Frozen Fire (38 page)

1:30
P.M
., Sunday, October 26, aboard the
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
, off the eastern coast of Taino

For the second time in a few hours, Captain Simon Broadhurst had left his own ship, the
Wangari Maathai
, to board the
Marjory
, only to hear stories that chilled him to his very core. The first, about the sea turning to foam and eating ships, he’d believed reluctantly and only because he knew four of the five people involved and had questioned them separately.

This time, the thought of dead bodies on the island left him incredulous. Lack of sleep and the stress of running the search-and-rescue, and then search-and-recovery, operations had left him exhausted, with very little imagination and absolutely no sense of humor. Radio contact with the base on the island had been intermittent and on an as-needed basis ever since the secure channels had gone down early this morning. But surely if someone or, more frightening, some
thing
, had killed people on the island, anyone who had escaped that fate would have contacted him.

Unless everyone was dead.

The thought made a shudder run through him. He shook it off and focused a hard glare on the stoned, sunburned civilian with one arm in a
sling who sat in front of him, and then shifted it to the security staffer who sat opposite her at the small table.

“Did you see the seagulls?” the woman asked with no preamble, and both Simon and the officer turned to look at her. Between her American accent and painkiller-slurred words Simon could barely understand her.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked coolly.

“I was asking him,” the woman said, and pointed a limp finger at the officer. “He was looking at the beach with binoculars. I’m just wondering if he saw the seagulls in the water.”

Not hiding his exasperation, Simon ignored her and turned his attention back to the officer.

“Hey, don’t dismiss me,” the woman said, speaking as if moving her mouth were difficult. “Your people gave me the drugs. This isn’t how I usually operate, Admiral.”

“Thank you for the promotion, but it’s ‘captain,’ ma’am. What about the seagulls?” Simon asked sarcastically. “Were they pretty?”

“They were dead.”

Her words made him do a double take. Intelligence flashed behind the woman’s dilated pupils and glazed look.

“Dead?”

“Yes. Dead. About a dozen of them. Maybe more. Floating in the water. How do you suppose a whole flock of seagulls dies, Captain? Fly into the mast of a sailboat?”

He swallowed the sharp reply that immediately came to mind. “How do you think they died, ma’am?”

“Same way the people on my boat died before it sank out of sight and the same way the people on the beach died. I think they breathed something that killed them,” she said slowly. “I couldn’t see the faces of the people on the beach, but I saw their bodies. Curled up in balls or crumpled up with their hands near their throats.”

Simon looked at the security officer, who was nodding at the woman’s words.

“Carlson, is this true?”

The officer nodded. “Yes, sir. Their hands were near their throats and chests, and most of their mouths were open. The ones whose faces I could see.”

Holy buggery fuck. What’s out there?
Simon gritted his teeth and looked at the woman.

“The foamy patch where my boat sank was just on the other side of where we were going to dock, isn’t it? The dock is kind of on the tip of the island, right? The clipper was coming around the tip when that foamy patch appeared. I think something is in the air near that foam, Captain, blowing around. And whatever is causing that foam is killing anything that breathes it in.”

“Thank you, Miss...?”

“Davison. Cynthia Davison.”

“Thank you, Ms. Davison.” Simon stood up abruptly. “Patterson. A moment,” he said, looking at Maggy Patterson, captain of the
Marjory
and wide-eyed observer of the conversation.

She followed him out of the small room.

“I’m giving you command of the search-and-recovery operation, effective immediately. Jones will assume command of the
Wangari
until I return,” he said, crisply and quietly.

Surprisingly, Maggy Patterson didn’t nod in agreement.

“Where are you going?” she demanded, clearly not pleased.

You’re questioning me?
He frowned at her. “I’m going to take one of the security teams and go around the north head of the island. If we can land safely, we’ll try to make it to the bunker to see if anyone is there.”

“You’re crazy,” she said thinly. “The whole island could be toxic.”

“I believe that’s ‘you’re crazy, sir,’” he snapped. “If I don’t return within two hours, you can assume we’re dead. That’s all, Patterson. You have your orders.”

“Not so fast,
sir
,” she snapped back at him. “You need to get clearance from Victoria Clark for something like this. We don’t know what’s happening on the island other than a lot of weird deaths. Don’t you dare add your name to that list.”

“I didn’t know you cared, Patterson,” he said dryly.

“Knock it off. Send two of the security guys. That’s what they’re trained for. You need to stay here,” she insisted.

The air was tense between them as they stood in the tiny corridor glaring at each other.

“Or I’ll have you confined to quarters,” she said, her words low and fierce. “You’re standing on
my
boat.”

Simon smiled at her coldly. “Thanks for your input, Patterson. I believe we’ll adjourn this discussion until a later date. In the meantime, I must return to my ship.”

Twenty minutes later, a reconnaissance team, fitted with full masks and scuba tanks, peeled away from the
Wangari Maathai
in an inflatable with Simon Broadhurst at the helm. He waved jauntily to an obviously fuming Maggy Patterson, who was standing in the stern of the
Marjory
as they zoomed past.

2:00
P.M
., Sunday, October 26, Taino

Handcuffed at the wrists and ankles to a chair, Dennis didn’t have much choice but to watch Micki and be sickened by her.

They were in the bunker’s security office, surrounded by computers that were all online and humming, and completely out of reach. He concealed his frustration, impotence, and fury; revealing any of it would only give Micki more to be glad about.

Still as calm and unfazed as if she had nothing more pressing on her mind than a typical day at work, Micki activated the backup security system. As she waited for the cameras to come online, she glanced over her shoulder and grinned at Dennis.

“Well, in just a few seconds we’ll get to see if all those worst-case scenarios were right, won’t we?” She turned her attention back to the monitor in front of her, and tapped a few keys. “Let’s start with the offices.”

The camera panned slowly, impassively, revealing a vista that was increasingly horrific, and Micki gave a small squeal of delight. Laughing and triumphant, she clicked the mouse to change the view and then sped her way through the images from each of the many cameras installed on the island.

The bodies of her colleagues littered the offices and the walkways that connected the compound’s low-slung buildings. More corpses were strewn on the docks of Taino’s port and floated in the placid water those docks surmounted.

“Ah, success is so sweet, isn’t it?” she said, after she’d completed one loop of images. She got up from the chair and stretched as if to loosen stiff muscles. The movement pulled her T-shirt above the waistband of her shorts, revealing a tanned, taut stomach that, at one time, Dennis had known intimately.

He turned away.

“What, Dennis? I’m not allowed my moment in the sun? That’s hardly fair. I recall—quite vividly—that you used to be rather brazen about celebratin’ your victories, no matter how small,” Micki said, lowering her face
so that it was level with his own. Her eyes were hot and her smile was all about sex and conquest.

Under other circumstances—

“This isn’t a victory, Micki,” Dennis said between clenched teeth, his arms and legs straining instinctively but impotently against the metal biting into his skin.

“Oh, but it is. It’s a victory for the Earth,” she purred, running her hands up his forearms, then over his biceps and shoulders, not stopping until her hands were cupped around his face. “I can see now why power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. The sight of them”—she tipped her head toward the monitor without breaking eye contact with him—“and the reality of you sittin’ here like this . . . I’ve never been much for playin’ with toys, but I have to admit that I’m beginnin’ to understand why some people like it,” she finished, her words a hot, damp whisper against his ear.

The toned curves she pressed against him, the earthy heat she radiated, caused an age-old battle in his brain and elsewhere; it was a battle Dennis had often fought, but had never before sought to lose.

“Don’t fuck with me, Micki,” he snarled, jerking his head away from hers.

She pulled back slightly until they were face to face again. “You keep forgetting that you’re not in charge anymore, Dennis. So I’ll fuck with you if I want to,” she said, her voice calm and even slightly amused. She dipped her head again and Dennis felt the slick, hot tip of her tongue slide along his neck. It generated a response he couldn’t prevent. Or ignore.

She straightened then and stood before him. Giving a quick glance to his lap, she let out a filthy, wicked laugh and stretched again, this time only for effect. Ending her performance with a melodramatic sigh, she turned on her heel and walked to the door of the security office.

“I’m goin’ to go take a shower, darlin’. You just stay there and make yourself comfortable. I won’t be too long.” She smiled and flirtatiously waggled a few fingers at him, then disappeared.

Her presence lingered in the air as Dennis stared in speechless rage at the empty doorway. The hatred he felt for her defied words. Pulsing in his head was a murderous need to damage her for what she’d done to him and to his universe.

From the edge of his vision, the dull flash of the images appearing in sequence on the monitor’s screen recaptured his attention and, reluctantly, he turned to face them again. The pictures turned Dennis’s stomach but
something, a sense of responsibility perhaps, or the unfamiliar and overwhelming sense of failure, prevented him from looking away. He watched the surveillance footage advance in a slow, staccato slide show, polling each camera in turn and presenting the scenes in full-color, five-second clips. The impersonal stillness of the images was haunting. Only the changing time stamp indicated that the world had not ended for everyone.

Tears filled Dennis’s eyes and dripped unchecked down his clenched, aching cheeks as he looked at the screen. Those people had been his people, his staff, Micki’s colleagues, who only hours before had been highly valued, brilliant professionals working toward a shared goal. Now, their stiff, cyanotic corpses were splayed grotesquely on outdoor gravel paths, across bamboo floors, in desk chairs. The positions of their bodies revealed the horror of their sudden deaths. Each face was frozen in a twisted, terrified rictus. Wide-open eyes bulged. Mouths hung open in screams now silenced or in last, vain attempts to inhale nontoxic air. Heads were thrown back as now stilled hands clawed at throats, leaving darkened, bloody tracks.

What aerobic bacteria that could survive in such a low-oxygen atmosphere had already begun to act upon the flesh and hasten its decomposition. Despite the tropical heat, however, no flies had alighted on the bodies, no ants or beetles or rodents had begun their gruesome tasks. For every animal, bird, and insect had also perished, enveloped by the poison cloud. They lay around the human corpses, just as still, just as silent.

The tapes offered no audio. It was just as well. Dennis knew that the only sounds to be heard beyond the walls of his bunker were the roar of the generators that were extending his own life, the whisper of the deadly wind moving through the fronds hanging limp from the branches of dying trees, and the susurrus of the tainted sea.

He had no idea how long he sat there, watching the endless, hypnotic loop of terrible images, evidence of the tranquil aftermath of unabashed madness.

“They’re dead, Dennis. Get over it.”

Dennis slowly turned to see Micki standing in the doorway. Her thin dress clung to her still-damp body and her hair fell in long, wet curls over her shoulders, dripping strategically onto her breasts and rendering sheer the single layer of fabric that covered them. His body overruled his brain’s revulsion and responded to the sight of her.

She was a damned good-looking woman, sexy beyond reason.

When Dennis pulled his gaze away from the lushness of her body to focus on her face, he saw that her eyes were bright with amusement, her mouth curled in a mocking, knowing smile.

“So, sugar, has the survival instinct started to kick in?” Micki asked, her voice lower, more sultry than it had been a moment before. “I had a feelin’ it might.”

He said nothing, just held her gaze and willed his body to revile her.

“Oh, come on, Dennis,” she said, a soft, cajoling note in her voice as she moved toward him in a languid stroll. “There are only the two of us here, with no possibility of escape or salvation. I mean, if you want to get it all over with, we could go outside and take a deep breath right now, or we could just relax and have some fun while we see what happens.”

She came to a stop with a shrug, and the loose, open neckline of her short dress slid closer to the outer edge of her shoulder.

He curled his hands into angry fists. “You don’t need to get in touch with anyone?” he asked. “Like your
boss
?”

She smiled. “I’m my own boss here, Dennis. But yes, there are people I need to contact. And I already have.”

“I thought you said communications were down.”