Deep Forest (138 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (View user info) at 2006-11-20 15:11:42 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
When you go on expedition to the South American rainforest, you expect to see some crazy sights. Whether it's bugs the size of your hand, or a tree that looks like it could eat you, or even just a real-life monkey, you know there's going to be something there that will blow your mind.
But for some people, that's just not good enough. For some people, it's all about individuality, seeing things that no person has ever, and I do mean ever, seen before. It's the hunt for extraterrestrial life, except you never have to leave the topsoil.
I like movies. I see a lot of them. That's why I feel the best way to describe the sensation is by using an example from "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." Not a particularly great movie, I know, but stick with me:
The basic premise of the movie was that a mad scientist kidnapped two of every animal, and was going to shoot them into outer space in a gigantic Noah's Ark-esque rocket ship, while blowing up the Earth at the same time. Kind of a fresh start sort of thing.
Long story short, the heroes foil the plan, but not after the rocket is launched. So in order to save the animals, they're all ejected in little escape pods, which gradually float back down to Earth, creating this amazing image of thousands of species gently fluttering down in a massive sky-exodus. The heroine has a chance to photograph this once-in-the-history-of-mankind event, but instead takes a picture of the hero.
The memory was so important, so life-changingly influential to them and them alone, that they felt they could not share it with the world. You might call that "greedy," they called it "special."
Get my point?
No?
All right, we were it in for the money. Whatever. The government writes some sweet, sweet grant checks for finding a new species, and we wanted in.
I mean, how awesome does that sound? You see a bird, bust out your little scientific encyclopedia, make sure no one called dibs already, and get a six-figure check.
Gotta love that bureaucracy system.
So where to go, to find a yet-unclaimed fur-pile? Our choice was Manaus, Brazil, near the very heart of the Amazon rainforest. We were told there was a gigantic fissure somewhere near there, extending close to a quarter-mile beneath the surface. It was so dark, so deep, that no one had ever actually seen the bottom.
Perfect.
There had to be some kind of fish or lizard or something down there, right? Hell, even a new bacteria would do in a pinch.
Well, we found something all right, and yep, we sure claimed our check.
Too bad the original plan was to split it six ways.
~~~
We were originally contacted by Dr. Marten Tuboi, a geologist hailing from Northern California. A graduate of Stanford, class of 1971, Marten was one of the leading scientists in the field, having spent most of his life buried amongst the sand and stone.
At the age of 57, he had recently found that stooping over in shallow pits wasn't exactly the best medicine for the crippling arthritis that had developed from decades of...stooping over in shallow pits. So this was to be his last hurrah, the final field work he was to undergo before settling into some menial desk job. He figured if the mission went well enough, he could forgo the desk job entirely, and settle down off the aforementioned grant money.
He hand-selected each of us, picking only the most qualified members for the specific jobs he felt the excursion entailed. We were each contacted individually, so any and all knowledge written here is the result of my own research and personal experience.
First on Marten's list was Doctors Ted and Tom Davis, botanist and zoologist respectively. Fraternal twins, these two had spent every waking moment of their lives together, right down to graduating first and second in their Berkeley graduating class of 2003. They were chosen due to their brotherly bond, an unnatural mental connection that accented each other's work noticeably. As the world of plants and animals are intertwined, so were their thoughts, leading their research to astounding new heights. This was their first major expedition as professionals, and they were eager to succeed.
Drs. Cal and Heather Kowalski were the last of the specialized researchers, each entomologists for over fifteen years. They worked together in the labs of Texas A&M for three years before meeting each other, where they promptly fell in love and became the strangest couple to talk to at parties...ever.
Since team relations is the most crucial factor in any mission, they were picked as the strong moral center that would keep the team together during even the most trying periods. Plus, there are way more bugs in the rainforest than animals, so having two of 'em couldn't hurt.
Which leaves me. I'm Dr. David Curtis, general practitioner and designated documentarian for the project. Most people just call me Dr. Dave. Makes 'em feel less like a machine with interchangeable parts, I guess. Whatever.
Anyways. I was chosen for my work on the Goldblum project, where I and seven other researchers found the perfectly preserved remains of a small dinosaur in the frozen tundra of Northern Canada. Back then I had just been there in case someone got the sniffles, but when their filmographer's left thumb fell off due to hypothermia, I was handed the camera and got credit for recording the excavation.
Lucky me.
Oh, and there were three mercenaries, too. We hired them in case things got icky down there in Logger Land, what with the deadly animals and the radical revolutionists and whatnot. Never hurts to be safe, kiddos.
They went by the names One, Two, and Three. And that's pretty much all we got out of them, 'cept for their job descriptions. They said it kept things more professional, when the client stayed unattached.
So all we knew about them was that One handled strategic operations, Two was the weapons expert, and Three dealt with explosives. I don't know how much stuff we'd want to blow up down there in the Amazon, but an extra back for carrying supplies couldn't hurt.
So let's make sure you got all that before I start telling this bad boy. Nothing's worse than a story where you have no idea what the hell is going on cause the author can't keep his characters straight.
Marten - Head guy. Old. Likes rocks.
Ted and Tom - The twins. Young. One does plants, the other, animals.
Cal and Heather - The married couple. Bug freaks.
Dave - Me. Ordinary doctor with a video camera.
One, Two, and Three - Mercenaries.
Got that? Good. Let's get on with it then.
~~~
"Anyone else getting a creepy 'Predator' vibe?" asked Cal, following behind Three at the end of the line. At the front was Two, hacking through the foliage with a machete the size of my arm, blazing a trail for the rest of us.
"Hah!" I laughed, pushing a wispy branch aside. "You fancying yourself the poor man's Schwarzenegger, eh Cal? You couldn't even see your own hand in front of your face without those specs of yours, let alone an alien with cloaking technology."
"Har har, Dave," he replied. "Just don't be surprised when your ass is the first to go."
"Me?" I laughed. "If anything, the walking fossil over there would be first, ain't that right Marten?"
"I have no idea what you two are talking about, but if anyone's going to die out here first, it's going to be her," he said, turning to point at Heather as he stumbled through the brush. "She's the woman here."
Even though there were probably tens of thousands of living creatures around us at that moment, the entire forest seemed to stop dead as we all stopped our march, looking at Marten with stunned amazement.
"Wow Marten," I started, breaking the awkward silence that cut through the air like Two's machete. "If you weren't on the other end of the line from me, I would totally give you a high five right now. That was the best answer I could ever imagined in my wildest dreams."
"Well...thank you," he stammered slowly, "I think."
"Now wait just a minute, that's my wife he's talking about here!" yelped Cal, pushing his way forward to confront Marten.
"C'mon Cal, he was just kidding around, ain't that right Doc?" I said, moving up to come in between them.
"Well actually, no," he stated bluntly. "You're all relatively young, strong men, and I'm the one paying the mercenaries. They won't let me die, or else they don't get paid. Logically, if faced with a physical threat, she would be at the greatest disadvantage."
Again the forest went silent as we all took in the sheer audacity of this wrinkly old man with the pith helmet.
"Marten, I think I love you," I said dryly, grabbing a blubbering Cal by the shoulders and steering him away. "Now let's everybody all forget that the dinosaur here has the political correctness of a KKK member, and keep moving. Daylight's a-wastin'!"
We walked for several more hours before we reached a point where the trees started to thin, and a clearing became apparent in the distance.
"Hey, is this the place?" asked Tom, directing his question at no one in particular.
"According to my maps, yes," said One, raising his portable GPS system to his eyes.
Two led the way to the edge of the forest, the rest of us pressing close behind in eager anticipation. Cal actually walked so close behind the solider that he was knocked flat on his ass when the burly man came to an abrupt stop in front of him.
Leaping back to his feet, he peered over Two's soldier, clamoring "Hey, what gives, big guy? Lemme see."
Moving aside, the mercenary gave a steely gaze and pointed to the open landscape, where a ring of sand some two hundred meters in diameter encircled the craggy opening in the ground.
"Could be quicksand," barked Two.
"Ah," murmured Cal. "Right then. Any ideas?"
"Yeah," said Three, stepping forward, handing Cal the end of a rope. "Start walking."
Staring at the end of the rope before focusing his gaze on the man's face, Cal gulped, flop sweat beginning to break out across his brow. "Me? Why me?" he asked indignantly.
Pushing the rope in Cal's hand closer to his chest, Three stated, "Because I look around and see two bug doctors. You're the most expendable."
"Yeah, well," started Cal, thrusting the rope back in Three's direction. "I see three mercenaries. You're the most expendable."
Gesturing to his pistol, the soldier fired back, "Well I see sixteen bullets, and they're all expendable. Get my drift?"
Cal gulped, taking the end of the rope and starting to tie it around his waist. "Yep. Sure do."
As he took his first step towards the fissure, he looked back at Marten. "Real good hired help, you got, Doc. I feel reeeeeal safe."
"Aw, just start walking, pantywaist," shot Ted, giving Cal a slight push.
Grasping his wife's hand for one brief second, Cal gave one last longing look and headed out across the sand.
Each soft "pish" with every passing footstep was like a gunshot, a game of Russian Roulette with a pistol found lying in the street. We all held our breath as Cal slowly made his way across the glistening sand, wondering if his next step would be the one sending him sinking into the ground.
Finally though, he made it safely to the rock edge at the center of the mini-desert, showing the path was indeed safe to cross. With a final jump, he leaped onto the safety of solid stone, pumping his fists in joyous celebration.
"Yes! Yes!" he cried. "I made it! I'm not dead!" he whooped as he jumped around wildly.
"I didn't die-" was the last thing he said before he accidentally hopped right into the open pit.
"Cal!" Heather screamed, running across the open sand. "Oh my God, Cal!" Reaching the fissure, she fell to her knees as she leaned over into the pit, peering down into the darkness.
"Somebody...help me..." grunted Three, straining with all his might as he held the other end of the rope.
"Oh shit!" the twins exclaimed, reaching out to help. Slowly the three of them pulled Cal back in, his limp form dangling dead as Heather helped him back onto the ledge.
"What's wrong with him?!" she shrieked, shaking his still body as I ran forward to examine him.
Looking him over, I laughed out loud as I realized what had happened. "The poor idiot fainted! He thought he was going to die so he fainted!"
I didn't stop chuckling until long after the base camp had been established.
~~~
"Amazing," breathed Marten, "Simply amazing."
It was the next day, and we had just reached the bottom of the fissure, after some two hours and thousand feet of rappelling. Of the nine of us, eight of us had gone down, Three remaining up top to keep an eye on things in case something went wrong.
"What are you looking at, Marten?" asked Heather, pointing her flashlight in the general direction of her leader's.
"It's these crystals," said the geologist, indicating the massive pillars of stone that jutted out from every surface. "From first indication, they appear to be pure silicon."
"Yeah, Doc, big deal, isn't all rock made of silicon?" asked Ted, kneeling down to examine a fungus.
"Well yes, but only partially so. Most rock formations on earth are made up of many elements, in addition to silicon, carbon and iron and the like. Pure silicon is only found in man-made smelters, by melting down silicon ores."
"So we've found a geological anomaly?" questioned Tom.
"Indeed, and quite a large one at that. There shouldn't be any sort of environment on Earth that could produce such a crystal naturally, especially one of this size."
"Waittaminute, Doc," I butted in, my flashlight illuminating his face. "Are you suggesting that these stalagmite thingies were man-made? Or are you going all E.T. on me?"
"No, I'm not suggesting either of those theories," he replied calmly, pushing his thinning hair back before replacing his helmet. "I'm simply stating that this has never been seen before in nature."
"That's not all that's never seen before," said Ted, standing up with a specimen jar full of fungus. "I've been checking out this fungus, and I've never seen anything like it before."
"So we have a geological and a botanical discovery?" piped up Cal. "Sweet, more money for us."
"Well yes, that's true, but this might be larger than that," replied Marten. "I suggest we gather a few more samples and head back up to the surface to do some tests."
And we did just that.
~~~
"Holy mother of God..." whispered Ted, peering into the lens of his microscope. "Marten, get over here and take a look at this."
Hurrying over from his dissection of the crystals found in the fissure, Marten reached Ted's side, putting a hand on the back of Ted's chair for support as he leaned in to view the slide.
"What am I looking for here?" he asked the young twin.
"This is a hundred times magnification of the fungus I took from the pit. Check out the physical structure of it."
"Well, it's dark gray, probably due to the lack of sunlight in the cavern...luminescent...and...slightly metallic?"
"Exactly. I think that somehow this fungus might be siliceous in chemical nature," he said with a straight face, looking Marten right in the eyes. "I mean, I saw the rock formations down there, this has the exact same physical appearance as the samples you brought up."
"Ted, what you're saying can't be possible. All life on Earth is carbon-based."
"Well yes, but that's only because evolved according to the carbon cycle. We breathe in air, and export carbon dioxide, while plant matter takes in carbon dioxide and produces air. It's a pretty basic understanding, but that's not much more to it."
"So you're suggesting that in an isolated environment heavily rich in another element, this fungus could have evolved according to a silicon cycle?"
"Well, theoretically, yes. The only reason the carbon cycle formed on the surface is because it reacted the best given the elemental conditions. If in a different environment, silicon is the only thing you've got to work with, life could adapt around that."
"What the heck are you two babbling about?" I asked, barging into the research tent. "I can hear you two women freaking out like you just got your first period, what's the deal?"
"Ted believes we just found silicon-based life," simplified Marten.
"You mean like that episode of the X-Files? I thought that wasn't possible."
"I didn't either," said Ted. "But the proof is right here on this slide."
"Well then," I said, grabbing a helmet off one of the tables. "I guess we have to go back down and get more samples, don't we?"
~~~
"So let me get this straight," began Cal, as we began the second slow descent into the fissure. "Ted finds a fungus that's got some silicon flakes in it, and now we need to go get as much as possible of it?"
"Pretty much," I shot back, hopping down the side of the cliff.
"Super," spat Cal bluntly. "Hey Heather, if we get rich and famous because Ted here found a computer-chip fungus, remind me to buy stock in Microsoft."
"Shhh you," she commanded. "This could be very big for us. Let's go with it."
The rest of the way down was relatively silent, except for the steady clinks and clanks of equipment banging together.
When the eight of us were all safely at the bottom, Ted stepped into the light of our main lantern, raising his arms to get the attention of the group.
"All right everyone, listen up. We need to get as much of this fungus as possible in order to verify its chemical nature. The more we gather, the more likely we'll find what we want and get loads of cash to celebrate." Raising a small glass jar, he continued, "Now, you've all got three specimen jars like this each. I want you to scour the walls, the floor, every possible surface trying to get fungus into these. Let's go."
And so the hunt began.
I myself had filled one jar and was moving onto a second when Cal's shrill yell pierced the cavern, making us all jump. One jar shattered off in the direction of where Marten had been gathering.
"Cal, what is it?" Heather cried out through the dim lighting.
"I dunno, something bit me!" he yelled back.
Everyone rushed to his side, gathering around him as they pointed their flashlights to the slightly bleeding wound now apparent on his left forearm.
"Looks like a spider bite," chimed in Tom.
"I'm the entomologist here," spat Cal. "I'll tell you if it's a spider bite or not."
"Well is it a spider bite?" asked Ted.
Pausing briefly, Cal lowered his voice before responding, "Yeah, seems like it."
"How the heck does a spider live down here?" I pondered aloud. "I mean, there's no light, and usually spiders eat other insects, right? That's what the whole web thing is for. I don't see any other life down here."
"No time to worry about that now," blurted Heather. "If this thing lives down here, it's probably unclassified, so we don't know if it's poisonous. We need to find it and catch it as soon as possible in order to run tests."
Crrrrrck.
"Hope it doesn't matter if it's dead," spoke One, pointing his flashlight at the bottom of his shoe.
~~~
"Just what the hell is going on down there?" mused Heather, leaning back from her microscope.
"What is it?" asked Cal anxiously. "Is it poisonous? Am I going to die? Please tell me I'm OK, please, baby, I need to hear you say it. Tell me I'm OK."
"That's just it, Cal, I can't," she responded with a slight whimper. "I have no idea what I'm looking at here. It almost looks like the fungus Ted was showing us earlier. I can't tell if it's organic or not, or what possible reactions this could have on you."
"Wait, you're telling me that spider was silicon based too?"
"As far as I can tell, yes. And since we've never known an insect to be anything besides carbon based, we've never studied any venoms outside the realm of carbon."
"Well get Dave in here, he's a real doctor, he might know."
"You know Cal," Heather said as she started toward the flaps of the research tent, "You're handling this pretty calmly, all things considered. Normally you'd be having a fit about now."
His sudden silence made her wonder if perhaps she'd said the wrong thing, put the wrong idea in his head.
"I'm going to go get Dave. You stay put."
~~~
"It itches. Should it be itching?" asked Cal, rubbing at the swelling welt.
"Most spider bites do itch," I said nonchalantly, keeping my eyes focused on the computer readout in my hands. "And stop scratching. You'll only make it worse."
"I can't help it, Dave, it itches real bad," he whined, rubbing the skin even harder.
"Look, I can give you an antihistamine in the meantime, and some hydrocortisone to help with the irritation. It should at least keep things under control until I can better understand this."
"Enhhhhh," moaned Cal, as the first flake of dead skin fell to the ground.
~~~
"So here's the plan," began Marten, addressing the group, minus Cal. "It is currently too late in the evening to attempt a safe rappel into the fissure, even with electrical lighting. We need to go back down into the cave and see if we can capture a live spider, for further study to aid Cal. I want everybody but Dave right here first thing in the morning so we can do this."
"What's Dave gonna be doing?" asked Tom.
"Making sure Cal doesn't die," replied Marten gravely.
~~~
"AHHHHHHHH!"
We all awoke at the sounds of terrified howls coming from the sounds of Cal's tent. Throwing on a shirt, I rushed out into the humid night air, praying Cal wasn't about to die on me.
"Cal, what the fuck is it?" I yelled, bursting into his tent.
"My arm! Holy shit, my arm!" he wailed, holding it out for me to see.
I couldn't help but gag at the sight thrust before me, as Cal's forearm had damn near disintegrated in a flurry of dead skin flakes. Grasping it near the wrist, far away from the original bite, I grabbed his face with my free hand and forced him to look at me.
"Cal, can you feel my hand?" I asked him forcefully. "Can you feel it?"
"No!" he sobbed. "I don't feel anything!"
Still staring at me with tear-strewn eyes, he tried to wrest his arm away from me...and everything below the bite came clear off in my hand.
"AHHHHHHH!" he howled again, screaming at decibels I didn't know humans could make.
"Oh my God..." I breathed, gazing incredulously at the extremity that had been attached to the man only seconds before. After several moments more, I snapped from my stupor, tossing the arm away like it had the plague.
"My fucking arm!" he bellowed at me. "That's my fucking arm! Why the fuck did you tear off my arm!?"
"I didn't..." I murmured stupidly. "There was no way I could..."
"What the fuck are you going to do about my arm!?" he continued yelling, his cheeks forming tributaries of tears and mucous.
"Cal," I tried to explain calmly, rationally, as I regained grasp on the scenario. "Your arm, as best as I can put it...is fucked. There is no way we could reattach that, ever. It's as brittle and useless as a dried-up booger."
Glaring at me intensely, his eyes seemed to express all the fury and disbelief his mouth could no longer choke out.
"The important thing now, is to know if you're in any pain. This could be a dumb question, but does it hurt?"
Squeezing shut his eyes, he looked upward, shaking his head side-to-side.
"No pain, OK. That means it's effectively killed your nerve endings." Standing up, I turned to exit the tent. "Don't move. I'm going to get Two."
He looked at me, confusion in his eyes.
"We need his machete," I said simply, trying my best to come off as a professional. "We need to amputate your arm before that bite spreads any further."
~~~
"Heather, how's Cal holding up?" asked Marten, standing before the team once again.
"He's holding up as best as he can, I guess," she responded through soft sobs. "Dave's got him pretty doped up, so he doesn't feel too much. Which is good, I guess. If Dave hadn't done what he did, when he did...he thinks it could have reached Cal's heart."
"So Cal's holding up all right? It hasn't spread any further?"
"No, he's still all right."
"OK then, the rest of my questions can wait until we get back," he said, clipping on his spelunking gear. "Right now, we need to go down and capture one of those spiders. Cal's life could depend on it."
~~~
"What the fuck happened?" I asked hurriedly, rushing forward to attend to the group as they emerged from the pit. "I heard someone yell just before you got back up."
Two was leaning on Three, reaching over his shoulder and wincing in pain as he grabbed his upper back. Three set him down gently, keeping his teammate propped upright as the two rested.
"We had found one of the spiders and gotten it in a jar," Three began. "We had it all sealed up and were heading back up, no incidents whatsoever. But just before we reached the surface..." he trailed off, holding up the jar. "...Two got bit."
"Wait, I thought you had it sealed up." I asked impatiently.
"We did," he said, turning the jar around so I could examine the jagged hole on the other side. "But the spider decided it didn't like that too much."
Examining the hole, I stared dumbfounded at Three, analyzing his implication.
"You're saying, the spider ate its way through the glass. A spider with teeth the size of strawberry seeds, chewed its way out of solid glass," I clarified.
"Look at the hole, man, what else do you think happened? The spider shot its way out?"
I took another long hard stare at the glass, studied the hole. There were no cracks, no splinters, no melted edges to indicate acid. As far as I could tell, the most logical explanation was that the spider had indeed ate itself free.
"This totally makes sense..." I slowly realized. "Every single thing we've found in that pit has shown signs that silicon-based life has been evolving down there, even relatively complex creatures such as spiders. Since glass is composed mainly of silicon, eating through it would be no different than one of us eating an apple..."
"Well that's all fine and fucking dandy," butted in Three. "But what're we gonna do about Two? He got bit on the back. You may have saved Cal by cutting off his arm, but you can't just amputate this man's entire upper torso."
"Um....shit..." I stammered, trying to think. "Did you at least get the spider up here?"
"No," he spat disgustedly. "The damn thing fell once it took a bite out of Two here."
"You guys didn't try to capture another one?" I asked unbelievingly.
"Look, we all saw what that thing did to Cal. None of us really wanted to risk having a hand fall off, so we left once we did the job," he said, pointing a calloused finger at my face. "Once you have the balls to go down there and get one yourself, you can talk."
"Fine, whatever. But someone needs to go back down this minute, and get another spider. I can't even begin to find an antidote without the original venom source."
"One and I will go," Three said, as he started to drag his ally toward Cal's tent, now the makeshift infirmary. "We're not much of a team without Two anyways."
"Take Heather with you," I suggested. "She might know a thing or two about handling the damn things safely."
~~~
"Dave, what's going on with these bites? What sort of spider can do this to a person?" asked Marten, an hour after the trio had begun their descent.
"Well, as far as I can figure, and believe me, this is all highly hypothetical...the spiders inject a highly-concentrated dose of silicon-based poison into their victim. Somehow, and don't ask me to make a guess, it fuses with the naturally-found carbon in our bodies, decaying the atomic structure of our flesh as it steals the carbon away. The result is a dry silicon-carbon compound, hard but easy to break."
"You can't be serious..." Marten sweat.
"Look, I know it sounds insane, but it's the best theory I've got. Hell, it's the only theory I've got."
"Do you think you can find a cure for it?"
"Honestly, and you have to keep this quiet, no. No fucking way. It would take an entire building full of scientists years to overcome this, and we both know Two doesn't have that kind of time. I honestly don't know if they'll even get back before he goes."
"So in other words, we can't let this thing bite us."
"At least not in the torso region. Amputation seems to work, but still..." I said, getting up to go tend to Two and Cal.
"...I'd like to keep all my limbs."
~~~
Two held the pistol in his hands, feeling its dead weight, the icy cool that seemed to penetrate his fingers as he ran his free hand along the barrel. He stared at it nonchalantly, calmly, like it was no more than his TV's remote control. Jiggling the weapon in his hand, he felt how it reacted to his touch, recalled how it had been a part of him ever since he joined up with One and Three.
That was pretty much all over now. Dave had just finished examining him, and from the look on the doctor's face, Two knew the outcome didn't look good.
Even as he sat there, he could feel the wound on his back getting worse, as the sensation went from itching to pain, then nothing at all. Soon his entire right shoulder was numb, and running his hand over the affliction, a flurry of dead skin fell off like hippie's dandruff.
He couldn't tell just how far it had spread along his back, but he knew it was only a matter of time before it reached his spine, turning it to dust as he sat there, waiting to die.
Looking back at the pistol, he slowly clicked off the safety.
~~~
"Dave!"
The cry echoed throughout the camp, a voice filled with the urgency and desperation that could only tell me someone else had been bitten.
"What happened?" I panted through short bursts of breath, having sprinted from the research tent to the edge of the pit.
One and Three were supporting Heather, her tiny form virtually nothing compared to the bulk of the two giants. Her arms were draped over their shoulders, and on her left hand, a faint trail of dried blood could be seen trickling through the webbing of her fingers.
One answered first. "She found a spider, but she just couldn't pin it down with the can. So she grabbed it with her bare hands and dropped it in, stupidest thing I've ever seen. No idea what she was thinking..."
"I wanted..." she started exhaustively, "I wanted to make sure Two didn't suffer, not like Cal did..."
"Heather, sweetie, that was very brave of you, but in all honesty the dumbest thing you could have done-" I began gently, when I was abruptly interrupted.
BANG!
The shot rang through the clearing, and nearby a small flock of birds exploded from the recesses of the foliage, fleeing to safety with all the gusto of a bat out of hell. Cal came running from the infirmary tent, a fine mist of blood across his face and chest as his remaining arm pumped wildly.
"He shot himself!" he screamed in hysterical desperation as he drew near. "Two shot himself!"
"What?!" I exclaimed, pushing past the others as I headed for the source of the shot.
"He's dead," Three informed me, grabbing my arm and holding me back. "If he felt he had to shoot himself, he would have made sure he got the job done. You can't help him."
Glaring harshly at the mercenary, I turned away and focused my attention on Cal instead. "Cal, what happened? Were you awake?"
"N-n-no..." he stuttered, his tears gumming up the works. "I was as-s-sleep, and then I heard a b-b-b-bang, and then he was b-bleeding all over me. His back was all torn up like my arm was...Did he get b-bitten?"
Marten and the twins had just emerged from the research tent, and were starting to make their way over. "What's all the commotion?" asked Ted, as they joined the group near the edge of the pit.
"Two just shot himself," replied One. "He didn't want to have to die like Cal's arm."
"And what happened to her?" inquired Tom, effectively dismissing Two as he pointed at Heather.
"She got bit trying to catch one of the spiders," said Three softly.
"Wait, you let her get bit?" rang in Cal, his waterworks suddenly drying up. "You were with her to protect her, and she still got bit?" His voice was ascending in intensity, as anger started to swell in his throat and eyes. "We pay you to look after us, and still you let this happen? What kind of shitty bodyguards are you guys?"
"Hold on a second, pal, she grabbed one of these things with her bare hands, we couldn't stop her," shot back Three.
"Well why the fuck was she down there in the first place? Couldn't the big, bad mercenaries catch a tiny spider without a bitch to do the work for them?" Cal spit, thrusting his face forward to stare directly into the eyes of the soldier.
"She's an expert on handling insects," said Three through gritted teeth, trying to stay calm. "We figured she could help."
"How fucking hard is it to catch a spider? You take the container, plop it down over the thing, and bam! You're done! You needed her for that?"
"Listen Cal, you're upset," I said, coming between the two, trying to ease the spiking tensions. "Somebody fucked up, yeah, but unless we do something fast, she could lose the entire arm."
"She wouldn't have to lose anything at all if these two idiots had been doing their job," hissed Cal, flipping his lonely limb in an upward motion of disgust.
"Well maybe if the one-armed man here hadn't been so dumb as to get bitten in the first place, we wouldn't have had to go back down there," countered One. "You're a bug doctor, right? I thought of all people you'd know about not getting bit."
"You shut your hole!" barked Cal, pushing his way past me. "This is all your fault!"
"Listen little man, you really don't want to mess around," said Three, handing over Heather to the waiting reach of One. "I'm the one here who still has two arms."
Ted and Tom, sensing rising the danger the large man faced to Cal, began to move behind Three, gently easing their hands onto his shoulders, holding him back.
"Fuck you!" howled Cal, rushing forward and shoving the mercenary with all the might remaining in his good arm.
For one brief moment, the collective trio of the twins and Three stumbled backwards, hanging precariously on the edge of the fissure. Marten and I lunged forward, grabbing the mass of flailing arms, trying with all our might to keep them from falling backwards.
But between the two of us, we could only hold so many people, and Tom ended up slipping back into the darkness.
"Tom!" cried Ted, diving to look over the lip of the cliff. But there were no white-knuckled hands, no tightly-stretched ropes to indicate his brother had any sort of chance. Tom was gone.
"Tom...God, no..." he weeped, slumping defeated on the porous rock surface. He lay there crying for several moments more, as the rest of us looked on in awkward shock. Cal fell to his knees, a blank look on his face, the sheer horror of knowing what he had done washing over his face in a wave of bleach.
"You bastard!" exclaimed Ted, suddenly rising to his feet. "You self-absorbed bastard! You killed my brother!"
"I didn't..." Cal tried to explain, his eyes still not moving. "I didn't want to..."
"Fuck you!" Ted screeched, as he reached out towards Three. Grabbing the mercenary's pistol from its hip holster, he deftly flipped the safety and shot Cal between the eyes, never once hesitating.
With an iron fist Three lashed out, cold-cocking the young man before he could do any more damage. The young man slumped to the ground harmlessly, the pistol clattering across the rock before coming to rest with a soft "pish" in the sand.
~~~
"OK, let's regroup ourselves and figure out the scenario," I said, seated at the discussion table with the remaining mercenaries and Marten. "Two, Cal, and Tom are dead. Heather is bitten but still functional, and Ted is currently unconscious." Turning to the mercenaries, I asked, "In all the meleé, I never found out what happened with the spider. Did you get it back here?"
Reaching into his equipment pack, One pulled out a small rations tin, plunking it onto the desk with a hollow clunk. Inside, something skittered across the metal surface.
"Aluminum tin. Sealed, with one air hole two millimeters in diameter. Specimen within," he reported.
"All right then, I'll take this back to the lab as soon as this meeting is over," I promised, pushing the tin aside. "I think right now we need to figure out what we're going to do next. One, any ideas?"
"Have you completed what you came to do?" he shot back.
"Marten, this is your call," I replied, looking to the elderly gentlemen for his final say.
"Absolutely not!" he punctuated. "We've discovered an entirely new environment, new species, new genera, a new way of looking at the world! We can't just up and leave because a few fools were careless enough to disregard the dangers!"
"Whoa, Marten, you want us to go back down there and see what other ways we can get ourselves killed?" I questioned incredulously. "Three people have died because of what's down there, and another's likely to lose a hand! You can't honestly expect us to continue!"
"I can, and will! I pay these two men to follow orders, and if they want to get paid at all, they'll continue working. As for you, all your findings, all your videotapes, all your research belongs to me! I paid for everything, I own all the byproducts!"
Looking me in the eyes, he threatened, "If you leave now, you get nothing. No fame, no respect, no money. You either stay and intensify those prizes, or you abandon them right where you stand."
~~~
Heather was crying as she took the machete to her own wrist, slicing the flesh neatly between bones. She knew it would have to be done eventually, and she figured getting it out of the way now, while she was of a firm mindset, was the best way.
But she had other plans in mind as well.
She had sacrificed this hand for Cal, given it up so that they might find a cure for the poison which had stricken him, which had caused him to lose his arm. She had proven herself to him, and she was not disappointed when he defended her honor in standing up to the threat of the brutal mercenary. She knew they had had their problems, but in the end, they would always be meant for each other. In losing Cal, she had lost herself as well.
And it was all because of the boy.
She didn't care for the extraneous circumstances, the motives that caused they boy to shoot her husband, she just knew he was the one who caused it to happen. He was the one who shot her lover, after he'd just recuperated from his horrific ordeal. He was the one who ruined everything.
But now she had evened the playing field once more. She was the one standing over him, holding her severed hand above his open mouth, letting the tainted blood drip, drip, drip.
~~~
"Where is she?" demanded Marten, after emerging from the empty tent. "She could be dying for all we know, why did she wander off?"
Grabbing One by the collar, he hissed to the mercenary, "She is a very big liability to this expedition, so if we can't find her to verify her death, we don't get paid. And if we don't get paid, you don't get paid. So go find her!"
Glaring with an intense look of contempt, One gathered himself, before barking out his orders. "All right everyone, we're going to split up and search the camp first, then spread out into the surrounding wilderness if need be. Dave, you check the north tents, Marten, you check the south. Three's got west and I've got east. Move."
We all set off in the general direction of our assigned areas, and I decided that while I was searching for Heather, I'd check in on Ted and see if he'd woken up yet.
"Ted?" I called, poking my head into his tent. "Ted, you up ye-"
I stopped suddenly, not quite sure I was seeing what I my eyes told me I was.
Ted was on top of Heather, strangling the life out of her with his bare hands. Her eyes were wildly maniacal, but there was also a sad hint of disparity behind them, as if she knew she deserved what was being done to her. Looking down at her bite, I saw the entire area had already been amputated, though how she did it without anesthetic, I'll never know.
"Ted! What the fuck are you doing, man!?" I rushed forward to try and pull him off her, but he was so ferociously into his work I couldn't budge him.
"This crazy bitch infected me," he gritted, squeezing harder upon her trachea. "Cut off her own hand and let the blood fall into my mouth."
It was then that I noticed the blood on his mouth, tiny little specks of silicon-laced agony. I slumped back, abandoning my efforts to restrain him, as I knelt in shock of believing a person could do this to another. As I watched, Dave finished the job, choking the breath out of her long past her final twitch.
Only after this did the other three men burst in, as if on cue. One, seeing Dave with his hands around Heather's neck, drew his pistol, ordering Ted to stand down.
But instead, Ted turned to me, his eyes full of pure apathetic sorrow. I knew then, that it really didn't matter to him whether they shot him or not, he was infected. Whether from a bullet or a poison, he was going to die.
Snapping his head back towards Heather, Ted snarled and started shaking her harder, putting all his weight into killing the body already long gone. One responded by putting a bullet in Ted's left shoulder, but that didn't stop the doomed twin. He just kept on pumping his arms, throttling the woman for everything she once was.
Seeing he wasn't about to quit anytime soon, One sighed, and put a nine millimeter slug right above Ted's left eyebrow.
~~~
"What happened with Heather and Ted is certainly a tragedy. But I feel if they were still with us-" recited Marten, before I jumped in.
"Cut the crap, Doc. We're not their families, you can stop with the sugarcoating. We saw it all," I said, continuing to pack my field bag.
After a brief pause to collect himself, he went on. "Well then, I hope we can continue their-"
"Yeah, yeah, back in the hole, gather more specimens, you own our asses, whatever."
I walked past him, dismissing his contemptuous glare with a wave of the hand. One and Three followed suit, the latter mercenary bumping shoulders with the geologist as he passed.
Several minutes later, the four of us were gathered around the fissure, suited up and ready to go down.
"All right then," clapped Marten, speaking with nonchalant enthusiasm. "Who wants to do the honors?"
Looking to the two mercenaries, I gave a slight nod, before turning to face Marten and stepping forward. Putting my arm around his shoulders, I started talking to him, buddy-buddy-like. "Actually, Doc, we talked it over, and we think it should be you."
"Me," he repeated bluntly, somewhat confused.
"Yeah," I confirmed, as if it was no big deal, all the while leading him closer to the hole. "I mean, this is your project, right? You paid for all this, you found the place, you got us all here...You should get the first shot at whatever else is down there."
"Look at this," I continued, guiding him to gaze down into the darkness with me. "We have a new Garden of Eden here, a scientific utopia. Right down there, right under our noses..." I paused, turning to face him, grabbing his shoulders and giving him a shake. "...Silicon based life! My God, man, what are you still doing up here, go go go!"
"What are you getting at, Dave?" he inquired, not buying my act at all.
Gesturing Three over, I ignored him.
"No, really..." I trailed off, as Three drew his sidearm on the elderly man. "...I insist."
Glancing back and forth at the three of us, Marten started, "You're serious. You're really going to do it like this? After everything I gave you, after all the opportunities I provided you, after all this...You're going to kill me."
"Oh no, Doc, you got it all wrong," I comforted him. "We're not going to kill you."
"Just like you didn't kill Ted," chimed in One.
"Or Heather," put in Three.
"Or any of the others," finished One.
"Yeah, Doc, it's not like you're partially responsible for their deaths. It's not like you should care that they died, I mean, it's not like you bit any of them," I concluded. "You're just the guy who will profit off of everything they died for."
"But if you think we're going to kill you, and then take the research for ourselves..." I persisted, circling Marten. "Well then you're just wrong."
"The only thing we want to take out of here is this tiny little can of rations," said One, holding up the tin containing the spider.
"You can have all the rest," I promised him. "The supplies, the notes, whatever else is in that pit...We just want that one little can." Pulling out a dollar from my wallet, I stuffed it in his front breast pocket. "See? We'll even pay you for it."
"You little punks can't get away with this," threatened Marten, as Three nudged him closer to the pit with the barrel of his pistol. "This is my legacy, my mission. I control the spoils."
"Sure you do, Doc, and they're right down there in that pit," I agreed. "Now you better go down there and get them."
"You heard the man," said Three, waving the sidearm. "Move."
Silently glaring, Marten kept his eyes on me as he prepared his main descending line, only breaking contact to make sure the equipment was good and secure.
He slowly eased himself into the pit, dropping down a few feet until only his head remained above the surface. Looking up at us, he waited for indication that he was really to go through with this.
"You've got one hour to get to the bottom," warned One. "After that, I have a strong feeling this rope might break."
"Say hi to Tom for us," Three said with a smile, patting him on the head.
As he began his final descent, I couldn't help but add,
"Good night, Marten. Don't let the bed bugs bite."
~~~
We started out with nine members.
We came back with three.
Every single death, every single person left behind in that godforsaken place...all needless. All were the result of madness, of humanity's inability to cope with hardship.
We were infected with a poison all right, but it didn't come from a spider. It came from our own greed, our own selfish desires. Whether it was for money, fame, or simply self-preservation, it was all about the almighty "Me."
The three of us that escaped that fissure, that pit of disparity...we did it by sticking together, by taking a collective stand.
Turns out the mercenaries had the right idea all along.
By operating as a team, as a cohesive unit, we made it out with our lives.
...And one silicon based spider.
From my experience out there in the jungle, I learned two things. One, the scientific prospect of new discovery is not as pure and well-intentioned as one would imagine. Behind every world-changing find, there are unseen forces clamoring to take credit for that marvel of nature, even though they did nothing but catch the damn thing in a jar.
But secondly...If you do come back with that fabled jar, don't be afraid to go to the military first. You never know when a silicon based poison might have potential for chemical warfare.
We started out intending to split a grant check six ways.
We came back to split a defense contract in three.
Gotta love that bureaucracy.
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Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 23:38:04 EDT (#)
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