Genesis Plague (9 page)

“S
omebody do something!” shouted Levino.

He stood there, staring
at Maria with his mouth open, as her floating chunk of rock sunk lower into the
river of steaming lava. One end of her platform was sinking faster than the
other. It would only be a matter of seconds before the rock flipped over,
spilling her to a torturous death.

“Charge the wolf,
Paul,” said Xander, standing calmly a safe distance away.

I dropped my gear and
ran to the expanding edge of the fissure. More chunks of rock were breaking
free from the wall and sinking into the lava.

“Don’t!” yelled Flint,
but I was already running.

My feet left the ground
as I jumped through the air and smacked into the side of the large chunk of
floating rock.

“
Paul!
”
screeched Maria.

The rocky island was
halfway tilted between flat and vertical, with Maria on what used to be the
top, and me on what would soon
become
the top. She grabbed for my hands,
her manicured nails digging painfully into my skin.

“We have to wait until
my side is almost flat,” I said.

Fortunately, it was
mostly a clean break from the fissure wall, and there was just enough room to
get a running start once the side I was clinging to became the top of the
island.

Maria nodded furiously
and tightened her grip. The island continued to roll over as it sank faster.
Maria scooted up and over the edge, then rested next to me. The side she was
on, the piece of flat ground, was now almost vertical, sinking straight down
into the lava.

I stood unsteadily and
pulled Maria to her feet. Our small island lurched to one side, nearly throwing
us off. I looked at Maria after we regained our balance, and she nodded back at
me as she inched closer to the edge of the fissure.

“We only get one shot
at this,” I said.

“I’m ready,” she said,
her voice quaking.

I led her as far back
on the sinking island as I dared to go, then ran like hell toward the edge,
pulling her behind me. When I hit the end, I jumped, throwing my body with full
force toward the edge of the fissure.

Maria was with me the
whole way, holding my hand. I yanked her past me in mid-air, hoping to add more
momentum.

She hit Cassidy full
force and tumbled with her to the ground.

My chest smacked into
the fissure wall, my arms and head the only things above the surface. My hands
scratched for purchase on the loose ground, but my fingertips only scraped
rough sand and small rocks.

I caught one final
glimpse of Cass and Maria, intertwined on the ground as they rolled to a stop,
before my hands slipped and I fell off the edge.

My arm was nearly
pulled out of socket as I stopped violently in mid-air, ten feet over the river
of lava.

Mike Pahalo strained as
he held onto my wrist with both hands. He was lying right at the edge, reaching
over, his jaws clenched, sweat dripping from his forehead. Suddenly Flint
popped his head over the side and reached down for me. I grasped for him with
my free hand, and he took it firmly in his. Together, he and Mike hauled me up
over the edge.

We collapsed on the
ground, panting. My face was pressed against the searing hot ground, but I
didn’t care. Dirt pushed away from my mouth with each quick breath. A few feet
away, Cassidy sat up, then helped Maria to do the same.

I pushed myself up and
brushed off my pants. Mike lifted Maria to her feet, then nodded at me, jaw
clenched tightly. Cass walked over and put her arms around my neck, and for the
next few seconds, she helped me to forget what just happened.

W
e kept our distance from the river of lava as we traveled the
remaining hundred yards to the entrance of the cave. It was just as I saw it in
Renfield’s pictures: a jagged mouth yawning in the rock, its throat glowing
red.

“Gear up, please,” said
Renfield, already pulling on his opalescent fireproof suit.

I gave my own suit one
last look of trepidation before pulling it on over my clothes. It zipped up the
front to my neck, where the collar formed a rigid, restrictive band around my
throat. The mask had a rubberized strap that slid down behind my head, covering
my ears. The face shield was made from clear, heat-resistant material. A tiny
flame symbol was stamped to one side of the shield along with tiny numbers that
read
350°
.

“How hot is it down
there?” I asked.

“Lava erupts at up to
two-thousand degrees Fahrenheit,” said Flint, grunting as he pulled on his
suit. It was not as forgiving as the custom-made dive suit Pierre gave him on
our last adventure. “Sitting mostly stationary or flowing slowly like we saw in
the photographs, it could be as low as thirteen-hundred.”

“How does that affect
the ambient temp of the cave?”

“It’ll be damn hot,”
said Flint. “I’d say it’s probably upwards of several hundred degrees within a
few feet of the pool. But it drops off quickly the farther away you get.”

“So no touching the
lava,” said Mike.

“Not unless you want
your suit to burst into flames,” said Renfield. “Even these fashionable
creations have their limits.”

Flint finally managed
to zip up his suit. He plucked at the shiny fabric. “I feel like a disco astronaut.”

“You look great,” said
Cass. She already had her suit and mask on, and was tugging on her thick boots.
Then she looked at me. “Nice save back there, cowboy.”

“I would have done it
for Xander, too.”

“I know that, Paul. It
was a genuine compliment.”

“No passive-aggressive
mind games?” I asked, smiling.

“Would you believe me
if I said no?”

“Do you people always
talk this much?” asked Xander. He stood at the mouth of the cave, waiting
impatiently. “I thought you were scientists, for God’s sake.”

“Scientists don’t have
voices, Mr. King?” said Levino. He looked up from his struggle to pull on his
boots and noticed that Xander was near the cave. “Well don’t let
us
keep
you.”

Xander’s eyes narrowed,
then he turned quickly and stepped down into the tunnel.

Maria walked past me,
fully suited. She touched my shoulder and said, “Thank you, Paul.”

I finished tugging on
my second boot and stomped down to settle it into place. When I stood up
straight, Cass was in front of me, holding her hands under her chin and batting
her eyelashes.

Thank you, Paul
,
she mouthed dramatically, before closing her eyes and kissing the air in my
direction.

I smiled sheepishly as
she followed Maria into the cave tunnel.

Dan Grayson was
checking the contents of his sample case when I walked over.

“Got any specimen kits
for the small stuff?” I asked. By ‘small stuff’, I was referring to any
microorganisms living on the rocks in the cave. It was all well and good to
come back up top with a handful of wriggling slugs, or whatever they were, but
I’d be damned if I wouldn’t have anything to study with the others besides what
I could scrape off the bigger creatures.

He handed me a small
box with a clear plastic lid. I opened it up and found a metal scraping knife
and a sealable petri dish, as well as a small wand that shot out a purple light
when I pushed a button. It looked like something you would find in the kiddie
science section of a toy store. I turned to Dan skeptically.

He shrugged. “It was
really short notice.”

With that, he closed
his sample case and entered the tunnel.

“Let’s hit it,” Flint
said. He slapped my shoulder and guided me toward the cave.

T
he tunnel descended rapidly through solid rock, curving slightly
to the right as it delved deeper into the side of the volcano. I walked
carefully behind Flint, trying my best to step where he stepped. The mask made
it difficult to look down at my feet, but the ground was more or less even in
this section of the tunnel.

The red glow
intensified as we neared the mouth of the cave, and the temperature in my disco
heat suit rose slowly. It wasn’t breathable fabric to begin with, so it might
have just been my exertion from the descent warming the suit.

As we rounded a sharp
bend in the tunnel and emerged into the cave, I realized it wasn’t just my own
body heat making me sweat.

The cave was about a
hundred feet wide past the entrance, and it extended another three hundred,
toward the core of the mountain. A wide pool of molten rock was on one side of
the large underground cavern. Small domes of lava swelled up from its shifting
surface – bubbles that burst with the slow heaviness of paint.

The rock pillars that
appeared in the photographs were much more detailed in person. Deep pits and
long grooves scarred their surfaces from top to bottom. Perhaps Flint knew the
reason.

The ceiling height
varied from about seven feet near the cavern entrance to roughly twelve feet
out over the lava pool. Shelves of jagged rock jutted out from the walls on all
sides; thin trails of white smoke rose lazily from the ones nearest the exposed
lava.

Flint hummed to himself
as he moved quickly to examine one of the support pillars. The others were
spaced about the cavern, engrossed in their own examinations. Maria and her new
diversion, Mike, were crouched near the wall to my right, prodding one of the
wormlike creatures with a tongue depressor. After my eyes adjusted to the dim
light of the cave, I saw that the walls were dotted heavily with the little
organisms.

Cass was a few feet
away, standing tiptoe under a stalactite as she tried to prod one of the slugs
into the palm of her gloved hand.

Levino, Renfield, and
Grayson spoke excitedly a few feet away from the perimeter of the lava pool,
occasionally pointing at a large rock nearby. The rock was a long, flat oval,
with rounded edges, like a sealed tube that had been pressed down from above.
Its surface was peppered with small granules of rock, but was otherwise smooth.
The slug-like creatures were more prevalent on the rock, clumped together in
patches.

I saw no sign of
Xander.

“Paul, come take a look
at this,” said Maria.

I squeezed Cass’s
shoulder as I walked past toward Maria, but she had succeeded in guiding one of
the slugs onto her palm, and I could have been halfway around the globe for all
she knew in that moment.

 Mike scooted over to
make room and I crouched between him and Maria near the wall. There were
several slugs on the rock in front of us. One was at the edge of a small jagged
protrusion, seemingly looking in our direction. The fleshy tubes clustered on
its head wavered slightly as it stretched its two-inch body toward us, clinging
only by its back third to the rock.

“I think he likes you,”
said Mike.

Maria held up her
wooden tongue depressor. “Watch this,” she said.

There was a coat of
fine fur-like hairs lining the back of the slug, each tipped with a bright spot
of green. Maria gently moved the tip of the tongue depressor over the hairs of
the slug. She withdrew, and the hairs shimmered, like tall blades of grass in a
wind-blown field.

“You know what this
reminds me of?” she asked.

“The Pompeii worm you
mentioned earlier.”

“Exactly. It’s uncanny,
really.”

I leaned in for a
closer look. I had to be careful not to breathe too hard or else I would fog my
mask.

The slug on the rocky
protrusion turned its small head toward me, as if sniffing the air. The tiny
hairs on its back wavered and dance.

“How do they survive in
here?” asked Mike. “What do they eat? Each other?”

“Maybe, but unlikely,”
I said, squinting at the slug. “The Pompeii worm lives near hydrothermal vents
deep in the ocean and can survive in extreme temperatures. It secretes mucus
from its back, and this mucus feeds the bacteria which live on its hairs. The
bacteria then provide a kind of heat insulation for the worm through the
proteins they excrete. Symbiosis at its most elegant. Something like that could
be going on here.”

“But what do the
slugs
eat?” asked Mike.

“Presumably,” said
Maria, “some microscopic element we haven’t identified yet. Maybe sulfur or
carbon dioxide.”

“You think they could
be chemosynthetic?” I asked.

Maria sighed. “We would
know more if studying Pompeii worms and similar organisms wasn’t so difficult.
They don’t survive decompression.”

“What does that mean?”
asked Mike.

“They pop when they hit
the surface,” I said with a smile.

“How long can these
have possibly been in here, surviving without any outside interference?” asked
Maria. She held out her tongue depressor to the slug and it slowly crawled onto
the flat wooden surface. “The polychaetes I’m used to dealing with have been
around since the Cambrian era. I can’t guess this little guy’s age just yet,
but I bet we’ll find it has been relatively unchanged for hundreds of thousands
of years, if not tens of millions.”

“Why would you need to
evolve if you have everything you need to survive?” I said. “They somehow have
a fully-functional ecosystem in here, with no need for adaptation. It’s like a
perfectly-preserved glimpse into the distant past.”

“What are those little
tubes on its head?” asked Mike.

“That’s the other thing,”
Maria said. “Polychaetes are usually marine-dwellers. If we were underwater, I
would say that cluster on its head is a collection of gills. In this case, I
would guess it’s some kind of sensory organ.” She suddenly jumped in surprise
and held the tongue depressor away from her body “Hey, look!” There was a soft
hissing sound and the wood beneath the slug began to smoke. “It’s burning
through the wood!” she said. “But how?”

“Some kind of
secretion.”

The tongue depressor
broke off beneath the slug. The creature fell three feet to the rocky floor and
splattered as if it had jumped off a tall building.

“Soft little guys,”
said Maria.

“
Ow
!” shrieked
Cassidy.

I stood quickly and ran
to her. She was next to a large stalactite, holding her left wrist, flexing and
relaxing her left hand. There was a circular burn mark in the palm of her
glove, and her exposed flesh was bright red. On the ground near her feet was a
splat mark where the slug landed.

She breathed quickly
through clenched teeth.

“You should be more
careful,” said Xander from across the cavern.

He was standing near a
dark crevice in the wall, which was just tall and wide enough to be the
entrance to a passage leading farther into the cave. He had several small
sample tubes clenched in one hand, filled with a substance I couldn’t identify.
He watched us intently.

“Are you alright?” I
asked Cassidy, holding up her hand and studying it.

“Fine, I think,” she
said. “The thing was crawling all over my hand, and then suddenly it started
oozing this slime. Next thing I know my palm is burning.”

“It’s happening over
here too,” said Flint loudly. He stood near the wall, looking at a dozen slugs.
Each one had a shining corona of slime beneath its foot.

“Amazing,” said Maria.

“Some kind of conditioned
response to danger,” I said. “Triggered by pheromones, perhaps. Seems rather
advanced for a bunch of slugs.”

“Not really,” said
Renfield. “Certain trees will release warning chemicals to other nearby trees
when it’s under attack by insects. Great white sharks will vacate an area for
weeks or more if the blood of one of their kind hits the water. It’s not that
far from likely.”

I walked over to the
wall near Flint and held up my petri dish below one of the slugs. I used the
small metal blade to scrape some of the excreted goop into the dish. There was
a quick hiss, like a drop of water hitting a hot skillet, but then nothing. I
sealed the petri dish and watched it for a moment to make sure the slug
excretion would not melt through, then I walked over to Grayson near the lava
pool.

He was kneeling next to
his open sample case, filling as many compartments as he could with individual
specimens. I handed him the petri dish and he slipped it back into its space. I
noticed a slight tremor in his hand as he closed the sample case.

“Everything okay, Dan?”

“Low blood sugar,” he
said with an apologetic grin. “Forgot to bring a granola bar.” The skin below
his eyes looked slightly swollen, and the corner of his eyes were bloodshot.

“Looks like fatigue as
well,” I said.

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t
be the first time.”

“Hey, Paul,” said
Levino from nearby. “You need to see this.”