Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  Cort Wesley exchanged a glance with Jones, triggered by the potential ancient origins of the ossuaries in question, not to mention the bones contained in at least one of them.

  “How about we fill in some blanks for you, Doc?” Jones asked. For instance, we have every reason to believe that whatever killed those men you’ve got tucked away here was living inside some ancient ossuaries from around the time of the Roman Empire. How does that jibe with the notion you’ve developed?”

  “You say these ossuaries date back approximately to the time of Caesar?”

  “A fair estimate,” Jones said, not elaborating further.

  “Then I’m afraid we have an anomaly.”

  “How’s that, Doc?” Jones asked him.

  “Let’s jump ahead a bit, shall we?” He circled his gaze around the whole of the neat swirl of iron doorways that opened to all manner of death and potential to wreak true havoc on mankind. “Every one of these is occupied by a corpse who died of some element, infection, pathogen, germ, microbe, virus, or bacteria that we can’t positively identify. We keep them here, frozen, in the hope that newer technological tools that don’t exist yet will help us toward that end.” Doc turned his gaze back upon Cort Wesley and Jones. “In the case of the three bodies from that train car in 1994, we were able to identify the cause of death but not the mutation responsible for one of the deadliest pathogens ever encountered evolving into something potentially even more dangerous.”

  “What pathogen is that?” Cort Wesley asked, before Jones had a chance to.

  “The bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death.”

  83

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Enrico Molinari hadn’t felt this way in a very long time. Not since his last trip to Texas.

  He’d sent the three men to the train car, their task simply to secure the ossuaries for transport. This after he had first killed the two men assigned to guard the boxes and then wiped out the entire train crew, dumping all seven bodies out of sight on the far side of the train.

  Molinari knew something was wrong when he returned to the car to find the door still open but none of his men in evidence. He shined his flashlight inside the car and spotted all three men dead, fallen to what he genuinely believed was the curse that had protected the contents of one of the bone boxes for two thousand years. His man who’d opened that box, unable to resist the temptation, must’ve had second thoughts and resealed the top. Too late, though, to prevent the release of what had killed all three of his men almost instantly, which explained why the shipping crate itself was still open.

  He’d hammered the top back into place with a rock and then set about loading all three crates himself. The bone boxes inside weren’t as heavy or as large as he’d been expecting, enabling him to hoist them up and load them into the cargo van that had been arranged for him. He’d been expecting something the size and heft of coffins, felt somber at the thought that the sum total of a man’s person could end up in a space so small, nothing but bones. Then again, the true measure, true weight, of a man lay in his soul, not in his skin.

  The mission that had brought him back to Texas was about more than preserving a secret the world could never know. In a miraculous act of blessed fortune, the Lord Himself had used that very secret to deliver a weapon of His own making to the Order so that the group might be able to protect His word and vanquish the enemies who would besmirch His kingdom. In that respect, this was an even holier mission, putting within reach the means to eradicate those who would challenge, refute, or blaspheme the word of God. A means lifted from a simple limestone bone box, which could secure the Order’s holy mission for time eternal.

  At night, in his dreams, he often saw himself lugging the box thought to contain the bones of the son of God from the train car into the back of the cargo van. In the dream, lightning struck him on the way and God appeared to Molinari as he had come to Moses. A strong but gentle hand laid on his shoulder made Molinari feel as if he were literally melting, dissolving back into the ether from which he’d come, until he heard the voice speak.

  “My son.”

  The apparition’s mouth didn’t move as he spoke those simple words. Molinari lived every day of his life hoping to lift that feeling from dream to reality, hoping that if he delivered His gift unto the Order, God would come to Molinari to thank him for his service to a higher calling.

  God had taken his face to prepare him for what was coming, a great final epic battle that would end with him having the limestone box in his grasp once more. In his dreams, having no face mattered not at all, as would be the case in the new reality he was helping to forge. There were times when Molinari even let himself fantasize that God would restore his face in return. That which He’d taken to serve one purpose restored so that Molinari might better serve another. During his first trip here, Molinari had removed all the mirrors from the motel room’s walls because he did not need a mirror to see inside, to see himself as God saw him.

  Which was the great overriding point.

  “Have you located the ossuaries?” Molinari heard the American leader of the Order ask through the phone at his ear, even though he had no memory of grasping or dialing it.

  “No,” Molinari replied, “but I know how to find them now. The Lord has shown me the way.”

  84

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  “You can see the source of the anomaly I mentioned,” Doc continued. “The Black Death ravaged Europe between 1346 and 1353, not during the time of Christ. It killed over fifty million people, which, at the time, was sixty percent of Europe’s whole population. If a mutated form of it, that could kill its victims literally within seconds, struck the world today, the death toll would be somewhere between four and five billion.”

  Cort Wesley and Jones exchanged a glance, trying to figure out how this fit with what they’d assumed from Dylan’s translation.

  “Maybe your son was wrong, cowboy,” Jones said, as if Doc weren’t even there. “He is a fuckup, after all.”

  “Keep talking, Jones, and it won’t be the Black Death that puts you in one of those steel chambers up there behind all that glass.”

  “Ahem,” Doc said. “If you want to take this outside, go right ahead. Otherwise, you might be interested in what else I have to say.”

  “You said you were jumping ahead a bit,” Jones noted.

  “And now let’s jump back a bit. It’s the prevailing opinion of CDC scientists who work on this level that all seven bodies, both the four from today and the three back in 1994, died of a mutated form of the Black Death. Now, based on the information you’ve provided, identifying the source of their deaths as the contents of one or more ossuaries, we can assume with a reasonable degree of certainty that the bones in question belonged to one or more victims of the Black Plague. That places the time line squarely in the fourteenth century, not the time of Caesar.”

  “You said ‘mutated form,’” said Cort Wesley. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

  Doc nodded, squarely in his element now, almost seeming to enjoy himself. “The Black Death was an epidemic of the bubonic plague caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, common to wild rats.”

  “Is there another kind?” Jones smirked.

  Doc ignored his question. “When wild rats collect in the kind of numbers and concentrations they did back in that age, they’re a breeding ground for all manner of diseases dangerous to man. The bubonic plague was more or less typical in that regard, except for the close proximity of the dwellings of these rodents to the homes of the soon to be infected. Black rats, where the disease originated and incubated, are generally scavengers, meaning that, unlike other rat species, they build their nests as close to people as they can.”

  “A recipe for disaster, in other words,” Jones noted.

  “Especially since it likely took all of ten days to two weeks before all the infected rats would be dead. Do you have any idea how many humans they could spread the disease to in that time?”
>
  “You already told us how many it ended up killing,” Cort Wesley said.

  “Once infected,” Doc continued, “the infection in humans typically took three to five days to incubate and another three to five days to kill.”

  “As opposed to less than a minute,” Jones reminded, “which is what we’re facing today.”

  “Because of that mutation I noted earlier. The vast majority of plague victims were burned. But noblemen who perished to the pestilence, especially in the early stages, were given traditional burials, their bodies left to rot in the ground of a cemetery or within an aboveground tomb. More likely the latter.”

  “Why do you say that?” Cort Wesley asked this time.

  “Because, based on what you’re telling me, somebody stole the bones from some medieval mausoleum and placed them in this ossuary you’ve mistakenly identified as coming from the time of Caesar. What you’ve uncovered is a fabrication, a hoax, which would likely become abundantly clear if these ossuaries were given a closer examination.”

  “Except all we have are pictures of one, and not very good ones at that,” Jones said.

  “Get back to how the Black Death mutated into something even worse,” said Cort Wesley.

  “Okay,” Doc resumed, “the bones of the plague victim get placed in this ossuary to create some kind of sham. Maybe over the years that ossuary ends up tucked away in some cave, likely in Israel, where the majority of them have been recovered. A cave would feature the ideal conditions for the disease that has been lying dormant in those bones to regenerate itself.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “From a scientific standpoint, I would have said no, until now. That said, we seem to be facing something we’ve never encountered before.”

  “Another anomaly,” Cort Wesley noted, starting to hate the word.

  “And how could this anomaly have occurred?” Jones asked.

  “Theoretically?”

  “Any way you want to describe it, Doc.”

  “You’re not talking about an anomaly so much as a metamorphosis. The conditions in that cave brought strains of the bubonic plague that had settled in the bones of the interred victim back to life, and then those strains fed off the fetid air, heat, and humidity—conditions ideal to grow mold spores. And, in fact, what we could be looking at here is actually a spore bred of the bacterial chain we call the Black Death. In other words, the disease was dormant within those bones of this particular plague victim until the environmental conditions of that cave, or possibly crypt, brought it back to life as something different and far, far more dangerous, as difficult as that is to believe. An ultra-potent bacterial neurotoxin, derived directly from the pneumonic stage of the Black Death, that kills by short-circuiting the respiratory system.

  “And that’s not totally unprecedented at all, really,” Doc continued. “There’s valley fever—quite common among archaeologists, by the way—which takes the form of a fungus within soil but becomes dangerous only after environmental conditions, especially rain, transform it into a spore.”

  “But can a bacteria like the one responsible for the bubonic plague,” Cort Wesley started, “transform into a spore, too, the way a fungus can?”

  Doc grinned from ear to ear, as if, like a classroom teacher, that was exactly the question he was hoping for. “Some bacteria, perhaps the Black Death among them, can form spores when it finds itself in a hostile environment. The bacterium, through a process called sporulation, replicates its genetic material and then surrounds it with a thick coating. In spore form, the bacterium’s water is released and metabolism ceases. It can survive temperature extremes, radiation, and lack of air, water, and nutrients for extended periods of time, to be revived when nutrients are abundant again. You see, gentlemen,” he said, as if coming to the end of his lecture, “a spore’s virtual indestructibility renders it the ideal biological weapons agent.”

  Jones and Cort Wesley looked at each other.

  “Nature,” Doc continued, before either one of them could say a word, “is the ultimate threat to mankind. What you’re describing could never have originated in a lab.” He seemed to be talking more to himself now. “Remember, in its advanced and most virulent pneumonic stage, the Black Death laid waste to the lungs, so it makes perfect sense, theoretically, that it would attack the respiratory system in its infinitely more dangerous form.”

  “Only seven victims, though,” Jones pointed out. “Three in 1994 and four more today. That doesn’t sound like the Black Death to me.”

  “Because a spore spreads differently than a bacteria. It’s not an infection that can move from person to person. It comes with no assembly required, with this cell or that, inside the body, and in this case it kills with what we can only conclude is a one hundred percent mortality rate.”

  “So if somebody opened the ossuary in question and got exposed to what was inside…”

  “That thirty- or forty-second clock, according to the investigative reports, would start ticking.” Doc pointed at the rows of corpse storage on the levels circling above them. “I already mentioned that spores make the ideal biological warfare agents. That’s because, if placed in an explosive device and detonated, they could potentially be as effective a weapon of mass destruction as a nuclear bomb. Maybe even more so, given that you wouldn’t have to worry about the lingering effects of radiation or the impact of physical destruction. It would kill only those who breathed in the released spores, and once its victims were dead, the spores would be trapped inside them.”

  “In short,” said Cort Wesley, “you’re talking about the perfect weapon.”

  “Oh,” Doc nodded, “to say the least.”

  85

  SPINNAKER FALLS, TEXAS

  “El Barquero must’ve walked in on these boys after they clipped the owner,” D. W. Tepper said, leaning over the bodies with stars drilled into the center of their foreheads.

  “His name was Wyatt Bass, no relation to Sam.”

  Tepper stood all the way back up and checked the area where the local medical examiner was still examining Bass’s body, splayed over the counter glass. “You wanna tell me what you got out of him?”

  “You already know about the remnants of that credit card receipt.”

  “But that’s not what you came to discuss with the late Mr. Bass, though, is it?”

  “You’re always seeing conspiracies with me.”

  “Because most of the time they’re there. And it’s obvious something had brought you back here, before you made that call about finding three more bodies to add to your ever-growing collection.” Tepper glanced down at the corpses propped up near his feet. “Something else is obvious, too: These two boys came gunning for you.”

  “So now you’re using your sixth sense à la Guillermo Paz?”

  “And tomorrow I’ll wake up to find I’m seven feet tall.” He mopped his brow. “The way it plays from my end is that Bass told you something that sent you someplace else, and you were making a stop to see him again from wherever that was. The shooters showed up in the meantime, likely killed him when he refused to say where you were at. Do I have that about right, Ranger?”

  Caitlin turned toward Wyatt Bass’s corpse so Tepper wouldn’t see the affirmation of his conclusions in her gaze. She tried to make her expression as empty as possible when she looked back at him.

  “Whoever’s behind these shooters must’ve been behind the ones we found in that New Braunfels alley across from Bane Sturgess, too, Captain,” she said, eager to change the subject.

  Tepper scratched at his scalp, showering the air with dandruff and flecks of hardened Brylcreem. “You wanna tell me how it is you’ve inherited a protector who isn’t seven feet tall, why it is that the legendary Ferryman himself keeps coming to your rescue?”

  “Luna Diaz Delgado would be my guess, given that we’re on the same side now.”

  Something in her words made Tepper swallow hard, his gaze turning evasive. “That’s what your dad thought, to
o.”

  “Did he prove to be wrong on that front? Maybe you should come clean to me about her ossuaries ending up buried in the desert.”

  “I already told you—”

  “That Jim Strong kept you out of the loop. I remember. Except we both know that was a lie, since he called you about helping him track the man with no face to a private airport. I know you’ve got your reasons, and I’m sure they’re damn good, but that doesn’t change the fact that you know what happened from the night my dad and the Red Widow spent together at that motel, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t lie to me about it again.”

  “Likewise,” Tepper said tersely.

  “When did I lie to you?”

  “A lie of omission, not telling me where it was you went after your conversation with the late Mr. Bass and what you found when you got there.”

  “This confession time, D.W.?”

  “Only if you go first.”

  “Later.”

  “Sounds fine to me. But there’s things I’ll tell you that can’t be untold, Ranger.”

  “When?”

  Tepper fanned the air with his Stetson, as if to brush away the dandruff and Brylcreem. “Jeez, Caitlin, can’t you take yes for an answer?”

  86

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  “Hope you brought a credit card,” Jones told Cort Wesley when they emerged from the CDC, “because our return flight home’s been canceled.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Comes with the fact that I’ve been canceled, too. I told you, free rein to do anything I wanted so long as I didn’t fuck up. What happened in Dallas, at Communications Technology Providers, proved to be that fuckup.”

  “You knew what you were after when you hired CTP to find it, didn’t you?”

  “You give me too much credit, cowboy. I had an inkling, sure, as soon as I came across manually typed reports that nobody had read for years. But I had no clue, no conception, not even the shadow of a notion that I was after a mutated version of the Black Death that comes complete with a one hundred percent mortality rate. I’m not easy to scare when it comes to new methods of taking out our enemies in a big way, only this shit gives victory a bad name. I should’ve known to stay away when the Strong name came up.”