The Island

Moon sat alone in her living room, her housekeeper gone for the day. Tired, exhausted, the work was taking its toll on her frail frame. But she was so close. Close enough to count the days, perhaps even the hours until the first wave of attacks.

Soon.

She had turned out all the lights. Only the soft glow of the television lit the room. She was about to watch the videocassettes—again.

Moon had memorized every word. She could close her eyes and recall every scene in amazing detail. To her, it was a living being—a direct connection to the past, to her father, to his work. In the tapes were images of the place where he unknowingly gave birth to the virus that would become Black Needles.

Aiming the remote, she pressed play.

The video from the handheld camera was shaky at first as the landmass emerged from the Gaussian blur of the fog bank. It was early morning, but the sun had not yet burned off the blanket of mist over the ocean. Slowly, the pieces of a dark, rocky beach came together to form a wide expanse of headland stretching across the bow of the boat.

There were three young ethno-botanists aboard the launch—Gina, a brunette with dark-eyes and olive-skin; Stefen, a lanky fellow with hair the color of oatmeal and fair skin who was shooting the video; and Lesley, a tall pecan-skinned girl who drove the boat.

Moon fast-forwarded the tape until the boat’s bow knifed into the sandy bottom as they put ashore on the island.

After disembarking, Stefen aimed the camera at himself, holding it at arm’s length. Feigning a British accent he said, “Welcome to Pleasure Island. I will be your host for the day.” Stefen gave a theatrical grin, then twisted around and aimed the camera toward the sea, zooming in on the hulky silhouette of the Pitcairn anchored in the distance. The Oceanautics research vessel had served as home for the three botanists along with other graduate student-scientists.

Moon paused the tape and stared at the Pitcairn. The ship was only a part of her prize. For three months they had kept the ship in quarantine while it was decontaminated. Today it was moored along the banks of the Taedong River in the middle of the North Korean capital alongside the USS Pueblo—two shining jewels in the General Secretary’s political treasury.

When Moon and her bio-hazmat medical team had first boarded the Pitcairn, among the dead they found Stefen’s videotape collection, eleven in all, but two of them were what captured her attention. Those two tapes and the ship’s log revealed that the research vessel had found the island by accident when a violent electrical storm caused an onboard fire and knocked out the navigation and communication systems. The ship strayed off course for a day until it came across one of the thousands of islands in the vast Korea Bay. With the possible chance of discovering new plant life, the three botanists had set off to explore the desolate volcanic island while the ship’s crew worked on repairing the damaged electronics. The repair took longer than expected, giving the botanists a number of opportunities to visit the island over the next few days. Each time, they explored a different section of the twenty-square-mile landmass.

Moon fast-forwarded through the videotape until she saw Lesley holding a digital SLR camera. She let the recording resume normal play. Stefen was again the videographer.

“Look,” Lesley whispered and pointed. “There’s an amur falcon in that tree.” Then she refocused her telephoto lens. “How strange.” Lowering the camera, she stepped a few paces forward, sweeping back the tall grass with her hand. “Check it out. About forty yards straight out.”

“What the hell?” Stefen said, pointing the video camera and zooming.

Gina said, “What do you think it is … or was?”

“Looks like an old building,” Lesley said. “At least what’s left of it.”

“But out here in the middle of nowhere?” Lesley used her hand like a sun visor. “You guys want to have a look?”

“Definitely,” Stefen said. Before following the two girls, he panned the camera in a circle, capturing their surroundings. “For posterity, on Pleasure Island we have your basic craggy-faced cliffs, a lot of dark, spooky forest, and thick undergrowth, probably filled with venomous snakes and deadly scorpions.”

The video jiggled as Stefen continued to tape while walking to the building.

Moon watched the three students stare at a lone concrete wall. It was hard to judge from the image, but the wall appeared to be about two hundred feet long and thirty feet high. The rest of the building was nothing more than heaps of rubble with chunks of concrete and iron rods occasionally poking through the underbrush. Openings in the wall that had once been windows were now only gaping wounds.

Moon’s parents had worked there for many years during the Japanese occupation. In the video, the ultra-secret lab of the Japanese Army’s Unit 731 was now nothing but rubble and weeds. Her father had no idea what he had left behind—something so innocent at the time—but that had all changed now. Her discovery was more than serendipity. It was as if it were meant to be there, just waiting for her.

Her eyes focused on the video. It showed two tall cylindrical stacks, reaching a good ten feet higher than the rest of the structure, rising behind the wall, standing like sentries over the ruins.

“Incinerators of some kind, maybe?” Lesley motioned toward the stacks. “And look at that.” She pointed at a faint image painted above an entrance doorway—a weather-worn red circle with sixteen rays on a nearly vanished white field.

“Hinomaru,” Gina said. “The Japanese war flag. Maybe this was a World War II military facility.”

“Let’s see what else we can find.” Lesley led the way around to the other side of the wall. The rubble and tangle of brush and vines made it difficult to walk.

Gina said, “My guess is there was an explosion or the place was bombed. Either way, it was a long time ago.”

“And something more recent,” Lesley said. “Maybe an earthquake? Some of the damage appears recent.”

“Wait!” Stefen pointed as he aimed the camera at a piece of rusted machinery.

Lesley froze and glanced down. Sticking out of the ground was a protruding metal spike. “Damn, I didn’t even see it.” She blew out her breath. “Thanks. That would have been nasty.”

“Hey, take a look.” Stefen handed the camera to Gina. With a grunt, he bent and pulled back a piece of rusted sheet metal the size of a car hood.

The video showed a narrow set of concrete steps leading into the ground.

“This is wild,” Stefen said. “Who wants to go first?”

He took the camera back and focused on Gina as she declined and sat on a nearby chunk of wall. “Jesus, Stefen, do you have to tape every little thing? You’re obsessive about that damn video camera.”

He laughed, but kept the camera pointed at Gina. “Coming?”

“You guys have at it,” Gina said. “Think I’m catching the flu.” She rubbed her arms as if chilled, then shivered.

“Too much cheap wine last night,” Stefen said.

“Get the freakin’ camera off me, would you! Christ, you’re a pain in the ass,” Gina said.

“Testy today, aren’t we?” Stefen panned toward Lesley.

“We’ll just take a quick look,” Lesley said to Gina. “Be right back.”

Stefen dug into his backpack and pulled out his flashlight. Lesley located hers. With Stefen in the lead, still videotaping everything, they started down the steps.

At the bottom was a tunnel littered with debris, but passable. Lesley shined her light into the darkness. Ten paces ahead was a much larger tunnel running perpendicular to the smaller one.

With great care, they maneuvered over pieces of fallen lumber and chunks of concrete until they stood in the wider passage. It was smooth-surfaced and large enough to drive a car through. Pitch-blackness lay ahead. They shined their beams in both directions before Stefen motioned to the right.

“Let’s see where this leads.”

“You first,” Lesley said.

The tunnel cut into the volcanic rock for about fifty feet before widening into a large room housing what appeared to be two power generators.

“They remind me of locomotive engines,” Lesley said as they moved past the hulks of rusted metal.

Moon pressed the fast-forward button again, speeding through the parts where Lesley and Stefen found a chamber with bunk beds, all in various states of collapse and dry rot. They backtracked and followed another tunnel, passing toilets and a kitchen and then into a storage room. That’s when Moon returned the video to normal play.

This was the part she cherished.

Stefen flashed his light on the back wall of the storage room. “Check it out.”

The video revealed a sizeable hole in the wall—chunks of concrete crumbled on the floor below it.

Stefen approached the hole and examined its rough edges. “Looks like it collapsed recently, probably from the earthquake.” He aimed his beam into the hole and the space beyond. “What do you make of that?”

Lesley came closer. “A store room? Or maybe a safe room in case of attack?”

What the video showed was a concrete-walled room about the size of a modest walk-in closet. In the center was a wooden pallet. Neatly stacked on top were cylinders that looked to be about three inches in diameter and ten inches long. Lesley counted. “Twenty-five.”

Squeezing through the opening, Stefen stood beside the pallet. He lifted one of the cylinders. “Not metal. Feels more like ceramic.” Replacing it, he shined his light around the small room. At the corner of the pallet, a single canister had dropped off and rolled over against the wall. “Oh shit, that one sprang a leak.” He aimed the light at the floor illuminating a dark smudged stain beside the canister. “No telling what that crap was. Want to take one back? We might get a pretty penny for war memorabilia.”

“Forget it. Could be toxic.” The alarm on Lesley’s watch beeped. “We need to report back to the ship.” She silenced the alarm and maneuvered through the hole in the wall. “Remember the captain said to use the walkie-talkie to radio in every hour in case they get the equipment repaired.”

“He’s worse than a mother hen.” Stefen said.

Lesley pulled the small, handheld radio from her backpack and pressed the transmit button. “Hello, Pitcairn?”

Static.

“It’s never going to work down here,” she said. “We need to get above ground.”

“Go ahead. I’ve gotta take a piss. I’ll catch up.”

As Lesley walked away, Stefen pointed the camera at himself. “Never pass up an opportunity, Stealthy Stefen says. This shit will be on eBay as soon as I can get back online.” The camera bobbled as Stefen lowered it to the ground. Moon saw him pick up a canister and stuff it into his backpack. He lifted the camera again. Focusing it on his face, he raised and lowered his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “No one the wiser.”

With the camera still recording, Stefen maneuvered through the passageways until he caught up to Lesley.

As they passed the rusty hulks of the power generators, Lesley said, “I see the sunlight coming from the entrance.” A moment later, they were up the steps and into the brightness of the clear-sky day.

Stefen aimed the camera at Gina, who sat propped against the wall, her eyes closed. “Sleeping on the job,” he said.

Moon leaned in closer to the television, not wanting to miss anything.

Gina picked her head up.

“Hey, are you all right?” Stefen asked.

“You don’t look so good, girl,” Lesley said.

“Definitely need to pay a visit to sickbay,” Gina said. “Probably just picked up a bug or something.”

Stefen said, “Couple of shots of José Cuervo should kill it.”

“Maybe not,” Lesley said. She scored her bottom lip and looked at Gina.

“What?” Gina said. Obviously noting her friend’s stare and responding to it, she touched her cheek, then felt across her jaw line. She took her hand away and looked at her fingertips.

Stefen peered closer before recoiling. “Holy crap, Gina, there’s blood coming out your ear.”

Moon paused the image, savoring what the monster virus could do—and so quickly. The three botanists had first set foot on the island only a few days before this video was made. And already, one of them showed symptoms. She smiled as images of hundreds of thousands would soon show those same first signs of the deadly Black Needles. The girl from the ship was already dying. Soon the others would follow.

Moon stood and went to the videocassette player. She extracted the tape and loaded the second.

It started abruptly with Stefen in his cabin, obviously drunk. He had propped the camera on a nearby shelf and talked to it as if it were a person in the room. “So here is my treasure find for the day.” His speech was slurred from too much beer. “A fucking jug of Jap juice. Who knows what was in it, or what it still has in it. Only The Shadow knows for sure. Maybe it is a midget alien, or maybe, yeah, maybe, a secret love potion that turns women into horny, sex-craved whores with no inhibitions and thousands of fantasies.” Stefen started dancing with the canister as he sang I Could Have Danced All Night. His image moved in and out of view—the auto focus trying to keep up with him as he swayed around the room. Finally he stumbled backward and flopped onto his bunk. As he did he lost his grip on the canister and it flipped from his hands hitting the metal railing of the bed. Stefen laughed at his drunken clumsiness. “Fucking A,” he said. “The bitch just knocked me on my ass.” He bent forward, trying to keep his body somewhat steady, but still swaying. He glared down. “Son-of-a-bitch. Look at that. The goddamn thing cracked. Who’d of thunk it?”

Moon watched as Stefen grappled his way off the bunk and retrieved the canister from the floor.

“Probably ain’t worth a shit, now,” he said, back-pedaling to his bunk. Stefen fell onto his bunk, the canister beside him. “Asshole,” he said to himself. “Damn it, Stefen, you could screw up a wet dream.” His eyes closed.

Moon froze the image. “Thank you, Stefen,” she whispered.