Vector Borne

by Michael McBride

  Brazelton radioed in. He acknowledged the report with a double click of the transceiver. He had no breath to waste. He was nearly upon the location from which his men had called to announce their discovery. With a mixture of anticipation and apprehension, he burst through a wall of foliage into a small clearing filled with swatches of waist-high grasses and clusters of shrubs. Here the competing batai and rosewood trees formed a ring around a knoll that granted a glimpse of the storm clouds overhead, so low they seemed barely out of his reach. The slope dropped off to the east, affording a panoramic view over the treetops of the southern tip of Babase Island and the vast eternity of the Pacific. Mounds of dirt and clay stood from the earth like termite mounds beside foot-wide, circular holes where the ground had been cored, presumably by the mining firm out of Sydney that leased the mineral rights.

  Montgomery turned from where he stood at the northern edge of the meadow and watched Pike approach.

  A flash if lightning momentarily blinded Pike through his goggles. He jerked them up onto his forehead, grabbed his flashlight, and crossed the clearing.

  “Took you long enough.” Montgomery cupped a hand over his eyes to shield them from the rain and stepped out from beneath the canopy. “I was beginning to wonder if you stopped for a nap or something.”

  Pike wasn’t in the mood.

  “Where are they?”

  “You’re standing on the first one.”

  Pike stopped in his tracks and looked down into the swaying grass. He shoved aside clumps until he found the body. It was sprawled on its back, arms stretched out to either side. The man’s face was gaunt and blackened by decomposition. His dark hair crawled with the insects that burrowed into his eyes and scurried through the gap between his parted lips. There was just enough left of his tattered shirt to reveal the stylized, DNA-helix X of the GeNext logo on his breast. His pectorals were slashed without evidence of healing. The lower anterior portion of his ribcage showed through an abdominal wound that looked like it had been inflicted by a shovel. Skin, muscle, and fat had been peeled away to either side where they were now greasy, desiccated straps of rawhide. Rain pooled on the remaining viscera in a vile puddle of rotting organs and squirming larvae. The smell was that of a stagnant marsh. At least the storm held the majority of the flies and mosquitoes at bay.

  Pike crouched and sloshed the mealy water aside to better visualize the contents. Although deterioration was advancing at a rapid click, it was readily apparent that the bowels had been removed.

  “What is it about the guts?” Montgomery asked. “If it were me, I’d be carving off ass steaks, not slurping down tubes full of shit.”

  “You didn’t find the intestines anywhere around here?”

  “Like I said, thing’s probably kicking back somewhere squeezing crap out of them like toothpaste.”

  “Where’s Pearson?”

  “Just follow your nose.”

  Pike stomped through the weeds until they gave way to the forest and he ducked under the canopy. He found Pearson fifty yards into the overgrowth beside a scorched trunk, at the base of which a spent flare had been cast. The groundcover had managed to burn in a twenty foot swatch before the rain put it out. Amid the standing black water humming with mosquitoes, he saw two bodies. One lay on his face, his back opened to the left of his spine between his iliac crest and his lower ribs. Putrid viscera bloomed from the hole through which his bowels had been pulled out. The meat of his shoulders and upper back had been slashed repeatedly, his drenched shirt stained by blood. Another man was crumpled under the charcoaled branches of a senna tora shrub, his cooked legs alive with black flies. His hair was burnt to his blistered scalp. The flesh on his face was the consistency of barbecued pig skin. His mouth was frozen in a scream that exposed all of his teeth. The lacerations across his cheeks, neck, and chest had opened wider while he burned to weep a crust of blood and amber pustulates reminiscent of sap. His abdomen was seared crisp, but remained otherwise intact.

  “It ambushed them in the clearing,” Pike said. “It took down one of them and followed the other two into the jungle. They tried to fend it off with the flare.”

  “Somehow, they lost the flare, starting the groundcover on fire,” Pearson said.

  “Or else one of them caught himself on fire and it was his burning corpse that lit the forest.”

  “Either way, it ripped the hell out of that one’s back in the process of disemboweling him, but made no attempt to gut the man lying in the bush, still burning.”

  “Why would it not finish off the one who was on fire?”

  “Maybe it’s scared of fire.” Pearson shrugged. “Or maybe it just likes its food raw.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  Pike walked a circuit around the remains. The drone of the insects made it difficult to concentrate. A riot of footprints was concealed by the black residua of the fire on the upper layer of soil. He shined his flashlight onto the trunks surrounding him. Several still bore dried blood spatters only partially washed away by the rain that channeled through the bark.

  He tried to envision the aftermath. Burdened by a combined sixty feet of slick intestinal rope, it wouldn’t have been able to move very fast. Nor was there any way it would have been able to consume that much mass, especially in a single sitting. The more he contemplated that quandary, the more he realized that they had to be missing something.

  “Document everything you possibly can,” Pike said. “Take pictures from every conceivable angle. Note everything you see or smell. Take samples of the soil and the blood spatters. Anything you can think of. Use your imagination. Then get these bodies back down to the beach for retrieval.”

  “You want us to lug these corpses all the way back down the mountain?”

  Pike shot Pearson a glare that ended all debate. First and foremost, Pike was not about to leave these men to rot where they fell. Secondly, there was an entire team of scientists on the research vessel floating in the harbor that was surely raring to take a crack at them.

  The ground shuddered underfoot. Pike looked at Pearson, who acknowledged the tremor with an uneasy shrug.

  He turned his back on Pearson and donned his goggles once more. White flashes of lightning from behind him stretched the shadows of the ebon trees leading to the west. He scanned the ground for footprints but came up empty. The only sign of passage was the occasional matted clump of grass or bent green limb. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was searching for until he was more than a hundred yards downwind of the charnel smell. A faint buzzing sound drew him onward and downhill to the right. The buzzing grew louder until it separated from the patter of raindrops on the broad leaves overhead and he saw a deep purple cloud that at first looked like smoke swirling in the branches. As he neared, the smoke coalesced into individual dots that proved to be the source of the sound. He paused and surveyed the area. There were no heat signatures or any sign of movement beyond the blue outlines of the black trees. He again exchanged his goggles for his flashlight and directed the beam up into the massive kapok tree.

  Flies swirled around what at first looked like a grayish python folded over a thick bough. Its coils shimmered with the reflected light. They were so swollen and engorged that Pike barely recognized them as one of the missing lengths of intestines.

  He broke a branch from the trees, and, using the boulder beside the trunk for leverage, reached up to slide the bowels from the canopy. The tip of the stick pierced the mucosal lining and tore a long gash as the bowels uncoiled and fell to the ground. The foul aroma of rotten eggs and decomposition billowed from the tear as the tube sagged and deflated.

  “Oh, for the love of…” Pike said. He had to cover his mouth and nose with his hand to combat the stench.

  He studied it with his beam. The miniature vessels had turned black and it had lost its former elasticity. The colon was barely distinguishable from the jejunum by the bulging haustra. Digested contents seeped from the ragged laceration. The ends, where it had been s
evered from the stomach on one end and the rectum on the other, had been tied together. Pike stared at the sloppy knot for a long moment.

  Why would anyone—anything—do something like that?

  Twenty-Five

  Feni Islands

  South Pacific Ocean

  52 km East of New Ireland Island, Papua New Guinea

  November 30th

  9:12 p.m. PGT

  Bradley unfastened the harness, ducked against the wind from the rotors, and ran across the slippery deck toward the open doorway where two men in slickers awaited his arrival. They ushered him into the corridor and out of the sheeting rain while he waited for Reaves to be similarly lowered to the stern of the Huxley.

  “How was your flight, sir?” one of the seamen asked. He had to shout to be heard over the thunder of the blades and the waves crashing against the hull.

  “Seemingly interminable,” Bradley said. The truth was that even the Lear jet had felt as though it was barely crawling across the Pacific, the Bell Iroquois that had been waiting for them on the tarmac in Rabaul on New Britain Island like a gnat at the mercy of a hurricane gale. Every second had been spent in communication with Van Horn and the technical crew on the research vessel as they detailed the status of the salvage operation, the condition of the survivors, and Pike’s relayed communications from Ambitle Island. He watched every new video clip the moment it was downloaded. Even though he hadn’t slept in nearly two days, he wasn’t the slightest bit tired. He was wired, as though fueled by a mixture of caffeine and cocaine pumped straight into his bloodstream on an adrenaline infusion. The more he heard and saw, the more he became convinced that his quest had finally come to an end. At last, the truth of his obsession was about to be revealed to him. He tried to temper his enthusiasm with the fact that so many had died here, but even such a sobering thought did little to dampen his excitement. A part of him knew that was morally reprehensible, but the majority of him simply didn’t care.

  The tugboat a hundred yards off stern was bristling with activity. Spotlights had been mounted to its decrepit wheelhouse to light its bow, where men in wetsuits hauled equipment from the bottom of the sea with the winch, unloaded them, and prepared them for transport to the Huxley. As he watched, the steel cable raised a large batch reactor from the rough waves. Its smooth housing glinted indigo with a strobe of lightning.

  Reaves slipped out of the rope seat and ran to join them. The Huey rose into the storm clouds and banked westward back toward Papua New Guinea.

  “Shall we?” Reaves asked. He squeegeed the rain from his hair and gestured toward the dimly-lit corridor.

  “If you’ll follow us then, sirs, we’ll see you to your cabins—”

  “Take us to the command center,” Bradley said, more sharply than he had intended.

  The man held up the bags he clutched in either hand as though asking what he should do with them. Their personal effects had been lowered to the deck before them.

  “Would you be so kind as to drop those off in our cabins after you take us to see Mr. Van Horn?” Reaves asked far more tactfully.

  “Aye, sir.”

  The first man led them into the ship, while the second trailed with their bags. Bradley had studied theMayr’s deck plans so many times since her sinking that he knew exactly where they were going on her twin. The flickering lights through the open doorway to the engineering room welcomed them into the impromptu command center. Van Horn glanced toward the door when they entered and strode to meet them with a smile.

  “Dr. Bradley. Dr. Reaves,” he said, proffering his hand to each in turn. “Glad you made it safely.”

  Bradley surveyed the room. There were four faceless men working at as many computer terminals. Two more darted around the room from one piece of hardware to the next, then back again. One man stood apart from the rest. He was bundled in blankets and propped on a stool. His blonde hair was wild, his face pale. Eyes recessed in shadow, the man merely watched them with an unreadable expression. Bradley recognized him immediately from the personnel file he’d read so many times he could probably recite it by heart.

  “Mr. Bishop.” Bradley disengaged himself from Van Horn and Reaves and offered his hand to the submersible pilot. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for your harrowing ordeal and how thankful I am that you survived it.”

  Bishop merely stared at him. Despite Van Horn’s reports to the contrary, Bradley wondered if the man was still in shock.

  “Forgive me if I come across as overbearing, Mr. Bishop. My name is Graham Bradley. I’m the founder and COO of GeNext Biosystems. The man who arrived with me is Dr. Brendan Reaves. We flew straight here from Seattle the moment we learned what happened to the Mayr, or, more precisely, the moment that we learned that you and Dr. Martin miraculously managed to stay alive.” This time when he offered his hand, Bishop took it in a cold but firm grasp. His bland affect never wavered. “We came all this way in hopes of determining the cause of the Mayr’s sinking and to make sure that everything was handled the right way. So, first things first, is there anything I can do for you?”

  Bishop eyed him curiously for several seconds before he finally spoke.

  “I could use another cup of coffee.”

  He held out the empty mug from beneath his blanket.

  Bradley laughed and accepted the cup.

  “Of course, Mr. Bishop.A refill’s the very least I can do.”

  He headed back to the entryway where Van Horn and Reaves conversed quietly. A member of the crew took the mug from him and disappeared into the hallway.

  “Has he said anything useful yet?” Bradley whispered.

  “Other than the thing about the eyes?” Van Horn said. “No. But we’ve downloaded a good number of files from theMayr’s security system and were just about to find out what’s on them.”

  “Excellent.” Bradley’s heart was racing. He shared a look of anticipation with Reaves. Together, they’d worked so hard for so long that even the prospect of the payoff was exhilarating. “No time like the present.”

  “Mr. Barnes,” Van Horn said. “Are the files ready for viewing?”

  “Yes, sir,” a man who looked uncannily like an owl said. “But again, I should caution you that the potential level of digital degradation—”

  “We trust your skills, Mr. Barnes,” Bradley said. “I’m sure they will be of the best possible quality under the circumstances. Now. If you wouldn’t mind…”

  Barnes nodded and repositioned his monitor so they could see it. Van Horn, Reaves, and Bradley crowded around him. Bishop scooted his stool with a screech in order to see between them.

  “About that coffee…” Bishop said, but Bradley was too focused on the list of files on the monitor to even acknowledge that the submersible pilot had spoken.

  “As I’m sure you know,” Barnes said, “the security cameras in the access-controlled laboratories are motion-triggered to record from the time the first person enters until the last person leaves. The remainder of the ship—minus the individual cabins, the heads, and the hold—could be set to record manually. In the event of an emergency, they were programmed to automatically kick on.”

  Bradley was out of patience. He wanted to take the man by the throat and shake him. He hadn’t traveled all this way to hear about the security protocols he’d helped implement.

  “Are the files time-stamped?” Reaves asked.

  “Yes, sir. They’re also indexed by camera number and location. You can see here that the number of feeds collected spikes at 1:52 a.m. on November 28th, which implies that this was the point at which the emergency backup systems were engaged and all of the cameras began to record simultaneously. You can also see the time at which they all stopped, the theoretical termination of their power source. 3:36 a.m.. We’re looking at a peak period of activity of approximately one hour and forty-four minutes.” He turned to face them. “Where would you like to start?”

  “My records indicate that there was a potential Level 3 Biohazard incident,
reported as the release of unknown airborne microorganisms, in the Biology/Analytical Clean Room that required Hazmat intervention at 4:56 p.m. on November 26th, roughly thirty-three hours prior to the Mayr’s foundering,” Bradley said. He shared a conspiratorial glance with Reaves. “I’d like to start there.”

  Twenty-Six

  Ambitle Island

  Jericho Montgomery strained against the weight of his cargo. He and Pearson had stripped the forest of vines and used them to lash the three corpses together, face-to-face, in a bundle, leaving several long lengths they could use to drag them down the steep hillside. The vines had snapped repeatedly, once freeing all three of the cadavers to tumble down the muddy slope. When they reached the lifeboat, they used the solar blanket from the emergency kit these very men had left behind to haul them down the path flattened by the shallow hull to the beach. While it was comforting to be out of the oppressive jungle, especially knowing what potentially lurked somewhere up there in its dark embrace, the deluge wasn’t much of an improvement.

  The lights from the salvage vessel and the Huxley were a diffuse aura through the mist across the bay. The monsoon winds alternately whipped the rain into their faces and then away from them. They’d found the tarp right where Pike had said it would be, clearly visible from the shoreline but far enough under the canopy to protect it from the worst of the torrent, with two bodies already beneath it, weighted down by stones on the corners.

  “We’ve reached our destination,” Montgomery said into the transceiver. “We’re now depositing our payload.”