Genesis Plague (11 page)

T
he tent where we held our first meeting after arriving at base
camp had been rapidly converted into a makeshift lab, complete with a row of
high-powered Motic digital stereomicroscopes, a centrifuge, and an incubator.

Cass was already
hunched over one of the microscopes, moving a sample plate slowly under her
view. Grayson wasn’t in the tent, but his sample case sat open on the table,
the
Loasis
specimens slowly sliming their way around their sealed tubes.

Renfield and Levino were
huddled together, speaking in hushed, hurried tones. I caught snippets of words
like ‘publish’ and ‘award’, and then:

“Dan already performed
the initial test, Roger,” said Renfield. “We’re talking about a natural
antiviral compound, the kind that comes along once a millennia. No more flu, no
more Ebola. This could be the one.”

“Now, now, let’s not
get ahead of ourselves,” said Levino, but he couldn’t keep his voice from
wavering with excitement.

Flint stood at the printer
in the corner, reading from a sheaf of paper that had spooled out during our
visit to the cave. A string of seismometers and tilt-meters scattered around
the volcano fed constant data to the camp. He lifted his reading glasses to
squint at a graph, then lowered them again and continued down the sheaf.

Cass looked up from the
microscope slowly, her hair falling down to cover her eyes. She removed her
current slide from the microscope and inserted a new, blank one.

“What’s up, Cass?” I
asked, but she ignored me.

She rapidly unwrapped
her wounded hand.

“Hey,” I said, stepping
toward her.

The flap of the tent
burst open behind me and Dan Grayson entered, followed closely by a woman I
hadn’t met. She was young, about his age, with long black hair tied back in a
ponytail. Both of them looked exhausted, with dark circles under their
bloodshot eyes. Dan pushed past me, toward Renfield.

“I’m telling you, I
feel fine,” he said, without looking back at the girl.

“That’s not what you
said ten minutes ago!” she protested. “Come on, Daniel—”

Renfield cleared his
throat loudly and the chatter ceased. “This is Sarah Wynorski, my other
assistant,” he said.

She became timid the
moment she noticed everyone else in the room. She grabbed Dan’s hand and pulled
him close to her. “I just think you need to take it easy, that’s all.” Then she
kissed his forehead, and he sighed.

“I think Sarah’s right,
Dan,” said Levino. “Everyone is exhausted. We can handle things for a little
while here if you want to rest. I promise we won’t make any groundbreaking
discoveries while you’re asleep.”

Dan wanted to protest,
but Sarah was already dragging him back out of the tent, into the rain.

“Hey, Paul,” said Cass.

I walked over to where
she was bent over a microscope. She moved to the side and nodded for me to look
in.

“What’s this?” I asked,
putting my eyes to the sights.

“The stuff that oozed
out of the
Loasis
specimens.”

She had returned her
original slide to the microscope. The light beneath the glass illuminated a
clear splotch of gelatinous goop, smashed down by twin transparent plates. I
twisted the focus dial on the side of the scope, and the image shifted from a
blurred landscape to one of sharp clarity.

There were short, solid
black lines, almost like grains of rice, sprinkled throughout the sample. Those
didn’t concern me – they were probably inorganic or some sort of food source
for other bacteria.

What concerned me were
the tiny, bisymmetrical shapes I saw moving in the liquid. Each had two
identical icosahedral heads, like multi-sided dice, connected to a straight
shaft which terminated in a collection of long, spiderlike legs.

“Is that what I think
it is?” asked Cass.

I couldn’t answer right
away. My brain was stuck trying to process what I was seeing.

“Paul, am I right?”

“Viral,” I said, my
voice croaking. “The specimens are infected.”

“I
t’s not airborne,” I said quickly, holding up my hands to calm
everyone down.
Not yet
, I wanted to add, but I figured it was best to
leave that out for now. “From what I can see here, the virus is inert. The
downside is that there’s no way to know its trigger, if it has one at all.”

“What do you mean by
trigger?” asked Levino. He looked shocked, as if he had just witnessed a
horrible accident.

“Look, I’m just telling
you what I see
right now
. There is nothing to indicate an airborne
pathogen, and there is nothing to indicate the virus is active in its current
form. And there’s more. Renfield mentioned the presence of an antiviral
component. If I had to guess, this component is why the
Loasis
organism
is a host instead of a victim. There’s just no way to tell with this equipment.
I need to get it back to the lab and get it under the SEM.”

The university’s
scanning electron microscope was the best way to see the details of whatever
needed a closer look, so I could figure out what we were dealing with.

Cass shook her head.
“And we brought it out of that cave.”

“What the bleeding
hell
are we supposed to do now?” shouted Levino, his face red and sweaty. “Call
the CDC? Won’t they shut this whole thing down? I mean, Jesus, we need to think
about containment protocols. and quarantine. We have a responsibility to the
people! We can’t just—”

“I don’t think the
Center for Disease Control needs to be involved,” Xander said silkily,
appearing at the entrance to the tent, his clothes dripping from the rain. His
cheek was bright red where I punched him. “You don’t want this discovery taken
out of your hands before you have a chance to study it, do you? Don’t think it
wouldn’t happen. They would lock you up for months to make sure you weren’t a
threat, and by the time you got out, there would be no more specimens. Besides,
no one is showing any signs of infection, are they?”

“What would that even
look like?” asked Levino, suddenly frightened. “Paul! Have you seen anything
like it before?”

I looked in the scope.
“There are a few trademark qualities for your average DNA virus, but with key
differences.”

“Such as?”

“Dual heads instead of
one. The tail sheath is longer, with more legs at its base, but with less
flair
,
for lack of a better word. Much more utilitarian, almost basic in its
construction. I won’t know more until we get it to the lab, but I would guess
we’ll find that it predates what we’re used to seeing by a wide margin.”

“Meaning what,
exactly?”

“It’s primordial. Not
of our time. We’re dealing with a virus that has been unchanged since before dinosaurs
walked the earth, and maybe even before that.”

I turned to talk to
Cass, but she was gone. My stomach dropped when I noticed that Xander was
missing as well.

 “The symptoms, Paul!”
said Levino. “What are the
symptoms
?”

“There’s no way to
know, if there are any to begin with. As I said, the virus could be completely
inactive.”

“What a nightmare,”
Levino said darkly, turning away.

Sensing a chance to get
away, I hurried toward the exit and pushed open the canvas flap, using it as a
shield against the heavy rain, which slapped the wet ground, spitting mud into
the tent and soaking my ankles.

Cass and Xander were in
heated conversation by the SUVs fifty feet away, almost lost to sight in the
rainy gloom. She was slapping her palm with the back of her other hand
repeatedly, engrossed in some violent explanation, while Xander listened with a
grim countenance.

I took a step away from
the tent, but Flint called out, “Paul.”

I hesitated when I
heard the dread in his voice. He stood at the printer, papers in hand, his face
drained of color. “It’s Mauna Loa, Paul. I think she’s waking up.”

He brought the paper
over to me. A long graph was printed on a single sheet of spooled paper.
Flint’s chicken-scratch handwriting punctuated certain areas, outlining tall
peaks on the wavering graph.

“Until about ten
minutes ago,” he said, showing me a flat piece of the graph, “everything was quiet.
But now…” He quickly spooled through the long roll of paper, stopping over a
flurry of activity on the graph. “Now I’m seeing multiple microquakes all over
the place, the strongest near the region of the cave.”

“You mean where Xander
detonated some kind of explosive device.”

“That’s the one.”

“But we were seeing
this kind of activity when we arrived.”

“Nuh-uh. You see this
line, here?” he said, pointing to a thin line, independent from the others,
rising steadily across the graph.

“Yeah…”

“That’s median seismic
resonance for the entire monitored area. The whole mountain’s shaking, Paul,
like a loose lid on a boiling pot. I’m telling you, we don’t have much time.”

“You hear that, Doc?” I
asked Levino, but my question was moot.

He was already busy
packing up the specimen case and scooping up piles of loose paper.

“Let’s call for a plane
and get back to the observatory. I want to get to the mainland as soon as
possible.”

“They might not fly in
this storm,” said Renfield, grabbing up whatever lab equipment he deemed most
important.

“They damn well
better,” said Levino.

I hurried out of the
tent, into the rain. Lightning cracked through the gray sky above, illuminating
the camp with a bright flash.

“Cass!” I shouted.

I did a quick lap of
the camp without finding her, then I ran to the SUVs. Mike and Flint were
already there, loading equipment into the white Jeep. Levino and Renfield
arrived and opened the back of a black Mercedes SUV. They gently secured the
sample case into a padded crate.

“Has anyone seen Cass?”
I shouted over the rain.

They all shook their
heads, no.

The rain was coming
down in a thick sheet, turning the air a soupy gray. The sky was quickly
darkening, even though the sun was well above the horizon.

I cupped my hands to my
mouth as I ran back into camp and yelled for Cassidy, but there was no
response.

Then I noticed Xander.
He stepped out from a cluster of trees near the parked vehicles and began loading
equipment into a gray Nissan Xterra.

I ran over and grabbed
him by the collar.

“Where is she?!” I
shouted.

Lightning flashed,
illuminating the pouring rain. Xander’s white teeth glowed in the dim light.

“Having women problems?”
he said loudly, shoving me away.

I stumbled back, my
feet sinking into the soggy ground, then rushed him again. He grabbed me by the
neck and spun me into the side of the SUV. He drove a knee into my groin and I
crumpled, hitting the dirt like a sack of potatoes. He knelt down as I tried to
breathe, and spoke loudly.

“If I were her, I would
have left you a long time ago.”

He spat on my cheek and
stood, then climbed into the Nissan and fired up the engine. Before I could
scramble to my feet, he floored the gas and fishtailed out of the makeshift
parking lot, spitting mud all over me.

I watched his SUV until
it was out of sight, expecting to see Cass banging against the rear window,
trying to get free.

I saw nothing.

I ran into the trees
where I saw Xander emerge, searching for any sign of Cass. I found a small,
trampled area of ground and a few cases of ruggedized electronic gear, but
nothing to indicate Cass had been there.

I stumbled back into
camp while the others continued to load the Jeep and the Mercedes. Maria ran
out of a tent and into the heavy rain, shielding a satellite phone under her
shirt.

“They say no more
flights!” she shouted. “We’re stuck here!”

“Go tell
them!
”
I said, pointing at Renfield and Levino as I walked away, shouting, “
Cassidy!
”

I hurried through the
camp, looking in all the tents. The other teams had cleared out while we were
still coming down from the cave, taking all of their expensive equipment with
them. I had just ducked into our makeshift lab when there was a
CRACK
outside louder than any thunder I’d ever heard.

“
Paul!
” Flint
screamed.

I ran out of the tent
to see a fat stream of bright, red-orange lava spit out the side of the
volcano, directly over the cave. The fissure that covered half the mountain, all
the way to the peak, shimmered for a split second, almost like a mirage, and
then it exploded outward in a vertical fan, painting the entire volcano a
brilliant red.

The fan flattened out
as it fell, then smacked the ground violently and rolled down the side of the
volcano, directly toward base camp.

“We need to get the
hell out of here!” shouted Levino. He climbed into the passenger seat of
Renfield’s SUV and slammed the door. Dan Grayson and Renfield’s other
assistant, Sarah, jumped into the back seat.

“Wait!” I yelled, running
over. “Did you see Cass?”

Renfield slammed the
back door of the SUV.

“Yes, yes!” he said
hastily. “She went—”

Another tremendous
BOOOOOM
shattered the air, and I couldn’t hear the rest of his sentence. A spigot of
lava erupted from the side of the volcano and splashed down into the growing
river on its side.

When I turned back,
Renfield jumped into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and shut the door.

“No, wait!” I shouted,
but he was already driving away.

“Cass!” I yelled again,
though my voice was drowned out by the thunderous explosions from the erupting
volcano. Lava sprouted from the vertical fissure, pumping out as if from a
ruptured artery. The massive outpouring formed a wide river that slid quickly
down the mountain.

Flint ran up and pulled
at my arm. “Paul, that shit can move up to forty miles an hour, and man,
we
need to go now
!”

I yanked my arm away
and shouted for Cassidy again.

She didn’t answer.

“Why would she leave?”
I yelled at Flint. I wiped rain from my eyes, but more poured in. “Where did
she go?”

Flint grabbed my arm
again. “She’s a smart girl, Paul. She knows what she’s doing. She wouldn’t
stick around here, not now.”

“Cass,” I called again,
this time weaker.

Flint pulled me back to
the white Jeep, where Maria sat in the back seat, shaking. Mike was behind the
wheel, slapping the side of the vehicle anxiously.

“Let’s
go
!” he
said.

Then the volcano was
quiet for a brief moment, and we all turned to look. A flash of lightning in
the dark sky, a crack of thunder, and then silence again.

“Oh, shit,” said Flint
quietly.

The ground vibrated
under our feet. There was a long, steady groan from the mountain, like a
gigantic beam of wood twisting and bending until it almost broke.

With an earsplitting
sonic boom, the top of Mauna Loa exploded. A shimmer of expanding air pressure
surged out from the volcano in a sphere, briefly clearing the sky around the
peak of the volcano. Chunks of rock flew off in every direction like meteors,
trailing fire and smoke. A mushroom cloud of black ash roiled up from the torn
peak, billowing upward to mix with the sky above. Blue lightning cracked like
spiderwebs through the ash cloud.

As if a pent-up fountain
had been suddenly uncorked, lava surged through the jagged peak in a pillar of
fire, shooting up like a beam aimed for heaven. The widening fissure on the
side of the volcano disappeared under a cascade of molten rock as the liquid
pillar fell to earth, consuming the side of the mountain in seconds.

Flint managed to shove
me into the passenger seat and shut my door before jumping into the back.

“
Gogogo
!” he
yelled.

Mike slammed down on
the gas pedal and we speed away from camp, and from the rapidly-approaching
lava slide.

As we bounced over the dirt
path, my right hand brushed the small padded box in my pocket. I felt its
square outline through my jeans, then leaned over the side of the Jeep and
vomited. I had picked up the ring right before the trip to hunt for the lost
treasure of the
Antigua
. It was a center-cut amethyst surrounded by a
ring of diamonds, on white gold.

Because amethyst was
Cassidy’s favorite.