Arachnosaur

by Richard Jeffries

  “Now what the fuck?” Daniels complained.

  “Take cover!” Key yelled, already charging the freezer.

  Daniels fell to the floor and started crawling under the table as Gonzales dove for the break room door. Neither quite made it before Ayman erupted with a flesh-ripping, bone-shattering blast.

  Steaming hot liquid splattered the walls, floor, and even ceiling. Shards of bone ricocheted off the morgue doors and tables. Daniels barked in pain and disgust, while Gonzales hit the break room floor and slid into the shelves, bringing down the video games.

  Key let the room steam and sizzle for a few seconds before poking his head from the freezer. “Morty, Speedy, you guys okay?”

  A few more moments passed before Gonzales moaned. “How do you define ‘okay’?”

  “Morty?”

  “Fuck,” Daniels said as he slid out from under the table. “A,” he continued as he slowly stood. “Duck,” he finished as he looked at the way his hands and head—the two items closest to the detonated attendant—were splashed with brackish, smoking, fluid and pieces of offal. By the look on the sergeant’s face, Key wasn’t sure what he’d do: go berserk or collapse crying. Instead, he waited until Gonzales slowly started to emerge from the now ironically termed break room, then spoke flatly. “What’s the Arabic name for ‘Bad Lucky’?”

  * * * *

  “Sayiya Ayman,” Gonzales said as he drove the two to his workshop on the southwest corner, just off the grounds, of the Thumrait Air Base.

  “What?” Daniels growled.

  “Bad Lucky.”

  Daniels grunted with no pleasure. His skin and hair was already dry from the dousing they gave him at the morgue bathroom. Gonzales had given him his boxers while Key had given him his T-shirt, which was all the sergeant wore now. Key had burned the rest, including Daniels’s desert boots.

  Daniels, of all people, had wanted to wait for the hazmat team, but Gonzales was all too happy to drive when Key decided they should vamos.

  They sat silent for a few minutes, digesting what they had just experienced, but, finally, Daniels could take no more.

  “Why didn’t you just burn me too?”

  Key, who had been lost in thought, looked at his associate. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you burned my clothes because you thought they might carry whatever this shit is. You destroyed the samples because they were swimming in this shit too. It doesn’t take a fucking genius to figure I’m as good as dead.”

  Key snorted. “Are you kidding me, Morty? Goodman exploded right next to me, remember? His remains were like an eighth layer of skin for God knows how long. Do I look as good as dead to you?”

  Daniels raised an eyebrow. “Not yet,” he said cautiously.

  Key shook his head. “They did every test on every part of me at Lemonneir,” he reminded his partner. “Whatever this thing is, apparently you don’t get it by contact with the victim.”

  Again, by Daniels’s expression, they weren’t sure whether he was going to start laughing or crying. Ultimately, as per his wont, he settled on anger. “So why the fuck did you burn my clothes?”

  “Because,” Key said, “you do get it somehow. Poor Ayman got it, so I burned on the side of caution.”

  “Could be in my hair, right? Microscopic particles of shit.”

  “Possible, but not likely,” Key said. “Since boot camp, what were the two things we instinctively covered?”

  Daniels grunted. “The fruits—melon and nuts.”

  Key nodded. Daniels seemed to relax a little.

  Gonzales steered his Desert Demon past the Harvest Falcon depot—which housed the Air Force’s transportable system of billets, bivouacs, modular equipment, generators, shelters, tents, and vehicles—that stretched off into the distance.

  “You’re never at a loss of something to repair, are you?” Key asked their driver.

  Gonzales shook his head. “Keeps me busy, and informed.” He pulled up to what looked like a giant corrugated steel oil tank that had been sliced down the middle and laid on its side. He powered down the Desert Demon, then glanced at Daniels. “I should be able to find you something more suitable to wear inside.”

  “Good,” Daniels said miserably. “Because I don’t know what fabric softener you’re using, but it ain’t working.”

  “Fabric softener?” Gonzales said with an exaggerated accent as he got out. “We don’t need no stinkin’ fabric softener.”

  But even Daniels forgot to keep grousing when they stepped inside the Hispanic Mechanic’s Studio. Instead, the sergeant’s grin started stretching from ear to ear despite the fact that the trip from the vehicle to the door felt like fire walking to his bare feet. “What did I tell you, Joe? What did I tell you?”

  The expansive interior of the crescent moon-shaped space looked like a cut-rate Smithsonian Air and Space Museum combined with Frankenstein’s castle laboratory. There were lifts on the floor and hooked chains hanging from the ceiling. There were husks and skeletons of every imaginable land and air craft covering almost every inch—save for eating, sleeping, and toiletry areas.

  “What, no videogames?” Key grinned with appreciation.

  “What do I need with any media,” Gonzales said, his arms out, “when I have this?”

  He found Daniels some gym shorts, a pair of sandals they could adjust to his size twelve feet, and an extra-large T-shirt that bore a skull-and-cross-wrench pirate symbol above the legend Stay Well Lubricated.

  He brought out some MREs—self-contained individual field rations, otherwise known as Meal, Ready-to-Eat—and joined them at a small round table by the kitchen. They started breaking down the kit, but the various packets and bags reminded Gonzales too much of what they had just come from.

  “Why did you leave the samples you came so far for?” he asked.

  “No point taking them.” Key laid out the beef stew bag, crackers, cheese spread, and powdered beverage envelope. “I had to see the stuff to try to figure how this is transmitted.” He retrieved the packets of salt, pepper, seasonings, and spoon. “Like I said, definitely not through blood or contact with flesh, so I ruled out the fingernail and the bones.”

  “What the hell were those egg shells?” Daniels asked, already chewing his packet of pork rib.

  “Not egg shells,” Key replied. “Too small. Might be eggs, but none like I’ve ever seen before.”

  “What came out of them? Birds?”

  “Those pea-sized pods are small for birds,” Gonzales chimed in. “Bugs, maybe?”

  Key sat up straighter. “Bugs maybe.” He mused, suddenly distracted.

  Daniels didn’t seem to notice. “Might be a very aggressive form of lyme disease or malaria or something like that,” he suggested, seemingly all but forgetting he had just watched a man messily explode. Then again, it hadn’t been the first time.

  “Hmph.” Gonzales made a chewing noise, deep again in his own thoughts. “If not that, then what?”

  “‘Wind power is very right….’” Key’s tone of voice was both wondrous and self-recriminating.

  Both the sergeant and mechanic turned.

  “Huh?” Daniels said.

  Key suddenly and sharply stood up, scattering his meal all over the floor. “Christ, we have to find the Study Committee, and now.”

  Chapter 8

  “Now that’s more like it,” Daniels said as he took his first look at Muscat, the big and ancient capital of Oman.

  He was wearing a plain white dishdasha—though thankfully not what remained of Ayman’s dishdasha—along with a somewhat sedate turban made of knotted head-cloth, as well as open-toe, open-back sandals. Gonzales had pulled them all out of his workshop’s locker before he changed into his own regional garb.

  When Daniels complained about the simple footwear, Gonzales had explained, “They’re called
nahl; easy to remove and they keep anything from getting trapped inside.”

  “‘Nahl’ kidding,” Daniels had drawled. “What could get trapped inside?”

  “Everything from sea snakes to the khanjar daggers of angry husbands,” Gonzales had advised knowingly. “Wear them. You’ll thank me.”

  Key now followed the sergeant out onto dusty tarmac—squinting at the bright blue sky, the sparkling waters of the Oman Gulf, and, in the distance, the copper crags of the Hajar Mountains. It was the tropical opposite of Shabhut; elegance, and even grace, as opposed to oppressive misery.

  He turned away from the clean majesty of even this northeastern edge of the city to see Gonzales emerge from his small private jet in full going-native splendor. The Hispanic Mechanic was wearing an authentic wazar undergarment beneath his more detailed dishdasha, with a long tassel hanging down from the neckline, and subtle, but impressive, embroidery around the wrists, across the shoulder blades, and neckline. On his head was a more ornate massar turban. If only given a cursory glance, he could have passed for a native—at least to Key’s inexperienced eye.

  Key didn’t have to ask exactly where they were. Gonzales had gone into detail during the flight. They were at what remained of the Bayt al Falaj airport, which had gone into minimum service once the grander Muscat International Airport opened in 1973. Gonzales had correctly surmised that Key wanted as low a profile as possible, but also didn’t want to waste eight hours driving there.

  So Gonzales had led them to his prize hobby: a 1991 Cessna Citation light business jet, which he had personally reconditioned after it was simply left behind by an unsatisfied billionaire. That sort of whim had become nearly commonplace in the oil-rich region. Although the Cessna was relatively small, it was certified for operations with a single pilot, and ready to go.

  Key had looked at Gonzales incredulously. “Well, what about—” He extednded his arms to encompass the workshop.

  Gonzales just grinned as Daniels elbowed Key in the side. “He’s a civilian contractor, Joe,” the sergeant informed him. “The Corps needs him more than he needs the Corps.”

  “And I think you need me more than the Corps does at the moment,” Gonzales added.

  Key’s eyebrows had not lowered. “But—”

  “Don’t worry about any future repairs for the base, Corporal,” Gonzales said. “Got some decent assistants. In fact, that drunk who bothered you in the bar was one of them.”

  That had not exactly put Key’s mind at ease. Every few minutes, while Gonzales had filed flight plans and garnered permissions, he offered other reasons why the mechanic should not get involved.

  Finally, Gonzales had simply turned on Key with a solemn expression. “Look,” he said. “I just watched a guy I know go boom. If he went boom, that means anybody can go boom. So, should I just hang around here or should I take you where you need to go to try stop it from happening again?”

  And, according to Gonzales, where they needed to go was Muscat. If they had any chance of cornering anyone from the Study Committee, it would be there.

  Key couldn’t argue with that, so he had finally shut up and let Gonzales get on with it. Two hours later they were slipping into the edge of Muscat as much as it was possible to do in a country with less than two dozen registered private jets. But, in the interim, Key was informed via text that the Marine hazmat team had locked down Ayman’s Emporium, if not what was left of Ayman himself.

  Key was half expecting Logan to rip his ear off, but also half expecting what actually happened—a calm, subsequent, text requesting that he keep the Captain informed. Key looked around at the overgrown field and sandy runway, feeling a little exposed.

  “You ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry, Corporal,” Gonzales assured him, misunderstanding the comment. “They know me here. They’ll take good care of CJ.”

  Daniels leaned over and mock-whispered in Key’s ear. “That’s his plane’s name. He names everything.”

  Already several young men in greasy coveralls, who looked like locals, were walking around the aircraft as if they had done it many times before. Gonzales said something to one of them in Arabic, which sent the man scurrying off.

  “So, what now, Corporal?” Gonzales inquired as Key continued to survey the area.

  “We need a base of operations,” Key reminded him.

  “Already done,” Gonzales promised. “I arranged it from the cockpit. It’s my usual hangout. I wasn’t sure you wanted to go there first, though.”

  Key felt relieved, and not for the first time, that he had finally allowed Gonzales to volunteer for the team. “Good guess,” he started, but was then distracted by Daniels giving off a loud moan.

  “You have got to be kidding me!”

  Key turned as a white Toyota Yaris came driving up beside them, and the young man who had scurried away emerged from behind the wheel. He and Gonzales had a rapid conversation.

  “He says it’s clean, the air conditioning works, and he checked the engine himself,” Gonzales told Daniels with only the slightest hint of a smirk. “He wants to know what the problem is.”

  “As if you didn’t know,” Daniels complained. “Was that the smallest car you could find? Why not a Yugo?”

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” Gonzales laughed. “He will take you to where we’re staying in his own Jeep.”

  Key put a hand on Daniels’s shoulder. “Didn’t think you wanted to go scouring the hospitals with me anyway.”

  “That’s what you’re going to do?” the sergeant asked, wincing with anticipated boredom.

  “Yeah. And schools. Anyplace we can find out if anybody else”—he looked at Gonzales—“went boom.”

  “Hospitals and schools?” Daniels echoed. “You think you’re going to find out anything there?”

  “Got to start someplace,” Key told him. “And got to start fast.”

  Daniels shook his head curtly. “Let me bring our stuff, whatever’s left of it, to the hotel, then I’ll bring my own prodigious intellect to the problem.”

  Key had known the sergeant too long to get unduly worried by that statement. Even so, he felt impelled to give Daniels a disclaimer. “Okay, but keep in mind that even with Captain Logan’s influence, we don’t have much pull here.”

  “And,” Gonzales added, “keep in mind that, according to Arabic laws, women may not be in a room alone with a man who is not a relative.”

  Daniels shook his head. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  Gonzales laughed. “Oh, we of much faith in knowing what you do. And, by the way, it’s not a hotel.”

  “Okay, okay,” Daniels said as he waved them away like annoying gnats. “Go off on your wild goose chase, and let the grown-ups get the goods for you.”

  Key waited until Daniels had gone off with the young scurrying man before getting into the passenger seat of the Yaris.

  “You think Morty’ll be okay around here?” Key solemnly asked Gonzales, who was in the driver’s seat.

  “I was just going to ask you the same thing,” Gonzales answered, half-jokingly. “Let me tell you something. When Sultan Qaboos took over in 1970, he decided to make Oman accessible to non-Muslims and Westerners—in order that we might ‘appreciate the beauty of Islam.’ If Morty was anyplace else in the region, we’d probably find him in pieces being eaten by camels when we got back. But here? They don’t even allow corporal punishment in the schools anymore. He’ll be fine.”

  “There’s a ‘but,’” Key observed.

  Gonzales sighed a little. “He’ll be fine—probably.”

  Key nodded in hopeful agreement as Gonzales started the Yaris’s one-point-five liter, four-cylinder engine.

  “Where to, Corporal?”

  “Call me Joe,” Key finally suggested. “And take me someplace I can find a translator who
won’t spook the locals, and an expert on communicable diseases.” Key looked at the mechanic apologetically. “Preferably both. And step on it.”

  Chapter 9

  Key didn’t know whether it was his increasing exhaustion and desperation, or simply the seemingly bottomless, concerned eyes of a new player, an assistant professor, that suddenly turned him very, very honest. Whatever it was, Key felt certain that time was running out. And not just for him.

  He didn’t think he was just being an alarmist here. That wasn’t his nature. But how many times in human history had something unanticipated, like fleas on rodents, caused something unexpected, like the Black Death, that killed around 200 million human beings and came perilously close to wiping us out?

  Probably more than I’m aware of, Key thought, wondering how many extinctions had taken a poke at the dinosaurs before their clock was punched by an asteroid.

  Gonzales had been driving him all over the capital in search of what he had asked for, a universal translator as well as an expert in communicable diseases. They had used up most of the eight hours they had gained by flying here going from hospital to hospital. Muscat had at least five dozen of them, and almost nine hundred clinics, dispensaries, and medical centers.

  But Gonzales may have introduced him to both when they finally stepped into an office marked Professor Basheer Davi at Oman Medical College—the first private Health Sciences College in Oman—and met the twenty-seven-year-old Esherida Rahal.

  “I’m sorry,” she said while coming around a lab table covered with equipment, “but the Professor is not in.”

  To Key’s ears, it sounded as if she had been saying that a lot—so much, in fact, that it was beginning to become automatic.

  “That’s all right,” he answered, the weariness in his voice matching her own verbal knee jerk. “My friend here”—he motioned toward Gonzales—“thinks you might be able to help us just as well.”

  Key watched a variety of reactions flit across her face like a wheel of fortune: it’s too late in the day, I’m really too busy, you’ll have to make an appointment, and some unformed others. But then her oval head and deep eyes lowered, and he saw a resigned, empathetic smile touch her soft, smooth, dark rose lips.