Free Genesis Plague by Sam Best

my
buttons.
    “Paul’s always been
like that,” Flint said. “Once he decked a salesman who sold the lab a scanning
microscope that wasn’t properly shielded. One of the lab techs suffered minor
radiation poisoning because of it.”
    “That’s not the whole
story,” I said defensively.
    The whole story was
that the salesman wouldn’t take responsibility for his company’s mistake, and
he was smug about it when I brought up the problem. He blamed our lab tech for
getting poisoned, and even went so far as to call the young man stupid and
incompetent. I think that’s when I hit the salesman. Then I told him it was his
own damned fault because he showed up for work that morning. The irony was lost
on him.
    “Is it true, Paul?”
asked Cass. Guess I had forgotten to tell her the story.
    I shrugged. “Being the
youngest of four brothers and having the biggest brain were mutually exclusive
as a kid.”
    “Ah,” said Xander with
a smug, punchable grin. “A product of your environment, are you?”
    “My father was a real
piece of work, yeah,” I said. “I had to learn to defend myself quickly, or my
mother would have to see my black eyes and missing teeth in every one of my
school pictures. Sometimes I had to defend my brothers as well. Flint,” I said,
hoping to change the subject, “did you pick up anything from those readings you
were studying in the tent?”
    His long gray hair was
pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore a red patterned bandana tied around his
forehead. He hopped quickly over a large rock in the path, and I was once again
surprised out how spry he was, despite his Buddha-like beer belly.
    “Nothing,” he said.
“The tremors ended yesterday, after the big one that split the mountain.”
    “It’s been quiet since
then?”
    “Not even so much as a
microquake.”
    “Is that unusual?”
    “Not at all. Active
volcanoes rumble a little bit now and then. ‘Active’ doesn’t necessarily mean
‘erupting violently’, it simply means the volcano isn’t extinct yet.”
    “Volcanoes can go
extinct?” asked Mike.
    “Absolutely,” said
Cassidy. “Mauna Loa is technically the largest active volcano in the world, but
it’s only the second largest if you include the extinct ones.”
    “What’s the largest?”
    “Tamu Massif,” I said
with a quick glance at Maria. She turned back and looked at me, and for a brief
moment she was the woman I used to love instead of the classically fake
celebrity she seemed to have become. Her eyes were almost apologetic, pleading.
Then she turned back to continue uphill, and the moment was gone.
    “It’s an underwater
volcano near Japan,” Flint said. “Big bad son of a bitch, back in its day.”
    “If I recall,” said
Xander from the back of the line, “Tamu Massif is where Ms. Fontaine made her
great discovery.”
    “Shut up, Xander,” she
said firmly, and to my surprise, he did.
    Flint barked laughter,
and I couldn’t help but smile.
    “I wish we would have
had this gear earlier,” said Dan Grayson, stepping over a small crevice. He
carried his suit and mask in one hand, and a transparent, cube-shaped case in
the other. The inside of the case was lined with compartments of varying sizes,
each one containing a specimen tube.
    “There was no way of
knowing we would need it,” said Renfield. “Besides, now we can take our time
without our shoes melting.” He grunted as he pulled himself up onto a low,
rocky shelf. “We’re close.”
    There was no vegetation
halfway to the peak. The ground had become a mottled expanse of rock and black
sand, laced with the charred remains of old lava flows. Ahead, the ground
opened narrowly at the beginning of the fissure, like the tip of a long dagger.
Within the fissure, lava pulsed, emitting a red-orange glow that painted the
nearby ground.
    “Don’t get too close to
the opening,” said Renfield as he walked parallel the edge, looking in.
    A steady stream of
molten rock flowed ten feet below. Everyone