“Baby, calm down.” Feeling anything but calm himself, Tennessee fought to reassure her. “Just calm down. Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”
Just barely under control, Faris yelled back, “Don’t tell me to calm the fuck down! You didn’t see… what I just saw. And I have no goddamn idea what he’s got. His back blew out and sprayed blood and crap all over the place, and I don’t know if Karine’s got the same thing, or if I’ve got it, or if…”
“You’re breaking up, Faris.” Panic began to grip him. “Can you read me?” He leaned toward the console pickup, as if the few additional centimeters might somehow bring him closer to his wife, bring him nearer to the storm-shrouded surface below.
“Please,” his wife said, her call barely intelligible, “help us…”
Signal went to zero, and no amount of cursing or pleading could bring it back.
XI
As soon as surface-to-orbit communications went down, Faris turned her full attention to the medbay monitor. It showed Karine, exhausted as she was, working hard to secure a safety strap around Ledward’s waist. He was trembling violently, the out-of-control convulsions having relapsed into wild shivering.
Without slackening her efforts, the scientist shouted in the direction of the AV pickup.
“Faris! What are you doing? Get down here! We need to IV him and I can’t do it by myself; he’s too strong and he’s still moving around too much. Help me!”
With a last, lingering look at the silent surface-to-orbit comm, Faris bolted from the bridge. Once back outside the medbay, she stopped at the sealed door to peer through the port. Having momentarily resumed functionality, Ledward’s hands were now tightly gripping the edge of the med table. His back facing the door, he began to secrete a watery, bloody liquid from his spine.
Where was Karine?
Faris lurched back as the other woman’s face abruptly appeared at the port. The biologist was in shock. Or something worse. Audio picked up her words from the other side. Her tone was flat, stunned.
“Let me out.”
A hard lump formed in the pilot’s throat. She didn’t quite whisper a response.
“I can’t do that, darlin’.”
Both Karine’s expression and voice went wild. “Let me out of here! Please! Faris, for god’s sake, open the door!”
Tears began to trickle from the pilot’s eyes. She did not reply.
Outside, a blood-red sun was setting. Between the lowering sun and the ever-present mist, darkness descended like a blanket over the expedition team as they hurried back toward the lake. As soon as they were able to make out the lights of the lander in the distance, they quickened their pace.
By now Hallet was unable to walk on his own. Supported by Lopé on one side and Walter on the other, he gasped in pain with each step. Trying to manage by himself, he broke away from his helpers only to fall to his hands and knees. Bloody fluid dribbled from his mouth and nose and he choked, trying to clear his throat. As Walter looked on, Lopé bent beside his companion.
“Come on, Tom. You can do it.” Looking up, the sergeant gestured ahead. “See? There’s the lander. See the lights? We’ll get you into medbay, fix you up.”
Coughing and wheezing, Hallet shook his head. “Sorry… I can’t. So sorry, Lopé…”
“Let me out of here! You fuck!”
Within the lander, Karine was banging both hands on the medbay door. The biologist was one scream shy of lapsing into unrestrained hysteria. Faris struggled to keep her voice even.
“You know I can’t do that.”
In the face of her friend and colleague’s panic it was all the pilot could do to hew to procedure. Everything she had seen since Karine and Ledward had returned to the lander cried out for quarantine. If things improved, she would be happy to open the door. Relieved, overjoyed.
As the situation stood now, opening the door to Karine would mean opening it to the unknown. And the unknown, in the person of Private Ledward, needed to be walled off and shut away until it could at the very least be better understood.
Karine knew that better than anyone, Faris told herself, but it was easy to follow procedure when you were standing on the safe side of the medbay door.
A rattling breath from the med table caused Karine to turn. Ledward was lying on his stomach now, still gripping the sides of the table, trying to suck air while wailing like a wounded animal in its final death throes. Maybe, she told herself, the infection, or whatever it was, would play itself out. Maybe it would behave something like the ancient, long-eradicated malady called malaria, where the victim suffered terribly for a short while, only to recover with no apparent after-effects.
Still scared but forcing herself to keep it together, Karine walked back over to the table. Ledward, she reminded herself, was the one who was ailing. Not her. There was nothing wrong with her. Physically, she felt fine. As an experienced researcher she should know better than to give in to panic. She should be observing, making mental notes to set down later in the expedition’s permanent record.
Without knowing what afflicted him, there was little she could do to help. Given his unpredictable bursts of convulsions, and without Faris’ assistance, she couldn’t even get an IV into him. She told herself that in his current state, an intravenous soporific might even do him more harm than good.
“Shhh.” She did her best to sound reassuring as she approached the table. “You’re gonna be okay. It’s Karine here. I’m with you, honey.”
She had no way of knowing if he could hear her, and if he could, if he was able to understand her words. But in trying to soothe him verbally she felt she was at least doing something. Gritting her teeth, she reached out and placed a hand on his back. For a moment it seemed to steady him.
Encouraged, she applied slight pressure.
Two ivory-white spikes shot upward from his back and rib cage, bursting out between her splayed fingers. Shocked into immobility, she could only stare as his entire back ruptured, the split rib cage spreading in opposite directions as if pulled apart by a pair of giant hands. Fountaining blood gushed over her, causing her to stumble backward, one hand feeling for her own mouth.
A placenta-like sac oozed from the now-dead private’s insides, rising and expanding from his back like a fleshy balloon. She screamed and flecks of blood flew from her lips. Ledward’s blood.
Ripped open from within, the sac tore lengthwise. The creature that emerged was small, about the size of an ordinary house cat. With its white, almost translucent flesh and elongated, vaguely humanoid skull, it was a choice vision from Hell. Mucus and bits of dead Ledward dripped from its head and flanks.
As it rose, limbs unfolded from joints, revealing slender arms and legs glistening with slick afterbirth. A long, pointed tail uncoiled. There were no eyes or ears, but a small puckered circle indicated the presence of an as yet unformed mouth. The skin was smooth, slick. A nauseatingly sweet smell, like the aroma of a bad narcotic, spread through the medbay. While blood continued to pump from the private’s destroyed body, the flow began to slow.
Not quite dead but much less than alive, what remained of Ledward abruptly jerked forward, then contorted backward across the med bed. Tumbling off but still halfway held to the platform by the single safety strap around his waist, he twisted once again. A single loud report filled the bay as his back snapped.