The strip mine cut like a gash through the verdant wilderness. Acres of natural beauty had been torn away to expose barren ridges of rock and soil. Ugly metal structures crouched upon shelves of naked bedrock that had been carved, blasted, and bulldozed into the side of the mountain. Shanty towns spilled down the slopes, providing housing for the thousands of laborers toiling in the hot midday sun. Mining, for copper, zinc, nickel, and other minerals, was a growing industry in the Philippines, but it came at the expense of the nation’s precious flora and fauna. Instead of abundant greenery, the mining complex was dirty, brown and lifeless. Serizawa winced at the damage done to the environment. The older he got, the more he thought that Nature was sometimes best left to its own devices.
His eyes narrowed as he spied what appeared to be a caved-in section of the mine. This was what had drawn him to this desolate location, all the way from his native Japan. He eyed the collapsed mine with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The early reports had hinted at something truly remarkable, well worth this exhausting journey. Serizawa couldn’t wait to see for himself.
The chopper touched down on a flattened stretch of mountaintop, not far from the cave-in. Outside, sweaty laborers operated mucking loaders, scoop trams, and other heavy machinery as they hurriedly excavated loose gravel and sludge from the collapsed mine. The logo of Universal Western Mining was emblazoned on the machinery. Filipino workers backed away from ‘copter, raising their arms to shield themselves from the dust and debris thrown up by rotors’ wash.
Finally, Serizawa thought. He unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed stiffly out of the ‘copter, followed by his colleague, Dr. Vivienne Graham. An attractive Englishwoman in her thirties, she had a dark brown hair cut sensibly short. She had been at Serizawa’s right hand for many years now. Her practical attire was rumpled from the trip.
Three other members of their team also exited the chopper and immediately got to work unloading duffel bags and gear. Serizawa took a moment to get his bearings. It felt good to set foot on solid ground and stretch his legs again. He glanced around, looking for someone to escort them to the discovery.
“Doctor Serizawa!”
A stocky, middle-aged American emerged from the chaos surrounding the mine, shouldering his way past busy workers and machinery alike. Perspiration shone on his ruddy face and had soaked through his clothes. Serizawa recognized the man as Oscar Boyd, one of the men in charge of the mining company. He and Serizawa had been in touch earlier.
“Thank God you’re here!” Boyd shouted over the whirr of the rotors. He joined Serizawa and his team. “It’s just a mess, I’m warning you. Just a total mess.”
A squad of armed guards, toting automatic weapons, accompanied Boyd. The men had the stony expressions and ice-cold eyes of hardened mercenaries or guerillas. Not exactly the most reassuring of welcoming committees. Serizawa and Graham exchanged worried looks. The presence of the guns and guards was unnerving, but they had come too far to succumb to second thoughts now. Serizawa trusted that the soldiers were only on hand to provide security, even if the amount of firepower on view struck him as excessive.
“They picked up a radiation pocket out here last month,” Boyd said, getting right down to business. He sounded anxious for whatever advice and assistance the scientists might be able to offer. Serizawa’s understanding was that Boyd was from the company’s main office and had not personally been on hand when the disaster struck. He sounded flustered and out of his depth. “And got all excited thinking they had a uranium deposit. They started stacking up the heavy machinery and…”
As he spoke, he guided them down a slope toward a nearby ridge. Serizawa stepped carefully over the rough, uneven terrain.
“The floor of the valley collapsed into the cavern below,” Boyd continued. “Just dropped away. Best guess right now is about forty miners went down with it.”
He stepped aside to let Serizawa and the others see for themselves. The team found themselves on a rocky ledge, looking out over the valley below — or what was left of it. A jagged chasm, at least a hundred feet long, had swallowed up the floor of the valley. Mangled machinery, shacks, boulders, and other debris could be dimly glimpsed within the shadowy rift, which appeared to descend deep into the Earth. Serizawa gazed down at the wreckage for several moments, taking it all in, before speaking again.
“I need to speak with the survivors,” he said.
A tin-roofed storage facility had been converted into an impromptu triage center. Dozens of injured and dying workers occupied rows of cots. Serizawa saw at once that all of the men were suffering from severe radiation burns. Blisters and ulcers and raw red patches afflicted their flesh. Some were still conscious, while the luckier ones had been rendered oblivious by morphine drips. Agonized moans and whimpers echoed off the walls of the building, whose sweltering atmosphere lacked any sort of air-conditioning. Doctors and nurses, overworked and overwhelmed, moved briskly among the rows of patients, doing what little they could to relieve the men’s suffering. Unlike their patients, the relief workers had donned hazmat suits for their own protection. Gas masks covered their faces.
Still in his traveling clothes, Serizawa felt uncomfortably exposed.
Graham inhaled sharply beside him, taken aback by the scale of the tragedy. Serizawa shared her horror. From what he could see of the men’s burns, few of the miners would last the week, while any survivors would be doomed to years of complications, cancers, and deformities before they finally succumbed to the radiation’s pernicious effects. His heart went out to them, knowing there was little that could be done for them at this point.
Steeling himself against the heart-rending sights and sounds, Serizawa approached one of the patients. The man’s face was so badly swollen that he looked barely human. Scorched skin peeled and blistered. His hair was falling out. The burns and swelling made it impossible to determine the patient’s age, but a glance at his chart revealed that the dying miner was only twenty years old.
So young, Serizawa thought, even as he forced himself to focus on the task at hand. Now was no time for sentiment. He needed hard data and information if the root cause of this catastrophe was indeed what he suspected. Many more lives might well be at stake.
One of his aides had rescued a portable radiation detector from their supplies. The handheld device included an external wand. Serizawa unslung the detector from his shoulder and switched it on. Drawing nearer to the cot, he pointed the sensor at the patient.
The detector clacked rapidly. The needle on the monitor spiked upward, into the red zone.
Serizawa backed away warily, alarmed by the results. He flagged down one of the busy nurses, whose face was largely concealed by her gas mask. He grasped the shoulder of her hazmat suit.
“Can you ask this man what happened?”
The nurse nodded. Leaning over the patient, she spoke to him in Tagalog. A hoarse, whispery voice escaped his cracked and swollen lips, but was far too faint to make out. She leaned in closer as the man repeated himself, gesturing feebly at Serizawa with a bandaged hand.
“He says,” the nurse translated, “that people like you… you came here, you raped the earth. You tore holes in her flesh… and now she’s given birth to a demon.”