The Darwin Strain

by Bill Schutt

  “Everything’s so unpredictable now,” Yanni said, as if finishing Mac’s thought.

  Mac said nothing, though it was now more than a suspicion that anyone who had made it out of that grotto alive was changed—and might continue to change, if not by the rewriting of their genes, then by amplifying the expression of genes. According to the report Nesbitt had written, they had all come home as walking biological free-fire zones. Some part of his brain was frightened by the observation that whatever microbes were presently living in their blood, Yanni had been affected most of all—while another part of him thought it made absolute sense. No matter which way he looked at it, the possibilities filled him with almost unbearable worry—which, like the Nesbitt report, he kept to himself, for now.

  We’re lucky not to be sitting in a cage on Plum Island, he thought.

  Thus far, the effects had amounted to nothing except steadily improving health, but even if this trend did not change, Mac foresaw only negative outcomes if too many people learned about it.

  “Do ya think someone else knows about it?” she asked.

  For a moment Mac did not understand what Yanni was referring to—until he saw her gesturing toward the black ship.

  “Moonless night, slipping in quiet-like and without a single deck light on. What do you think, Yanni?”

  “Little late for locals looking for a miracle dip.”

  “Authorities put the clamp on that after what happened to Cousteau.”

  Yanni nodded. “Then somebody knows something.”

  “And I’m bettin’ that our somebody made a connection between the incidents here at Santorini and what we got exposed to back near Tibet.”

  Yanni was silent for many long moments. “So,” she asked finally, “do ya think we’re infectious—one of us or maybe both of us?”

  Mac shot her his “just ate a bad clam look.” He had not considered the possibility. No one had, until now. “Dunno, Yanni. How’s your friend Benedetto doing? Tossing away his reading glasses yet?”

  “No,” she said, in an uncharacteristically defensive tone. “And like I told you, Tony’s changing his last name.”

  Mac let out a nearly inaudible grunt. He knew “Tony” as an all-too-attractive young crooner from Queens—and one of those rare people to whom the overused word “genius” really applied—though he’d never admit it to Yanni. Mac also knew that the guy was on a path that would quite likely make him famous.

  “So, who changes his name?” he wondered aloud.

  “Plenty of people. Tse-lin for one.”

  “That’s different,” Mac said, frustrated. “It’s like you’re dating a child.”

  “Mac, he’s only a coupla years younger than me and he’s certainly no child.”

  “Okay, next topic,” Mac said, clearly uncomfortable.

  Yanni continued to return Mac a steely silence, so he attempted to switch his thoughts elsewhere—anywhere else—and fill the void. “I wonder what it looked like around here,” he asked, “when Allen’s and Pierre’s apes began burying their dead.”

  Yanni did not offer an answer. She nodded toward three points of light flashing on and off in sequence. Greenish-yellow and startlingly beautiful, they appeared to be coming from somewhere just below the surface of the lagoon.

  “You see that?”

  “Definitely,” Mac said, estimating that each series of flashes was separated by perhaps half a mile.

  “I think I’m seeing a pattern to it,” Yanni said. But the sequence stopped just as quickly as it began and did not resume.

  “You think that’s what attacked Cousteau’s pals?”

  Yanni shrugged her shoulders. “Dunno, Mac, but I think somebody besides us is talking about that boat.”

  5.33 Million b.c.

  The Lost World of Mediterranean Canyon

  At dawn, the eldest male died of his wounds.

  Proud One knew that the monstrous beings that fell upon the encampment had singled out the weak. Two, who had been ill for many days before the attack, were simply gone. She also knew that her child had been targeted, but through circumstances she could not quite define, Seed still lived.

  After the elder died, Proud One came upon Broken Tooth, a middle-aged male with a dislocated shoulder and a limp, signing frantically upriver and toward home and the high cliffs in the south. He must have sensed a pattern in the attacks, and what it would mean for him if the predators returned.

  The clan leader signed in the opposite direction—toward the unknown northlands—her gestures becoming even more assertive. “Safety downriver,” she emphasized, in a manner of speaking. “Safety only north.”

  Broken Tooth, even with his infirmities, was influential enough to be joined in his protest by two large females. He continued to sign, as before, but now as part of a trio. The entire clan watched the proceedings.

  “Death there,” Proud One motioned forcefully. She had no means of clearly explaining her answer, even to herself. There was only a sense that the Stone-throwers who had taken possession of their highland feeding grounds, and who killed all who fought back, were a problem that would continue to baffle and defeat her clan. Before the exodus down to the canyon, the war had killed eight out of every ten members of the clan, reducing the population to a point dangerously close to extinction. Proud One’s kind could bite and claw at a small number of monsters when they came down from the trees; but against hundreds of enemies who knew how to shape and sling stones with impossible accuracy, there could be no surviving, to fight another day.

  “Proud One knows nothing,” Broken Tooth signed, and glared.

  The large female beside him signed more forcefully, in what passed, in this primal language, for mockery.

  Proud One averted her eyes and lowered her head toward the ground, signaling, “Yes. Nothing.”

  For what seemed a very long time, she directed her gaze at the dirt. Then, as her head came up, she sprung herself upon the most powerful of her three rivals. The attack was so quick that no one could respond. Proud One applied a headlock that ended with her sharpened black fingernail pressed against her adversary’s eyelid. Every onlooker feared what would occur next.

  The massive challenger responded with a cooing sound, stretched out her lips, and kissed the muscular arm that held her. The signal was clear and it would be her only chance to emerge from the battle intact: “We follow you.”

  After the kiss there was a moment of hesitation before the release of Proud One’s grip and then a reciprocal hug. There were more kisses by the defeated female and this time they were returned. The clan settled most of its nearly daily disputes in this manner and actual bodily harm was a rare occurrence. It was a trait that made them quite unique among the many branches of earth’s simian family tree.

  “Go downriver,” the clan conceded to Proud One, during a long session of even more nodding, hugging, and kissing. “Go downriver.”

  And so they fled along the shores of a strange new landscape—leaving the highland Stone-throwers forever behind in the south. The simians stopped scarcely at all for rest. By night they traveled under the dim glow of cloud-filtered moonlight, for as many hours as their strained muscles would permit. Even as the river turned sharply into a more rugged landscape and exhaustion threatened, they managed to quicken their pace, toward the greatest horror of all.

  Chapter 6

  It Came from Beneath the Sea

  And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

  —Genesis

  Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginning of that great mother of life, the sea.

  —Rachel Carson

  There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.

  —Herman Melville

  July 1, 1948

  5:45 a.m. on the Isle of Santorini

  Yanni cherished the soft radiance that preceded dawn. At this latitude, the sun r
easserted itself almost imperceptibly at first, against the infinite gulf that was the universe. On the desert island of Santorini, where every garden tree and bush required special care, the hotel owners supplemented their income with remarkably well-tended vineyards. Here the night’s dying was accompanied by a chorus of songbirds so loud and expansive that it was difficult for Yanni to imagine how she could be the only person awake, at “the only hotel in town.”

  At daybreak, Boulle arrived from the excavation, looking uncharacteristically excited, and minutes later Yanni woke the others. There was a fishing trawler sitting in the shallows, just off the coast of Aspronisi, an island fragment on the western edge of the lagoon.

  “Fishing?” Mac asked.

  Boulle shrugged his shoulders. “My informant says drifting, not fishing.”

  “You think this is the same one you and Mac were watching last night?” Cousteau asked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Mac responded.

  Ninety minutes later, the ship that Mac and Yanni had glimpsed in silhouette the night before loomed before them, large and incongruous. After being carried westward by the night current, it had finally run aground. Now she rested bow-first, only steps offshore the fragmented, and still fragmenting, white cliffs of the islet Aspronisi—also known as “the White Island.” Capped by thick layers of volcanic ash that had blanketed the region beginning some four thousand years earlier, Aspronisi lay uninhabited for as long as anyone could remember.

  “She is completely intact,” Cousteau observed as they drew their small boat closer to the south shore and the stranded ship. “No damage to the prop, I think.”

  Mac gestured toward the deeper water lying just off the trawler’s stern. “So it should have been easy for the crew to free her, and back away into open water?”

  “Easy maybe,” Cousteau replied, “but yes.”

  Yanni stood silently, scanning the deck unsuccessfully for signs of life. The one lifeboat that was visible remained untouched, its canvas cover still drawn tight.

  “The position of her mast is all wrong—for a trawler,” Cousteau observed. Then, as their own boat approached the port side, he throttled back and held steady, watching as Mac expertly lassoed a cleat along the gunwale.

  “Mast looks like a badly disguised antenna,” Mac said, securing the line.

  “I think so too,” the French naval officer said. “And the disguise continues with the nets. You smell that? They used them recently.”

  At more than ninety feet long, the craft had been designed to bring in large hauls of school fish. But it was clear to Yanni from the moment they climbed aboard the stern that these “fishermen” had caught more than they bargained for.

  Standing on the deck, which listed only slightly to starboard, the trio could detect no movement at all; the only sounds were the occasional slap of six-inch swells against the hull and the low growl of the forward keel against submerged rocks.

  Dmitri Chernov and his brother Alexi had been trailing their navy’s listening post and research vessel at a distance of one hundred nautical miles. During their voyage to Santorini, the mini-sub had remained mostly on the surface, charging its batteries and maintaining an acceptable twenty knots. The craft was equipped with what its designer claimed to be the quietest diesel engine on earth. The crew compartment was roomy enough to be considered almost luxurious by its two occupants. She exhibited a number of firsts for a mini-sub—her hull a first experiment in what would become known as sonar stealth technology. She was also equipped with a newly perfected moon pool that allowed a diver to come and go as he pleased while the vessel remained submerged. No expense was spared for the Kremlin’s best and most dedicated.

  In the beginning, it was a simple plan. The Orthodox Church had been buzzing with news of miraculous healings and red volcanic water that, in spite of being salty, and presumably bad for crops, was somehow being turned by locals into something of an agricultural miracle. Investigating the truth of it should have been easy. Everyone expected that, if the phenomenon proved as real as Lysenko and his associates believed, then Stage Two—acquiring it and sequestering it—would be the politically inconvenient part.

  But now the plan appeared to be unraveling at Stage One: investigation.

  Dmitri and Alexi knew only that the primary research vessel had gone silent shortly after slipping into the lagoon at Santorini. Like a lone voice in the Mediterranean wilderness, a radio distress signal emitted every thirty seconds had guided the two brothers to the south shore of an island fragment. The overly dramatic Europeans referred to it as Forbidden Island. Their own detailed maps listed it as Aspronisi.

  “Hello!” Mac called out. “We’re here to help you.”

  No one and nothing stirred.

  Yanni wandered over and peered down into the hold, noting that the hinges of the cargo hatch appeared to have been twisted off. The hatch itself was nowhere to be seen.

  “It might smell like fish,” she said, “but there ain’t none down there.”

  “What sort of madness?” Mac whispered. It was as if pirates had come aboard, to steal only fish.

  The boarding party unholstered their sidearms and moved forward.

  The bridge was vacant and upon entering they found the engines off, but the batteries were still active at more than three-quarters power. At the aft end of the wheelhouse, a set of stairs descended to a central corridor. Mac shot Yanni a nod and she flipped a switch, turning on lights all along the companionway.

  “Anyone down there?” Yanni called. “Anyone need help?”

  The deck below remained as silent as a tomb—which, perhaps, it was.

  The air wafting up carried a musty odor, along with a faint sulfuric tang. “Gunpowder,” Mac thought aloud. His friends recognized the same telltale under-scent of gunfire.

  They also understood, without further discussion, that in coming this far, it was inconceivable that they should go no farther. Cousteau started the descent, reminding his two companions of a common motto for safety at sea: “One hand for yourself, and one hand for the ship,” or as Mac might have rephrased it, Always use the damned handrail.

  Only two steps down, Yanni’s right foot slipped out from under her, and she discovered to everyone’s dismay that the wooden rail did not offer so much support as it should have. Mac almost fell in behind her.

  They had not yet completely regained their footing before Yanni called out, “Look at this!” A slippery substance—mostly water tinged with red—had been wiped and spattered across one wall. The rail, too, was dripping.

  “Something came in over the side,” she said.

  “Or came in from below,” Cousteau suggested.

  Mac returned him a most quizzical look.

  “You believe I am being funny?” Cousteau said. “Mac, my friend, you were not there when I saw them changing colors under the water. What creature does such a trick?”

  Sliding a finger along the wet rail, the Frenchman sniffed at the substance. “Yes, I have smelled this type of animal before. And if it’s what I think, it may have come in through the bilge pumps.”

  “So, you’re thinking cephalopod?” Mac asked.

  “Yes, but not the ones that we know,” Cousteau replied, and led the way down to the next deck.

  “But these had to be big,” Yanni said, “too big to crawl out of the water.”

  “Maybe true,” Cousteau conceded. “But I think, not impossible.”

  “Wonderful,” Yanni muttered.

  “Of course that is only hypothétique,” the Frenchman continued, raising his gun and swinging a door open with his foot. “We might prove it wrong,” he said, stepping inside.

  By then a metallic under-scent had become unmistakable. In the cabin—which only hours before had been crew’s quarters—one bulkhead was streaked with a dark red fluid that at first glimpse might have been microbe-stained water. But it was not. The deck and wall were smeared with blood, lots of it.

  Compared to the first
bunkroom, the one across the companionway was clean, except for signs of gunfire—the only indication of a struggle.

  The next cabin aft, the largest so far, was in ruins. Its door lay on the deck, broken in two. Inside, clothing had been torn apart and equipment was scattered in pieces. Shelves and desks were pulled from bulkheads and reduced to piles of huge splinters. Mac lifted sheets of paper from the floor and gave them a quick glance. “This is all Cyrillic,” he said. “Russians.”

  “Quelle surprise, non?”

  “No surprise,” Mac replied, glumly.

  Yanni pulled an emergency flashlight from its wall mount and directed her beam at a deep pile of wrecked furnishings, casting nightmare shadows. She squatted to pick something out of the debris, then stood and joined Mac and Cousteau in the corridor.

  “Someone fought hard in there with this,” she said, brandishing the broken business end of a fire axe.

  “He fought against whatever killed my friends,” Cousteau said, his voice haunted.

  “Whatever it was, it had to be big,” Mac said quietly, examining the blade. He turned to Yanni. “Can you give that last cabin a final going-over?” he asked, then turned his attention toward another compartment, at the end of the companionway. “Door’s open. Looks like it’s full of electronics, and I wanna check it out.”

  “Got it,” she replied. “Just watch yourself, huh? I am not in a rescuing mood.”

  Picking her way carefully across the debris-laden deck to the far side of the “last stand” cabin, Yanni Thorne could easily envision the violence that had taken place within its confines. With only one way out, there was probably no escape for the men who had encountered—what?

  It could only be what Cousteau saw on that first day, Yanni thought. Some unknown animal shifting with the colors of its background and vanishing in a blinding flash. It could only be the things we saw flashing beneath the lagoon last night, signaling to each other when this ship arrived.