Gorgon

CHAPTER 9

Dawn was approaching slowly out of the east, for now little more than a slight orange blush on the far horizon. The small and ancient town of Polatli sat at the center of the Anatolian plateau, a large grassy steppe that stretched away for miles, and had a history stretching even farther. It was where Alexander the Great had cut the Gordian knot, and the mythological Phrygian King Midas was said to have been buried.

Corporal Mehmet Atalay rubbed his face with one hand and breathed in the cool dry air. The military base on the outskirts of the town was modest, with only around eighty men and women. But what it lacked in numbers, it made up for in sheer human toughness — these foot soldiers of the Turkish army had a fearsome reputation. Atalay’s soldiers were known for never retreating, and never showing fear. He was proud of every single one of them.

It was in this town, in 1922, that the bloody battle of Sakarya was fought, and the Turkish army halted the advance of the Greek war machine. In three weeks nearly 6000 troops died, and nearly 20,000 were wounded. Atalay had another reason to feel pride — his own grandfather had given his life in that battle. To him, this land was sacred — it was in his flesh, blood, and bones.

There was another reason the base was important. It housed a long-wave low-frequency transmitter that was one of the biggest in the Middle East, even though it had been mostly forgotten in the time of satellite communications. Its powerful waves could reach all corners of the country; and because they traveled at ground level, they were not affected by the ionosphere static, which meant the transmitter would continue to operate even after a nuclear attack. Polatli was a vital communications safety net within a region that was rapidly scaling up on nuclear weapons.

Mehmet Atalay yelled orders at the top of his voice, smiling as he heard them echo away across the grassy plains. His troops were already up, and by now should be commencing tasks in preparation for the forthcoming exercises on the outer plains, to be undertaken in field kit, full pack, and rations. They would form up and march to the gates shortly, giving him an opportunity to assess them for untidy packs or injuries, or anything else that might present a problem … or simply displeased him. The day would be long and hard, and Atalay would do everything his soldiers did. He’d prefer to fall down dead before he showed them fatigue or pain.

The Polatli base was bordered by miles of nine-foot-high storm fencing, and had been for decades. The one nod to modernization was the introduction of tension break-sensors along the perimeter — not so much as a deterrent as early warning of a potential insurgent attack. The fanatics were everywhere these days. Three terrorists had been shot dead only a month ago, their suicide vests, grenade launchers, and thousands of rounds of ammunition all unused, praise be to God. Atalay had delighted in the encounter — it was what his soldiers needed to sharpen their skills, harden their hearts, and turn them into better warriors.

He let his eyes move over the dark plains — for some reason he felt uneasy. Something wasn’t right, or he’d forgotten something. The feeling nagged at him. There was no moon, and sunrise was still some hours away. And there was an unusual mist blowing in from the north-west that smelled of… nothing — not the dry grasses of the steppes, nor the wild flowers. It didn’t even have the moisture usual for mist.

He turned back to his troops, and gave them his customary glare — his eyes were so black they could have been pools of oil resting under twin overhangs of bushy brows. The soldiers began to form up, recognizing what their commanding officer wanted even before he ordered it. He was taking out a single platoon of sixty this time, leaving the rest behind. As he lifted a whistle to his lips to blow the short sharp blast indicating the formal fall-in, the sudden scream of sirens made him pause. A distant flashing red light immediately answered his unspoken question — a breach in the perimeter fence.

Atalay roared his instructions, and soldiers immediately ran in different directions to scan the surveillance equipment and break out large armaments. He then moved the platoon into three smaller squads, twenty apiece, and directed them toward the suspected breach.

He smiled flatly. If insurgents thought they could sneak onto the base and find the camp asleep, they were about to come face to face with sixty armed soldiers and one very pissed-off commander.

Atalay ordered a man to retrieve some flares, then headed out after his squads. He pulled his phone from his pocket — still the fastest means of communication in peacetime — and spoke to his administration center that acted as his command module. Nothing was on ground radar, they reported, and also nothing significant moving in the vicinity of the fence break.

Damn this mist, he thought angrily and roared again for the flares.

A soldier came running with a small case and a fat single-barreled gun. He stopped, broke open the stock, loaded a huge pellet into the pipe and snapped it shut, before handing the gun to his commanding officer.

Atalay nodded. ‘Now, let us see what we will see.’

He pointed the gun upwards and pulled the trigger, then immediately handed it to the soldier to reload.

Explosive gases thumped the cigar-shaped silver pellet hundreds of feet into the air, where it exploded into a glaring red ball of light dangling on a small parachute. The flare floated to the ground, a miniature sun of heat and light that illuminated the terrain for hundreds of feet in every direction.

Atalay grabbed the loaded flare gun again, and fired off another round. This followed the first’s trajectory, and a few seconds later added its light to the scene.

His men had fanned out in a line at the fence break. The flare had colored the mist a boiling red, and within it, just inside the fence, a figure was visible — tall, large, and wearing something on its head. It stood stock still, but also seemed to be in constant motion, like a film dubbed over itself with all versions playing at once. The storm-fencing wire behind it looked torn apart rather than cut.

‘What in God’s name …?’ Atalay lifted his phone to his ear. ‘Onbaşi, what do you have on ground radar for our position … approximately 500 feet to our direct east?’

There was the sound of confusion, then, ‘I only have you, sir, and the squads. There is nothing else.’

Atalay swore. ‘There is something here — I can see it with my own eyes. It tore a hole in our fence. It’s too big to not show up on ground radar — check again.’

More silence, then, ‘Nothing … no physical signature at all. Are you sure it’s not a shadow, sir?’

Atalay swore even louder and hung up. He pointed to his closest squad leader. ‘Bylak, see to the intruder.’

The soldier saluted, then waved his men forward. Atalay fired another flare as the squad approached the figure. It remained standing as still as a post, and as Bylak and his men circled it, Atalay could see that it was at least seven feet tall, and had either a strange helmet on its head, or …

The new flare descended. In its red light, Atalay saw Bylak stop just a dozen feet in front of the towering figure, raise his gun and yell instructions. There was no response for several seconds, then the huge head seemed to slowly lift and, though Atalay couldn’t be sure due to the swirling mist, crane forward to stare into his man’s face. Bylak dropped his gun and staggered back a step. He went down to his knees, raking at his eyes, then froze in place.

Atalay’s eyes went wide. He dropped the flare gun and drew his own revolver, then roared a single instruction: ‘Fire.’

Automatic gunfire shattered the dawn air, and muzzle flashes dotted the small hillside, as hundreds of rounds sped toward the figure. It seemed to writhe and shake at their impact, but didn’t fall. The head swiveled slowly, seeming to take in the men on the hill. At each sweep, the sound of gunfire lessened.

When the huge head finally swung toward Mehmet Atalay, he had the fleeting impression of a ghastly white face streaked red by the flare, and slitted reptilian eyes that could only be hell-born. Images of snakes, fiery pits, roaring giants, and monstrous many-headed hounds crowded his brain, and it seemed to slow, like a clock winding down. A tiny dot of pain in his forehead grew and bloomed, and he saw the figure was gliding toward him. He wanted to fire his gun, or stab at it, or throw a punch, but his muscles refused to obey. The thing went past him without a glance, and he realized he was as inconsequential to it as an insect that just happened to be in the way.

A veil of gray started to pull over his vision. He turned his head on a creaking neck to glance at his men. They were frozen in place on the hill, some with rifles still at their shoulders. A stone army, armed and ready for battle, for eternity.

Doctor Layla Ayhan pushed the long curved needle in through the flesh of the young boy’s tricep and lifted it out the other side of the vicious gash. She tugged and the skin came together like the mouth of a purse being pulled closed. She repeated the zippering stitch a few more times, felt the flesh around the wound, as if testing for ripeness, and then gave it a quick swab of alcohol. She stood back to survey her work.

‘Looks good … and you’ll have a nice scar to frighten the girls.’ She smiled and pulled off her gloves.

The boy bobbed his head and grinned back, trying to pull the skin on his arm around to see her work.

‘Ack.’ She batted his hand away from the wound.

The pager vibrated on her hip, making her jump. The electronic relic was only ever called by her mother and some select close friends. She lifted the small black box from her belt to read the brief message that scrolled across its miniature screen: PRIORITY — BAYKAL–COMING IN AT LOADING BAY — 5 MINS.

She raised an eyebrow as she tapped the box against her chin for a moment. What are you bringing me that is so important and secretive you have to use the back door of my hospital, Kemel?

She pushed some loose hair back behind her ear, turned to the boy and lifted him off the gurney. ‘Out,’ she said with a smile, and pushed him into the arms of his mother, who looked far less impressed by the wound than he was.

Layla quickly tidied her combined office and laboratory, sweeping coffee cups and food wrappers into a wastepaper basket. She went to an old wooden cupboard that doubled as a filing cabinet and pulled open the door, quickly checking her face in a small mirror on its inside. Satisfied, she shut the door, and was straightening her clothes when there was a knock on the door and it was immediately being pushed open.

Kemel Baykal stared at her for a second or two, his bushy moustache turned up at the corners with the hint of a smile, then gave a little bow. The large Special Forces commander was twice as fearsome as any man Layla knew, but in her presence he always seemed to revert to the stumbling schoolboy. She liked that.

Baykal stepped to the side to allow two soldiers to push a covered gurney into the room. He dismissed them and turned to her, his face serious.

‘A puzzle, Doctor … and an urgent one, I’m afraid.’

He flipped back the sheet, and the question forming on her lips was immediately cut off.

She approached slowly. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘Far from it,’ Baykal responded softly.

She walked the length of the gurney, her hand hovering over the figure. She reached into her pocket to retrieve some rubber gloves, pulled them on, and touched the corpse. It was rock-hard.

‘Impossible. This is not real.’

Baykal stared down at the figure. ‘I agree it is impossible. And I wish it wasn’t real. But this was one of my men, and I think there will be others.’ He looked up, his eyes tormented. ‘Layla, help us understand it.’

She pressed the man’s cheek. Powder drifted down onto the gurney. She noticed some fragments had broken away, and went to her bench to gather a spare slide and a scalpel. She used the blade to scrape the debris onto the slide, and took it back to her bench where a large microscope stood waiting. She flicked on a light at its base and placed her eye over the lens.

‘Where did this occur?’ She adjusted the microscope’s resolution, then lifted her head to look once again at the strange remains on the gurney. ‘How did it occur?’

Baykal was leaning against the wall, his arms folded, his face dark with concentration. He blinked at the sound of her voice.

‘The Basilica Cistern — something happened to him in a newly discovered deep vault. Been sealed for centuries, we think.’

She peered into the microscope again, using the tip of one finger to fractionally move the slide to examine different aspects of the sample.

‘Cell structures, blood vessels, muscle striation, bone — it’s all there. If I hadn’t seen this myself, I would never have believed it. Full ossification… amazing.’ She stood up and turned to the SFC commander. ‘When did this happen — I mean, over what period of time?’

Baykal used his shoulders to push off the wall. ‘Just a few hours ago … and it took only minutes.’ He blinked, remembering. ‘I saw it happen myself.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Hours ago?’ She leaned back from the scope. ‘Impossible.’ Layla moved quickly to the gurney, where she pulled back more of the sheet. The body lay among fragments of stone and mounds of gray dust. ‘Simply amazing.’ She picked up one of the fragments with her gloved hand and rolled it between thumb and forefinger.

Baykal sighed. ‘It’s impossible, I know. But trust me, I saw it. He must have become infected or contaminated by something.’ His eyes widened. ‘In the deepest pit, there was a huge bronze urn. It had just been opened. It was empty when we got there, but we had the feeling there had been something in it.’

Layla turned to him. ‘You think something came out of it?’

Baykal shook his head. ‘Came out, taken out, I don’t know, nothing is making sense. But could there have been something contagious in there?’

Layla wiped a finger along the body’s upper arm and lifted it to her face. ‘It’s degrading, becoming even more ossified to the point of losing its chemical cohesion — turning into powder. Soon it’ll be gone.’

Baykal grunted. ‘Perhaps to the same place where all the other bodies went. Well, is it? Contagious?’

She rubbed her thumb and finger together, and the smooth dust floated away. ‘Contagious? I don’t see how — there are no living cells anywhere in the matrix, neither internally nor externally. There is absolutely nothing living here — it’s as sterile as can be. So, no — no vectors, no transferable fluids, no biological residues, nothing.’ She looked down at the frozen face of the soldier. ‘Whatever caused this, it switched on very quickly, and then just… switched off again.’

She pulled more of the sheet back. ‘What is his clothing made from?’

Baykal frowned momentarily. ‘Flame-retardant wool.’

She nodded. ‘But not the belt — that’s nylon mesh, right?’

He nodded.

She reached out to the stone hand. ‘There’s a ring on his finger.’ The digit snapped off in her hand and she held it up. ‘See, still gold. But everything else with a biological base, the flesh, bone, clothing, was… infected.’ She pushed a strand of hair back off her face. ‘That might not be the right word — afflicted might be better.’

‘Afflicted, infected.’ He shrugged. ‘By what?’

Layla walked to a bookshelf, and reached up to select a couple of monstrous tomes that made her strain with the effort. Baykal rushed over to take them from her. She pointed to the table, and he set them down. She immediately began to flick through the first volume’s thousands of pages. She slowed her search, and ran a finger down one of the columns.

‘It is near impossible,’ she said, ‘and it’s certainly rare. But something like this has been documented before — just never on this scale or acting with such aggressive rapidity.’

Baykal pointed to the gurney. ‘This has happened before? When?’

She was reading down the page, her brow furrowed in concentration. ‘Hmm, well, not exactly like this, but … here …’ She waved him over, and started to read. ‘Okay, here we go. There are actually several conditions that can cause flesh to solidify, or ossify, as it’s termed.’ She looked at the gurney. ‘Nothing as complete as that …’

Baykal leaned over her shoulder. ‘Please, tell me everything. Anything might be helpful right now.’

She saw the worry on his face. It was one of his men lying there, and more were still missing. The odds were they had met the same fate.

‘Well, there is a disease called scleroderma,’ she said, ‘which means “hard skin”. It’s characterized by a thickening of the epidermis. However, the real damage is done under the surface of the skin, where the immune system destroys the small blood vessels through the creation of excessive collagen. The patient ends up with thick and tight leathery skin that feels like it’s burning. Supposed to be very painful.’

Baykal’s mouth turned down. ‘Yes, his face… it certainly looked painful. But isn’t collagen the stuff they inject into Hollywood stars’ lips?’

She laughed, but stopped quickly when she saw his question was genuine. ‘No, not quite. Eventually the build-up of the leathery, fibrous connective tissue destroys the lungs, heart, gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, muscles, just about everything. Pretty horrible.’

Baykal motioned to the gurney, his voice a little louder. ‘But this isn’t just the skin becoming leathery — look at him.’

‘I know, I know.’ Layla quickly flipped through some more pages of the medical tome, running her finger down a dense column of information. ‘This is more what I was thinking of. Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.’ She looked up at Baykal. ‘Stone man syndrome. Maybe… possibly…’

Baykal leaned closer, trying to see over her shoulder. ‘Right now, possibly will do. Tell me about it.’

‘It’s very, very rare, and was described as early as 2000 BC by the early Greeks, although there are cases documented all over the world. Basically, the body starts to over-produce calcium, which causes unnecessary changes to the skeletal structure, turning the skeleton into a series of bony plates.’ She frowned as she read down the page. ‘Hmm, and not only the skeleton — eventually all the organs succumb. You can cut away the affected tissue or bone, but it simply repairs itself — not with connective tissue, but with more bone.’

She pushed the book nearer so he could see.

Baykal read the text aloud. ‘An American, Harry Raymond Eastlack, began to develop calcium build-up in his system at ten years of age. By the time he died, his body had completely ossified. He could just move his lips to speak, but everything else was as hard as stone.’ He frowned. ‘Yes, but …’

‘But the process usually takes several years,’ Layla finished. ‘You say this happened to your man in just a few hours?’

Baykal looked up at her slowly. ‘No — while we watched — in minutes.’ He sighed. ‘He just stopped moving, then dried up — turned to rock and dust.’

Layla frowned and went back to the microscope. ‘No, not dried up, of that I am sure. The cells are still hydrated. This body was not desiccated, it was just …’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know, it’s as if its life force was extracted, leaving nothing living behind. I bet if I had an electron microscope I’d see that even the bacteria on his skin and in his gut is ossified as well.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t think I have many answers for you. Sorry.’

He smiled. ‘Actually I’ve learned a lot. But I’ve also learned there is a lot more we don’t know. More work to do.’ He made a small bow. ‘As always, you are amazing, Dr. Ayhan. Ah, I almost forget. Can you get this analyzed?’ He pulled a small bottle from his pocket, and shook it before handing it to her.

‘Sure.’ She held it up, peering at it closely. ‘Looks like old fish scales … very old. The cisterns have carp — some quite large.’ She looked back at the bottle. ‘I might be wrong, and we won’t know for sure until we get it analyzed.’ She reached into a drawer to pull out a padded envelope, wrote an address on the outside, dropped the sample inside and sealed it. ‘‘I’ll send this to a friend at the museum. He’ll identify it. But it’s your job to find out how it got there.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ll figure it out, Kemel. You always do.’

He reached up to place his hand over hers, just as his phone jangled in his pocket. He made a guttural sound in his throat and pointed at her chest. ‘Don’t go away.’

He put the phone to his ear and turned his back on her, lowering his voice. ‘All of them?’ He closed his eyes, and Layla could see his teeth grinding behind his cheeks. He disconnected, but remained staring out of the large window over the city rooftops.

‘What is it?’ Layla came up behind him.

‘It has happened again.’

‘Another stone man? In the Palace Cisterns?’

He shook his head, turning slowly. ‘No, many miles away … and this time an entire army base. All dead … all turned to stone.’

She froze. ‘What? But …’

Baykal headed for the door. ‘I’ll be back — we still need to talk.’

Layla grabbed her coat. ‘We’ll talk on the way — I have to see this myself.’