by Jon Land
“Where are you going with this?” a suddenly curious Jimenez posed.
“That something you found at the site of that meteor strike in Nigeria became the basis for whatever Gunther Brune’s research team was developing in Lebanon, a pathogen they unwittingly created that ends up turning humans into monsters.” Red checked his watch and rose from the cot set against the wall next to Jimenez’s chair. “Let’s go, Father.”
Jimenez struggled to his feet, knees cracking. “Where?”
“To meet someone else who can tell us more.”
SIXTY-ONE
The Middle East
“Can you hear me clearly, Dr. Tanoury?”
“I can,” Vicky said to Admiral Keene Darby, who was speaking to her from the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush, currently on station in the Mediterranean Sea. “I can see you clearly too, sir.”
“Hope the sight doesn’t horrify you too much, Doctor. Not much sleep these past couple nights, if any. But, unfortunately, the crisis we’re facing doesn’t allow for a lot of down time.”
“I haven’t slept much either, Admiral.”
In fact, she hadn’t slept at all, since Major Musa and his Lebanese army forces rendezvoused with a similar Israeli force at the border, in the wake of barely escaping the facility in southern Lebanon with their lives. Normally, those two armies working together cooperatively would have been unthinkable, except these were anything but normal times.
The Israelis had driven Vicky south to a command and control bunker, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, activated to monitor what had been deemed now to be a dire threat. She’d been collating her notes and reaching out to disease experts around the world ever since. None, though, had proven even remotely helpful and some went as far as to vigorously dispute what she’d witnessed firsthand, adding to Vicky’s sense of unease.
She even found herself staring at the Apple Watch her late fiancé Thomas had given her in the hope of another message from him scrawling across the screen. All evidence of the first one was gone, further convincing her that she was dealing with something in the overall sense here that science and rational thought couldn’t explain. Something was happening that stretched across borders far different than the ones she was used to crossing for the WHO.
Meanwhile, the data she continued to assemble indicated that exposure to the creatures she’d encountered in southern Lebanon effectively eliminated the apparent pupa stage, the victim transitioning directly in what appeared to be a matter of mere hours. Those exposed to the pathogen through traditional means, on the other hand, transitioned through phases, delineated by a rapid absorption of the host’s cells and their wholesale replacement by cells consistent with Medusa’s genetic makeup.
“None of us are sleeping much these days,” Admiral Darby acknowledged, on the screen before her. “I’ve seen the drone and satellite footage of that facility in southern Lebanon, before Israeli F-16s hit it with bunker busters. Can’t make out much of whatever was attacking you, but it was enough to steal the little sleep I tried to squeeze in.”
“You caught a glimpse of the final stage of the pathogen that’s spreading across the entire Middle East,” Vicky told Darby.
“You’re telling me it was a disease that turned those men into monsters?”
“Disease is more a layman’s term than a scientific one. We haven’t isolated the causation or origins yet, and I don’t want to define what we’re facing in anything more than the most general means. It could be a germ, a virus, a bacteria, or…”
“Or what, Doctor?”
“Something we can’t quantify, something we’ve never seen before. What I saw in Lebanon certainly suggests that. We’ve labeled the pathogen ‘Medusa,’ because of the hardened condition of each patient’s skin, more advanced in Lebanon than Jordan. Prior to that, the infected exhibited symptoms more consistent with traditionally virulent infections. Bleeding from the mouth, eyes, and ears, for example, followed by depressed breathing capacity and diminished heart rate, accompanied by palpitations.”
“And what happens in the wake of these more traditional symptoms, Doctor?”
“A complete metamorphosis on the level of the stages through which butterflies, bees, flies, beetles, and other insects develop.”
“Last time I checked, the patients covered in your reports weren’t insects.”
“Please bear with me, Admiral. Complete metamorphosis, or transformation, is composed of four stages,” Vicky explained. “Egg, larva, pupa, and adult. What we’re facing here, with Medusa, is another version, a modification of that staging, but the general principles are the same. The infection, the pathogen itself, plays the role of the egg and the body in its original form is the actual larva in which the egg can develop. The next stage in this scenario is the hardening of the dermis, or skin, creating a pupa in which the creatures can gestate unmolested by any environmental factors. And, once the gestation phase is complete, and the adult is fully developed, it emerges from the pupa which is then discarded.”
“So are we talking about people here or not?” the admiral wondered.
“Not to any degree we’re capable of understanding. They used to be human, yes, and certainly whatever they’ve become retains the base elements of life as we understand it. By the same token, though, I’d venture to say that a thorough examination of their remains would reveal strands of DNA we can’t identify or place anywhere in human or animal development.” Vicky stopped rattling on, composed herself with a deep breath, and continued. “Nothing about what I observed firsthand in Lebanon suggested a human being in any way we understand human beings to be. It’ll take more data and analysis to fully explain the transformation, and until that point, I’m at a loss to offer anything more substantive at this point.”
“I think I may be able to help you there, Doctor,” Admiral Darby told her. “You see, we’ve found a witness.”
SIXTY-TWO
Middle East
The Navy chopper had been waiting at Ercan International Airport in northern Cyprus to shuttle Max to the George H. W. Bush, still on station in the Mediterranean. The long series of flights from Vancouver had proved a maddening exercise in racing airports in the process of shutting down in view of a crisis involving the reported spread of a virulent pathogen through the Middle East. That pathogen, by all accounts, was forcing countries to wall themselves off from the rest of the world.
Max found himself stranded at London’s Heathrow Airport for a stretch, during which time he studied television monitors in the terminal updating the situation that was growing more dire by the minute. Flights in and out of the region had been canceled altogether, and authorities were fighting to control unruly masses seeking to flee their countries at any cost. Riots were beginning to break out across cities attempting to enforce blockades, quarantines, and curfews, and widespread desertions from both military and police units were being reported.
The upshot of this was congestion at every level, since there was nowhere for those trying to escape the region to go and no way to get there, even if there had been. Borders throughout the region had been shut at every level—air, land, and sea—with armies setting heavy weaponry, even tanks, in place, their orders uniformly to take any measures necessary to stop any and all incursions or mass exoduses.
Max was finally able to board a small military jet bound for Cyprus out of London. Only because of his presence on board, along with other military personnel reporting for duty, was that plane allowed to land in Cyprus, after Athens had shuttered its gates as well. Walking across the stilled tarmac toward the chopper dispatched to retrieve him, he was struck by the sea of civilian faces of the stranded pressed against the terminal’s windows, rapping futilely on the glass. The congestion reached three or four deep in places, and Max boarded the chopper, picturing comparable scenes unfolding at airports all across the Mideast, as well as all of Europe and Asia by now, with the United States, almost inevitably, certain to follow.
For Max, the first leg
of his journey out of Vancouver had gotten only marginally better in the wake of his dream, vision, or whatever it had been. He tried to recall the room, the setting, but it was the beautiful woman in the mask that continued to consume him. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, an attraction, obsession even, he couldn’t explain or quantify. Like so much else that had happened this past week, it made no rational sense. And yet he felt that room, and the woman in the mask, were somehow meaningful, foreshadowing something to come.
While aboard the chopper, his mind drifted a decade back. “Max Borgia” had been born the moment his father had come to get him at a shuttered backwoods bait store, both of them knowing Max Younger could never return after what he’d done to Dale Denton’s thugs. So he’d escaped into another life made possible by his father’s connections and money. A veritable fortune spent to turn Max Younger into Max Borgia with documents that would hold up anywhere, anytime. From that night on, he’d become a nomad, never even aware that his father was sick. Only Dale Denton had commented for the news reports, lamenting his best friend and business partner’s untimely passing, while never mentioning that Ben Younger’s son had been on the verge of killing him until Vicky intervened. Max’s mother, the articles had said, could not be reached for comment.
Looking back on that night in the Adirondacks and tension-riddled days that followed, Max could tell something had indeed been wrong, that his father was in pain. But he passed it off to discomfort over Max having finally gone over the edge his parents had always feared he might. And his father knew full well that, had he told Max the truth, Max never would have left, remaining by his side until the inevitable happened.
He was a thousand miles away when Ben Younger jumped sixty stories to his death, in a shabby motel that took cash and didn’t ask questions, unable to attend the funeral or be present to comfort his mother. In retrospect, Max figured his father’s death had pushed her all the way around the bend. He’d later find out that she missed the funeral herself, hospitalized due to a fit of stress-induced delirium that had stolen her grasp of sanity, particularly place and time.
The scandal that had followed his father’s death had both bankrupted his mother and led to her ultimate institutionalization. His reunion with her, on her birthday just a few days before, had proven discomforting, even before the killers appeared in the guise of orderlies. His mother’s recitations of her conversations with the little blind girl she called Lilith had left Max distinctly unsettled, particularly Lilith’s prediction of what was coming.
“All the tribulations. She told me about them.”
And right now, as the chopper finally settled into its descent for the George H. W. Bush, Max was struck hard and fast by the realization that these tribulations weren’t coming at all.
They were already here.
SIXTY-THREE
Cape Horn, Chile
Dale Denton and Orson Beekman landed at Malvinas Argentinas International Airport in Cape Horn aboard a Western Energy Technologies GS650, exactly twenty-four hours after the disastrous conclusion of their latest experiment. All eight personnel who’d been inexplicably and brutally stricken in the underground lab were dead. Only the fact that he and Beekman had been upstairs in his twentieth-floor office had spared them. Nor were they likely to face any legal recriminations at this point, although the disaster was sure to result in an investigation Denton would eventually have to buy his way clear of.
Making this the perfect time to lay low for a time, while still pursuing their experiments on the rock.
* * *
“We’re going to Cape Horn,” Denton had informed Beekman, even as they watched the constant stream of arriving ambulances and rescue wagons on the street below, in the aftermath of the sub-sea earthquake. “A setting far better equipped to handle our continued work, away from any scrutiny from the authorities we may face now. We can’t risk losing that rock again.”
Beekman couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “After what just happened, what we just witnessed, you still want to…”
His voice had trailed off there, unable to finish his thought.
“Even more,” Denton had told him, in the spill of the stream of flashing lights below. “Even more, because of what we just witnessed.”
“What are you going to say to the authorities about the scientists and technicians found dead in our lab?”
Denton smirked. “You let me worry about that, Professor. It’s just another mess, and I’ve been cleaning up messes my entire career. Part of being successful is knowing how to rectify mistakes, circumstances beyond your control. And I pay the proper professionals whatever it takes to deal with these type of problems.”
“By deal, you mean covering them up.”
“I mean, doing whatever has to be done. Coming clean, confessing culpability, won’t bring those people back, Professor. And they knew the risks, just like you and I did. It wasn’t like we caused this, or had any reason to anticipate it. I mean, can you really explain what happened?”
“I don’t think anyone can explain what happened.”
“All right,” Denton nodded, “then how would you describe the level of energy the rock is capable of generating or amplifying?”
“I can’t.”
“Precisely why we need to go someplace you can. Cape Horn, Professor,” Denton said, and studied him briefly. “That concerns you?”
“Doesn’t bringing that rock anywhere near a supercollider concern you?”
“On the contrary, it excites me. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but the vacuum-sealed collider chamber might well be the best, the only safe way, to truly harness and quantify that resulting level of energy the rock produces.”
“The only safe way is to abandon our efforts entirely.”
“Something I’m not about to do, Professor. There’s no need to pack anything. I’ll have a change of clothes waiting for us in Cape Horn when we land. I’ve already called ahead to have the Gulfstream prepped.”
* * *
Cape Horn was the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile. Located on Hornos Island, it was best known for its strategic maritime location at the point where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans intersect. Prior to the opening of the Panama Canal, it had represented one of the most heavily traveled points for sailors traversing the seas.
A multi-national consortium of foreign governments had built a smaller-scale supercollider beneath a rocky sprawl of land on Cape Horn, only to see their efforts go for naught when far larger facilities at CERN and elsewhere commanded all the world’s attention and research dollars. That had allowed Denton to buy a stake in the facility for an absurdly low dollar amount compared to the original investment outlay. He’d kept the transactions hidden from authorities, thanks to WET’s substantial cash reserves, generated by gas revenues from a massive strike nearby Tierra del Fuego. With the right people in the Chilean government on board, thanks to their own wallets being fattened, the venture became a win-win across the board, assuring the facility would remain open as a prime generator of employment in an otherwise depressed region.
“There’s something else,” Beekman said, as the Gulfstream streaked into its descent, looking up from the laptop that had commanded his attention through much of the flight. “I’ve been studying and analyzing all the data from our latest … experiment,” he finished, wishing there was a better word to describe it.
“And?”
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Beekman said, gazing out the window at the island below enclosed by nothing but blue. “We shouldn’t be doing this. What caused the sub-sea earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico boasted the energy equivalent of a single atomic bomb in the forty megaton range. Add a supercollider to the mix and we could be looking at measurable energy output in the range of ten million atomic bombs.”
“Enough to power the entire world,” Denton realized, barely able to restrain his smile.
“Or destroy it,” added Beekman.
SIXTY-FOUR
George H. W. Bush
Red led Father Jimenez to a bulkhead door deep in the bowels of the ship guarded by two marines. The door was outfitted with an optical scanner Red waved a blank white keycard before. A light flashed from red to green, as the heavy door clicked, and one of the marines pulled it open.
Jimenez followed Red inside, struck immediately by the cold, clammy air that felt different from any other part of the ship. Before them, personnel in white lab coats scurried about, working a variety of machines set against a glass wall. Beyond that wall, what looked like medical personnel, wearing helmeted isolation suits, hovered over a trio of beds holding a man, woman, and young child.
“They don’t speak any English, but we’ve got more personnel who speak Arabic on this ship than salt shakers,” Red explained. “Stand back and listen, Father. Let’s see if we can learn something.”
Jimenez aimed his focus through the glass at the man, woman, and child. “Who are they?”
“Refugees. Or, more accurately, survivors from a Sunni village in western Iraq under the control of the New Islamic Front.” Red’s expression flattened, empty even for him. “We believe that village to be the first one infected by whatever’s spreading through the Middle East. They must’ve gotten out just in time. We’re about to find out what happened.”
* * *
The man’s bed was rolled closer to the glass and one of the suited medical personnel inside the sealed chamber fitted a headset in place, compressing his thick hair and adjusting the microphone into the proper position. Jimenez turned to his right to see that Admiral Darby had entered the front room, trailed by an intelligence officer accompanied by a sailor wearing ensign’s bars. The ensign looked nervous, uncomfortable in the intelligence officer’s presence, as if he’d been enlisted with a task that brought more responsibility than he feared he could handle.