This Green Hell

‘Hmm, anyone else and I would be suspicious of their motives, Captain Senesh, and perhaps their … manipulations.’ She heard him sip again. ‘You can have your extra time, but bring me something soon … or I’ll send you something, Addy.’

The line went dead, and Adira pulled the small PDA comm away from her head. She tapped her chin with it for a few moments, musing for the hundredth time on how she might either get into the deep facility or get Hammerson to talk, or perhaps even ask Alex Hunter to tell her about the Arcadian blueprint.

If she had been sent on the mission to South America and been able to spend time alone with the man, she might have found out what she needed. There was a connection between them; they were friends. He may even have told her about it voluntarily.

She slid the back off the PDA, pulled the small chip free and replaced it with its standard HAWC chip. She put the removed chip between her back teeth and bit down hard, crushing it, then spat out the fragments.

As she headed back to the barracks, her mind was still working furiously. Being inside the tent wasn’t working; maybe it was time to try going outside. She cursed Jack Hammerson again — he was her greatest roadblock to success.

Two of the recent HAWC recruits fell in behind her and started making comments. The term Jewish princess floated in the air, spoken deliberately for her to hear. Her fists balled. You do not want to piss me off today, she thought.

The men trailed her into the barracks. Adira pushed open the doors into the large, relatively empty rec room. The catcalls from behind became louder as she went to the centre of the floor, rolling her shoulders and flexing her hands, still keeping her back to the men.

Normally, she would have ignored them — they were insignificant, little more than a distraction to her mission plan. But her anger was already at boiling point following her conversation with the general and the knowledge that she had limited time to achieve her aim. Alex Hunter, her reason for joining the unit was being kept from her; the information she needed on the Arcadian Project was out of reach; and Jack Hammerson was holding her in an operational suspended animation. And now she had to deal with a pair of silly children who might have distinguished themselves as SEALs or Rangers, but would probably last an hour in the deserts of Southern Lebanon, and less in a Gaza spiderhole.

She heard them getting closer, their footfalls loud and clumsy. How could these fools ever work with Alex Hunter? They aren’t worthy of him.

A hand alighted on her shoulder.

When she turned, she didn’t see two young men; she saw Jack Hammerson laughing at her. Her anger boiled over and she acted.

* * *

When Zac Ingram regained consciousness, he tried to move but couldn’t. Vision slowly clearing, he realised he was looking through one eye only. His face, chest and groin all hurt. In fact, there were few parts of his body that didn’t.

Slowly turning his head to the left, he could hear the metronomic hiss and pump of a respirator. Denny Wilson was in the bed next to him, purple-bruised eyes taped shut, a breathing tube taped into his mouth. Both arms were in casts and he seemed to be missing a chunk of skin from his forehead.

Zac groaned and looked up at the hospital ceiling. Slowly, a picture drifted into his mind.

The Jewish woman turning — the ferocity on her face — the speed with which she moved. She had knocked them both down, then allowed them up — just to knock them down again.

He moaned as a wave of pain rippled across his bruised diaphragm. ‘Who the fuck is she?’ His voice sounded funny as he spoke the words aloud, and he realised all his front teeth were missing.

TWENTY-ONE

The scientists made their way to the makeshift laboratory that had been set up in Francisco’s old hut. Aimee pulled the gun from her waistband and handed it back, butt first, to Casey Franks.

Franks shook her head. ‘Keep it.’ She pointed her thumb over her shoulder back towards the isolation hut. ‘Bad in there?’

‘Thanks,’ Aimee said, tucking the pistol back into her pants. She looked at the tough woman, wondering what she should tell her. Franks raised her eyebrows in anticipation of an answer.

Fuck it, Aimee thought, we’re all in this together now.

‘Casey, there’s an alpha-terminal micro life form at work here — one that literally breaks down the human physiology. The symptoms are unmistakable — human biological material conversion to a liquefied substance in a matter of hours. We don’t really know what it is, how it spreads, or how to stop it. What we do know is it’s infectious as all hell. So if you see anyone weeping black tears, stay the fuck away from them.’

Casey stopped walking for a second, one side of her face pulling up in a grin. ‘Ooookaay; I’m guessing it’s pretty bad then.’

Maria and Michael had already entered the lab. Aimee paused with her foot on the step. ‘Best if you stay out here, Casey. Don’t want you weeping black tears if anything goes wrong.’

Casey spat out her gum. ‘Not a chance. Didn’t you know? HAWCs don’t cry.’ She winked and followed Aimee into the small room.

The Vargises had already unpacked the samples and set them up in a portable isolation cube: a collapsible perspex square with side-attached gloves, and a lens fitted into the top so either a camera or microscope could be attached. Maria fixed a single large electronic eye onto the top of the cube then fed the cable back to her computer. Michael busied himself with the samples, dripping and scraping specimens onto slides and lining them up so Maria could pass the lens over them.

Aimee moved some of the scientists’ other gear out of the way to make space for herself and Casey. ‘Oof … wow, what’s in here?’ she asked when she tried to lift a metallic suitcase.

‘Leave it,’ Maria said. ‘It’s X-ray material — the lead shielding makes it cumbersome.’

She watched Aimee put the case down before turning her attention back to the microscope.

‘Good to go,’ Michael said, pulling his hands from the cube’s gloves and sitting down in a chair close to his mother.

Maria typed a few commands and the wriggling, spinning life forms jumped into focus. She moved across the different samples, enlarging, clarifying. The forms became more animated the more liquefied the flesh samples became.

Maria folded her arms and sat back. ‘Well, your little Hidden Key is bacterial all right, and it’s big, perhaps one to one-point-five micrometres. I’m guessing peptidoglycan bacterial walls given the cross-linked polysaccharides. Michael, take a look — see the protective rigid S-layer covering the outside of the cell? Going to be a tough little bastard with all that organic armour plating.’

She increased the magnification slightly on a section of one of the microorganisms and shook her head. ‘You know, just when I think I know what I’m looking at, I see something else that makes me think this thing doesn’t belong here at all.’

Aimee frowned. ‘You mean, on the surface?’

Maria shrugged. ‘No. I mean anywhere.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘Look, a single flagellum gives it mobility, but only when in suspension … And there, another smaller one; rigid — not sure what that’s for — could it act as a potential virulence factor?’

She sat back again and Aimee crouched down to look at the computer screen. ‘Well, it’s big enough that we can trap it,’ she said. ‘Filter it out maybe?’

Maria and Michael talked together in rapid Greek, completely ignoring Aimee for a few moments. At last, as if suddenly remembering the question, Michael said over his shoulder, ‘You’re right; it’s enormous — way too big to pass through skin. It’d need to enter via the respiratory system, the eye or any other orifice, or perhaps an open wound. A vector could probably inoculate it directly into the body — and round here there’s no shortage of biting