Chapter 9
SATURDAY 8:02 a.m.
Stenness, Scotland
The silence was booming.
Curtains subdued the morning sunlight, only allowing it to enter at the window’s perimeter. David rubbed his ears, listening for the sounds of breakfast. No sizzle of ham. No crackle of fried eggs. No one shuffling
around in slippers downstairs. There wasn’t even the hum of an occasional passing car along the street below.
He twisted to see Darwin beside the open door. Curled in
a tight ball, she was asleep. It had taken most of the night for her to calm down. He recalled waking a few times to her whining, but the door was open and she knew how to get outside.
“Darwin?” his whisper cut the dead air.
She was perfectly still.
“Darwin?”
She didn’t move.
“Darwin?”
David jumped from the bed and dropped beside her.
She was tranquil, h
er chest motionless. He watched her, waiting, willing her to move. His throat burned. It was a throbbing ache that threatened tears. He slid his arms underneath her. Her body was limp and cold. Something
had
been wrong with her. The snapping, the lashing out. Her pacing, whining. Why hadn’t he done anything for her?
He lifted her
gently off the floor, holding her body tight against him.
“Marta?” H
is voice tight with emotion.
The house was quiet.
He carried Darwin downstairs. Trace embers remained in the fireplace. The breakfast rolls sat uncovered on the dining room table. The clock on the wall had stopped ticking, the time frozen at exactly 2:00 a.m. He looked at his watch. The hands were suspended at 2:00 a.m.
Dread replaced the lump in his throat.
He set Darwin on the floor.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Hurrying through the kitchen, he continued down the hallway to Marta’s bedroom. He knocked on her door. “Marta?”
He pushed open the door, flinching as it creaked.
Marta was tucked under a thick comforter, her back to him.
“Marta?” H
is voice cracked again.
She didn’t move.
He stepped inside and placed one hand on the innkeeper’s side. “Mart—”
Her body tipped forward. O
ne arm dropped from the side of the bed, and the comforter fell from her face.
David stumbled backwards into the dresser.
Marta’s eyes were open, bulging with unnatural convexity. The skin surrounding them was spotted with an eruption of capillaries like red claws grasping her eyeballs. Her once-blue irises were nearly devoid of color, now a cloudy matter dotted with a few crimson bubbles. Liquid within liquid. Along her cheeks were two trails of blood, starting at her nostrils and soaking her pillow.
David retracted, vomited
. He caught the telephone cord hanging off the dresser with his elbow. The phone toppled to the floor. He picked up the receiver.
There was n
o dial tone.
He
exploded out onto the street.
The countryside was covered with death. Bodies of sheep, rigid and misshapen with rigor, were strewn in every direction. Images of hell burned in their popping eyes. From Marta’s inn to the hills beyond Stenness, the land was entirely wet, wooly death. Morning mist twisted off the earth li
ke apparitions dancing over putrid decay.
He heard a scream. A voice swallowed by the wind.
Where did it come from? There was someone else alive.
David
ran across the road, his mind foggy, his body stumbling over the sheep carcasses. He leaped onto the porch of the neighbor’s house. His fists pounded the door.
The handle was locked.
Grabbing a wicker chair from the porch, he smashed open the living room window. Glass shattered with a terrible crash, falling over him, cutting him. He heard the scream again. He was definitely not alone. He climbed through the window. Up the staircase, he hurdled two, three steps at a time. Panic gave way to dizziness, and with one misstep, he fell and his left knee split apart against the top step. He dropped to the floor, grabbing his leg, trying to ease the searing pain of exploded ligaments. His kneecap dislodged, the bone was misaligned from the rest of his leg.
With a groan, he forced himself to stand.
He limped into the nearest bedroom. A young girl was tucked under frilly sheets. Her hair was a frizzy mess loosely pinned to one side with a pink barrette. Blood trailed from her nose and ears. Her eyes were wide like Marta’s.
The scream throbbed in his ears.
Where was it coming from?
There was another bedroom down the hall. Inside, a man and woman
were dead. Their sanguine fluid soaked the sheets.
David fell against the wall, his chest heaving.
Again, the scream. This time louder, piercing his mind.
He tore downstairs, back through the broken glass, and out into the street. His knee refused to bend. Pain shot up his leg as he forced himself forward. Down the road. Past Marta’s, spinning this
way and that. The only sound now was the biting northern wind.
Finally, a
nother shriek, louder than the last.
It caused him to stumble and fall. His hands scraped
against the asphalt. He hugged his injured leg. Blood soaked into his pants.
The scream circled his head, twisted around his body, and strangled his throat. It enveloped his heart and then pierced it. His logical mind sifted through the chaos, until he shuddered with startling clarity.
The scream was his.
And th
ere was no one left to hear it.
Chapter 10
SUNDAY 1:55 p.m.
Orkney Island, Scotland
“Almost done,” Marek said, making mi
nor modifications on his laptop.
Thatcher squinted, wishing she ha
d remembered her sunglasses.
The uncommonly sunny day cast blinding light off of Sonja’s chrome.
Their sonic pulse generator, a dome-shaped conductor that siphoned into a long cylindrical tube, was positioned on a mount the size of a truck bed and facing west. She was aimed at an array of transducers and microphones that monitored frequency, pressure, and amplitude over a 6-mile area.
Thatcher
stretched her neck until it cracked. She hated it when people did that, but standing over dead birds for fourteen hours meant it was well-earned. Her temples were still throbbing from the strange pressure wave that had pulsed through their testing grounds earlier that morning.
Donovon
turned to Thatcher and winked. His Irish cheeks were as perpetually rosy as his disposition. “All we have to do is reset a few calibrations. Fortunately, Sonja sustained no damage from the ‘resonance echo.’”
Thatcher lifted an
eyebrow. “It was a resonance echo, then?”
“Nobody knows for sure.” Marek shrugged
. He looked over at Bailey, who was kneeling in the grass crouched over a field computer trying to block the sun’s glare from his screen. “We’ll be ready in five, right Ballistics?”
Bailey
didn’t respond. Only in his early twenties, the asocial genius had a handful of Oxford doctorate degrees under his belt: nuclear chemical engineering, applied vibrational physics, fluid mechanics. When it came to weapons technology, he was a complete Anorak. He knew everything.
“Ballistics?” Marek
chucked a pebble at the back of Bailey’s monitor and signaled at Thatcher. “Show some respect, man.”
Bailey looked up from his computer. “Sod off, mate. If you’re in such a hurry, then give me a hand.” He
adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses and tossed a clipboard across the grass to Marek.
Before Marek could grab it,
Thatcher picked it up. She studied the chicken scratch of formulas. “Okay, Marek, four times 6.8 meters squared times the full sphere at r squared…”
“1.8496.” He
could do the math in his head. “That’s Sonja’s sound intensity along the axis of propagation.”
Golke stopped fiddling with the conductor components of the can
non. “In other words, ‘boom.’”
Bailey mocked Golke’s thick Greek accent. “You so funny
, Golke! You try make joke?”
Golke
briefly met Thatcher’s eyes and turned a turnip shade of purple. Although handsome, with a dimpled face and a mane of thick black hair, the scientist suffered from an Achilles’ heel of acne that destroyed his self-confidence. Golke was the newest addition to the team. Hiring a sound equipment technician had been Donovon’s idea. Director Hummer got onboard after learning the engineer was willing to work for free.
Bailey finished calculating the computation. “1.8496.” He nodded at Marek,
minimally impressed.
“How you like them math skills, doc?” Marek wiggled his eyebrows at Thatcher. “And you thought all I was good for was pickin
g up a few dead birds.”
“A few?” She shook her head. “Now I am questioning your math skills.”
“Smart arse,” Donovon chirped as he helped Golke adjust Sonja’s range.
Thatcher’s cell phone rang. She unclipped it from her belt and stepped a
way from the group.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Marek run a finger across his neck, signaling the worst. Hummer’s reaction would depend ent
irely upon his mood, and Hummer was never happy.
“This is Thatcher.”
“Everyone in Stenness—dead,” Hummer’s voice cut out.
“Sir
?” she asked, confused.
“
—shock wave you felt—everyone in Stenness is dead.”
Thatcher looked at Marek,
then at the cannon. She backed away from the acoustic weapon.
“Disarm Sonja immediately,” Hummer ordered. “
We leave for Stenness at 1700.”
Chapter 11
SUNDAY 5:40 p.m.
Stenness, Orkney Island,
Scotland
“Bloody hell!” The Land Rover flattened another sheep carcass on the roadway. Hummer was driving. Armored inside and out, tightlipped and devoid of emotion, he was the perfect military mechanism for suppressing a disaster of this magnitude.
The vehicle reached the hillt
op overlooking Stenness valley.
“Looks like a war zone,” Mar
ek whispered, sitting beside Thatcher.
Stenness
was unrecognizable. Blanketed with sterilized plastic, the out-of-date community had joined the present day in a sudden violent rush. White tents bubbled over the expanse, providing makeshift laboratories, containment rooms, temporary living quarters, and storage for the swarming National Chemical Emergency Centre officials dressed in contamination suits.
“It’s a full deployment.” Hummer’s chiseled frown sagged even lower. “NCEC has garrisoned the place.”
Lee turned off the highway and stopped in the pasture-turned-parking lot.
Thatcher
took off her seatbelt. “Have they found any leads?”
“No
.” Hummer was stone-faced. “And they won’t.”
She sat back. Her heart fluttered with panic. T
ension was building in her shoulders. The whole bloody mess twisted her stomach into knots. Hummer was already certain their team was responsible. She hated to admit the scenario was even plausible. Their test site was nearby, but there were safeguards in place. Testing Sonja at levels that rivaled a disaster of this magnitude was strictly prohibited.
“Suit up,” Hummer said, stepping out
side.
Thatcher zipped up her hazardous materials suit, pulled the bulky plastic helmet over her head
, and exited the SUV.
A
man half the size of Hummer rushed to the group with a digital clipboard in hand. “Are you with NEMA or INTERPOL DVI?”
Hummer shut
the driver’s door.
The man’s eyes darted back and forth behind the glass shield of his helmet.
“Wait, gentlemen!” he shouted at Marek and Bailey as they opened the back of the Land Rover and started removing equipment from the cargo hold. “I need names and authorization before anything can be unloaded.”
Marek
and Bailey looked to Hummer. Hummer waved at them to continue.
The man tittered. “I need the names of your team as well as their credentials, sir.”
Thatcher and Lee kept at Hummer’s heels as he started toward the tents. Thatcher spoke quickly, trying to satisfy the NCEC officer who trailed behind them. “I’m Dr. Brynne Thatcher, NATO Intelligence, a forensic pathologist. This is Strategic Director Hummer.”
The NCEC officer
searched his digital clipboard.
“
That’s Dr. Lee, Assistant Director of the Security Consul, and Dr. Marek and his tech team: Golke, Donovan, and…bloody hell...” She snapped her fingers, trying to remember.
“Bailey.” Bailey scowled.
The officer lowered his digital clipboard, confused. “You’re with what agency?”
“NATO,” she answered.
“NATO?”
Hummer wasted no time. “Thanks for preparing the area. Discontinue all first responder activity and vacate the premises.”
The man dropped his clipboard.
“NATO has
no authority over this incident site.” The NCEC officer grabbed Hummer by the elbow. “This is a CBRN emergency. Stenness is a Level 5, Class 6.2, 606.”
Humm
er raised an eyebrow. The NCEC categorized whatever killed these people as a biological infectious substance. They were either a million miles off target or they’d found contamination.
Thatcher bit her lip.
Let it be the latter
.
Hummer scanned the
area with a look of satisfaction. “We’ll keep the tents, but Lee, I want our lab up and running with a one-way link to NCEC’s intel.” He turned to Thatcher. “I want you in the morgue. Lee will get you whatever you need. The others can help—”
“E
xcuse me!” the officer interrupted.
“And for Chrissake!” Hummer thumbed at the man sputtering behind him. “Find someone other than this plonker to give us a tour of the place.”
****
Thatcher walked
through the morgue behind Hummer and the NCEC’s highest-ranking onsite pathologist. Six rows of gurneys lined both sides of the chilled and pressurized tent. “What is the death toll?” she asked.
“Forty-seven.” The pathologist’s voice was muffled by the heavy PVC of his sealed hazmat helmet. “I’ve only had time to autopsy a few bodies. We sent tissue samples to the lab
, but the onsite facility is limited. I’d wager they’ll find nothing substantial.”
Thatcher bent over one of the cadavers. The body sho
wed no signs of infection. A few burst blood vessels crested the man’s pale skin. She met Hummer’s eyes. He had to be thinking the same thing: subsonic trauma. Sound was a remarkable weapon. It destroyed indiscriminately, leaving almost no signature upon its victims.
“We set up a security peri
meter around the village,” the pathologist continued. “We hope that whatever caused this disaster will be contained.”
They exited the morgue and headed into another tent marked
QUARANTINE. Inside, the walls were protected with extra layers of insulated foam and plastic.
“D
econtamination stations?” Thatcher asked.
The site saf
ety plan called for five exclusion rooms, but they weren’t needed.”
The room was filled with
gurneys and equipment, but empty of people.
“Since we haven’t identified or isolated the sou
rce,” the pathologist said, “I advise you keep protective gear on at all times.”
“Any guesses as to wh
at caused this?” Thatcher was curious about his diagnosis.
“Off the record?”
“Sure.”
He shrugged. “
An infectious agent. I’d say an Ebola-related filovirus or a mutated strain of hemorrhagic fever.” He paused for a moment looking thoroughly confused. “None of the bodies show any cutaneous manifestations, though. There’s blood loss at all orifices, though mostly the nose and ears, and massive internal bleeding. The severity of subarachnoid hemorrhaging is bizarre.”
Hummer looked to Thatcher for a translation.
“Blood surrounding the brain,” she said. “Usually from an aneurysm or traumatic injury.” Hummer didn’t care about the fine nuances of forensic medicine. All that mattered was these were signs of lethal noise.
“It still
doesn’t make sense.” The pathologist shook his head. “The death rate is much too high for a virus. It’s unprecedented, actually. The Sudan outbreak only had a 22% survival rate.”
Thatcher
feigned bewilderment. Acoustic trauma of this magnitude would result in a 100% fatality rate. No questions asked. If her team was responsible, there would be no survivors. End of story.
The pathologist shook his head
, perplexed. “You need to see this.”
He
led them to the back of the room and stopped near a large sliding door. It looked more like an elevator than an entrance into a sealed decontamination area.
“There’s a lift?”
she asked.
“We stumbled upon an abandoned uranium mine while taking soil samples.
” He slid aside the panel door and revealed an elevated metal cage suspended from wires. “It was constructed during WWII. The mine was retired and apparently forgotten.”
He gestured for them to get onboard. Thatcher was hesitant. The rickety machine looked well
past its prime.
“
We fixed the drive motor. It’s a counter-weighted hoisting system with mechanical brakes,” the pathologist insisted. “We reinforced the guide rails. The lift is a bit precarious—especially the cage—but it does the job. There’s a pneumatic rope break system, lighting, and a fully contained airlock system below.”
“Why’d you go through all this trouble?” she asked.
His face lit up beneath his mask. He was charged about something. “I’ll show you.” He stepped inside. The three of them barely fit. “Hold onto the rail,” he said. “The drop is a good thirty-three feet down.” He pressed a button on the inside of the cage. “One push down, two pushes up.”
Thatcher shook
her head utterly confused. Why would they need a bunker three stories below ground?
The car rocked side to side as they lowered into the dark. The flo
or was made of a see-through metal grate. Thatcher had no problem with heights, but it was disconcerting to drop into nothingness. When they reached the floor, the lift came to a hard stop. The tunnel walls were cracked, exposing the aged brick and mortar. Six feet ahead was the first airlock door.
The pathologist
opened the gate.
“I’d like you to meet the
lone survivor,” he said.
Thatcher
’s gaze shifted to Hummer. She must have heard him wrong.
Hummer looked sick
. “
Survivor
?”