Another thought struck her—a worse one.
Is this a terrorist attack?
She drove wildly, foot down full on the accelerator. Luckily traffic was light—there was another accident on the corner of Watson and French, and she saw the drivers, both hunched over their wheels, unmoving. But there was no sign of any responders—no cops, no ambulance, and Rebecca herself was in no mood to stop. It took her a while to notice that she seemed to have driven out of the spattering rain. The loop took her down to the foot of the hill below Watson Drive and as she turned into the schoolyard she saw that the rain cloud hung, black and heavy, over the highest elevation of town. Even now sweeping tendrils of gray were reaching farther down the hill; they looked almost alive.
Two other cars screeched into the schoolyard just behind her—she recognized one of the women—Patty Payne, her daughter Annie was in Mark’s grade. The other was a redhead she hadn’t seen before, but all three of them got out of the vehicles together, one determined unit as they went through the school door.
A burly guard immediately tried to stop them. Rebecca noticed he had a crowd pacifier on his hip—he hadn’t reached for it yet, but there was something in his eyes that told her he might, if pressed.
“Can I help you, ladies?”
Rebecca tried to keep her voice calm.
“I would like to take my boys—Adam and Mark Lovatt—home, please.”
“We will need a good reason for that,” the guard said.
“How about acid fucking rain killing folks in the street,” the redhead said, and started to try to push past the man, screaming. “Ira Kaminski—get your ass out here, right now.”
“Madam,” the guard said, trying to hold the woman back. “If you don’t calm down, I’ll have to call the police.”
“Go ahead and try,” the woman replied. “They won’t come—they’ve got bigger things on their mind.”
Rebecca saw confusion in the man’s eyes, and worked on it quickly while they had an opportunity.
“Just come to the door and look out,” she said softly. “You’ll see what we mean.”
The redhead took her chance and ran off down the corridor, screaming for her Ira. The guard wanted to follow, but by this time Rebecca was on one side of him, Patty on the other, taking him by the arm and leading him to the main door.
The rain was closer now, more than halfway down the hill. The cloud hung low over the upper part of town—but not low enough to obscure the small clusters of flames and smoke that rose from several places.
“What happened?”
“We have no idea,” Rebecca said. “But we’re taking our kids.”
The guard opened the door. Screams echoed in the air from up the hill—wailing, tortured screams.
“We’re taking our kids,” Patty echoed softly, and Rebecca joined her in heading off along the corridor. The guard let them go, unable to take his eyes off the scene outside.
* * *
They found Mark and Annie first—the kids were all at the main window of their room, overlooking the town, and when Mark turned at her call, she saw the same confusion and fear she felt inside her.
“Where’s Adam?”
“3B—two doors down,” Mark replied.
By the time she’d fetched Adam—after a yelling match with a young teacher who looked more frightened than any of the kids—the light in the school had grown dimmer—the rain cloud was sweeping down the hill, moving overhead.
“Time to go,” Patty said, and as a group all five of them ran back toward the entrance. The redhead and her Ira were already there, although the guard blocked the route back out to the vehicles.
“Look, I can see you’re worried—but it might be dangerous out there,” he said. “The kids could be hurt.”
“That’s why we’re taking them home.”
“What about the others here?”
“Keep them inside—they’ll be safe inside,” Patty said, although Rebecca was by no means sure that was going to be the case—she just wanted to be home—needed to be home. She saw past the guard out the door. It was growing dark out there now—rain wasn’t far away.
“We’re going. When the rain starts, don’t let any hit you. Trust us on this.”
The guard put a hand on the pacifier, then thought better of it and stood aside.
“Okay—just promise me you’ll be careful—and make sure they’re here with a note tomorrow.”
Rebecca almost laughed. She had a feeling that notes were quickly going to be least of the man’s worries, but she had no time for any chat—she shepherded the kids outside. The kids were confused, and more than a bit excited at being out of school so early. They immediately ran across the play area.
“Get your asses back here,” Rebecca shouted. “Right fucking now.”
She saw both Annie’s shocked, wide-eyed expression, and Patty’s barely suppressed grin, but it had done the job. It was the first time she’d ever swore in front of the boys; she only hoped she’d get a chance to do it again. She had to yell again—no swearing this time—to get them to climb up into the SUV—and she was nearly too late. She saw two raindrops pitter-patter on the roof as she got into the driver’s seat.
Patty hadn’t been as quick—Annie was in the passenger seat and Patty stood outside the car, bent over and fiddling with the tension of her seatbelt. She yelped in pain, like the bark of a small dog—Rebecca heard it clearly. Patty scratched at her hand even as she threw herself into the car and slammed the door behind her.
The redhead and her Ira were already headed off across the yard at speed as heavier rain started to spatter on the windshield—more grease that the wipers couldn’t quite deal with. Rebecca drove the SUV up next to Patty’s car before slightly lowering the driver’s side window, checking that no rain was going to get in before lowering it farther.
“You okay, Patty?”
The other woman smiled, grimaced and showed Rebecca a fresh red weal on the back of her hand.
“It was a little black speck of something—it hurt like a steam iron burn at first, but as soon as I scraped it off it was fine. Just don’t get any of that shit on you.”
Patty would normally wash her mouth out with carbolic soap rather than let a cuss word pass her lips.
Looks like there’s a first time for everything for both of us today.
“I hear you,” Rebecca said. “Call me if you need anything—okay?”
Patty nodded, and they both drove off, parting company at Watson and French—the accident was still there—as were the bodies in the drivers’ seats. The boys’ eyes went wide in astonishment but neither they nor Rebecca said anything as they drove past without stopping.
The black rain spattered huge oily drops on the windshield, drops that the wipers smeared across Rebecca’s vision until the world beyond was misty and opaque.
She drove home on autopilot—luckily there was no traffic, although they passed half a dozen more accidents. More worrying, there were no responders at any of them—no police, ambulance or fire workers to be seen.
What the hell is going on here?
3
Shaun Lovatt was thinking the same thing at the same time on the other side of the country, on a forest trail in Alberta. The Caterpillar plow that served as their primary mode of transport in the spring was taking them up to the high lumber working site. But where the foliage should be verdant and deep green there was only brown withered branches, dank gray lichen and a pervading stench of rot, so bad that they had to close the windows.
“What the hell is this? Some kind of blight?”
He turned to Joe in the passenger seat—the big man didn’t speak, couldn’t take his eyes from the view, as if he didn’t believe what he saw.
“I was up here last Friday, Shaun,” he finally said. “There’s no blight will do this in a week. If you ask me, this is chemical—a spill maybe? Something jettisoned from a plane?”
“We’d have heard of something this bad, surely?”
“We haven’t heard much of anything—that’s why we’re here, remember?”
They’d been trying to reach the logging camp on the radio for nearly two days now with no reply forthcoming. Four long flatbed trucks had gone up the hill—but no timber, no trucks—and no one—had come back down. It happened occasionally here in the Alberta Rockies, camps sometimes got cut off, usually due to a burst of inclement weather—but apart from heavy rain on the tops last weekend it had been mostly fair. There was hardly even any snow left on the ground, and the plow was making good time up the slopes.
But Shaun was starting to worry just what it was they were heading into.
* * *
They rolled into the camp twenty minutes later. Shaun wasn’t expecting a reception committee—this was a working camp after all. But he was expecting some activity—any sign that work was underway, or at least had been recently. Nothing moved. The whole site sat in thin fog—not anything that would cause any delay. There was big money in timber, and big money meant quick turnarounds and continual deliveries of logs off the slopes. Whatever was going on here now, it certainly wasn’t making the company any money.
The main site was little more than a wide cleared area of recent and old sawdust, pine needles and stumps, with the four long flatbeds parked neatly in one corner and three log cabins at the far end. There should at least have been smoke from the chimneys but there was none. When Shaun killed the plow’s engine and rolled down his window—just an inch—he remembered the smell—they were met with deathly silence punctuated only by the sound of moisture dripping from the dead brown branches of the trees. Indeed, whatever was causing the die-off seemed even worse up here. All of the trees in the area had been stripped clean of any needles and there was not a single hint of greenery to be seen. Even the undergrowth—normally lush with ferns—had taken on the same brown tone, and when Shaun opened the plow door, the stench of rot got so pungent that he closed it again immediately and sat back in his seat.
“It wasn’t me—it was the dog,” Joe said, and smiled thinly. “If there’s anybody around, they’ll be in the mess room—drive over to the door, would you? I’m not keen on walking too far out there.”
“I hear you, brother,” Shaun replied. He drove the plow over to park right up next to the door of the nearest cabin. The noise should have been more than enough to bring somebody running, but the whole site was still silent when he cut the engine again.
Joe, on the passenger side, was nearest the doorway.
“After you,” Shaun said. The big man covered his mouth with a hand, gave Shaun the okay sign, and left in a hurry.
Shaun waited for a further sign that he should join him.
The only sound now was the ticking and metallic clangs as the plow engine started to cool.
He should be back by now.
Still Shaun waited. He knew from experience that any stupidity, any hasty action up on these mountains could get you dead quickly. He drummed his gloved hands on the steering wheel, then stopped—although little more than a dull thud the noise seemed just too loud, too out of place in what was starting to feel like a burial ground more than a work site.
Come on, Joe. What’s keeping you?
At that same moment, Joe came back into the doorway. All the color had drained from his face, and he looked like he’d just thrown up his breakfast. He waved for Shaun to join him. Shaun remembered to cover his mouth before opening the door and climbing down out of the plow’s cab. Out in the open it felt even more like a cemetery—nothing moved—no wind, no sound, not even a bird cry or rustle of branches. The stench was almost unbearable, burning at his nostrils like diesel fumes, and once again he thought of Joe’s theory of some kind of chemical spillage.
Joe stood aside and motioned that Shaun go past him into the cabin.
“You need to see this—we’re both going to need to be telling the same story. They won’t believe it if it comes from just one of us.”
The big man wouldn’t say any more, and showed little inclination to return into the cabin. Shaun stepped past him and entered the main room.
At least the smell of rot wasn’t so bad in here—but that didn’t make up for the sight of the bodies that lay strewn around the room—in seats, on the floor and, bizarrely, laid out on the long trestle table. He had a closer look at the one on the table first, and quickly wished he hadn’t. It was Bert, the foreman—the gray in the beard gave it away, but it was really the only bit of the man still recognizable. The rest was dried out and sunken—mummified was the word that came to mind first, although the exposed skin had the same brown tone that Shaun had got used to seeing on the trees and ground on the way up the slope. Whatever had got the vegetation, it seemed it had got to the men too.
He did a quick headcount—eleven bodies.
There should be twelve of them—eight of ours and four truck drivers.
There wasn’t much else for him to see. A large pot of congealed stew sat on the stove, but he couldn’t get close enough to investigate—it stank as bad as anything outside. As far as he could tell there was no indication as to how the men had died, beyond the dry brown skin—and Shaun wasn’t about to inspect that any closer than he had to.
He went back out onto the doorstep. Joe handed him a freshly lit smoke.
“I quit, remember?” Shaun started, then the stench hit again. He took the cigarette and had a long draw.
“It helps,” Joe said. “Trust me. Today’s not a good day to stay on the wagon.”
Shaun sucked smoke for several seconds. It did indeed help with the stench, although it was still there, still almost overpowering.
“There are eleven in there,” he said. “Maybe there’s still someone alive up here?”
Joe pointed over at the four long flatbeds. The door to the nearest was open. Just below it, on the ground, was a dried-out brown mound. It could have been just mold and litter—but Shaun was pretty sure they’d found the last body.
“Now what?” he said.
Joe stubbed out his smoke.
“We should check the other cabins, just to make sure. And use the radio to call this in—although as I said, we both need to have our story straight—this is going to take some telling.”
“I can tell you something for nothing—I’m none too happy at hanging around any longer than we have to.”
“You and me both,” Joe replied. “Just a quick check of the other cabins, a radio call, then we can be off down the hill and let somebody else clear up.”
To save on time they took a cabin each. Shaun got the bunks—in some ways he was glad that all the bodies were already accounted for—he didn’t think he would have coped with seeing any more brown mummies laid out in the cots. The cabin was bare and empty save for the paraphernalia of day-to-day living up here—shavers, combs, duffel bags, damp socks and rucksacks, the domesticity in stark contrast to the horrors next door in the mess.
He, almost absent mindedly, bent to pick a discarded sock off the floor. It would not lift—it was stuck hard to a rug—which was in turn stuck hard to the wooden flooring. He bent closer and saw that the wool of the sock and the weave of the rug were intertwined and meshed together—like some kind of natural Velcro, something that looked oily—and brown.
Without even realizing it, he was out on the doorstep again, gulping in air and fighting hard to keep down a rising sense of panic. Joe called out from the third cabin.
“In here, Shaun. One more thing you need to see with me.”
The third cabin served as the office and admin area for the work crew—two laptops, a printer, coffeepot and a couple of chairs around a trestle. But the thing Joe needed him to see was the radio set.
“Did you get through?” Shaun asked.
Joe laughed bitterly.
“I don’t even want to touch it.”
Joe saw what the big man meant when he had a look for himself. It was more of the brown oily tendrils, a mass of them all across the microphone, the dials—and
creeping up the face of the radio. Below that, on the glass of two of the display panels, were smears of something more recognizable—the red, just starting to brown, of drying blood.
“What the fuck happened here?” Shaun whispered.
“I don’t have a clue,” Joe replied, “but I think it’s still happening. I vote we get the hell out of Dodge before it gets us too.”
Shaun wasn’t about to disagree. He headed out for the plow. Joe held back.
“Get the engine running. I want to get the log book—there might be something in there that’ll tell us what happened.”
Shaun had just got inside and switched on the engine when heavy, oily raindrops started to spatter against the plow’s windshield. Joe stepped out of the cabin and immediately threw a hand to his head as if he’d been stung. He yelped again as he pulled himself up into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. He dropped the log book on the floor at his feet and scratched frantically at his scalp, then at the back of his hand, raising a welt and a line of thin, watery blood.
“Bloody hell, that smarts,” the big man said. “There’s something in the rain—acid maybe?” He kept scratching at his head as he turned to Shaun. “This is not good. Get us the hell out of here.”
* * *
They got back down the hill in half the time it had taken them to go up. Shaun smoked another of Joe’s Camels—his first cigarettes for more than nine years, but Becky would forgive him—just this once. And thinking of Becky and the boys made him drive ever faster, throwing the plow down the hill track and taking too many risks on too many corners. Normally that would have earned him a ticking-off from Joe, but the big man wasn’t paying much attention, alternating between looking at the log book and scratching frantically at his scalp.
“It itches like fucking crazy,” was all that he would say. “Just get us off this hill—we need somebody to have a good look at it.”
Shaun saw fear in the big man’s eyes—they were thinking the same thing—oily brown tendrils, creeping through wool and carpet—through blood and tissue.
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