Read Online Pandora's Succession by Russell Brooks - Free Book Online

HAZMAT gear. I was airborne when the SOS was sent, and I was forced to turn back. We used lab mice as a way of ensuring safety for you to come. It took close to three hours before all visible signs of Pandora dissipated. Come with me, you’ll want to see this.” She led them to the isolation chamber. After they passed through the decontamination airlock the crisp frost air hit them. “Don’t worry. We’ll be out of here long before we all freeze.”
    Along one side of the floor sat four trays holding black anti-contamination bags with the yellow bio-hazard symbol on each of them. Each of the bags was about the size of a regular duffle bag. “The temperature’s being regulated at minus three degrees Celsius to help keep what’s left of these bodies in one piece.”
    Walsh squinted as he looked at Marx. “In one piece?”
    Marx nodded. “Precisely.”
    Fox listened to her as he looked down at one of the trays. Walsh did the same with another tray. As Fox looked at the bags, he questioned their small size, seeing that they looked too small to contain an average-sized man that would have fit on the trays that they were on.
    “Aside from the inorganic components of their skeletons and Pandora’s slimy by-products, all that was left of them were their clothes, and a few other personal items.”
    “Jesus!” Walsh jumped back from one of the bags he had unzipped. The sight of the mess in front of him was enough to throw anyone back. Walsh hopped between the trays and around both Marx and Fox as he ran for the door, his right hand over his mouth.
    If this was going to be one of many embarrassing moments with Walsh, Fox was ready to ditch him the first chance he got. He looked back at Marx who was looking down at the body bag. The woman wasn’t showing any kind of emotion.
    “I should’ve warned him about that. I guess I was wrong to assume that anything with a visibly large bio-hazard symbol would be enough to keep anyone away,” said Marx with deliberate sarcasm.
    “As I said, nothing much that would identify the victims was left.” Marx knelt down in front of the same tray from which Walsh had run, put on a pair of latex gloves from her coat pocket, and stretched them over her fingers. She then pinched and lifted a section of the cover before she continued to unzip it halfway.
    It wasn’t what he saw that almost made him react like Walsh—he’d already witnessed unspeakable acts against human beings— but the more Marx unzipped the bag, the more he pursed his lips and squinted. Dear God was all that came to Fox’s mind. The dark and thick, slimy mass had sparse amounts of hair and bone. It clung to the inside of the bag and bubbled as more air was exposed to it. No wonder the bags were that size. It was most likely pumped through a hose.
    “Zip it up!” Fox turned away.
    Marx raised an eyebrow, shrugged her shoulders, and zipped it back up. She stood up, took off the latex gloves, and dropped them on the cover.
    He stormed away a few paces and then doubled back. Fox knew he was not being fair to her, but it made him feel better to act as though it was her fault. How could she be so close to such a stomach-turning sight and be unaffected? She didn’t even flinch. Maybe it was an act.
    “I must admit that I haven’t seen anything like this since 1987,” said Marx. “I was just starting out with the CDC when I accompanied my colleagues to Northern Canada where the first outbreak occurred in a small Inuit community. There weren’t too many deaths, since Pandora is less effective in the cold. We were able to contain the outbreak and also keep the incident out of the papers to prevent a widespread panic. But when our research revealed exactly how dangerous Pandora was, our government at the time thought they had found an alternative to the nuclear bomb. The Department of Defense had contracts with the CDC for R and D funding.”
    Fox glanced at all of the body bags. “Looks to me that it didn’t need