Genesis Plague (7 page)

A
piece of paper labeled SAN FRAN was taped to the entrance to
one of the white tents. I held aside the canvas flap door for Cass, then followed
her in. It was noticeably cooler inside, though the temperature felt like it
was still in the mid-80s.

“Ah, good,” Levino
said. He sat behind a folding table in the middle of the spacious tent, next to
an older man with a shock-white beard and a Hawaiian shirt plastered with
colorful flowers. “This is Dr. Renfield from the U.S. Geological Survey here on
the Big Island. He’s the one who called me, initially. We studied together
under the old regime.”

He patted Renfield on
the back, who chuckled at the private joke.

Flint stood in the
corner, squinting through his reading glasses at a long sheaf of paper covered
in tiny squiggled lines that hung from a standing printer. He continually
mumbled numbers under his breath as his eyes scanned the data, but he grunted
acknowledgment in my direction.

Cass and I shook hands
with Dr. Renfield, and he motioned for us to take the two empty folding chairs
across the table from him and Levino.

“I’ll just go ahead and
cut the mystery right out, shall I?”

“That would be nice,”
said Cass. To me it sounded like
You’re damn right you will
.

Renfield picked up a
small pen-shaped device on the table and clicked a button on one end. A
rectangle of light appeared on the inside wall of the tent behind him. I looked
back at the entrance to see a small projector bolted to a tent support just
over the canvas door. Renfield clicked the button again and a picture of the
nearby volcano flicked onto the screen.

“Late yesterday
afternoon,” he said, “Mauna Loa was hit by a series of subterranean tremors.
Nothing major. They had a median range of 1.7 on the standard Richter scale.
Shortly afterward, a much larger, isolated tremor rippled through the north
side of the volcano, causing the fissure you see here.”

He clicked the button
and image of Mauna Loa changed. The previously green and brown, gently-sloping
north face was now an open wound, glowing with red-orange light from
underground magma flow.

“Fortunately, my team
was already headed down to base camp when the split occurred, or else who knows
how many of us would have been swallowed up by this beast?”

Cass and I shared a
quick glance.
Beast?
she mouthed.

“At any rate,” Renfield
said, “once the tremor subsided, we hurried to the bottom of the fissure.”

He clicked through the
next series of photographs rapidly. There were close-ups of the ground next to
the opening, charred black from the heat. Jagged, rocky walls dropped ten feet
to a river of molten lava. A bush near the fissure burned violently, whipping
around in the strong wind.

“And then…we saw
this
.”

Renfield clenched the
pen device for emphasis and clicked the button. The new image on the screen was
a muddled oval of rocky shapes, with a deep shadow in the middle.

“A tunnel,” I said.

“Yes. Large enough for
two people to walk abreast. You can see, there, that the pathway forms almost a
natural stair, as if custom-made for exploration.”

“How long is the
tunnel?” asked Cassidy. Flint paused his data analysis and watched Renfield
intently.

“Roughly thirty feet
deep.”

“And it’s that wide the
whole way?”

“All the way to the
cave, upon which it opens.”

Click
.

The next image showed a
man descending the tunnel, flashlight in hand. The rocky wall smoked with heat.

“My assistants
descended. That’s Dan Grayson in front. Sarah Wynorski is holding the camera.
The soles of their shoes began to melt,” Renfield said, his voice thick with
disappointment. “Or else they would have stayed longer.”

As he clicked through
the images, the tunnel opened onto a rocky cave, with a large lava lake
covering half the floor near the back. Pillars of rock supported the roof, from
which long stalactites hung like daggered chandeliers.

In the next image, Dan
Grayson was pointing to a spot on a rock a few feet away.

“What is it?” I asked.

Click
.

The image changed to
show a slug-like creature that looked more like an alien than anything that
belonged on Earth. In the next image, Dan was holding his index finger steady
next to the thing. Judging by the scale in the photograph, its furry body was
approximately two inches long, a mix of charcoal and gray, bisymmetrical and
lined with dual fans, almost like the ridges that make up the foot fringe of
certain slugs and other gastropods. A cluster of lumpy protrusions were
situated near what I assumed was its head – perhaps some type of sensory organ.
Its “tail” tapered to a rounded point, punctuated with a dark, circular mark
near the very end.

There was a brief flash
of light and the image on the screen disappeared as the tent flap opened behind
me.

“He is pointing,” said
a familiar female voice, “at
Polychaeta Loasis
. Ain’t she beautiful?”

Cassidy’s mood darkened
instantly. She didn’t need to turn around to see who it was. Nor did I, for
that matter, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Well, now,” said Maria
Fontaine as we made eye contact. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

M
y gaze slowly drifted over to Levino, who shifted uncomfortably
in his chair. I realized he knew she was going to be here, just like
he
probably realized I would never have agreed to come if I knew in the first
place.

Maria flipped her long
black hair over her shoulders and stood with her hands on her shapely hips,
surveying the room. She was a shade over five-feet tall, a little less slender
than Cassidy, but by no means thick. She still fell firmly into the beautiful
category. The only thing about her that had changed since the last time I’d
seen her was the amount of makeup she wore. Of course, she was photographed a
lot more these days, so I guess it paid to be ready at any given moment.

She snapped her fingers
at the canvas door and Mike Pahalo hurried into the tent, carrying a folding
chair. He opened it up and set it down next to me, then stepped back. Maria
gave him a quick slap on the butt before she sat, and Mike grinned.

“Thanks, sweetie,” she
said. Then she looked past me, at Cass. “Who’s this? Kind of young, don’t you
think, Paul?”

“Look who’s talking,” I
said, nodding toward Mike. “I was wondering how he clawed his way onto a job
like this. Now I see it was you doing the clawing.” I looked over at Levino.
“And now
you
see why this is a bad idea.”

“Just making
conversation,” said Maria. She was more brash since we last spoke, more
dramatic. She sighed and languidly holds out her hand toward Cass. “I’m Maria.”

“I know who you are,”
said Cass, not shaking the offered hand. “I read your book. You look thinner in
your author picture.”

Maria made an amused
hissing sound, like a feral cat, and settled back into her chair.

Renfield cleared his
throat. “As I was saying, we had no time to study the creature and no time to
collect a sample, as we were unprepared for an encounter with a biological
specimen. And now that Dr. Reynolds is here,” he said, nodding at Flint, “we
can continue.”

“What do I have to do
with a slug?” Flint asked from the corner. An unspooled mound of paper covered
his sandaled feet, and he clutched a stack in each hand.

Maria leaned forward.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that, Flint?”

Flint grinned. “Nice to
see you again, too, Maria.”

Those two always got
along – sometimes a little
too
well, as I was fond of saying when they
ganged up on me during a discussion-turned-argument.

Levino rubbed his eyes
tiredly. “The insurance company won’t let us go back into the cave unless we
have a volcanologist to survey the site and approve its safety.”

I laughed. “Insurance?
You’re kidding.”

“It’s a serious
consideration, Paul,” said Levino.

“We should have never
told your university about it until we had a chance to make a full
examination,” grumbled Renfield.

“And,” continued
Levino, “it’s the only thing keeping the rest of those goons outside from
storming up the mountain to steal our find. Teams from Maui and San Diego are
already out there, preparing expeditions, and I’m sure they’re already
contacting national papers to reserve a spot on the front page next week. We
were lucky your treasure-hunting billionaire had such a fast plane, or else the
other geologists would have arrived first. And that’s not to mention that shark
Xander King. God knows how long a simple thing like insurance restrictions will
keep him at bay. He was practically salivating when he found out the real
reason we’re here. Which is another thing! I don’t know how the hell word got
out, since only a few of us knew about it in the first place. I want you all to
be extremely tight-lipped after you ascend.”

“So you don’t really
need me or Cass,” I said. “Just Flint, for the insurance.”

“Don’t be a child,”
Levino said. “It isn’t just about the
slug
. There is bound to be a
myriad of unknown microscopic organisms in that cave, untouched for millennia.
This is an entire ecosystem that has developed independently from everything
else on the planet. And I can always send Riley’s team, if you feel so
underappreciated.”

I smiled.

“So what is
she
doing here?” asked Cassidy, jabbing a thumb at Maria.

“Her name carries a lot
more weight than any of ours,” I said, trying to puzzle out the answer myself.

Levino sputtered. “You
think I would bring Maria here just to be photographed? That I don’t respect
her opinion as a scientist? Or
any
of your opinions, for that matter?”

I shrugged. “Let’s just
say I’ve noticed your tendency to…how shall I put this…
consider
all the
angles.”

“None of that answers
my question,” said Cass.

I gripped her thigh
under the table, then turned to Maria. “
Polychaeta Loasis
,” I said,
repeating the scientific name she gave the slug. “I’m guessing you think it
shares some connection with the organisms that are found around deep-sea
vents.”

“I
know
it
does,” she said with confidence. “
Alvinella Pompejana
, specifically.”

“
Alvi
-whatsis
Pompe-
hoosy?” said Flint.

“The Pompeii worm,”
continued Maria. “Roughly the same size as our new friend, with several other
striking similarities. It can survive temperatures up to almost two-hundred
degrees Fahrenheit near deep-sea vents.”

“It’s much hotter than
that in the cave,” said Flint.

“Which is why we need
to get back there as soon as possible and get a specimen sample,” said Maria.

Levino stood up and
looked at all of us. “So why the hell is everyone sitting around? Go make
history.”