Black Rain

There was nothing overtly dangerous about what she saw, but something struck her as odd about the shape and the way the leaves and other debris had gathered around it. Try as she might, Danielle was unable to shake the feeling that it was an ill omen of some kind.

“Cut the throttle,” she called back. “There’s something in the water.”

Her shout brought the others to attention. Verhoven caught her eye and began to move to the forward section of the boat.

“You see it?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Block it before it passes.”

As Verhoven grabbed one of the boat’s long oars, a crowd gathered beside them.

Behind her, the boat’s captain cut the throttle and turned the Ocana sideways. As the vessel settled, the floating object bumped softly against the port side. Verhoven trapped it.

First glimpses surprised them all. “Oh, that’s disgusting,” Susan said.

For those who couldn’t see, Danielle spoke. “It’s a body.”

It was the body of a native man, facedown in the water, surrounded by a tangle of branches, leaves and other flotsam. The lower half of his torso and his legs disappeared beneath the surface, leaving only the back of his head and his shoulders visible.

“Can you clear him?” Danielle said, her tone calm but concerned.

Verhoven used the the oar to scrape off some debris, pushing away a tangle of sticks that had hooked onto the man and then turning his attention to a three-foot log that floated near the man’s head. He shoved it with the oar and it moved away, but the body jerked along behind it and the man’s hands floated to the surface. A thin length of twine connected each wrist to the branch.

Verhoven fired a shot of tobacco juice over the side. “He’s tied to the damn thing.”

Danielle could see the lengths of crude native rope that ran to each wrist. It was not a good sign and truthfully not something she would have wanted any of the others to see.

But they did see, and like onlookers at a car crash, they rubbernecked for a better view, watching as Verhoven used the oar to try to maneuver the log further. As Verhoven worked, the body twisted and rolled, eventually turning faceup. The onlookers stared in silence. The brown face, with a frame of wet, black hair, appeared relatively untouched by whatever had killed him, but the torso carried scars from a variety of assaults: two great holes in the chest, a pair of long slashes that ran from his left shoulder down across his stomach, and a group of bulbous swellings—spherical blackened blisters the size and shape of half a grapefruit.

Polaski asked the question on everyone’s mind. “What on earth happened to him?”

Danielle stared at the holes in the chest. They were large and circular. “Are those bullet wounds?”

Verhoven shook his head. “Too big. Can’t make a hole like that without blasting a train tunnel out the back side. And I didn’t see any exit wounds.”

Verhoven offered a guess. “Looks like he was impaled on something. A couple of blows from a sharpened stave, maybe.”

Danielle needed a better opinion. She crouched at the edge of the Ocana’s deck and studied the holes in the chest herself. There was damage to the man’s skin that indicated movement both ways. “Something went in and then came back out,” she whispered. “It didn’t go through.”

Behind her the deck became crowded as the others moved in for a better view.

“What about those?” Devers asked, pointing to the blackened swellings. “I mean, please tell us it’s not Ebola or anything.”

Some of the blisters displayed ragged tears, as if they had exploded. Others showed a cleaner cut, as if they’d been lanced on purpose, perhaps to keep them from breaking. At that moment she wished they had brought a doctor along, but another civilian was one too many. The limited medical training the NRI had given her and a degree in biology would have to suffice. “There’s no discharge,” she said, moving in closer and sniffing the air. “No smell of infection either.”

In fact, there wasn’t much odor at all, which led her to believe the man died quite recently, probably within the last twenty-four hours.

“It looks more like a reaction to something,” she told them. “Like a chemical burn or a raised welt from being struck.” She wondered if the skin and tissue had swelled from being in the water. She turned to Devers. “And, besides, Ebola is only in Africa.”

Devers nodded, moving closer. “Good to know. Ebola, permafrost—I’m learning all kinds of things on this trip.”

Uncomfortable with Devers’ crowding presence and his babbling, Danielle stood up, put a hand on him and pushed him back with the rest of the crowd. “Stay,” she said, glaring at him, then turned to Verhoven. “Can I see his legs, please?”

The request was easier asked than answered. Verhoven was using his pole to keep the body from floating away, and each time he released the pressure, the slipstream that had formed on the side of the boat began to move it. He turned to one of his men. “Get another pole.”