Black Tide by Del Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

mail,’ Scotty said. ‘Maybe that – that – what’s that stuff they’re mining from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico? Those methane ice chunks – maybe that’s where it came from.’
    We sat quietly a moment, and then I said, ‘Listen. All I know is I saw an awful lot of cellular debris in the slides. It looked like whatever was in the water had literally exploded.’
    â€˜Like those people on fire,’ Scotty observed in a near whisper.
    â€˜Yes!’ Heather declared, slapping her thigh with an open palm. ‘How do you explain that, Fred?’ She turned to me and I could see she was angry, but not at me. It was an intellectual frustration. She wanted answers and there weren’t any and it infuriated her. ‘Smoke pouring off those people’s bodies. You mean to tell me an aerosol caused their cells to burst into flames? Mass spontaneous combustion?’ The chin went back down on her knees. ‘This isn’t Ripley’s Believe It or Not .’
    I started to reach over and run my hand through her hair. Or pat her on the shoulder. Just extend some gesture of shared frustration. To be honest, I wasn’t strong on the chemistry component of my field, and human physiology bored me. Now I was wishing I’d paid attention in those classes or kept up with the latest papers, because I had no explanation for how any of this could have happened. On the face of it, some kind of marine organism had moved through Santa Rosa Sound, energetically reacting to some kind of stimulus and in the process releasing a compound that produced a similar reaction in terrestrial organisms, at least the higher vascular organisms. So far none of the grasses or trees had exploded. Maybe that was to come.
    At any rate, it sounded like something out of a science fiction novel, or worse, a George Romero movie, and I shuddered at that thought, here in the dark. A scene from the movie Night of the Living Dead sprang to mind, the one where the brother and sister are in the graveyard, and a zombie attacks the brother. I was only a kid when that movie arrived at the local drive-in. My big sister went to see it with her boyfriend, and she recounted the scene for me. Years later, when I saw the movie for myself, I felt a refrain of the shuddering terror that electrified my nerves as my sister described the zombie’s shambling stance, and the brother’s transformation from taunting jokester to dead man. An echo of that old dread reverberated through me now.
    â€˜I think it was some kind of nerve gas spill,’ Heather said quietly. She still had her chin on her knees, and she was gazing blankly across the sound, at the fiery mainland. Debris had begun washing ashore on the island – timber from docks, old oil barrels, other flotsam and jetsam. It looked as though a barge had taken out a stretch of shoreline east of here, the results just now arriving at our beach.
    â€˜There’s military bases around here,’ Scotty mused, his voice irritatingly sinister, as if that fact alone were enough to decide the issue. I couldn’t help but shake my head, and I could tell that irked Scotty. His expression soured into defensiveness. ‘Well, Professor, it’s a damn better theory than you and your nitro slime.’
    â€˜These bases aren’t involved in that kind of work,’ I sighed, not even hiding the weary impatience.
    â€˜How do YOU know?’ Scotty snarled back.
    â€˜Hurlburt is a special operations base.’
    â€˜Special operations!’ Scotty repeated stupidly.
    â€˜Special operations,’ I mocked him, ‘as in commando operations. Not chemical warfare. And Eglin tests conventional munitions.’
    â€˜Who’s to say what they do?’ Scotty hissed. ‘They’re the damn government, and the government lies all the time.’
    â€˜Sure. And they’ve got a flying saucer hidden in one of their