The Panic Zone

42

The Devil’s Tail River, Cameroon, Africa

The diesel-powered barge chugged along the river that coiled its way through the forests of Cameroon’s remote northern region.

The boat was laden with equipment for Dr. Sutsoff’s expedition.

After spending the night in Yaounde, she’d chartered a float plane to an abandoned riverside outpost. It was as far as the Cessna could travel to land safely before the river narrowed. There, four trusted members of her research team awaited her arrival.

They’d arranged for the boat to take them upriver to their field station.

And the discovery.

They had to work fast. Time was running out.

Sutsoff sat alone at the bow in a director’s chair, drinking in the solitude. The isolation offered relief from the episode she’d endured on her long flight. The water rushing under her was mesmerizing, gently pulling her back over her life.

The aftermath of the stampede was a blur of images and moments.

The toll was 249 dead.

Gretchen had survived because she’d been pressed into an air pocket. But she’d suffered a serious concussion. Her head throbbed as if it would crack open.

Vridekistan declared three days of national mourning. They’d used a school gymnasium as the morgue. Embassy staff accompanied her to identify the battered bodies of her brother, mother and father. They looked like bloodied broken mannequins.

“Get up!” she screamed at them before she collapsed.

Orphaned at fourteen.

The embassy staff contacted her mother’s cousin in Paris. He got her the best medical care. She’d sustained major head trauma. Her skull had been fractured in six places. “A miracle she survived,” one specialist said. Her disturbing brain activity concerned doctors who had warned that over time it could degenerate into a psychopathic condition, an inability to feel empathy or remorse or, at worst, a loss of connection with reality. Medication could offset the effects of her injury but she was at risk of painful seizures and potential dissociative episodes for the rest of her life.

After a year of therapy, her uncle helped her return to school in Switzerland and over the years she excelled with near perfect grades, completing degrees in science, medicine, chemistry and cellular engineering at Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford and MIT.

On her own time, she conducted research on the psychology of mass hysteria, mob mentality and population control. As she developed a pathological loathing of crowds, she began forging a personal ideology, a near fanatical belief, that there were too many people in the world.

Too many ants.

Her outstanding academic achievements led to her being recruited by Foster Winfield, the CIA’s chief scientist, to join a secret team to conduct work on a range of subjects under a new program.

Project Crucible.

The top-secret program encompassed cutting-edge research on synthetic biological agents, theoretical nanotechnology and state-of-the-art genetic manipulation. Some of it was triggered by File 91, flawed work by North Korea. When she advocated that her similar research on DNA manipulation under Project Crucible required secret live trials on a civilian population, her colleagues accused her of wanting to violate the Nuremberg Code.

They were fools.

Winfield and the others failed to see her logic, her need for live trials. She left the program and ultimately left the United States, changed her name and became a citizen of the Bahamas. She took pains not to be found, ensuring her personal information was removed from most databanks as she continued refining her ideology in solitude.

Through her confidential sources in the intelligence and science communities she quietly sought out those who shared her belief that time was running out on civilization. They created a secret organization and explored ways of transforming their beliefs into action. She named her inner circle Extremus Deus, for she was convinced that her life was spared on the day her family died because she was fated to rescue humanity.

From the day she’d encountered the ants eating the dog, to the horrific moments she’d spent in the stadium, she was destined to reach this point. All of her life’s work had led to it, led her to this country, to this river and, soon, to the final component of her formula.

The barge’s engine thudded and Gretchen felt Will’s hand in hers.

Returning spirits of the dead.

Staring into the water flowing by, she considered an old African legend. It held that when the first white explorers arrived, the masts of their ships on the horizon were the first things seen by Africans, who deemed them to be the dead who’d risen from the bottom of the sea. As the barge churned around a bend she saw a cluster of thatched-roof huts pressed from the forest to the muddy riverbank.

It was a deserted village.

She thought of the old tales of cannibals and leper colonies, but as they glided by the huts so deathly still, she thought of the real nightmare that waited ahead.

They made camp that night.

As the barge’s diesel slept, the small group sat around their campfire coated with DEET, listening to the throb of cicadas, the bellow of bullfrogs and the shrieks of things unseen. Flames licked at the night and Sutsoff studied the faces of her team.

Fiona was a brilliant microbiologist from India. Pauline was a doctor from New Zealand who’d worked with aid groups around the globe. Colin was the former science advisor to Britain’s health secretary. Juan had been a surgeon with Argentina’s military.

All were followers of E.D. All had left their positions to join her. They were the best of her organization, her disciples.

They revered her.

They knew her as Dr. Auden and they adhered to her rules.

They did not sit near her, or speak to her unless she initiated conversation, as she did now.

“Give me the outline for tomorrow, Colin.”

“At daybreak the contractor will arrive with men to carry our equipment overland. It’s rough terrain and should take us half a day to reach the field station. We can proceed in the morning.”

“Anyone else care to add anything?”

“Well-” Juan cleared his throat “-we can’t stress enough how dangerous this operation is. No one has ever seen anything like this before.”

“Do you wish to withdraw?” Sutsoff said. “Would you prefer to wait here while the others bravely make their mark in history?”

“No.”

“Your point then?”

“Thank you for the honor to be part of your team.”

They retired to their tents, one for Sutsoff, one for the guys and one for Fiona and Pauline. As the fire died, Sutsoff sensed something breathing, brooding, waiting in the darkness.

And she smiled.