Genesis Plague Read Online Free PDF Page A

control over my actions. Without
thought, I grabbed the harpoon gun, my actions painfully slow in the water, and
aimed it down into the pit. Pierre was clawing in slow-motion at the shear wall
several feet down. He was no longer caught in the downward vortex from the
winch, but a heavy piece of twisted metal had pierced the top of his foot and
was pulling him lower. He tried to shake it off but his actions only made him
sink farther.
    I pulled the trigger
and the gas-powered harpoon sprang from the gun, trailing a steel cable attached
to the handle. The harpoon cut a clean line through the water and sank into
Pierre’s thigh. He screamed in pain, then he laughed like a madman.
    “Got you!” I shouted,
but it was the other way around. His downward momentum and the weight of the
metal hanging from his foot dragged me with him, and soon I was at the very
edge of the pit, feet scraping for purchase as I slid over.
    As I began to fall over
the void, all I could think was This is it this is it Oh my God Paul you’re
going to die , but then my body jerked backward. Someone was pulling me back
– back from the edge, back to safety.
    “And I got you ,”
said Cassidy, hauling me away from the pit.
    The quake subsided, and
the bubbles roiling up from the void became a slow trickle. Cassidy and I fell
back in slow motion, landing on the sand, me on top of her, both of us panting
heavily. The cable attached to the harpoon gun went limp for a moment, then it
tightened. Hopefully it was just Pierre getting rid of the chunk of metal in
his foot.
    “Pierre?” I said. No
answer, so I turned to Cass, still breathing hard. “Where – where’s Flint?”
    She pointed behind us,
where Flint sat upright on the ocean floor, holding one arm gingerly against
his chest. He gave me a big thumbs-up.
    The harpoon gun
shuddered in my hand. The steel cable attached to the handle shook back and
forth impatiently where it disappeared over the edge of the pit.
    “Is that Pierre?” asked
Cassidy. “Why isn’t he talking?”
    “He probably blew out
his microphone when he screamed. Help me reel him in.”
     

 
     

     
     
     
    T he Wavecutter wasn’t too bad off, considering the
research yacht just had a large piece of its backside ripped out. It looked as
if an oversized shark popped up and took a bite out of its hindquarters. A jagged,
half-moon sized chunk was missing right between the dual outboards on the back,
where the winch had been bolted to the deck.
    Ocean water sloshed
over the ragged hole as two of the divers worked frantically to patch a leak in
the hull below the waterline. The rest of us, having earlier flopped onto the
deck like so much fish, now sat rejuvenating with a bottle of champagne each,
scattered about a small lounge area near the prow.
    Flint soaked in a hot
tub, his eyes closed, bottle of champagne half-clenched in his hand, muttering
a steady, contented sigh. At his request, we phoned the mainland as soon as we
were aboard, reporting the scale of the tremors and warning about potential
tsunami activity. He seemed to relax a bit more with that out of the way.
     Flint’s long gray hair
was fanned out on the edge of the hot tub behind his head. His injured hand was
resting out of the water, wrapped in thick gauze. As he lay dazed on the ocean
floor, that hand had been too close to the fissure and suffered second-degree
burns. I told him not to go in the hot tub because of it, but he stubbornly
reminded me how burn victims were placed in rooms at excessive temperatures to
promote healthy blood circulation so the damaged tissue could heal. And he
would have gone in anyway, even without a good reason, so my saying anything
wouldn’t have made a difference.
    Cassidy sat in a
tanning chair next to mine, drinking out of her champagne bottle and slowly
scooting toward me. She wore too-big sunglasses that were all the rage and
little specks of diamond earrings I had given her for our first dating anniversary.
I told her I