This Green Hell

* * *

‘How is she?’ Alex asked Aimee.

Franks’s unconscious figure lay on the low bunk in Aimee’s cabin. In the opposite corner of the room, Chaco and Saqueo sat huddled together, long ago having given up the struggle to sleep. Both boys watched Alex — Saqueo with curiosity, Chaco with distrust.

‘She’s fine,’ Aimee said. ‘If I hadn’t sedated her, she’d be up and trying to resume duties. I put a temporary balloon stent into her windpipe to re-dilate it, and I’ve removed the tube and stitched the wound. It’ll hurt like hell for a few days, and she won’t be able to manage solid foods, but at least she can breathe easily now. She was very lucky.’

Alex kneeled down beside the sleeping HAWC and tilted her head. Her entire neck was bathed in dark iodine, even though the wound itself was tiny. But Alex wasn’t interested in the field tracheotomy — he’d seen plenty before; instead, he examined the large bruises all around her throat. He remembered the immense strength of the man, or thing, that he’d fought. Not a man, he’d told Sam. But what then? he wondered.

Aimee kneeled down beside him and placed her hand on his arm. ‘I saw him, Alex — Gonzalez — he looked like he was trying to bite you. I think he’s gone insane. I’m scared for all the men he’s taken. There’s a rare condition called porphyria that can affect sufferers in different ways. In acute cases, the symptoms are sensitivity to sunlight, muscle- and bone-lengthening, especially around the skull and teeth, and, in the extreme cases, psychopathic behaviour. There are medical records linking the condition to the original legends of werewolves and vampires. You know, we’ve never seen Gonzalez during the day.’

‘Porphyria … vampires?’ Alex continued to stare at the marks on his HAWC’s neck. He knew that madness, and some drugs, could give a person almost superhuman strength, but he had felt something else lurking within the man. The tiny grey tendril that had extruded from the strange mouth to … what? Taste his flesh? He shuddered and looked at the cracked ceramic plating on his right glove. The priest should have been dead after his first strike. Not a man, he thought again.

‘We’re going out tomorrow to find the priest and bring all your men back,’ he told Aimee. ‘I’ll need you to —’

‘Good. I’m coming with you.’ Aimee stood up and folded her arms.

Oh, great, he thought. ‘Okay, but get some rest. Sam and I are leaving at about 0700 hours. I’ll call in for you then.’

Aimee’s eyes went diamond hard. ‘Like crap you will. You’ll leave earlier than that and leave me behind. I know you Alex. I’m coming and that’s that. You’ll have to tie me up to make me stay here.’ She paused, perhaps thinking she shouldn’t have mentioned that idea. ‘Look, I can show you where we found the Green Berets’ bodies,’ she went on. ‘And besides, you know I’ll just follow you anyway.’

Alex thought for a few seconds; he believed her — she would follow them. He stood and tilted his head back with resignation. ‘0600, be ready.’

Aimee stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. ‘See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it, Captain Hunter?’

Alex smiled. ‘You win this time, Miss Pushy, but I reserve the right to take you up on that offer to tie you up if you get us into trouble.’

Aimee smiled and her blue eyes seemed to darken. ‘Get me home first.’

* * *

Alex needed to call Hammerson; the satellite would be in a transmission intersect now and he had to meet its sweep window. There would be no rest for him after that; he’d stand watch until it was time to depart. His body was on fire with energy, and sleep would not come, or be needed, for days.

He scanned the surrounding wall of dense vegetation and tried to feel for the presence of Gonzalez. There was nothing. The jungle was loud with the sounds of the night — which was good. It was when the creatures shut down that he needed to worry.

He had one last stop to make before the contact with Hammerson. At the door of the Vargises’ laboratory cabin, he took a disposable face mask off a hook and pulled it over his face. He paused for one last look around the smoke-filled clearing. The rain was still falling, and he was glad for the frond mat that Tomas and the men had laid down.

He knocked and pushed open the door. The two scientists were still in their bio-hazard gear. Maria greeted him, but returned immediately to the microscope. She looked tired and her normally perfect hair was in slight disarray.

Michael sat back in his chair and gave Alex a weak smile. He looked pale, Alex thought; too pale.

‘Progress?’ He didn’t have time for pleasantries; events were moving too fast for politeness or politics.

There was silence for a few moments, then Maria pushed her chair back and ran her hands over her hair. ‘The bacteria is immune to significant heat, and moves far too rapidly for a natural immunological response. We’re not even close to a vaccine. We need a full-sized lab and about a month.’

‘Is there anything we can use?’ Alex asked.

Maria shrugged. ‘There are no more infections, so we figure it’s spread by insect vectors — the smoke and DDT did their job. And the men in the isolation cabin are all dead and … gone.’ She went back to looking through her microscope.

Alex felt a small ball of annoyance in his gut. He inhaled slowly, calming himself.

‘I think cold slows it down,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe at low enough temperatures, it could even kill it.’ His voice sounded phlegmy.

‘That’s something — how can we use it?’

Maria looked up. ‘We can’t. The temperatures needed to terminate the bacteria would also explode human cell walls. You’d die about the same time as the Hades Bug did.’

Michael coughed and Maria looked across at him, as if really noticing him for the first time. ‘Michael?’

Alex stared hard at the man, using his enhanced senses to pick up the poison in his system. ‘He’s sick … infected.’

‘What? No!’ Maria jumped to her feet so fast her chair toppled over backwards. She moved quickly to Michael and tore off her glove, intending to place her hand on his forehead.

Alex grabbed her wrist. Close up, he could see the dark veins in the young man’s eyes.

Michael held up his hands to ward Maria off. ‘Forget it; I’ll be dead in a day.’ He dropped his head into his hands for a moment, then sat up, sniffing back tears. ‘I knew it wasn’t just fatigue, but I hoped …’ He looked miserably at his mother. ‘I don’t want to end up like the men in the cabin. Can you give me something … so I just go to sleep?’

Maria turned to Alex. ‘How are the generators holding up?’

Alex realised what she was thinking. ‘Sedate him,’ he said.

‘No, please,’ Michael said. ‘There’s no cure — just kill me.’ He went to get to his feet, but Alex put one hand on his shoulder.

Maria had filled a syringe from a small amber bottle; now she plunged it into Michael’s arm. In a few seconds, he was slumped back in his chair. Alex wrapped him in a sheet from one of the cots, lifted him like he weighed nothing, and took him to what had once been the camp’s mess cabin. Nestled between a coffee machine and a soda machine was an ice chest. Alex used one hand to lift the lid and shoved the unconscious scientist in among the ice. As Michael’s body settled, Alex sensed the deadly bacteria coursing through the young man’s system; he doubted he’d make it.

Maria stood staring down at her son for many minutes. Alex could hear her saying something under her breath; Greek, he assumed. Finally, she turned to him with a look of weariness on her face. ‘Twenty-four hours and there’ll be a solution. I guarantee it.’

* * *

As the rain continued, puddles formed beneath the mat of fronds covering the campsite. The dried black stains moistened, then thickened. After another hour of the soaking rain, the black shapes were able to slide across the wet ground to find each other.

The viscous puddles became pools. Living pools.

A hungry mewling swelled the air, inaudible to human ears.