Mason looked at the rest. Nicholas was still resting on his box. He supposed he'd have to stay. That left—
“Where you want me?” Calle asked. The usual laughter had gone out of his voice.
“You stay with me. But your job isn't to flap your mouth, do you get me?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Now Doc?”
Gideon looked up as if he had been oblivious. “Uh, yes?”
“You better start talking.”
3
When Christian returned with the civilians, they stared at the doctor as if they'd never seen his ilk before. The McCreedy woman looked like she wanted to start running her mouth straight off, but before she could, Gideon started to speak.
“It gets inside your head,” the doc said. “That's the way these things work, isn't it? Like the movies. But this is worse. You can trust me on that.”
“Are you saying this is a virus, Doc? Because if you are—”
The man was shaking his head. “Not a virus. A fungus. A blastocladiomycota. At least, that's what it looks like. It's not like any species I've ever seen. This thing is a work of art. It's a survivor. Like a cockroach of the detritivores. ”
“A what?” Melvin asked.
“A cockroach,” the man said, putting his fingers to his head and making antenna motions. It should have been ridiculous, but Mason felt his skin crawl. He hated bugs, had stomped every goddamned beetle and cockroach he'd seen since he was a kid. Comparing that stuff under The Aeschylus to one… it fit, somehow. The stuff crawled. He didn't know how that was possible since it stayed in one place, but the word fit. It crawled.
“I call it The Carrion,” Gideon said. “That's not right, exactly. It's more like a carrion feeder than a piece of meat, you understand?”
No one said anything.
“It's funny, because if you were to see it under a microscope, it looks crazy inefficient. Its sole purpose is to generate heat. Oh, and I have, by the way. Seen it under a microscope, I mean.”
“What kind of doctor are you?” Mason asked.
“An environmental microbiologist. I study the molecular content of crude. To determine purity and asset use. It's a precursor to the filtration process, the heating and separating of—”
“I get it,” Mason said, “and I don't give a shit. Why don't you tell me what I want to know.” It wasn't a question.
“What?”
“He means that bullshit down there. The Carrion, or whatever it is,” Melvin said.
“How dangerous is it?” the kid asked.
Mason looked at his crew irritatedly, then back at the man. “You managed to survive, Doctor Grey. Why don't you tell us about that?”
“There was a fire about two weeks ago. It was right after Whitman bought the farm. Do you remember?”
Mason's mind drifted back to the briefing reports. Hank Whitman was a rope access technician who had fallen out of his harness while scrubbing the damage ballasts. He had hit his head on the way down, crashed into the water, and drowned. The incident report was labeled as unrelated, but Mason had read it anyways. “I remember.”
“Right. Well, he fell off scrubbing the side of the steel supports on the lower level. What do you think he was scrubbing?”
“You don't mean—”
“It started small, just splotches on the supports. He went down there to get a closer look, and the next thing we knew, he was in the water. We didn't hear a scream. Nothing. Just the bang of him hitting the struts and the splash below. It took four guys to find him and haul him up. It was a hell of a mess.”
Mason looked at him skeptically. “So what are you telling me, Grey? That somehow, a fungus caused this guy to lose his footing? Or worse?”
When the doctor looked up, his eyes were dead. “Oh no, Mister Bruhbaker. Not The Carrion, not that time. It was either an accident, or one of the crew helped him on his way.”
“What?” Melvin asked, piping in again.
“The fire,” Gideon said. “That's what I was trying to tell you. After his body was recovered, someone set a fire in the medical lab. The whole place burned up. I'd say whatever knocked him off was probably of a similar cause. You get me?”
Mason grimaced. “I don't remember reading anything about that.”
“Of course you don't,” Gideon said. “I bet you also don't remember reading anything about someone sabotaging our communications tower, either. Or wrecking one of our cranes. Or bringing The Carrion into the barracks to make sure every last man on here was infected with it. Do you?”
“Slow down,” Mason said. “You're not making any sense. Your communications has only been down for, what? Thirty-six hours?”
Gideon laughed shrilly. “That's what they told you, is it? I bet they're trying to make this whole thing look like a goddamned accident.”
Melvin looked at Mason in a way he didn't like. He could feel everyone's eyes at his back. “The how and why isn't our concern, here, Doctor. Our mission is to secure the site and prep it for Valley Oil environmental.” So, it's back to that old mantra, is it? It felt like a lie. As much as he wanted it to be the truth, as much as he kept repeating it to himself, it felt like a lie.
“We have to get out of here,” Gideon said, pointing to the bandage on his head. “I can't stay out here. Are you listening?”
“Hold up,” Melvin said. “So you got people sabotaging shit now, huh? Is that what you're saying? That somebody helped this stuff along?”
“That's right,” Gideon said. “That's why they burned the lab. It took us days to realize what was happening. That it wasn't an accident, I mean. By the time we did, it was everywhere. The Carrion had grown up through the water. It was spreading, you see. And besides, a saboteur is the only thing that does make sense. The alternative is even crazier.”
“Oh?” Mason asked.
“The Carrion works by generating heat inside your central nervous system. Don't you get it?” He was near shouting now. “It starts as a fever. And then it spreads, raising your core temperature over a day… or two. Your body sweats. Your brain swells. It doesn't stop you from thinking, but your forebrain… that's the front part of your brain,” he said, tapping a violent finger into his forehead. “It starts to melt. And there's something else. I can't prove it, but I think it… it plants something inside. A message. Like a Trojan, a worm eating its way through your body and spreading to all of your subsystems. It's like… it's like it's looking out for its own survival.” He looked at them. “And so the alternative, gentlemen, is that Whitman was already infected when they brought him back. The alternative is that Whitman waited until they dragged him up into the med lab and zipped him into a body bag. The alternative is that he waited until it was good and quiet in there, climbed out of the bag, and then set the blaze himself. You see, we never found his body after the fire.”
The silence that followed hung in the air like a fog. Mason didn't know whether to laugh or smash the doctor in the mouth. Because they all knew how it sounded. It sounded fucking crazy, just like the doc said.
“He was just the first,” Gideon said. “You see, that's where my theory comes from. As it got more of them, things started to happen. At first, we thought it was just the flu. Guys were coming down with a fever. Their bodies were heating up, you see? One guy registered a body temp of a hundred and eight. A hundred and eight, and he was still walking around! Do you believe that? Because if somebody had told me that, I would have sent him to the goddamned funny farm.”
Mason felt his fists clench. He wanted to shut him up, needed to shut him up, but he couldn't. He was glued to the deck, just like the rest of them.