Canary
Fog duty. It was his turn to go. Had it been twelve months already? He'd only gone three times before and the first was before they had implemented the draft. No one volunteered anymore. Everyone who was able played their part whether they wanted to or not. It wasn't long after it had started, that first time. He remembered a curiosity as morbid as it was insatiable. Once someone had gone out there and come back he knew it was an experience he had to have for himself. A young man with little attachment and a daredevil streak. The perfect candidate. They went out always in groups of three, each tethered to one another by a steel cable that trailed to base several thousand feet behind. The suits were specially built with a Kevlar overlay and a mounted flashlight and camera on both sides of the visors. He felt like Iron Man inside it. He felt impervious, at least he did then. Now he was older, now he knew better. That first trip ended with his co-worker tripping, falling on his face, and breaking the fiberglass. His name was Harris Thacker, he'd known him since Kindergarten. He watched his retinas bleed open and his tongue swell and face turn purple. It was never a slow death, and that was the only consolation they could cling to.
It had come on an innocuous Sunday afternoon. The sun was in full among a plumage of cumulonimbus clouds. It was Spring, early Spring when the temperature barely cracked seventy and the whistling breath of Old Man Winter could still be felt distinctly in the morning and the evenings. The 18th of March when that airborne evil first assembled itself on the eastern horizon and blew like it was animated by a consciousness of its own. A dark but not quite gray pallor; a sort of greenish shade of putrid that sunk with a heaviness flat onto the streets. There were thousands dead that first day. They lay festering where they were struck on the 19th as those who survived huddled inside, petrified. The day after the brazen among them inched back outside. More followed and found their lost and a week later the town was in recovery, shattered by the anomaly but slouching toward some previous normalcy. Until it happened again. April's bevy fell on a different day, as did the one on May and June and every month since. There was panic as endemic as any sickness and a mass exodus from the city that was recouped by incoming government agents and scientists in triage with military personnel. They would not allow anyone else to leave, driven instead into underground bunkers and reinforced barricades in their homes paid in full by the taxes they themselves tithed.
That was when the draft had been officially instituted. The teams would go out and collect samples of the gas and anything else the G-men deemed interesting. The Washington eggheads examined it, tested it, and found only traces of elements common to our periodic table. It was an abject mystery, as was its origin and why it had only come to this place once every month. Some people came to think the town was cursed, which was about as logical an explanation as any. Last year about thirty members of the populace declared it God's end-time judgement and gave themselves up to it. Men, women, and children walking hand-in-hand, smiles on their faces. He figured any god that would afflict such an inexplicable horror wasn't worthy of his devotion. But he wanted to know what it was, just as anyone.
He went through the main corridor where the feds were watching and monitoring. Men in uniform with ear pieces. Before he came to the front airlock his hand was shaken personally by the site overseer who would customarily thank and attribute some earnest but hollow platitude about courage to them. The fog divers, as they had been colloquially termed. He and his two team members were quarantined and sanitized before they suited up, meaning they were stripped naked and washed down by guys and girls in white lab gear. Blood was drawn while they were attached to wires that transmitted their vital signs. They each were outfitted with backpacks containing oxygen canisters and spare compartments for storage. One of the three was equipped with a drone that flew with infra-red. Reconnaissance. Another carried a pistol that fired tranquilizer darts and a rifle that shot a net for marking and subduing wildlife, not that they were met with much resistance from the fauna. The mist was lethal to humans but to animals it only inflicted a kind of paralytic state, relatively harmless. They trekked from base and charted a course through what was left of the city zoo, one of the sectors of town that had not yet been mapped fully. A family of lions and of chimpanzees stood and hung motionless in their catatonia like taxidermied ornaments. There were birds roosting about every treetop and powerline the city had. They had come to be the most reliable warning signal for the fog. When they went silent it meant run for shelter. The longest countdown yet to be recorded was thirty-two minutes. But like everything else with this phenomena, there was little consistency.
This month's fog came at 7:23 that morning on the dot. Early, just enough that he was barely able to get a decent night's sleep beforehand. They were out there for over an hour with no indications of recession. It was rare that a fog would last over ninety minutes, but this was coming in close. Their packs were virtually full of samples and the drone picked up no abnormalities. He was getting restless, sluggish. He could feel the futility of the labor acutely as he walked. There were never any answers, no matter how many times it happened and people went out and studied and measured. Where there had once been fear, curiosity, fascination there was now boredom. The rote drudgery of janitorial work. Truly amazing how human beings can accommodate to seemingly any reality, any change. The most fantastic and terrible wonder ever documented rendered monotonous and mundane in just a handful of years. He straggled behind his teammates as far back as the cable would allow, far enough to be semi-obscured in the mist. Two humanoid silhouettes constant in his purview. He looked around, up toward the greenish shroud which concealed nothing of importance. The same dull color, same silence. But when he turned his head back down there something different was before him. A third figure in the middle of the two. There was a confusion, a stupor as he walked to where the others had stopped. The figure was moving. The vague shape of a man, bipedal and thin. He could not take his eyes off it. Recon muttered something to base; the drone wasn't reading it. Base said to wait and do nothing while they deliberated. He could hear muffled argument and mild panic in his headset. The figure straight-lined closer, closer until its features could almost be seen clearly and then it halted. It was hairless, naked. The skin was of a gray tone nearly matched by the fog and its lidless eyes were milky and globular, the irises like dark smudges. It appeared not to have any ears nor a nose besides two holes in the front of its face just above the slit of the mouth. Base gave the word to sedate it in curt and nerve-wracked command. The tracker reached for his pistol. The entity opened its mouth, a gaping maw falling well beyond its sternum. Out of it came a familiar sound, a harmony of birds chirping. The two froze. In terror, shock, awe. But not him. He felt that adrenaline rush in him again. That discovery, that risk. Of something finally new and substantive born from this horrible blight. This was a new day, yes. And he counted himself fortunate to be there to see its unfolding, whatever it may bring.
It had come on an innocuous Sunday afternoon. The sun was in full among a plumage of cumulonimbus clouds. It was Spring, early Spring when the temperature barely cracked seventy and the whistling breath of Old Man Winter could still be felt distinctly in the morning and the evenings. The 18th of March when that airborne evil first assembled itself on the eastern horizon and blew like it was animated by a consciousness of its own. A dark but not quite gray pallor; a sort of greenish shade of putrid that sunk with a heaviness flat onto the streets. There were thousands dead that first day. They lay festering where they were struck on the 19th as those who survived huddled inside, petrified. The day after the brazen among them inched back outside. More followed and found their lost and a week later the town was in recovery, shattered by the anomaly but slouching toward some previous normalcy. Until it happened again. April's bevy fell on a different day, as did the one on May and June and every month since. There was panic as endemic as any sickness and a mass exodus from the city that was recouped by incoming government agents and scientists in triage with military personnel. They would not allow anyone else to leave, driven instead into underground bunkers and reinforced barricades in their homes paid in full by the taxes they themselves tithed.
That was when the draft had been officially instituted. The teams would go out and collect samples of the gas and anything else the G-men deemed interesting. The Washington eggheads examined it, tested it, and found only traces of elements common to our periodic table. It was an abject mystery, as was its origin and why it had only come to this place once every month. Some people came to think the town was cursed, which was about as logical an explanation as any. Last year about thirty members of the populace declared it God's end-time judgement and gave themselves up to it. Men, women, and children walking hand-in-hand, smiles on their faces. He figured any god that would afflict such an inexplicable horror wasn't worthy of his devotion. But he wanted to know what it was, just as anyone.
He went through the main corridor where the feds were watching and monitoring. Men in uniform with ear pieces. Before he came to the front airlock his hand was shaken personally by the site overseer who would customarily thank and attribute some earnest but hollow platitude about courage to them. The fog divers, as they had been colloquially termed. He and his two team members were quarantined and sanitized before they suited up, meaning they were stripped naked and washed down by guys and girls in white lab gear. Blood was drawn while they were attached to wires that transmitted their vital signs. They each were outfitted with backpacks containing oxygen canisters and spare compartments for storage. One of the three was equipped with a drone that flew with infra-red. Reconnaissance. Another carried a pistol that fired tranquilizer darts and a rifle that shot a net for marking and subduing wildlife, not that they were met with much resistance from the fauna. The mist was lethal to humans but to animals it only inflicted a kind of paralytic state, relatively harmless. They trekked from base and charted a course through what was left of the city zoo, one of the sectors of town that had not yet been mapped fully. A family of lions and of chimpanzees stood and hung motionless in their catatonia like taxidermied ornaments. There were birds roosting about every treetop and powerline the city had. They had come to be the most reliable warning signal for the fog. When they went silent it meant run for shelter. The longest countdown yet to be recorded was thirty-two minutes. But like everything else with this phenomena, there was little consistency.
This month's fog came at 7:23 that morning on the dot. Early, just enough that he was barely able to get a decent night's sleep beforehand. They were out there for over an hour with no indications of recession. It was rare that a fog would last over ninety minutes, but this was coming in close. Their packs were virtually full of samples and the drone picked up no abnormalities. He was getting restless, sluggish. He could feel the futility of the labor acutely as he walked. There were never any answers, no matter how many times it happened and people went out and studied and measured. Where there had once been fear, curiosity, fascination there was now boredom. The rote drudgery of janitorial work. Truly amazing how human beings can accommodate to seemingly any reality, any change. The most fantastic and terrible wonder ever documented rendered monotonous and mundane in just a handful of years. He straggled behind his teammates as far back as the cable would allow, far enough to be semi-obscured in the mist. Two humanoid silhouettes constant in his purview. He looked around, up toward the greenish shroud which concealed nothing of importance. The same dull color, same silence. But when he turned his head back down there something different was before him. A third figure in the middle of the two. There was a confusion, a stupor as he walked to where the others had stopped. The figure was moving. The vague shape of a man, bipedal and thin. He could not take his eyes off it. Recon muttered something to base; the drone wasn't reading it. Base said to wait and do nothing while they deliberated. He could hear muffled argument and mild panic in his headset. The figure straight-lined closer, closer until its features could almost be seen clearly and then it halted. It was hairless, naked. The skin was of a gray tone nearly matched by the fog and its lidless eyes were milky and globular, the irises like dark smudges. It appeared not to have any ears nor a nose besides two holes in the front of its face just above the slit of the mouth. Base gave the word to sedate it in curt and nerve-wracked command. The tracker reached for his pistol. The entity opened its mouth, a gaping maw falling well beyond its sternum. Out of it came a familiar sound, a harmony of birds chirping. The two froze. In terror, shock, awe. But not him. He felt that adrenaline rush in him again. That discovery, that risk. Of something finally new and substantive born from this horrible blight. This was a new day, yes. And he counted himself fortunate to be there to see its unfolding, whatever it may bring.
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