Christy Esmahan - The Laptev Virus

Surely the incidents at Glassuroil had nothing to do with any viral outbreaks. Nothing at all. That kind of thing could not have been kept secret.

After wiping his face and hands with a towel, Stan returned to his bed and picked up the phone to silence it before turning in for the night. That’s when he saw that there had suddenly been a frantic list of emails. Isolated words, ‘urgent’, ‘six dead,’ ‘compound not responding,’ flashed across the message subject lines.

Holy shit, he thought, and his heart began pounding fiercely in his chest. His fingers were shaking so hard that he fumbled a few times as he scrolled through and read the most recent one. It was from a minute ago, 2:09 am.

We cannot reach anyone at the compound to confirm the report that was received a few minutes ago.

Suddenly his phone rang. He saw that it was the new VP of Health, Safety and Environment, Peter Shoemaker, and immediately took the call.

“Stan, sorry to wake you.”

“I was up.”

“I just got a call from Riesig-Alaska, the control facility that is working with the Laptev Bay barracks in the Arctic. It seems there’s been a shooting. They got word that one of the workers, I guess it was the bear hazer, Max something, who had just returned from one of the drilling sites this evening. Apparently he went crazy and began shooting. They said several people were dead. Someone from the barracks sent hasty messages and then all contact with them was lost.”

“God…” Stan said, closing his eyes. A shooting. Workers dead. It was his worst nightmare. He swallowed twice before he was sure that his voice would not tremble as he spoke. “What do you suggest?”

“Since no one is responding, it could be a hostage situation. I think we need to get a plane to go there immediately and see what’s happening,” said Pete.

Stan let out his breath. “Okay, do it,” he said, hoping against hope that it would not be too late.

Oscillating between fear, guilt and anxiety, Stan was not able to sleep for the rest of that long night. With tattered nerves he rose before dawn, fervently wishing he could turn back the ruthless passage of time and remove all traces of his permission to open the drilling site anew.

He had left his phone on, but no new information had been forthcoming. He shaved, showered and just as he was walking out the door, another call came in, this time from Riesig-Alaska. He stepped back inside his house and took the call.

“Mr. Sundback,” said the voice, “this is Gerald Jemison, from the Alaska Riesigoil outpost. Dr. Shoemaker said we were to call you directly as soon as we had information about the compound at Laptev Bay.”

“Yes, what did you find?”

“Sir… I regret to inform you that at this time there appear to be no survivors.”

Stan reached for the wall as the room tipped slightly. “What else have you got?” he said, his voice hoarse.

“We’re sending the photos of the bodies to our forensics team, and the authorities have been called, of course. It’s too early to speculate, but what we can confirm is that most of the crew was killed in their sleep. They were shot in the neck with bear darts. It looks like a few of the people must have woken up while the systematic killing was going on, and there is evidence of a struggle afterwards… though, like I said, no one seems to have survived. We will keep you informed as soon as we find out more.”

Stan hung up. His mind was reeling and his heart was leaden. He knew the next step that he needed to take and he mentally prepared himself to call Dennis. He tried to pick up the phone but suddenly felt nauseous. He ran to the bathroom and bent over the toilet as his stomach heaved repeatedly.

Regret and remorse took turns washing over him anew in huge, towering, suffocating waves. The image of the Deepwater Horizon, listing to the side with huge black plumes of smoke, flashed in his mind. Eleven Dead, Sixteen Injured. Then he saw the reports about the incident in early May and the headlines that read ‘Seven Dead in the Worst Accident Ever in Riesigoil History.’

He covered his mouth, trying to prevent further retching, and walked to the sink to splash some cold water on his face. As he held the towel, the images which had burned themselves onto the fabric of his tortured mind continued to flash mercilessly.

He had known that it was a bad idea to open up the Arctic for drilling again. There were some places too remote and too wild to be dominated by humans. His own arrogance as the CEO of a powerful company had kept him from understanding this basic fact. Now the blood of all those people was on his hands.

He closed his eyes. He knew with utter certainty that there was no way he could make the call and listen to the heartless board again. There was no way that he could ever report to work again. There was no way that he could ever look in the mirror at himself without hating the monster he had become.

He carefully walked back to his bed, his head still throbbing, and retrieved his cell phone. He scrolled through the gruesome photos that Peter had forwarded to him just a few minutes ago. After he had seen them all, he gingerly turned the phone off and placed it on his night stand. Then he hesitated before slowly reaching down and opening the drawer. There it was, shiny, black and always ready to protect him in case of an intruder. With trembling hands he reached in and removed it. He held it for a moment, feeling the weight of the cold metal in his palm. He thought again about the deaths of all those people in the Arctic. He had personally met with each worker on the team before they had returned to work and he had assured them that they would be safe. It had all been a lie.

He looked at the cold, black barrel, but in his mind’s eye, he saw the workers. Strong, healthy people who would never return home to their loved ones. He had watched them kiss their spouses and children before they boarded the plane.

He was so ashamed. There was no other way. He opened his mouth and the last thing he felt was the icy steel, as bitter and cruel as a stormy night near Laptev Bay, against his teeth.

My humble thanks go first to the researchers, professors and scientists who formed and inspired me throughout my academic career, beginning with the professors of Microbiology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. I also thank my professors at the Universidad de León, León, Spain, where I did my Ph. D., and my fellow graduate students, many of whom I still count as close friends now, almost thirty years since we first met.

I would also like to thank Dr. Chantal Abergel and Dr. Jean-Michel Claverie, whose fascinating work with giant viruses was one of the inspirations for this novel. I am deeply indebted to these two researchers and their team at the IGS, CNRS-AMU, France, for kindly providing the picture used on the cover of this novel. It’s not every day that one is brave enough to write to the world’s leading expert on a subject, introduce one’s self, and then make a request for a photograph of their work. It is even far less often that the person receiving said request actually bothers to answer one so graciously. I am humbled and much appreciate their kindness in attending to my request.

In a similar manner, Mr. Graham Blackbourn, Director of Blackbourn Geoconsulting, was most generous in allowing me to download the image of an oil rig in the Laptev Sea area from his website for use on the back cover of this novel. His kindness is most appreciated.

My writing coach and editor, Lauren Sapala, deserves my most fervent appreciation for encouraging me in this endeavor as soon as she found out that I was on this journey. In spite of a heavy schedule and an imminent personal deadline, she made time for me. Her extensive comments on my work, both along the way and once I finished, were extremely positive and helpful, and the story benefitted enormously from her keen insights.