The Mad and the MacAbre (21 page)

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to scare him off.”

“
Hopefully we’ll see him
again.”

He was angry she’d startled Oscar to flight,
but if she hadn’t done it, he probably would have. After surviving
in the wild for so long, the cat had become feral, tapped into his
primitive instincts. The idea of catching him was a fool’s
proposition.

“
We will,” she said,
wrapping her arm around his back beneath the rifle.

Gabriel hugged her around the shoulders.
Without having said so, he knew she understood what he was trying
to do with the cat. He gave her a gentle kiss on the bridge of her
nose.

“
I suppose we should hit
the trail again,” she finally said.

“
Yeah,” he said,
reluctantly releasing her from his embrace.

He helped her into the backpack and followed
her to the edge of the woods toward the path. She turned around and
smiled. His heart fluttered. He couldn’t help but wonder what the
future might hold for them back in the real world.

***

Just over two hours later, they were both
beyond the point of exhaustion, but they were too close to stop
now, and in no position to do so regardless. The sharp, snowcapped
peak loomed over them from above, a fin of white blowing from the
pinnacle. Their zigzagging ascent had brought them to the point
where they now had to crawl around tree trunks that grew at bizarre
angles from the steep embankment. If a path existed somewhere
beneath the snow, they had long since lost it. They had to be close
to the hot spring by now. The abrupt transition from forest to bare
rock at timberline was perhaps a quarter-mile above them and the
satellite image had shown just a hint of water through the
overhanging branches.

Gabriel’s heartbeat was racing and his
thoughts were a blur. He both hoped to find some sign of his sister
and dreaded the possibility at the same time. The urge to turn
around was now more pressing than his will to continue on, but one
glance back over his shoulder, down what appeared to be a deadfall
into the valley now hidden by snow, and he knew he had no choice
but to proceed.

The wind shifted and pelted him in the face
with ice crystals, and something else…the familiar stench of rotten
eggs. Sulfur.

“
Do you smell that?” he
called to Jess, who was just up the slope to his right. Beyond her
was a cloud of mist. No, not mist. It was steam.

She turned at the sound of his voice and he
saw the look of recognition on her face. She had seen it too.

They scrabbled over the crest of a stony
knoll and stared down into a small crater, at the bottom of which
was a pool of murky gray water, barely visible through the swirling
steam. Sliding down the slick, granite slope, they stood at the
edge of a small pool no more than twelve feet in width and twenty
feet long. The smell of salt and dissolved minerals washed over
them, something of a cross between a marsh and the ocean. Tiny
bubbles rose to the surface, like a pot of water only beginning to
boil. Uneven stones lined the bottom, covered with a thick layer of
hairy moss. The snow melted in the steam and fell to the spring as
droplets of rain.

“
How hot do you think it
is?” Jess asked.

“
Most geothermal springs
are between ninety-seven and ninety-nine degrees.”

“
Were it not for all the
slime on the bottom, I’d climb right in.”

Gabriel thought of the strange bacteria they
had found on Nathan’s femur and shuddered at the idea of them
crawling all over his skin. He walked around the side, careful not
to slide off the uneven rocks into the water. If he did and his
boot became soaked, there would be no way to dry it and he’d end up
losing his foot to frostbite. He scrutinized the choppy surface and
the crevices between the stones beneath for any of the telltale
signs of the presence of haloarchaea. Granted, they were making an
assumption about the unique microorganism, which appeared to be the
same as that which had arrived fossilized on the meteorite from
Mars, based largely on the physical resemblance to haloarchaea, but
the composition of the celestial rock and the known qualities of
the soil on the fourth planet made it a sound correlation. Perhaps
this new species didn’t have the same need for ultraviolet
protection, and hence wouldn’t necessarily produce the same
red-tinged pigments. After all, if they were correct about its
origin, Mars was hundreds of thousands of miles farther away from
the sun, the source of the radiation. Maybe it simply didn’t need
to—

Gabriel stopped and crouched right at the
edge. Steam billowed in his face, momentarily warming his cheeks
and stinging his eyes. He waved it away and looked deeper into the
water. There was a crevice between two jagged rocks, a slash of
blackness from which a steady stream of bubbles flowed. And lining
the rocks was a thin layer of scarlet, tight lips around the mouth
of the geothermal fissure.

“
Well, what do you know,”
he whispered.

Jess knelt beside him and followed his gaze
into the murky water.

“
That red stuff,” she said.
“That’s what we’re looking for, isn’t it?”

Gabriel nodded. He wished he had some way of
excising a sample of the bacterial growth so he could study it up
close. It was staggering to think that these microscopic creatures
may have originated across space on a planet that hadn’t seen water
in eons. If that was indeed where they had been spawned, then how
had they managed to survive the journey? The only other example had
been fossilized in a chunk of rock. Maybe what they were looking at
now was simply a variation of a naturally occurring species of
haloarchaea.

“
Do you think this is where
the mountain lion found Nathan’s bone?” Jess asked.

“
It’s possible.” Until that
point, he had been specifically looking for the proliferation of
microorganisms, and not for human remains. “I didn’t see any other
bones right off, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any down there
covered in algae.”
They walked a complete circuit of the spring, often stopping and
crouching to get a better look at something on the bottom, until
they finally returned to where they started.

“
Nothing,” Gabriel said.
Though disheartening, it was still a relief not to have found any
skeletal parts. It allowed them to cling to the grain of hope that
somewhere their sisters might still be alive.

***

Gabriel sat on a stone at the edge of the
steaming pond and poked a long branch down into the water. He
scraped a section of the red growth off of one of the rocks and
held it up so he could take a closer look. It was just like any
sample of pond scum in texture: slimy, phlegm-like. There were
striations, almost as though countless organisms had aggregated
into long strands that stuck together to form a sludge. Part of him
wanted to believe that these microorganisms had traveled from a
distant planet to populate this spring, but they appeared too
ordinary. And generally, the answer to any scientific question was
the most obvious one. He was probably just staring at an unnamed
species of haloarchaea, and nothing more mysterious than that.

Tossing the stick back into the water, he
remembered the verse Jess had quoted from the blog. Thou art the
anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast
upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the
midst of the stones of fire. Even studying the red rocks in the
water now, he had a hard time imagining anyone calling them “stones
of fire,” even metaphorically.

He rose and ascended the slope to where Jess
stood between two tall pines, staring out over the valley through a
gap in the branches while talking to Cavenaugh on the
walkie-talkie.

“
That’s right,” she said.
“There’s nothing here.”

“
You’re sure you found a
geothermal spring and not just a freshwater pond?”

“
Please.”

“
And you’re certain you can
see that red bacteria down there?”

“
For the hundredth time,
yes. We found the hot spring. There’s all kinds of red slime around
what looks like where the water comes in, but no sign of human
remains.”

Only a crackle of static responded.

“
We’re almost to our
destination now,” Cavenaugh finally said. “Maura, how far out are
you guys?”

“
We’ve got to be close. We
can’t see anything yet, but we can definitely smell it.”

“
Excellent. Report back as
soon as you’re there,” Cavenaugh said. “Jess. You and Gabriel hold
your position until we both check back in, and be ready to move in
either direction should we find anything. Out.”

Jess sighed and shoved the walkie-talkie
into the backpack again. She looked out over the distant stream a
moment longer before turning to face Gabriel. A gust of wind blew a
sheet of snow between them.

“
Looks like the storm’s
getting—” Gabriel started, but Jess silenced him with a sharp
look.

Their eyes locked and she steered his gaze
to his right. She whispered the word “Slowly.”

He nodded his understanding and unhurriedly
turned around. At first he saw nothing but the cloud of steam
rising from the spring, until the wind shifted and he momentarily
had a clear view of the water and the far bank beyond.
Heavily-needled pines shivered loose a shower of snow, which
descended as sparkling bits of glitter onto the shrubs beneath. And
there, under the cover of a juniper, was a small orange shape with
green eyes and one pricked ear.

“
Toss me one of those
granola bars,” he whispered, fearing even the slightest movement
would send Oscar hurtling into the underbrush. He heard the
rustling sound of Jess rummaging through the bag, and then the soft
tap of something hitting the ground at his feet.

Gabriel never allowed his eyes to stray from
the cat’s as he crouched and grabbed the bar. He had to glance down
at the wrapper to tear it open. When he looked back at the forest,
Oscar was gone.

He cursed under his breath and watched the
tree line a while longer before returning to Jess, who must have
read the expression of disappointment on his face.

“
He followed us this far,”
she said. “You’ll get your chance sooner or later.”

He smiled at the sincerity of her words and
squeezed her hand. She smiled back, and he caught a glint of what
might have been mischief in her eyes.

“
Don’t look now,” she said,
“but I think our furry friend’s overcoming his shyness.”

Gabriel turned to his left, and there was
the orange tabby, standing right at the edge of the forest, thick
winter coat spotted with clumps of snow.

Oscar sat on his haunches, cocked his
lopsided head, and let out a meow.

***

The cat cautiously crossed the icy rock
ledge to where Gabriel knelt with a chunk of granola held as far
away from his body as he could manage. Jess crouched beside him
with another piece of the broken bar at the ready. As Oscar drew
near, his haunches trembled, but he pressed on. Once he was within
three feet, he paused, then darted in, took the granola, and
scampered back out of range. Only this time, he didn’t disappear
into the woods. He dropped his meal onto the ground and positioned
himself so he could watch them while he ate.

After he crunched down the last morsel, he
inspected Gabriel, who was already offering another bite.

A burst of static from the walkie-talkie,
and Oscar was gone.

“
Shoot,” Gabriel
said.

“
It’s progress,” Jess said
as she produced the communications device from the
backpack.

The buzzing sound continued until she walked
away from the thicker canopy toward the valley slope where the
trees thinned significantly.

“…
here now.” Cavenaugh’s
voice took form from the white noise. “It’s roughly the size of a
swimming pool, but I can’t tell how deep it is. The water’s fairly
cloudy. I can maybe see the tops of some rocks…and they’re red. We
definitely have confirmation of the bacteria.”

“
We’re here now too,” Maura
said. “This one is much smaller. Roughly ten feet in diameter, but
it looks really deep. There are all kinds of tiny bubbles, like the
water’s carbonated or something. I just…can’t see the bottom.
There’s a lot of red stuff though. There’s a ring on the rocks all
around the spring. It looks like some kind of sludge. Even the
water has a pinkish tint to it.”

Gabriel looked at the spring behind him and
then back at Jess. A knot of tension tightened in his gut.

“
They’re only on the other
side of the mountain,” Jess said. “Why would there be so much more
bacterial growth?”

“
Did you say pink?”
Cavenaugh asked. “We’re getting a lot of feedback on our end. There
are only a couple rocks with that stuff growing on them here. Do
you see anything else, Maura?”

“
It’s too deep to tell.
Will broke a branch off a tree and tried to reach the bottom, but
just ended up losing the stick. The spring itself is recessed into
what almost looks like a crater. There are fairly steep, slick rock
walls all around it. We’re surrounded by a ring of pine trees so
large their branches nearly touch across the water.”

“
Do you see any bones,
Maura? Any sign that they might have been there?”

“
No. Nothing.
Wait…”

Gabriel heard the muffled sound of Will’s
voice, too far from the microphone to be intelligible, a click, and
then dead air. He looked at Jess, whose eyes reflected the anxiety
that rose within him.