The Deep Zone

by James M. Tabor

  She was concerned about the supercave, of course, but she had taken its measure before. The people worried her more. If Lathrop was right, with the exception of Arguello, they had all spent enough time down deep to be expert with the techniques. So it wasn’t their experience that concerned Hallie. Depth and darkness could prey on a person’s mind; she had seen brave and brawny men reduced to trembling wrecks after several days far down. She had—

  She walked right into Arguello, who had stopped suddenly to avoid running into Bowman. Someone spoke, words unintelligible, the voice like wind-blown tree branches scratching on a wall.

  Peering around Arguello and Bowman, in the NVDs’ green glow she could see the luminous form of a man blocking their way. A small dog stood beside him, eyes glowing red as fire. The man was of average height, his face etched with wrinkles, wearing a shirt and pants that hung loose on his bony frame. His sandals looked to have been made from old automobile tires. On his right side he carried a machete in a leather sheath hung with frayed rope around his waist. He had a battered leather satchel draped over his left shoulder.

  The old man spoke again.

  Bowman looked at Arguello. Hallie noted that the big man had turned ever so slightly, so that his right shoulder and hip were away from the old man. His right hand hung easily, casually, by the SIG Sauer.

  Arguello hesitated a moment. “Sorry. A very old dialect. He asked if we are here to kill narcotraficantes.”

  “Tell him we are not.”

  Arguello did, and the old man spoke more.

  “He says that is a pity. Now he asks if we are here to kill the federales. The government soldiers.”

  “Tell him we’re not doing that, either.”

  Arguello did, and the old man responded, his eyes straying to Hallie.

  “He said that, too, is a pity. He also says that the high woman is very beautiful. The tall woman, he means. Even with the funny glasses.”

  Hallie wondered how he could see her at all.

  “Ask him if there are narcos or federales close by.”

  “He says they are everywhere now. He calls them… ah, it is obscene. Something to do with the excretory function. But very bad.”

  “The narcos or the federales?”

  “Both, I believe.”

  “Ask him how he travels on a moonless night with no light through a forest of mala mujer.”

  The old man listened, chuckled, answered. Arguello translated: “He says that when you know the way, there is no darkness. And that he made friends with mala mujer long ago.”

  “Friends? Ask him… never mind.”

  The old man spoke at length then and Arguello translated again: “He says that he is sorry we are not here to kill the federales. They are stupid and careless, drunk constantly, and they shot his wife during a firefight. Also the narcos, drunk and worse, crazy on drugs. They took his two daughters and burned his home. Now he lives in the forest and kills those who get drunk and wander away from their camps.”

  “What’s going on?” Cahner whispered from back in the line. “Why did we stop?”

  The old man spoke again and Arguello murmured to Bowman: “He says Chi Con Gui-Jao is expecting us.”

  And Hallie wondered, How would he know we are going to the cave?

  “Ask him why he approached us. Why he wasn’t afraid.” Bowman watched the old man, not Arguello.

  After an exchange, Arguello answered, “He is a curandero. Shaman. He says that you give off good light. Not like the narcos and federales. Their light is like foul water.”

  The old man kept talking, apparently explaining something to Arguello.

  “He says that he would accompany us but cannot until his business of putting out the, ah, ‘filthy lights,’ he calls them, is finished.”

  The old man spoke to Arguello once more.

  “He says that the cave is another world,” Arguello relayed. “One that—how to explain this—contains what we call heaven and hell. Many enter the cave and never return. Those who do return are different.”

  “Different how?” Bowman asked.

  Arguello questioned the old man in his language and once again translated for Bowman. “There is no way to know,” he said.

  Hallie felt goose bumps rise on her arms. The old man was speaking the truth. On her other trip into the cave, she had experienced exactly what the curandero described. One of the hydrogeologists, a hard-core smoker, had a cold when they entered Cueva de Luz. It intensified with frightening speed, becoming pneumonia in both lungs before they reached the cave’s terminus. If he had not disappeared, it was entirely possible that he would not have made it out of the cave in any case. Another of the men had flirted with her—just lightly, nothing offensive—during their trip down to Mexico. The deeper they went, the more powerful his lust became, the more insistent his advances, until toward the end she slept with her sheath knife in one hand inside her mummy bag. That man, too, had disappeared.

  Bowman turned back, addressing the team: “We’ll move out now.” He swung toward the trail, and then froze.

  The old man and the dog were gone. They had made no sound.

  “Did you see where he went?” Bowman, tense, looking all around. “Anyone?” No one answered. “Let’s get on. The sooner we get into the cave, the safer we’ll be,” he said.

  I wouldn’t count on that, Hallie thought.

  ELEVEN

  “YOU OUGHTA BE WEARIN’ A HOT SUIT, DOC.” THE SPEAKER was a young black sergeant.

  Lenora Stilwell glanced up from her clipboard. The sergeant’s name was Dillon. Marshell Dillon.

  “Can’t get anything done in those body condoms.” Stilwell winked, prompting a pained grin in return. “Can’t hear, can’t talk, can’t touch. Heck, you can barely walk in one of those. As for going to the bathroom…” She shook her head. “What kind of doctor would that be?”

  It was early evening. Terok’s field hospital was now fully quarantined and isolated from the rest of the combat outpost. From the rest of the world, for that matter. The NBC—Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical—guys showed up the day after the presence of ACE was confirmed. They sealed the unit, installing one biosecure air lock for ingress and egress, and distributed Biosafety Level 4 suits. The “hot suit” Dillon had referred to was the sky-blue Chemturion Model 3530, made of a twenty-millimeter impervious plastic called Cloropel. It weighed ten pounds. The personal life support system backpack (PLSS) added another ten pounds to the total weight. A BSL-4 felt, when zipped and clipped, like a diver’s heavy dry suit, but even stiffer. Every movement required extra effort, and the plastic popped and crinkled continuously. Then, too, they were so hot that it was possible to sweat out two pounds during an eight-hour shift, even with the little ventilator fan blowing.

  Air from the PLSS backpack or an external supply kept the suits inflated to positive pressure, so that no pathogens could infiltrate even if a suit was breached. The integrated, bucket-shaped hood was made of thicker plastic that was clear enough when new but never remained so for long. It scratched and marred easily, so that seeing through one more than a few weeks old was like looking through a windshield spiderwebbed with cracks. After the antifog chemical wore off, which it usually did within a month, the plastic fogged up, making it even harder to see. The suits’ sleeves ended in heavy, double-layer hazmat gloves that allowed only slightly more manual dexterity than winter mittens. Since the suit, when inflated, effectively doubled the wearer’s volume and added a foot of height, it required constant mental recalibration to keep from blundering into equipment, other people, and containers holding pathogens so deadly that a thousandth of an ounce could depopulate the planet. Stilwell thought it was like driving an eighteen-wheeler after a lifetime of Hondas.

  BSL-4 Chemturions were designed to protect laboratorians against nightmares from the invisible world, monsters like Ebola Zaire, superpox, pneumonic plague, and many others, including ACE, and they did that job well enough. But they were not designed to help an overtask
ed doctor in a combat zone do her work, and Stilwell had refused to wear one from the start. Since no one outranked her at Terok, no one could order her to wear one of the clumsy suits, and that suited her just fine.

  “You don’t wanna catch this stuff, Doc. It’s amazing you don’t got it already.” Dillon was twenty-three, slim, his head shaved. He wore a wedding band and, Stilwell knew, had two young children back home in Atlanta, Georgia. He’d enlisted at eighteen, loved the Army, planned to make a career of it.

  “Hey, you know about us doctors. We build up immunity. I’ve been exposed to so many bugs over the years, I’m probably immune to everything.”

  “I’m sayin’ prayers for you, Doc.” Dillon gasped, his face collapsing into a clutch of pain as Stilwell lifted the dressing from one of the red, suppurating patches on his torso. The infection had not progressed as far as those that had killed Wyman and Washington and the others. IV colistin was slowing it down. That was the good news. But it was gaining on the colistin, despite steadily increasing dosages.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Hey, tell me something, Sergeant. Did you ever hear of a TV show called Gunsmoke?”

  “Only about a hundred million times, ma’am.” Dillon’s voice contained pain again, but of a different kind.

  “So you know about Marshal Dillon? The character James Arness played?”

  “Oh, do I ever, ma’am. Forget bein’ a boy named Sue. The ’hood I come from, you named for a cop, that’s two strikes right there.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why would your mother do that?”

  “She didn’t, ma’am. It was my aunt.”

  “Oh? And how was it that she did the naming?” Stilwell was still probing, examining. Keep him talking.

  “My mother booked soon as she could get out of the hospital, ma’am. I never seen her. My aunt and uncle raised me.”

  “I see. Well, why did she do it, then?”

  “They never had a TV when she was growin’ up. She didn’t know anything about that show. Just liked the sound of the name.”

  “I guess it could have been worse.”

  “How so, ma’am?”

  “She could have named you Festus.”

  He gave her a blank look. Too young, she realized. “Another character on that show.”

  “Oh yeah.” Dillon nodded, his face screwed up in distaste. “That woulda been worse. Sounds like a disease. ‘You got a case of acute Festus.’ ” He smiled briefly, but then his expression changed. “Ma’am, what’s that stuff doing now?”

  She never lied to her patients. “It’s growing. But more slowly now that we’re getting the antibiotic into you.”

  “So that drug’s helpin’ some, then?”

  “It appears so, yes.”

  “I’m glad, ’cause it fu—um, it messed up my stomach big-time. Can’t even keep water down.”

  “The other IV will keep you hydrated. We can feed you that way too, if we have to.”

  “Doc… you talked to my wife yet?”

  “Not yet, Sergeant. Battalion has clamped down. No outgoing comm. I haven’t talked to my own family for five days.”

  “They don’t want to freak people out, right? I can understand that. But, Doc, if you do talk to her?”

  “Yes?”

  Dillon had been in more firefights than she could count and seen more horrors than she could imagine. He was one of their best, career Army, a cold-eyed, efficient killer but a sensitive leader of men. Rare combination, that. Now his eyes filled with tears.

  “Doc… look. No bull now. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I know ’bout Wyman and Angel and the others. You’re good at hidin’ it, but… not that good. So, please don’t tell her how bad I am, hear? She got enough on her plate, dealin’ with the kids an’ all. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have one of them miraculous recoveries.”

  She looked down. There were no lesions between the elbow and wrist. She gave his arm a long, firm squeeze.

  “Marshell Dillon, you listen. There’s no way I think you’re going to die. I don’t want to hear you say that again. Roger that?” She delivered that stern-voiced, like an order, but her eyes were kind.

  He smiled up at her, his own eyes still glistening. “Roger that, ma’am.”

  Stilwell finished examining the eight cases in Ward B and headed for the four in Ward A. In the hallway between the two wards, a nurse in a Chemturion approached. Stilwell laid a hand on her plastic-covered arm.

  “Pam.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “What day is it?”

  “What day? Tuesday, ma’am. Evening.”

  “Thank you. I sort of lost track.”

  “Um… ma’am? Permission to speak?”

  Stilwell patted the nurse’s arm, smiled. “You always have that with me, Pam.”

  “Yes. Thank you, ma’am. So, we’re worrying about you.”

  “About me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s not only going around without a suit. You’re not taking care of yourself. Ma’am.” Through the hazy plastic hood, Stilwell saw genuine concern in the young nurse’s eyes. “You’re not eating enough or sleeping. We’re worrying.”

  “If you didn’t have that suit on I’d give you a hug. I appreciate your concern, Pam. Really. But back in the day, when I was an intern, they called me ‘Superdoc.’ I could do more work than any two of the male doctors.”

  Pam looked skeptical, but a bit less worried. “Is it true you used to run marathons, ma’am?”

  “That is true. I never broke three hours, but I never ran a race I didn’t finish, either. Born with the stamina of a mule.” Her expression turned serious. “Look, I’ll be careful. I know that if I go down, I’m no use to you or these sick kids. But if you do see me screwing up, say so. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Understood.”

  Stilwell patted her shoulder and sent the nurse on her way. Now, where was I going? And what was I doing?

  “Uh, Major, ma’am, excuse me, there’s a call.” Stilwell turned to see another nurse, a young specialist from Baltimore, Michael Demrock, very thin, corn-silk hair. Not the brightest one she’d ever had, but certainly one of the best-hearted.

  “Thanks. I’ll catch it later. I’m going to—”

  “It’s a colonel, ma’am. Full bird.”

  “What does he want? Is he a fobbit?” Stilwell could feel her impatience heating up. She had never much cared for the fobbits, officers so called because they were denizens of the FOBs, forward operating bases, which were not really forward at all but were a world away to the rear. She disliked them for their tailored uniforms and Baskin-Robbins shops and McDonald’s and Starbucks and bars, all of which FOBs offered. When the fobbits came, it was always about some missing piece of paperwork or with an admonition about her outrageous MPPs—her minutes-per-patient ratio.

  “He kind of sounds like one, yes ma’am.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ah, Rubbish, ma’am.”

  “Rubbish? His name is Colonel Rubbish?”

  “No, wait. That’s not it. Ribbesh. Or something like that. It’s kind of hard to hear in these suits.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She waited. After a while she realized that Demrock was waiting, too. Patience, Major. He’s just deferring to your rank. “And what was it, Specialist?”

  “You, ma’am. He said he wanted to talk to you.”

  Round and round we go, she thought. “Of course. You told me that already. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Major.”

  In her closet-sized office, she dropped into the wooden chair behind her desk and picked up the phone. “Major Stilwell.”

  “Colonel Ribbesh here, Major. They had to go a way to find you, apparently. I apprised them almost ten minutes ago of my need to speak with you.”

  A fobbit for sure. And he wants an apology for keeping him waiting. They were easy to spot when you could see them. Their uniforms were too c
lean, they had too much fat on them, and their skin was always too white. They were almost as easy to identify just from their voices. They never swore, didn’t drop g’s, sounded prissy, used words like ‘apprised.’ Lenora Stilwell detested them.

  “How can I help you, Colonel?”

  A beat, then another. He’s surprised. Waiting for it. She let him wait, glanced at her watch. She was overdue in Ward A. Those four soldiers would be waiting for her. Medicine was about drugs and scalpels and X-rays for sure, but healing was about heart; she had understood that long ago.

  Finally he cleared his throat. “I’m battalion NBC liaison. I will be coming up to Terok. An inspection visit, orders from regiment. I wanted to apprise you of my ETA.”

  Regiment. That meant from the one-star, an alcoholic martinet named Gremble. “Your ETA. I see. What is it, sir?”

  “Day after tomorrow, zero eight thirty hours.”

  Day after tomorrow. Fine. Great. From where she sat now, with a hundred things needing to be done in the next hour, that felt like a century away.

  “Very well, Colonel. Thanks for letting me know.”

  When the fobbit spoke again, his voice was different. “Major, can you apprise me of the conditions up there at Terok?”

  “The conditions, sir?” What the hell did he mean? The weather? The four-star accommodations?

  He coughed again. “Yes.” Pause. “I gather this pathogen is quite deadly.”

  He’s scared. She could hear it in his voice. Just tell him the truth.

  “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, Colonel. You’ve heard of Ebola Zaire?”

  “Of course.”

  “Worse than that. More contagious, shorter incubation period, higher mortality rate.”

  “My God.”

  “Are you sure you need to make this trip, Colonel? We’ve got things under control here.”

  “Orders, Major.” Ribbesh sounded like a miserable child who was being punished. She wondered what he had done to get on the one-star’s bad side. “So… would you recommend full Biosafety Level Four protection?”

  She laughed before she could stop herself, but cut it off quickly. No need to insult the man. “Not if you remain outside the hospital confines, sir. If you want to come in, then definitely.”