Pathosis (A Dark Evolution Book 1)
Page 16
The RHIB roared to life at a touch of the bright green button. Well that’s what eighty grand would get you, reliability. Kuma and Chris, the other member of his group, loaded Jens onto the raft with him bitching the whole time about his busted ankle.
“Next time don’t go jumping around like a damn leprechaun,” Kuma told him.
This got a few laughs, but not from Jens. Instead he glowered at the big, bald, tattooed Kuma.
“Tell me what has happened,” Jens demanded of him.
Kuma jumped out of the boat, shoved it into the ocean surf, and hoisted himself over the shallow gunwales. He left all their equipment on the beach, as it would only slow them down. Finally, he turned to Jens. Kuma’s face was dripping sweat from his bald head all the way down his beard.
“We have to go pick up Captain Shuler’s group. One of their people died and another is sick. We are evacuating from the island.”
“Because someone is sick?”
“They think more of us are at risk. Apparently, Patel was bitten by a poisonous spider and died soon after. Captain says we’re to scrap the mission.”
Jens leaned back a little, contemplating this. “I guess that’s okay as long as we still get paid.”
“I’m sure you’ll get paid, you greedy bastard.”
Jens grinned with a big, ugly, toothy smirk. Kuma threw him the sat phone. “Can you call your man on the boat? If you have him meet us on the other side of the island, it’ll save some time later.”
Jens nodded and called the cantankerous Norwegian engineer on board the Darwin. He sounded no less irritable, but agreed to move the ship.
“Just don’t bloody-damn hit anything, got it?”
Kuma could hear the engineer answer in an expletive before hanging up on him. By now they were racing along the shoreline, heading for the other side of the island, just as the captain had ordered. Hundreds of yards of beach flew past, then dense jungle and black rocks. Kuma had the RHIB at three-fourths throttle, which was already a bit more than he could safely handle. It seemed to skip over the early morning waves, doing an easy thirty knots. Then he saw movement on the shoreline and throttled back a little.
Jens immediately looked up when the nose planed down with the decrease in acceleration. “What is it?”
“There’s something in the woods right by the shore.”
“Jungle, you mean?” Chris asked, peering into the dense trees.
“Yeah, jungle.”
“There,” Chris said, pointing his scrawny arm at the shore. “I just saw a flash of something. I think it might have been somebody’s shirt.”
“That’s what it looked like to me, too.”
“I don’t see anything, guys,” Jens said, though he was leaning his head back, staring at the sky. He had popped a few Vicodin after his ankle injury and they were starting to kick in now.
Chris, the thin bespectacled anthropologist, pointed again into the jungle. “There it is again. Kuma, bring us in closer. That looks like a person.”
Kuma pulled the craft around and in toward the shore. They were moving at little more than a crawl, now, drifting and peering intently into the jungle. There was no beach here, so they were able to approach to within ten feet of the shoreline. Without warning, a bright shape burst from the jungle and hit the water just behind them.
“Chris, Chris! Help me!”
“Jesus, Kuma, that’s Joe! Kill the engine.”
Kuma did. The man was wearing a bright red tech tee and splashing frantically toward them. He looked terrified.
“Joe, what is it?” Chris yelled.
“Don’t turn off the engine, he’s right behind me!”
“What? Who?”
“Look out!” Kuma screamed just as a dark shape launched itself from shore. The beast howled as it plunged toward Joe in the water. Its hands were outstretched, with fingers like claws. Joe screamed as the creature lurched toward him. Chris screamed too, and Kuma fired the engine back up. Chris was tripping over seats to get to the back of the boat and help Joe, but just then, the beast splashed down after its supernatural leap from shore.
“Jesus Christ!” Chris gasped, “It’s Stephen!”
Stephen, a mild-mannered naturalist from Colorado, was now on top of Joe in the water. His eyes were mad; his hands caked with gooey dark red. Joe screamed and Stephen howled with rage. As Stephen sunk his teeth into Joe’s neck from behind, Joe’s scream turned into a piercing wail. Stephen’s teeth sunk in and punctured Joe’s carotid artery. He shook his head back and forth like a pit bull, until he had ripped a large chunk out of Joe’s neck. Stephen tipped his head back and howled while he chewed the human meat.
Joe slipped back down into the water while blood shot out of the crater in his neck.
Kuma hit the gas so hard he almost sent Chris over the stern. Chris was left staring out the back, his eyes red, his mouth contorting into different words and sounds he could not articulate.
“Well,” Jens said. “I think the captain made the right call to evacuate.”
Both Kuma and Chris just stared at Jens.
“What the hell just happened, Chris?” Kuma looked like he was in shock. Chris shook his head.
“I have no freaking idea.”
It would take several hours to reach the other side of the island where the captain had said he would be waiting. Though once they got there, Kuma had no idea how they would get out to the boat. That side of the island was surrounded by sheer cliffs.
Chapter 20
At eleven o’clock, in homes across Dade County and Southern Florida, the news came on. Kala and Abbie weren’t watching, they were busy preparing handguns and semi-automatic rifle magazines in her basement bedroom. Kala’s father was sleeping fitfully. Her mother lay in bed next to him, worried about her family and the uncertain future around them. The news came on anyhow.
The reporter, Jerry, was a middle-aged African American man. He had a large belly and a short beard that was mottled black and gray. He was generally an amiable man, though he was more accustomed to his morning broadcasts where he would sit behind the news desk drinking coffee and greeting Miami. Now he was out here in the dark of night, on the street, out where those crazy ones were surely roaming. The camera operator finished adjusting his light and counted Jerry down.
“Good evening, Dade County. I’m Jerry Geoffries. Henry Smite is out sick tonight so I’m filling in.” He paused, working into his usual relaxed rhythm. “Our top story tonight: Panic, in the streets of Miami.”
Jerry paused and the camera showed a quick clip of several women shrieking and pointing at something off-camera. Then there was another quick shot, this one of a mother running with her small child from a grocery store to her car. A moment later, another clip cut in, this one showing a line of police officers who had their guns drawn. They hunkered down behind two police sedans and one of the officers was shouting through a bullhorn. The camera panned and showed the object of their attention. It was a crazed woman; her face pulled tight and somehow to the side, arms jerking into the air. She was covered with blood and it did not look like her own. Her white camisole was ripped open across her belly, and there was a loud garbled sound coming from her.
“This footage was captured earlier, and it was a scene that has played out over and over again in our city today. The results are tragic.” The camera now showed the deranged woman walking toward the police line again and listeners could hear, “Fire!” come from the police bullhorn. The officers fired what seemed like many rounds into the woman, until at last her body stopped jerking and fell to the ground. Her face had been blurred out by the station, but that was all.
“There are those who are wondering if this kind of force is really necessary,” a quick cut to a twenty-year-old man in a red, yellow, green, and blue beanie. He was shouting anima
tedly at the camera.
“These are human beings! They are sick; the police can’t just shoot them. This is like when the SS came hunting for Jews and executed them because they were Jewish. We have to save these people!” He certainly looked passionate about what he was saying.
“The police have their own story,” Jerry said, and the camera showed their portly police chief.
“We have lost ten police officers today, and this, epidemic of madness doesn’t seem to be stopping. It is imperative that we protect our citizens and our officers. That is why we use deadly force. We have tried to capture these poor people. We know they are sick, but they are uncontrollable. Tasers don’t work on them, my men cannot hold them without becoming injured, and gunshots to non-vital areas don’t seem to slow them down.” The police chief was frustrated and flushed; obviously this had been a trying day for all of the city’s emergency services. “We managed to capture one person alive earlier today, and that was due as much to luck as it was to the skill of the officers on scene. The FBI is running tests on that person now.”
Jerry resumed. “As far as we know now, there have been somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred reported incidents today, all involving people acting madly or violently. The police have asked that people stay inside as much as they can right now.”
“The culprit of this strange phenomenon has not been officially identified, but the police department did confirm that at least several witnesses reported that the victims had been bitten by a spider before going mad.” The camera shifted and cut to a shot of a large, dead spider. It was a shiny orange and black, and lay half-crushed in someone’s driveway. “The woman who sent us this image, Dena Arder, had no idea the spider was under her car, and only took a picture because of its unusual size.”
“Surviving witnesses say these spiders are extremely aggressive, and that within an hour after being bitten, victims began feeling sick and drowsy. Then, several hours later, they would awaken in some type of stupor. At this point the victims are uncommunicative and enraged. They act out violently against anything or anyone that they encounter.”
“Pest control agencies around the state were swamped today with concerned citizens wanting to rid their houses of any and all spiders.” A sharp sound came from somewhere behind Jerry and he startled, looking back over his shoulder quickly. The cameraman shook his head at Jerry.
“Sorry about that folks, even I’m feeling a little unnerved by these bizarre events. Today, citizens of Miami are scared, and they have more questions than ever. What about the victims? Should these people be shot in the street? Are they still people anymore? What is going to be done about this deadly new spider? To try to answer some of these questions, I’m going to turn things over to Brent in the studio, who sat down with arachnologist Susan Yager just a few minutes ago.”
The camera cut to a small grey room at the news station, one used commonly for interviewing. The camera showed a mild-looking older woman. She was trim and sat with good posture. She had long, straight, grey hair that framed her thin face and wore thick glasses. She was seated across from a young news correspondent, Brent, who was conducting the interview. It was plain after only a few moments that she was frustrated with the interviewer.
“So Dr. Yager, tell us about this new spider. Where did it come from?”
“Well, it isn’t a new species, that much is for sure…”
“Undiscovered, I mean,” Brent interrupted.
“Undescribed,” she corrected slowly, giving him a menacing look. “There are more than forty thousand known species of spiders thriving on the planet right now, with as many as twelve previously undescribed species coming to light each year. I have not had the pleasure of examining this particular species, but it looks to be a very large variety of Widow.”
“Like the Black Widow?” he asked.
She continued without acknowledging him. “However, from the pictures here,” she referred to the footage of the dead spider in the driveway. “You can see that while the legs have a spindly shape, they are also a lot thicker - more robust than a widow or cellar-type spider.”
“Is that due to its large size?”
First intelligent question, she thought. “Not entirely. The body of this spider is large and round, and covered with hair - the hair is uncommon for widows also, and if you look at this graphic, I’ll point out some comparisons.” She motioned, and a graphic was pulled up for the camera. Two spider silhouettes appeared on the graphic, illustrating the difference between spider sizes.
“This graphic shows the undescribed species, and a widow, with the widow enlarged to the same size for comparison. You can clearly see that, even at the same overall size, this previously undescribed species is considerably more robust and ‘tough’ than a widow of the same size.”
“Do you have any idea why that might be?”
“Well, most likely it is because they are two different species, but in a comparison, where I’m merely making presumptions, I would say that this spider is a combination of web-builder and wanderer. The reason I say that is because most web builders don’t have such thick legs. This is quite extraordinary. Web spiders stay close to their webs, wanderers forage far and wide.”
The arachnologist paused. “Of course, there are a few remarkable things about this species, but most incredible is their bite. The neurological reaction that humans are having is unprecedented and amazing.”
“You think it is amazing?” the young correspondent said with a false air of incredulity. “These spiders are turning humans into killers, doctor. People are out there dying, and you think it is amazing?”
“Why, yes. Don’t confuse the word amazing with something it isn’t. The word amazing means to cause amazement or wonder, something out of the ordinary and incredible. That something isn’t necessarily positive. Think about what we’re really seeing here.”
“What are we seeing, doctor?”
“Well, I’m trying to tell you, Brent. The closest thing to this that exists in the world is rabies, a disease that attacks almost every part of the body, including the nerves and the brain. Rabies is an incurable virus that turns animals that are infected into violent shadows of their former selves. The rabies virus proliferates in the salivary gland, so by infecting the brain and turning the victim violent, rabies is able to infect new victims through biting. It’s devastatingly effective.”
“So do you think these spiders are carrying some kind of rabies?”
Here Susan paused, cocked her head for a moment.
“Doctor?”
“I’m thinking.”
Brent glanced quickly at the camera, and then Susan spoke.
“Yes. I think these spiders are carrying some kind of disease. Spider venom is either neurotoxic or necrotic, the goal being to paralyze the victim, or liquefy it. An arachnid would not benefit at all from having their victims go berserk. In fact, that would make feeding more difficult for them.”
The doctor paused again. Obviously these thoughts were not preplanned, and she was working through them as she went.
“Spiders like to incapacitate their victims, not enrage them. It is possible that these spiders could actually be infected by the very disease that they are transmitting to us. That could explain their aggression, something that is also uncommon for most species of arachnid.” The doctor nodded to herself. “Yes, that makes sense to me. Of course I’m only speculating.”
“Do you think this disease will spread and get worse?”
“No, I don’t. Most diseases fail, especially when trying to cross over to a new host. In addition, it’s obvious when someone is infected, so once the police find a safe way to do so, the infected people can be isolated. As far as the spiders go, unfortunately, I think that they will be stomped out of existence by this new wave of fear that’s sweeping over our community.”
“The Everglades are vast,” the doctor said, nodding her head, “and I have no doubt there are undescribed species of arthropods and reptiles living in the Glades. That’s definitely not where this one came from.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, as a news agency, I would have thought you would have picked up on it sooner. As I drove up to the station today, I passed the Coast Guard base on MacArthur Causeway. It is swarming with Feds.”
Brent’s eyes perked up in surprise.
“I pulled into the parking lot there, and I didn’t get far before I was turned away, but I saw enough. There were Federal agents and CDC officials in biohazard level 4 gear boarding a ship that was docked in the port. It wasn’t a military ship, it looked like one of those ships that go on expeditions. You know, a research vessel.”
Brent was silent for a moment, formulating his words. “So what are the chances that these two strange events, the attacks in the city, and the hazmat suits at the Coast Guard, are unrelated?”
“I can’t be sure,” Susan said. “Occam’s Razor states that the simplest answer to any question is usually the right one. So now we need the Feds to tell us just what the hell they’re doing on that ship.”
“What indeed,” Brent said. He turned and faced the camera, “One thing is for certain, our streets are not safe. Stay indoors if you can, and if you encounter one of these… monsters, call 911 immediately! Do not get near them or try to engage them!”