After curiously examining the odd assortment of antenna, beacons, and
satellite dishes adorning the rooftop, the small bird seized a gust of
wind and flew away in search of more edible offerings.
The Coast Guard weather station on Yunaska Island was as tranquil as it
was remote. Situated midway along the Aleutian chain of islands,
Yunaska was one of dozens of volcanic uprisings that curved off the
Alaskan mainland like an arched tentacle. Barely seventeen miles
across, the island was distinguished by two dormant volcano
<SL
peaks at either end, which were separated by rolling grass hills.
Absent a single tree or high shrub, the green island rose like an
emerald from the surrounding frigid ocean waters in the late spring.
Lying central to the North Pacific currents, Yunaska was an ideal
location for tracking sea and atmospheric conditions that would brew
into full-fledged weather fronts as they moved eastward toward North
America. In addition to collecting weather data, the Coast Guard
station also served as a warning and rescue relay station for troubled
fishermen working the surrounding marine-rich waters.
The site could hardly be considered a paradise for the two men assigned
to man the station. The nearest village was ninety miles away across
open water, while their home base in Anchorage was more than a thousand
miles distant. The isolated inhabitants were on their own for a
three-week stint until the next pair of volunteers was airlifted in.
Five months out of the year, brutal winter weather conditions forced
closure of the station except for minimal remote operations. But from
May to November, the two-man crew was on call around the clock.
Despite the seclusion, meteorologist Ed Stimson and technician Mike
Barnes considered it a plum assignment. Stimson enjoyed being in the
field to practice his science while Barnes relished the time off he
would accrue after working a station shift, which he would spend
prospecting in the Alaskan backcountry.
"I'm telling you, Ed, you're going to have to find a new partner after
our next R&R. I found a fissure of quartz in the Chugach Mountains
that would knock your socks off. I know there's got to be a thick,
juicy gold vein lying right beneath it."
"Sure, just like that strike you made wild claims about on the McKinley
River," Stimson chided. Barnes had a naive sense of optimism that
always amused the elder meteorologist.
"Just wait till you see me driving around Anchorage in my new Hummer,
then you'll believe," replied Barnes somewhat indignantly.
"Fair enough," Stimson replied. "In the meantime, can you check
the anemometer mounting? The wind readings have stopped recording
again."
"Just don't file a claim on my gold field while I'm up on the roof,"
Barnes grinned while pulling on a heavy coat.
"Not to worry, my friend. Not to worry."
Two miles to the east, Sarah Matson cursed leaving her gloves back in
the tent. Although the temperature was almost fifty, an offshore
breeze made it feel much cooler. Her hands were wet from crawling over
some sea-washed boulders and the sensitivity was evaporating from her
fingertips. Climbing across a gully, she tried to forget about her icy
hands and concentrate on moving closer to her quarry. Stepping quietly
along a boulder-strewn path, she eased herself slowly to a prime
vantage point beside a shallow rock outcropping.
Barely thirty feet away lay a noisy colony of Steller's sea lions
basking at the water's edge. A dozen or so of the fat-whiskered
mammals sat huddled together like tourists jammed on the beach at Rio
while another four or five could be seen swimming in the surf. Two
young males barked loudly back and forth at each other, vying for the
attention of a nearby female, who showed not the slightest sign of
interest in either mammal. Several pups slept blissfully oblivious to
the rancor, cuddled up close to their mother's belly.
Pulling a small notepad from her jacket pocket, Sarah began jotting
down particulars about each animal, estimating their age, sex, and
apparent health condition. As accurately as she could, she carefully
observed each sea lion for signs of muscle spasms, eye or nasal
secretions, or excessive sneezing. After nearly an hour of
observation, she replaced the notepad in her pocket, hoping that she
would later be able to read the scribbled handwriting created by her
frozen fingers.
Slowly retracing her steps, Sarah edged away from the colony and
made her way back across the gully. She found that her original
footsteps had left indentations in the short grass and she easily
followed her imprints leading inland and over a gradual rise. The cool
sea breeze felt refreshing to her lungs as she hiked while the sparse
beauty of the island made her feel energized and full of life. Belying
her slender frame and delicate features, the flaxen-haired woman of
thirty actually relished working outdoors. Growing up in rural
Wyoming, Sarah had spent all her summer days hiking and horseback
riding in the Teton Mountains with a pair of rambunctious brothers. A
love of outdoor wildlife led her to study veterinary medicine at
neighboring Colorado State University. After a number of research
positions on the East Coast, she followed a favorite professor to the
federal Centers for Disease Control with the promise that she wouldn't
be stuck in a lab every day. In the role of field epidemiologist for
the CDC, she was able to combine her passion for wildlife and the
outdoors by helping track the spread of communicable diseases among
animals that posed a health threat to humans.
Finding herself in the Aleutian Islands was just the sort of outdoor
adventure she craved, although the reason behind it tugged at her
animal-loving heart. A mysterious number of sea lion deaths had been
reported along the western Alaska Peninsula, although no known
environmental catastrophe or human-induced culprit was suspected. Sarah
and two associates had been sent from Seattle to diagnose the extent of
the die-off and determine its range of dispersement. Starting with the
outward Aleutian island of Attu, the team had begun island-hopping
eastward, searching for signs of the outbreak while working their way
toward the Alaskan mainland. Every three days, a small seaplane would
pick the team up, then ferry them to the next designated island with a
fresh drop of supplies. The second day on Yu-naska had failed to
reveal indications of the ailment in the local sea lion population,
which added a small sense of relief to Sarah.
Blessed with high cheekbones and soft hazel eyes, the pretty scientist
quickly ambled the two miles back to camp, easily spotting the trio
of bright red tents some distance away. A squat, bearded man wearing a
flannel shirt and a worn Seattle Mariners baseball cap was rummaging
through a large cooler when Sarah approached the campsite.
"Sarah, there you are. Sandy and I were just making plans for lunch,"
Irv Fowler said
with a smile. An easygoing man on the thin side of
fifty, Fowler looked and acted like a man ten years his junior.
A petite redheaded woman crawled out of one of the nearby tents
clutching a pot and ladle. "Irv's always making plans for lunch,"
Sandy Johnson responded with a grin while rolling her eyes.
"How did you two make out this morning?" Sarah inquired as she grabbed
an empty campstool and sat down.
"Sandy's got the stats. We checked a large colony of Steller's on the
eastern beach and they all looked fat and healthy. I found one
cadaver, but by all appearances the fellow looked like he expired from
old age. I took a tissue sample for lab analysis just to be sure."
While he spoke, Fowler pumped the primer on a propane gas camp stove,
then lit the hissing gas escaping beneath the burner, the blue flame
igniting with a poof.
"That's consistent with what I observed as well. It appears that the
affliction has not spread to the sea lions of charming Yunaska," Sarah
replied, her eyes sweeping the green landscape around them.
"We can check the colony on the west coast of the island this
afternoon, since our pilot won't be back to pick us up until
morning."
"That will be a bit of a hike. But we can stop for a chat at the Coast
Guard station, which I recall our pilot saying was manned this time of
year."
"In the meantime," Fowler announced, placing the large pot on the
portable stove, "it's time for the specialty of the house."
"Not that fire-belching-" Sandy tried to declare before being cut
off.
"Yes, indeed. Cajun chili du jour," Fowler grinned, while scraping the
lumpy brown contents of a large tin can into the heated pot.
"As they say in N'Awlins," Sarah said with a laugh, "Laisse^ k bon
temps rouler."
Ed Stimson peered intently at a weather radar monitor watching a slight
buildup of white electronic clouds fuzz up the upper portion of the
green screen. It was a moderate storm front, some two hundred miles to
the southwest, that Stimson accurately predicted would douse their
island with several days of soggy weather. His concentration was
interrupted by a rapping sound overhead. Barnes was still up on the
tin roof fooling with the anemometer.
Static-filled chatter suddenly blared through the hut from a radio set
mounted on a corner wall. Nearby fishing boats, their captains yakking
about the weather, constituted most of the garbled radio traffic
received on the island. Stimson did his best to tune out the
meaningless chatter and, at first, failed to detect the odd whooshing
sound. It was a low resonance emanating from outside. Then the radio
fell silent for a moment and he could clearly hear a rushing sound in
the distance, something similar to a jet aircraft. For several long
seconds, the odd noise continued, seeming to diminish slightly in
intensity before ending altogether in a loud crack.
Thinking it might be thunder, Stimson adjusted the scale view on his
weather radar to a twenty-mile range. The monitor showed only a light
scattering of clouds in the immediate vicinity, with nothing resembling
thunderheads. Must be the Air Force up to some tricks, he figured,
recalling the heavy air traffic in the Alaskan skies during the days of
the Cold War.
His thoughts were broken by a crying wail outside the door from the pet
husky named Max.
"What is it, Max?" Stimson called out while opening the door to the
hut.
The Siberian husky let out a death-shrieking howl as it turned,
shaking, toward his master in the doorway. Stimson was shocked to see
the dog's eyes glazed in a vacant stare while thick white foam oozed
from
his mouth. The dog stood teetering back and forth for a moment, then
keeled over on its side, hitting the ground with a thud.
"Jesus! Mike, get down here quick," Stimson yelled to his partner.
Barnes was already climbing down the ladder from the roof but was
having a hard time catching the rungs with his feet. Nearing the
ground, he missed the last rung with his left foot altogether and
lurched to the ground, staying semierect only by a hearty hand grasp on
the ladder's rung.
"Mike, the dog just ... are you okay?" Stimson asked, realizing
something was not right. Running to his partner's side, he found
Barnes in a state of labored breathing, and his eyes were nearly as
glassy as Max's. Throwing his arm around the younger man's shoulder,
Stimson half carried, half dragged Barnes into the shack and set him
down in a chair.
Barnes bent over and retched violently, then sat upright, clinging to
Stimson's arm for support. Gasping in a hoarse voice, he whispered,
"There's something in the air."
back of his head and he fell over stone dead.
Stimson stood up in a state of shock, then found that the room was
spinning like a top before his eyes. A throbbing pain racked his head
while the grip of an iron vise suddenly began squeezing the air out of
his lungs. Staggering to the radio, he tried to let out a brief cry
for help but was unsure whether his lips could move because of numbness
to his face. A burst of heat flared internally, like an invisible fire
was consuming his organs. Choking for air and losing all sense of
vision, he staggered and fell hard to the floor, dead before he hit the
ground.
Four miles east of the Coast Guard station, the three CDC scientists
were just finishing their lunch when the invisible wave of death
struck. Sarah was the first to detect something wrong when a pair of
birds flying overhead suddenly stopped in mid flight as if they had
struck an invisible wall and then fell to the ground wriggling. Sandy
fell victim first, clutching her stomach and doubling over in agony.
"Come now, my chili wasn't that bad," Fowler joked before he, too,
became light-headed and nauseous.
Sarah stood and took a few steps toward the cooler to retrieve some
bottled water when fire shot through her legs and her thigh muscles
began to spasm.
"What's happening?" Fowler gasped as he tried to comfort Sandy before
staggering to the ground in distress.
For Sarah, time seemed to slow as her senses became dulled. Sluggishly,
she dropped to the ground as her muscles weakened and refused to obey
the commands sent by her brain. Her lungs seemed to constrict upon
themselves, making each breath a painful stab of agony. A thumping
noise began to ring through her ears as she fell prone on her back and
stared blurry-eyed at the gray sky above. She felt the blades of grass
dance and rustle against her body, but she was frozen, unable to
move.
Gradually, a fog enveloped her mind and a field of blackness began to
encroach the edges of her vision. But a sudden intrusion jarred her
senses momentarily. Into the sea of gray popped an apparition, a
strange ghost with a tuft of black hair over a rubbery face that seemed
to melt away
like plastic. She felt the alien gaze upon her with
frightening giant, three-inch-wide crystal eyes. But there appeared to
be another set of eyes beyond the crystal lenses, gazing intently at
her with a sense of grace and warmth. A pair of deep, opaline green
eyes. Then everything turned to black.
Sarah opened her eyes to a gray canopy above her, only this one was
flat and without clouds. Shaking off the blurriness, her eyes slowly
regained focus and she could see that it was not the sky above her but
a ceiling. A softness beneath her revealed that she was lying in a bed
with a thick pillow under her head. An oxygen mask was covering her
face, which she removed, but she left alone the intravenous needle that
was stuck in her arm. Carefully taking in the surroundings, her eyes
gazed upon a small, simply decorated room featuring a small writing
desk in one corner with an impressive painting of an old ocean liner
above it, while off to the side was a small bath. The bed she lay in
was mounted to the wall and the open door to a hallway had a step over
threshold. The whole room seemed to be rolling, and she was uncertain
if it was her head creating the motion as a result of the deep
throbbing sensation that pounded at her temples.
A movement caught her eye and she turned back to the doorway
to find a figure standing there, looking at her with a slight grin. He
was a tall man, broad-shouldered, but on a fit and somewhat wiry frame.
He was young, perhaps in his late twenties, she guessed, but moved with
the confidence of a more mature man. His skin showed the deep tan of
someone who spent a good deal of time outdoors. Wavy black hair set