowly turned back to the creature on the benchtop.
A sharp noise from behind made the three of them spin around.
*****
Carter looked in through the glass door and saw Sara and the two young Russians crowded around the massive lump of dead bear. He rapped on the frame, making all three of them jump.
Sara waved them in and then straightened. “Thanks for your early morning gift.”
Carter nodded toward it. “Sorry about that, but we found it last night, blown up by one of our booby traps. Not what we were expecting.”
Nikolay pointed with his small light. “Not what anyone was expecting, I think.”
“What can you tell us?” Red asked. “Because that bear is weird as shit.”
“And inside it gets even weirder,” Sara replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it, or even read about it in my entire life.” She looked back down at the bear. “We were just wondering how it could have ever been alive.” She looked back up at Carter. “Are you absolutely sure this thing was walking around last night?”
Carter held up his hands. “Well, we didn’t actually see it walking around. But how else would it have stumbled into our claymore?”
Sara grimaced. “Claymores around our mill compound? Jesus, Carter, we’ll talk about that later. But none of you actually saw it alive then?”
“We saw its tracks, and they were fresh,” Mitch said. “The bear tracks headed into the kill zone… on its own two-fucking-feet. And the snow in that area had only fallen in the last few hours.”
“Okay, cool it,” she shot back. “I’m just laying out what the scientific evidence has suggested. And that is the bear has been necrotic for some time.”
“Yeah, and maybe someone carried an 800-pound dead bear through the forest at night and threw it at our claymore.” Red laughed.
“And where’s the guts?” Mitch asked. “I’ve skinned and cleaned a bear before, and you end up with about 70 to 100 pounds of stinking organs. It was all gone, and the thing looked cleaned out.”
“He’s right,” Red said. “Pretty damned sure this thing got the shit blown out of it. There should have been bits and pieces everywhere, but instead, all we found was a trail of blood and crap leading to the water.”
Sara frowned. “How long from the explosion to when you arrived?”
“Thirty-five minutes, give or take,” Carter said.
She nodded. “Enough time to drag the innards away. But not enough to thoroughly clean out the carcass.”
“I know claymores, and I’ve seen some weird stuff happen—heads stuck up in trees, arms blown off still holding guns, and even some guy standing right in front of one when it went off and was totally untouched.” Mitch raised his eyebrows. “So, could the blast have done that to the innards? Blown them clean and clear, I mean?”
“All the way to the lake? No,” Sara said emphatically. “The internal organs of mammals are all secured in many places—the stomach to the esophagus and throat, the intestines lead to the colon and then the anus, and the heart’s aortas have thick, branching veins and arteries that are like rubber cables. I’ve dissected plenty of cadavers, and they are as tough as boot leather. The innards could be decimated and the beast eviscerated, but not blown clear to leave a cavity like that.”
“Damn,” Carter said. “This is getting a little freaky.”
“It gets freakier. Check this out.” She waved him closer. “The missing internal organs weren’t the only oddity we found.”
The men crowded around the remains and Sara pointed into the open skull. “As well as no organs, there’s no brain either. Basically, the total physiological infrastructure is all gone. There’s not even any connectors for the organs; not anymore anyway.”
“Not anymore? Are you saying it’s been altered?” Carter asked.
“Possibly, but how, by who?” She pointed with a gloved finger. “There are other changes—there are holes everywhere. I think artificially made.”
“What for?” Red asked.
Sara half-smiled. “You tell me.” She held up a finger. “But remember that sample you brought me from the lake bed?”
“Yeah, you said the tissue sample was from many animals, and there might even have been human cells mashed in there,” Carter replied.
“That’s right.” She folded her arms. “We found some more with the same jumble of necrotized animal cells. But there was something else in there—a biological trace, and the cellular structures weren’t dead this time. But this stuff wasn’t normal—not normal for a bear, not normal for anything.”
Red snorted. “We can already see it’s not a normal bear. Just what the hell is it then? An experiment, or a Russian joke?”
“Some joke.” Stefan looked strained. “It just can’t have been alive. There was no brain, no heart, no lungs, nothing.”
“We need to know more.” Carter sighed. “I don’t like mysteries so close to our compound.”
“It’s the best we can do with what we’ve got,” Stefan said. “This isn’t a research lab, and Sara isn’t an environmental or evolutionary biologist with extensive mammalian databases to work with.”
“I need to know what the hell is creeping around the compound at night,” Carter replied.
Sara lifted her chin. “Stefan’s right; we just don’t have the equipment or expertise. But we know someone who does, don’t we?”
Carter smiled. “I’ll bite, who?”
“We already have contacts within the Federal Agency for Fisheries and Conservation.” She walked toward him. “Mr. Mikhail Ivanov, their chief scientist, is our contact for the sturgeon and eggs. He signed off on everything and is supportive of what we’re doing.”
Carter shrugged. “Great, then let’s put a sample together and send it off to him.”
“Ah, excuse me.” Stefan held up a hand. “They might shut you down.”
“What?” Sara turned to him. “Why?”
Stefan sighed loudly. “They panicked after Chernobyl and closed every business, shop, school, and house for a hundred miles. If they think this thing is some sort of mutation or infection from the paper mill, then wave goodbye to everything.”
Sara groaned.
Nikolay opened his arms. “We just tell him we collected it well away from the water and the mill.”
Sara turned to Carter. “What do you think?”
Carter stared at the ground as he spoke. “For some reason, this thing scares the shit out of me. Even more than the goddamned mafia.” He looked up. “We need to know.”
“I’ll prepare the sample,” Nikolay said.
“Thank you,” Carter said and began to turn away.
“One more thing,” Sara said.
“Yeah?” Carter paused.
“You said in your note you thought something was inside there, the bear. What did you mean by that?” She waited, watching him closely.
Carter narrowed his eyes for a moment as he stared at the massive pile of the bear’s remains for a few more moments. He exhaled.
“You said that the bear couldn’t have been alive or moving around, right?”
“That’s right.” Sara waited.
“When we found it, Red said something that got me thinking. He said he thought at first it was like a ghillie suit.”
“A what?” Nikolay asked.
Carter spoke over his shoulder to the young man. “A ghillie suit is a type of military camouflage suit designed to resemble the background environment.”
“I remember,” Red said. “All that fur. Thought we bagged one of the bad guys.” He nodded.
“Well, what if you were right, about the bear not being alive, and not moving around.” He looked up but avoided her eye contact. “What if something else was moving it around?”
“Holy fuck, yeah, wearing it like a ghillie suit. Now I get it.” Red’s eyes were wide. “That is fucked up.”
Stefan frowned
. “You think there was a man hiding in there?”
“I don’t know.” Carter shook his head. “But those holes over the limbs, like where you’d put your arms in, and also stick your head up into. I’m just saying that something might have been in there, inside that carcass.”
“Making it move around. Even after it was dead?” Nikolay breathed.
“Unlikely, Carter. Nothing like that exists now or ever.” Sara’s lips compressed.
“This lake is weird and getting weirder,” Mitch said.
“According to the legends, it always was.” Carter rubbed his chin.
“There’s no record of anything like this I know of in Siberia,” Stefan said. “This is an old country, plenty of word-of-mouth tales, but nothing written down.”
“Maybe there is.” Carter turned to Nikolay. “You mentioned a cave you and Marcus found with ancient drawings that showed the lake and something happening on it, right?”
“Yes, something hitting the lake we thought,” Nikolay agreed.
“I need you to take me to that cave and those rock drawings. I need to see them myself.”
Nikolay nodded. “When?”
“Today,” Carter replied. “And I don’t want anyone out after dark for a while.”
“I should come with you,” Sara said.
He shook his head. “We need to get that sample off to the Ministry as a priority. We can have Yuri run it down to Listvyanka.”
He turned to Mitch and Red. “You guys go and check the other sensors and plant the rest of the claymores. I hope that this thing was the only one, but if not, I don’t want any more of them lumbering into our compound.”
“You got it,” the pair agreed.
“Nikolay, I’ll see you in an hour—wear your hiking gear.” Carter was already heading for the door.
CHAPTER 26
Carter forged ahead, with Nikolay directly behind. The young man looked out of breath and had remarked a while back that Carter was much fitter than his younger brother had been. He immediately looked awkward and apologized, but Carter just waved it away.
Carter tucked his chin inside his collar, as it was cold—damn cold. There was plenty of deep snow on the ground and a biting coldness that hung all around them like the freezing vapor did in the air.
