“For a long time, the problem was confined to the Eastern Seaboard. Then the bright boys at PCS decided to make a human population control weapon out of it. They tinkered around with its genetics, and ended up spreading it even further afield. Camiphages are everywhere now. They can’t be controlled, so we have to adapt to them.”
“And the sirens?” Ryan asked him.
“Only good thing PCS did was to stumble on a way to detect the start of their reproduction cycle. That alert siren goes off whenever cell concentrations reach critical mass. Which is pretty much like clockwork twice a dayit’s keyed to the tidal cycle. When the siren sounds, everyone heads for pressurized shelters. Of course, PCS made sure there is never enough shelter space to go around. If you don’t get inside, you die. The agrobacteria down here on Slime Level just drown you with their wet weight, but if you suck in a lungful of carniphages, they eat you from the inside out. Takes about a minute to kill you. Then they really get to work. They are busy little fuckers.”
Ryan looked at the backs of his hands, which were dotted with tiny red spots.
“That’s nothing,” Damm assured him. “When they get on the skin surface in low concentrations they can cause rashes and boils, and in some cases, even temporary blindness. All of which goes away in a few hours. Carniphages are really only deadly during the reproductive stage of their life cycle, when there’s lots and lots of them. They hatch out, eat, multiply and either die or go dormant, all on their own timetable. The whole thing lasts half an hour, from start to finish.”
“I saw the guys in black armor use something like that in Deathlands, only it ate flesh from the outside in.”
“You must mean the milweapon. Those aren’t airborne bacteria. They’re held in supersaturated concentrations in a foam suspension.”
The van’s high beams caught the outline of something ahead that wasn’t all green.
Ryan recognized the rear of a semitrailer, parked in the middle of nowhere. Its silver sides were striped with slimy, wet fronds.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Nara exclaimed. “That’s not going to protect us!”
“It’s all been taken care of,” Damm said. When the driver sounded his horn, the rear double doors of the trailer swung open, revealing a brightly lit ulterior. The two men waiting inside quickly lowered a metal ramp. The driver turned and reversed the van up and into the trailer.
Ryan and Nara climbed out of the van along with everyone else. The driver and three others donned black plastic boots, rain suits and gauntlets before pulling the protective yellow plastic bags over their heads. Picking up laser rifles, the four of them hopped off the trailer’s tailgate. Ryan got a good look outside before they shut the doors. Beyond range of the trailer’s interior lights, it was blacker than the tenth level of hell out there. The long compartment was lined, floor, ceiling, walls, with an envelope of taped together sheet plastic, which was inflated by air pumps spaced along the floor. After ushering Ryan and Nara to the front of the box, the others completely covered the van with a clear plastic tarp and secured it on the floor with sandbags.
It was even hotter inside the trailer. Through the clear plastic, it looked like the walls were insulated with a silver material.
“The van’s contaminated,” Nara told the mercie leader. “Covering it over like that’s not going to keep the inside of this placeand usfrom turning green. And what about the agrobacteria that’s seeping in from the outside through the seams in the envelope?”
“You’re right,” Damm said, “eventually this interior space is going to become a solid mass of slime, but long before that happens we’ll be out of here and on our way to Shadow World. In the meantime, don’t worry. Pressure from those air pumps should keep most of the spores out. Now, why don’t you have a seat and get your thoughts together.” He indicated the stack of plastic crates along the trailer wall.
As Ryan and Nara took seats, the mercies started passing around foil packets.