Page 65 of Stars
“Jack!” Ethan swiftly plucked the metal from Jack’s gloved hand.
Jack glared at him through his goggles.
“It’s a tent,” Welby said. He and Blake hefted the other end of the tube from the ash, dislodging an avalanche of debris in a cascade toward their boots. It was part of a tent frame, long and peaked in the center. “It’s not a virus incubator, Ethan.”
Jack arched an eyebrow at Ethan and stood. “Let’s sift through all this. I want to know what was burned down here. Grab sticks to dig. Don’t put your hands anywhere you can’t see.”
Two hours later, they broke for water, trekking down to the riverbank away from possible contamination before peeling off their sweat-soaked masks and goggles.
Welby, Blake, and Pete had unearthed two tent frames—long and rectangular and made of thick steel. Charred bits of canvas were still trapped in the joints. “Military,” Welby had said. “Definitely Russian military issue. I remember tents like these from Syria when we were downrange of the Russian units.”
“Something—someone—was here recently. They either torched their stuff on the way out or someone didn’t want them here and burned their camp down.” Jack frowned at the remains of the Uchami camp.
“I’m not seeing any evidence of a lab,” Blake said, hands on his knees, breathing hard. “We haven’t found anything other than these tents. No beakers. No vials. No tech of any kind. You’d think there’d be something. A flash drive, or a floppy disk, even. Or, hell, a test tube.”
“The lab is long gone,” Jack said. “And it’s been gone for decades.”
“Then who was out here recently?” Pete spat a mouthful of water to the ground. He shivered, the cold air chilling the sweat they’d worked up inside the Tyvek suits.
“Whoever it was, they must have carried some trace of this lab’s bioweapon with them back to those villages.” Jack sighed, shaking his head. “This is all tribal land. From here to the Sakha Republic, where Dr. Mendoza’s team found the two bodies. Maybe reindeer herders got too close to this place, and when they went back to their villages, they caused a flash outbreak. It was vicious, but localized.”
“What about the tents?” Welby asked.
“It wouldn’t be out of character for the military to cover up their dirty laundry. If a reindeer herder accidentally dragged a contagious bioweapon out of Uchami and infected their village, the military would take care of that threat swiftly. If they burned a diseased village to the ground, why wouldn’t they then come back here and burn Uchami? If they knew this was where the sickness came from?”
“Those villagers were murdered,” Blake said softly.
Jack nodded.
“You think it started as an accident, then? The deaths? The outbreak? And everything since then has just been some Russian general covering his ass?” Pete asked.
“I can see it,” Welby said. “The Russians aren’t known for…”
As Welby spoke, something caught Ethan’s eye, a shifting shadow at the edge of the dead wood surrounding Uchami.
Frowning, Ethan made his way up the riverbank, pulling his mask over his face.
“What is it, Ethan?” Jack called after him. “What do you see?”
Ethan peered through the charred tree limbs—
The earth gave way beneath his heel, and he tumbled down, sliding on his ass into a trench cut into the mud—fairly fresh—covered by broken branches and windblown ash.
“Ethan!”
Footsteps clambered after him, boots on mud and swishing Tyvek suits. Jack called his name, and then Welby hollered at Jack to put on his mask.
Ethan sat in the mud, splattered in it from his neck to his ankles. He froze, staring straight ahead, his blood going colder than the Siberian air slipping down his spine.
“Ethan!” Jack appeared at the top of the trench. He wobbled, but Pete and Welby grabbed him before he pitched forward.
“I don’t think what happened was an accident, Jack,” Ethan said softly, pushing to his knees. There was a buzz in his ears, the roar of his blood, and his vision went ultracrisp, ultrasharp. He stared at the ground, at what his gloved hands were pushing down, at what lay around him.
He didn’t know where to step.
Beneath his heel, somethingcrunched. He flinched.
“Oh my God,” Blake breathed. “Is that—”
