Flesh Wounds, page 29
And she’s had to cut back. The Illinois has been tossing up some of the bodies lately.
All Colors Bleed to Red
In his peripheral vision, Jesse Sanders spotted a splash of color: one bright bit of blue contrasted against the muck of the creek bed. Turning toward it, he stumbled and fell as thick mud sucked at his boots. He managed to catch himself on the stalagmite-shaped stump of a long dead willow, nearly dropping his sample jars in the bargain.
He poked at the color with a stick. It was a dead bird. A blue jay with its beak buried in fetid slime. One feather, broken so that it stood out from the bird’s wing like a pennant in the breeze, was all that delineated the poor creature from the pollution in which it lay. Some morbid tendency urged Jesse to pry up the carcass with the tip of the stick. The bird’s breast clung to the mud, peeling back from balsa-fine bones cupped about an empty cavity.
The blue jay was gone. Only the shell it had once inhabited remained. Like me, thought Jesse.
He let the carcass settle back into the mud and tossed away the stick. There remained an obdurate film of slime in the palm of his hand. He wiped the ooze on his thigh, leaving long, green-brown stains on his khaki trousers. Camouflaged, he thought. Thus I become one with the trauma to which Wilder Creek has succumbed. On a whim, he bent and plucked the unsoiled feather from the dead bird. Though it parted at the break, what pulled free was most of the feather. He carefully tucked it away in his shirt pocket, stepped across the dead bird, and made his way through the cattails and sharp, high grass to the creek.
Wilder Creek was moving, though imperceptibly. Jesse had to stare at the water for several silent breaths before he was certain. The oil on the surface coalesced in the rainbow-hues of an abstract painting, like a mood ring shattered across the surface of a black mirror. It had a hypnotic effect and for a moment he couldn’t pull his gaze away.
There was a small catfish floating just off the bank, its sleek, black body bobbing alongside a plastic tampon applicator. The catfish appeared to have only recently given up its struggle for life. He fancied for a moment that he saw its gills flare, but when it happened only once he was certain he’d imagined it. Beyond the catfish was something larger, something older, something that had occupied the foul water of the creek long enough to have lost its own discernability. Half submerged in the black water, it was hard to grasp the size of the thing, but it might have once been a cat or a large rodent, or maybe even a puppy. Now it was a decaying cage of ribs and teeth and skull canvassed by a pale hide spotted with the last remaining tufts of grey fur.
Jesse shuddered, breaking his momentary apoplexy. He knelt amid the garbage to take his samples. The mud bubbled seductively about his feet, releasing an odor of pestilence and putrefaction. He filled the first of his three Mason jars and was screwing the lid back on when he saw the otters on the opposite bank, not a dozen feet away.
Stretched out in the mud, their fur clotted with oil so that it stood out in stubby porcupine spikes, the otters looked like bloated puffer fish washed up on the banks of Prince William Sound, their gills choked with Exxon crude, bristling and angry... but dead. Jesse shook off the image. He’d promised himself that northern Virginia was far enough removed from those memories. Besides which, the still shapes on the opposite bank were no member of family Tetraodontidae.
“Lutracanadensis,” he said aloud, amazing himself by recalling not only the puffer’s family, but the otter’s genus and species as well. He hadn’t forgotten all his zoology.
Startled by Jesse’s voice, the far otter raised its head and studied him over the still form of its mate. Though he’d been taught that river otters are excessively shy, this one watched him without fear. Looking the animal over, Jesse realized that it might be incapable of fleeing. Worse, it might be incapable of fear. Jesse had seen that look before on the television, in the eyes of a Rwandan child whose head gaped wide, revealing gleaming bone and the edges of angry red tissue, the result of a blow from a Hutu machete. The child had lain for most of a day among the dead in a Roman Catholic church, not moving, barely breathing, knowing that if the life left in him were noted it would be succinctly snuffed out. The look on the child’s face was one without the energy left to feel even pain, let alone fear. The look said that death might have been the saner choice.
The otter had that look.
Thus, thought Jesse, do world events shape our perceptions. A Rwandan child had taught him the look of hopeless surrender. And before the Exxon Valdez, he had believed in the sanctity of an absolute right and wrong.
The otter’s eyes were coated with a murky film of white that was neither opaque nor transparent, but somewhere in between, like a thin, cloudy lacquer over black marble. Its ears and whiskers were pasted back against its head as if it were facing into a strong wind. The mouth remained a tight black line while it breathed through the nose in short wheezing pants. White fur that had once lined the underside of its neck, blending back into the darker brown of the body and tail, was now a charcoal grey, the color of smoke rising from a burning tire.
The otter raised a webbed foot briefly, part greeting, part dismissal. It was a pitiful gesture and it brought Jesse to his feet. Forgotten, his two empty sample jars plopped into the mud.
Fifty feet upstream—if the stagnant creek could be thought of as having an up or downstream—there was an ancient desk. There was also a dead rhesus monkey, a mystery that had occupied Jesse’s mind for some time before the jay’s feather had distracted him. Someone from White Post or Millwood had probably dumped the desk by the roadside, but he had no idea where the monkey had come from. A heavy rain might have swept the dilapidated office furniture to its final resting place, a good quarter mile from the road, where it’d become caught on some submerged log or sewer line. However it got there—the desk, that is—it lay astraddle the middle of the stream forming a bridge that, though incomplete, allowed Jesse to cross without getting water in over the tops of his boots.
He followed the creek back to the otters, moving as quietly as possible so as not to frighten them away. Stealth proved impossible, what with the mud sucking at his feet, the dry grass rasping against his jeans, and reeds snapping like number two pencils beneath his boots. He needn’t have worried though; the otters weren’t going anywhere. The far otter, the only one he’d seen move, had dropped its head across its mate’s sunken side. Beneath their foggy shrouds, the otter’s small eyes followed Jesse’s approach.
“I won’t hurt you,” Jesse whispered as he knelt beside them.
He probed the matted coat of the still otter. And felt nothing. No heartbeat. No rising and falling of the chest. Nothing but cold, greasy fur stretched across a framework of prominent ribs. The other otter, which he decided was the male because it was larger, lifted its head and studied him, looking at him sideways the way a puzzled dog will do.
“I’m sorry,” he told the male. “She’s gone.” It blinked ever so slowly. He reached out to touch it.
The otter’s head turned, rattlesnake fast, and its teeth sank into the webbing of flesh between Jesse’s thumb and finger.
From the Washington Post:
MONKEY VIRUS
Late Wednesday evening a strain of virus similar to that which was purged from Reston, VA in 1989 was detected in African monkeys under quarantine at a temporary facility near Dulles International Airport. Local health officials were quick to announce that there is no immediate threat from this virus as it has been entirely contained within the quarantine facility. They added that, if the virus should somehow escape the quarantine facility, a scenario they view as virtually impossible, the virus is not easily transmitted and does not affect humans.
The virus, a relative of the highly lethal Ebola Zaire reported to have killed thousands in Africa, is one of several filoviruses (latin for “thread viruses”) under constant study by agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Frederick, MD. When asked for comment, the CDC indicated that they had not yet been contacted by the Virginia State Health Department and were unfamiliar with the details of the incident. Both the CDC and USAMRIID were involved in the 1989 Reston incident in which several hundred monkeys were euthanized to contain the spread of the disease. Though unable to speculate, the CDC did reiterate local Health Department announcements that there was no danger to human lives, pointing out that there was not a single case of human viral infection during the 1989 incident.
A spokesman for the Health Department stated that some 16 to 20 thousand monkeys are imported into the United States every year for research purposes. Many are diseased. For this reason all monkeys are required to undergo a one month quarantine. He indicated that there is nothing unusual or alarming in the recent virus outbreak and that the quarantine procedures in place will contain it.
Jesse nearly ran into the Indian.
Startled, he realized he didn’t know where he was—was, in fact, missing a sizeable slice of memory. Physical pain shut out the immediate fear of dislocation. Every joint ached. He was dizzy, head spinning about a fire centered somewhere just back of his eyes. He needed no thermometer to tell him he was burning with fever. His mouth was dry and his lips were cracked. His hand was screaming a cacophony of pain. His legs were trembling and he couldn’t catch his breath.
The Indian looked to have been carved from cedar and allowed to stand, unfinished, in the weather for decades. Jesse wasn’t sure he was real until he moved. When the Indian’s gaze (eyes black as wormholes) dropped, Jesse realized there was something draped in his arms.
The dead otter hung like a sodden stole, head and tail bonelessly pointing to earth. Her thick coat of sludge was smeared across Jesse’s shirt and trousers; his arms were black to the elbows. He felt something brush his leg and looked down to find the male had followed—how far, he had no idea. The male otter dropped at Jesse’s feet, sides heaving, wheezing, a bubble of hemorrhagic blood erupting from its nose.
The Indian extended his hands for the dead otter. “She’s dead,” Jesse mumbled inanely, relinquishing her none-the-less. The Indian took her without comment, turned and walked quietly away. The male otter followed. Jesse stood for a moment, dizzy and confused; then he, too, followed the Indian up a gentle hill.
At the crest of the hill there stood a ragged hut of mud and reeds, its opening covered with some sort of animal hide. Smoke bled from the cracks in the mud. More smoke billowed out when the Indian parted the hide and entered. The hide slapped closed behind him, leaving Jesse and the male otter standing in the fast fading twilight. Again, the otter lay down between Jesse’s feet. Jesse used the time to examine the puncture wounds in his hand. They were swollen and red, with angry pus accumulating just beneath the surface of the skin. It’s infected, thought Jesse, I need to get some antibiotics.
The Indian emerged from the tent without the dead otter. He seemed surprised to find Jesse waiting. “How may I be of assistance to you?” he asked in a voice that was as far from stereotypical as Jesse was from his antibiotics. The Indian was obviously an educated man. His careful enunciation belied the leather and beads and native trappings which he wore.
“I think I need help,” Jesse mumbled.
The Indian nodded. “Will you enter the sweat lodge?”
“What?”
“A cleansing,” the Indian said. “I can offer you that much.”
“I think I need a doctor.”
“I,” said the Indian, “am a doctor.”
“Oh,” Jesse said, thinking, Yeah, right. Just what he needed, a native American medicine man.
“There is a price.”
Of course. Jesse reached into his pocket, found the wad of bills he kept there. He wasn’t thinking about why he should be paying an Indian who probably had nothing to offer him in the way of medical aid; he was running on automatic. Someone expected to be paid, and habit said pull money out and pay. Maybe the Indian would call someone. Nine-One-One would do nicely. But before Jesse could pull his money free, the Indian laid a gentle restraining hand on his wrist and shook his head. Not money then, thought Jesse. But he had nothing else. There was the sample jar bulging in the pocket of his field vest, but Jesse needed to take that back to the lab at Alcor Chemicals.
“The creek is poison,” said the Indian, as if reading Jesse’s mind.
The only other thing in his pockets was the feather. Jesse pulled it free and passed it to the Indian. The Indian held it up so that it caught the last rays of the sun. “Fitting,” he remarked, “that you offer me a lie.”
“A lie?” Jesse’s legs were fading fast. He thought they would buckle, but the Indian caught him by the elbow and held him up, his grip like iron.
“Like the sky, there is no blue in this feather. There is, in fact, little or no blue in the world. It’s a deception.”
Alveolar cells, thought Jesse, recalling more of his zoology and physics. Tiny, box-like, transparent particles in the jay’s feathers bounce blue light toward the observer while allowing longer wavelengths to pass through. If Jesse’s memory served him right, there’s no blue pigment in any known vertebrate. His own blue eyes were not even really blue. In the sky, tiny molecules of gas do the same thing. Physicists call it Rayleigh scattering.
“Blue is a lie,” said the Indian, “the only true color is red. All colors bleed to red.”
“Look, chief, I don’t have anything else to give you—”
“This will do,” answered the Indian, and the feather disappeared into a leather pouch hung round his neck. The Indian pulled aside the flap and motioned for Jesse to enter the sweat lodge.
Excerpt from a 1990 report filed by USAMRIID’s Chief of Epidemiology, Dr. Thomas Jahrling:
We can count ourselves extraordinarily lucky that Ebola Reston, though it exhibited the exact same appearance, structural makeup, and protein composition as Ebola Zaire, was not capable of multispecies transmission and amplification. Prior to USAMRIID’s extermination of the specimens in the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit, no less than five civilian personnel had been exposed to the virus, up to and including exposure during necropsy. During the cleanup operation, several military personnel were also exposed as a result of breached Racal suits and gloves. Furthermore, during the initial investigation and prior to the positive identification of a level 4 hot agent, both tissue samples and complete specimens were transported under inadequate containment and safety precautions from Reston, VA to Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, risking exposure to a large population group. Though we have no positive evidence that Ebola strains can be transmitted through the air, there is reason to believe, based upon experiments carried out with E. Zaire at this facility, that that possibility exists. Regardless, emerging viruses, in particular those identified as biohazard level 4, are known to mutate/evolve at extraordinary rates and must be handled as if they had the potential for airborne amplification.
An outbreak of E. Zaire or a similar hot agent in the Washington, DC area would have devastating effects and be extremely hard, if not impossible, to contain. The mortality rate among villages near the headwaters of the Ebola River during an outbreak in 1976 was ninety percent. An airborne strain would have species-wide, global impact, conceivably circling the globe in as little as six weeks. It’s for these reasons that E. Zaire is the most feared agent at USAMRIID.
The fact that E. Reston did not exhibit the same multispecies transmission characteristics of E. Zaire, E. Sudan, Marburg, HIV, and other emerging agents, should not encourage an atmosphere of negligence in the handling of primate quarantines. When E. Reston next emerges, who’s to say how it will have changed as a result of this one microbreak?
“Remove your clothing,” the medicine man said as Jesse slipped through the hide-covered doorway.
Jesse was beyond arguing. Fever and fog. Things were shifting in and out of focus. His head was one dull ache and he imagined he could actually hear his knees knocking together. He stripped to his underwear. The Indian did not protest that last bit of modesty, merely draped a heavy robe over Jesse’s shoulders. The robe stank and scratched at his skin. Jesse believed it to be genuine buffalo.
“Rub yourself down with this.” The medicine man handed him a bundle of grass. “It is sage,” he added when Jesse hesitated. When he had complied, the Indian motioned toward the central fire. “Sit and be cleansed.”
“I think,” stuttered Jesse, “that I need medical attention. Is there a phone nearby?”
“Sit,” the Indian repeated, steering Jesse toward the fire. “You are beyond medical attention, my friend. I offer you a cleansing... and the chance to see the catalyst that you have become. No one can do more for you now.”
The otter crawled into Jesse’s lap as he sat beside the fire and stones. For a moment, Jesse was afraid, remembering the speed with which the otter had bit him the first time. Then he reasoned that the damage was already done and there was nothing to lose. He touched it, stroking its oiled hide beneath his equally coated hand, scratching it carefully behind the ears. He found what appeared to be a bite mark on its hind quarters. Through hooded eyes that now looked as if they were covered with cataracts, the otter watched him. There was red arterial blood running from its nostrils, more seeping from beneath its tail. Jesse had seen cormorants and seals and even sea otters covered with crude. He’d seen them die from it. But he’d never seen an animal bleed like this. There was more at work here than Wilder Creek’s pollution. What had Alcor been dumping?
The medicine man sat down across the fire from him. Of the female otter there was no sign. Her body might be hidden in the thick furs piled about the walls of the lodge; it was too dark for Jesse’s eyes to probe every corner. From a wooden bucket, the medicine man ladled a thick soup of herbs onto the stones in the fire. Hiss and steam. A thick cloud that stung Jesse’s eyes and burned going down his lungs. He thought of peyote and loco weed and all the westerns he had seen. He watched in silence as the Indian placed the blue jay feather into the fire. It did not burn, but instead withered and curled, the blue fading like a bruise to black. Its smoke rose pure white, mingling and disappearing into the steam rising above the fire.
