by Darren Hale
Raymond finished his own mug then threw the last of its content to the surf as Brad had done. ‘So what do you want to do about it?’
‘I want the Icarus back in the air just as soon as the conditions are favourable. I don’t like being deaf and blind all at the same time.’
Raymond nodded. ‘Very well, I’ll get onto it with Toni, just as soon as we’ve had breakfast. Chef has been cooking up a storm and I think we’ll be in trouble if we miss it.’
******
As it happened, breakfast was worth the wait, consisting as it did of a fabulous spread of ham, eggs, and toast, accompanied by liberal portions of fried tomatoes and golden hash browns. Even Mick had attacked his plate with gusto, despite the fact that his stomach had still been sore from long hours of crippling nausea and vertigo.
Once finished, Raymond and Toni departed in the direction of the aft storehouse where the compact Icarus UAV would be waiting for them, its delicate components carefully packed away in a number of elongated aluminium cases. A marvel of modern engineering, the Icarus was just under five feet in length, had a ten-foot wingspan, and weighed little more than twenty kilograms. Its single propeller, mounted on the back of the fuselage (so as to avoid fouling in the retrieval net upon recovery), was powered by ingenious hybrid engine that, when supplemented with the power drawn through the solar panels adorning both wings, gave it a cruising speed of eighty knots and incomparable endurance.
Raymond tried the handle of the storehouse door.
The latch jiggled ineffectually within his grip.
Something appeared to be jamming it from inside.
He shoved it with the palm of his hand.
It didn’t budge.
‘Give me a hand with this will you. Damn door appears to be stuck.’
‘Okay, let me try…’ said Toni, placing his shoulder against the door and heaving as hard as he could. Metal grated against metal as the door and obstruction yielded to brute force, opening a gap just wide enough for him to squeeze through.
He flicked on the light. ‘Ohh – shit!’
‘What is it?’ enquired Raymond anxiously.
Toni surveyed the damage. Sundry boxes littered the floor, having scattered their myriad contents across the deck, and amongst them, one of the UAV’s long metal cases. Having somehow shucked its bindings, it had slipped onto the floor and was now wedging the door closed.
‘Looks like the storm’s managed to throw things around pretty good in here,’ Toni observed
‘What about the UAV?’ asked Raymond anxiously.
Toni inspected the case. A number of large dints and scrapes marred its surface, though they were not of immediate concern. The case contained a generous layer of foam padding that would ordinarily have protected its delicate fuselage, if not for the fact that one of the latches had been jarred loose, allowing the lid to open fractionally. ‘Hard to tell… but it’s a fair fucking bet it’s seen better days!’
‘Then I guess we’d better take a look,’ said Raymond anxiously, having now pried his way into the room.
Bracing themselves against the bucking sea, they lifted the case back onto its shelf with all the reverence of a pair of pallbearers. Then, having safely secured it, Ray flicked the remaining catches and opened the lid. The body of the Icarus lay nestled inside, its smooth, ivory shell marred by a single jagged crack along the nose cone. He caught his breath. ‘Dammit!’
‘Is it bad?’ Toni asked.
‘Hard to say… If we’re lucky, the casing absorbed the brunt of the blow and this crack is all we have to show for it…’
‘And if we’re unlucky?’
‘There could be irreparable damage to the avionics bay…’
‘Brad ain’t going to be happy,’ Toni observed, understating the obvious. The last few days of turbulent weather had tried everyone’s patience – Brad’s included. ‘Who the hell was responsible for stowing this thing?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Raymond admitted. ‘Mick, I think...’
27
Monday 16th October:
Carmen sat tapping the tip of her pencil against the table, her brow furrowed in consternation. She had been doing it for a good five minutes or more and had succeeded in blunting the end to little more than a stub.
‘Still upset with the professor?’ Rufus asked warily.
Almost a full day had passed since Carmen had learnt that her tent had been searched and her privacy invaded at the professor’s instruction. And coincidentally, it had been almost one full day since she’d exchanged anything but a hard glare and a few angry words with the perpetrators of this crime, Oki and Angus, excepting the five minutes it had taken to figure out who had been responsible. And the revelation had somehow come to her attention before anyone had revealed the bullet they’d discovered in Martin’s tent… Certain very personal items had apparently been discovered out of place, and it had not taken long to deduce who’d been responsible, though the “why” of the matter had come later, following another heated exchange between Carmen and the professor.
There was a crack as the tip of the pencil gave in to the relentless pressure.
Carmen turned to look at him. ‘No – of course not. Why do you ask?’
Rufus pointed to her hand. ‘The pencil… I think it’s the third one you’ve killed this afternoon.’ The pencil tapping had recurred throughout the day, though Rufus had managed to drown out the sounds of graphite being tortured, thanks to a pair of earphones and the music streaming from Angus’s phone. It had surprised him to discover that Angus’s taste in music was not that different from his own, though he would not have made any effort to discover the fact, had he not become so bored of his own selection, having listened to it so many times he could now sing every track flawlessly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, her face wrinkling into an expression of guilt. She let the pencil fall onto the table.
‘So, what’s the problem?’ he asked, keen to discover the source of her angst before another pencil met its maker.
‘What problem?’ she replied absent-mindedly.
‘You always seem to tap your pencil when something is troubling you.’
‘Am I that transparent?’
Rufus nodded. ‘Fraid so.’
‘Okay… Take a look at this.’ Carmen turned her laptop towards him. ‘This is one of the skulls we recovered from the filled-in well,’ she said, referencing the picture on the screen. ‘It required quite a lot of cleaning, but now… You see this here?’ She retrieved her pencil and pointed it at what appeared to be a roughened black stain on the bone. ‘I’m afraid the picture’s not all that good, but I think you can see it clearly enough...’
Rufus stood up and walked over to her. They’d spent the afternoon working in the dining tent (which had transitioned into its daytime role as an office just as soon as the breakfast buffet was out of the way). According to their habits, the two of them would spend the cooler portions toward the beginning and end of the day, examining the physical evidence they’d discovered, then spend the sultry midday hours (when others were inclined to take a siesta), doing the paperwork that would inevitably follow. The tent’s sides had been raised, permitting those gentle stirrings that barely amounted to a breeze, nevertheless, the exertion brought a sweat to his face. ‘Yeh, I can see that. What is it?’ he asked, leaning towards the screen.
‘I think it may be the remains of a subdural haematoma...’ Carmen mused.
‘A what?’
‘A blood clot… One that can be found between the skull and the meninges… Those toughened membranes that adhere to its surface,’ she explained.
‘Is that any great surprise? These guys seem to have had something of a habit of beating each other with clubs.’
Carmen dared to smile. ‘We presume… Except that there are no fracture lines anywhere close to the haematoma…’
‘So what do you think caused it?’
‘That’s the problem. I have no idea…’ She started drumming the
pencil against the table once more. ‘…The bones are in such poor shape it’s hard to tell very much. There’s been a lot of mineral staining and erosion due to soil bacteria and that sort of thing.’
Rufus snatched the pencil from her fingers. ‘For its own good…’ he explained.
She gave him a sheepish smile.
‘But that’s not the only thing bothering you,’ he said intuitively.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘It isn’t.’ She brought up more pictures onto the screen – fragments of skulls demonstrating the same black blodges. ‘I’ve found them in almost every specimen I’ve examined. Sometimes multiple haematomas the size of a coin, and sometimes much bigger. I had contemplated genetic and nutritional factors, but I can’t see any other indicators that might support that conclusion.’
‘What about diseases?’
‘I’d thought of that too, but I can’t contemplate of anything that might have caused this.’ And then she turned to look at him. ‘Now you’re the one looking troubled,’ she observed. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Rufus scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘I’m not entirely sure. I’ve only managed to translate a fraction of what is written on the cover stone, but I did find one passage that suggested that “her people wept blood”. I had taken it to be some kind of religious imagery, but what you’re telling me puts a rather different complexion on things. Perhaps you should ask Catherine for her opinion?’
******
‘Can I help you?’
Catherine deposited the notepad she’d been using next to the miscellaneous pots and packets on the table beside her.
‘If I interrupt something important, I can return,’ said Eduardo timidly.
‘No… no… it’s quite alright,’ she assured him. ‘It was beginning to get a bit boring anyway.’
‘Have you lost something?’
‘No… Nothing like that. It’s been so long since we had any supplies from the Amazon Queen, I thought I should perform an inventory of our medical supplies, just to make sure there’s nothing we’re running out of.’
‘And how are we doing?’ Eduardo asked.
‘Not too good I’m afraid. We’ve still got plenty of the emergency drugs, but it’s the simple things like bandages and dressings we could do with more of. Even the supply of antibiotics is beginning to run lower than I might like, though I seem to have enough for the time being...’ She gathered up the items on the table and started returning them to the container they’d come from. ‘So – what appears to be the problem?’
‘I think I was bitten on my arm, and it appears to have turned to poison.’ Eduardo scratched his arm. What had started as nothing more than an irritating tickle, had escalated over the last twenty-four hours into a severe burning sensation, as if an army of ants had taken refuge beneath his shirt.
He rolled up his left sleeve, displaying a number of small ulcers surrounded by puckered and putrefying skin.
Catherine clicked her tongue; a mannerism she’d developed in order to stifle what might otherwise have been a reflex display of disgust. ‘I agree… That’s beginning to look a bit nasty. Perhaps you should have seen me a bit earlier?’ she suggested, curbing what might have been a desire to chastise him for having failed to report this problem sooner.
‘You think it will be okay?’
‘We’ll see, shall we?’ she said, steering him to a chair. ‘But… first things first… Are you up to date with your tetanus vaccinations?’
‘My what vaccinations?’
‘Okay… I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then shall I?’
‘I guess so…’
Fortunately, Catherine had thought to bring a small supply of the vaccine in case of emergency. She loaded one of the vials into a syringe and injected it into his right shoulder. Then, using some sterile swabs and saline, she started to clean the wound. ‘Any idea how you might have gotten this?’ she asked.
‘Two nights ago… In the tomb, I think. I was bitten many times. Why… is there a problem?’ he asked, picking up on some hiss or sigh that had escaped her lips without her consent.
She waggled her head from side to side in that way that resembled a nod as much as it did a shake. ‘You’ve managed to acquire a nasty infection,’ she sighed. ‘And I think it’s going to need a good dose of antibiotics to get it under control.’
‘I thought you said you were running out of antibiotics?’
‘I said I had fewer than I might like… So I guess I can spare some for you,’ she said with a smile. ‘And this is spreading… So we need to get it under control – now. Are you allergic to penicillin?’
Eduardo shook his head. ‘No – I don’t think so.’
‘Good.’ She finished cleaning his wound, then applied a generous smear of antiseptic paste and a wad of gauze. ‘How’s that?’
‘Much better thank you.’ Eduardo quickly inspected the dressing, then hopped up from the chair.
Catherine hunted through the boxes for some antibiotics and dispensed them into an empty bottle. ‘There are two different tablets here. Make sure you take them both – four times a day. And I expect to see you back here tomorrow, so I can take another look. Okay?’
Eduardo gave her a wide smile and left with the antibiotics in hand, leaving Catherine to tidy up the mess of empty dressing packets and swabs.
The door flap rustled.
‘Did you forget something?’ she asked, half-expecting to see Eduardo standing in the doorway.
‘Am I interrupting?’
It was Carmen.
Catherine dropped the last of her waste into a bag along with the gloves she’d been wearing and sealed it. ‘No – just trying to earn my keep. God bless Eduardo, Miguel, and Simon. I think that without them, I’d be out of a job,’ she said with a smile.
Carmen chuckled. ‘Yes – they do seem to be a bit accident prone, don’t they.’
‘So – what can I do for you?’ Catherine asked. To date she’d had little to do with Carmen, other than their encounters in the breakfast hall. The woman was too fastidiously into her work to have engaged her in idle conversation, and far too sensible to have ever required her help.
Carmen held out the laptop she’d been carrying under her arm. ‘I’d like your professional opinion on something if I may?’
‘Sure…’
Carmen rested her laptop on the table next to Catherine and opened it to an image of a skull. ‘This is a picture of one of the skulls we found at the well,’ she explained, pointing to a black mark infesting its inner surface. ‘And this, I’m pretty sure, is representative of an intracranial bleed…’
Catherine examined the image. ‘I’m no forensic pathologist I’m afraid, and certainly have no experience when it comes to four-thousand-year-old skulls… But it is, perhaps, a reasonable conclusion…’ She hesitated, unsure where the conversation might have been going.
Carmen did not leave her waiting for long. She brought up another host of images, one after another. ‘And these are other skulls found within the well. They all show the same markings. We think they must have been using the well as some kind of mass grave, and having discussed the matter with Rufus, we were wondering if they’d perhaps succumbed to some kind of disease – though I’m not sure I’m familiar with anything that might have presented in this way. What about you? Any thoughts?’
‘Sure – I could guess at a few. Meningitis for example, or any other disease that interferes with the blood’s ability to clot. But I’m not sure how you’d go about proving it…’
******
Common things are common.
Catherine repeated the adage over and over in her head, hoping for some sudden flash of inspiration. It was the medical school equivalent of Occam’s razor; a reminder that the simplest of diagnoses was often the correct one.
Often – but not always…
And usually the only way of knowing when it wasn’t, was something as unprofessional as a gut feeling – that primal instinct that parsed the li
ttle clues into something more substantive. And this particular gut feeling, having started as an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach following her encounter with Eduardo, had then grown into a full-on churning by the time she’d given thought to Carmen’s questions.
Common things were common: Insect bites became infections, and infections became red welts that spread up the arm – though they didn’t usually turn into angry boils and suppurating sores like they had in Eduardo’s case.
Prompted by a feeling that had at the time been no worse than trapped wind, Catherine had gone to check on Simon, only to discover that the bites on his arms had also festered, though thanks to her timely intervention, they did not resemble the purulent boils Eduardo had shown her. Having first dosed him with a cocktail of antibiotics, she had then cleaned and redressed them before leaving in search of her textbooks.
But, sadly, having perused their pages to the point of boredom, she had failed to discover any candidate for Eduardo’s condition that was more plausible than a simple wound infection, though her tummy had continued its grumblings with a vengeance as it struggled to digest the diet of unsavoury facts it had just been given.
Common things ARE common.
An indigestible truth that her stomach had failed to accept.
A pit full of bodies…
Brain haemorrhages…
Death on a massive scale…
Having contemplated Carmen’s questions, and with her mind beginning to wonder, she had started idly flicking through some of the more speculative pages of a book on infectious diseases.
What if…
‘Ich!’
Catherine had been so engrossed in her work she’d not heard Juliet entering the tent.
‘What is that?’ Juliet asked, her mouth agape.