The Silver Surfer
Wilderstory 22
Late afternoon shadows spilled over the pavement as Quinn made her way toward the aluminum trailer. Drawing closer, she observed her warped reflection along its gleaming metal hull.
With each step, her shape puckered across seams and rivets, stretching in unnatural ways. It reminded her of a desert mirage; the way objects shimmer in the heat, just above a horizon.
The parking lot around Sugar’s diner reflected behind her. It formed a crooked ribbon that spanned the length of the trailer.
Local and state patrol cars shared space with official government vehicles. And a bright yellow strand of police tape bounced in the wind, enclosing the back half of the lot.
Quinn approached the trailer’s elevated door, squinting at the peculiar visage mirrored back. A white stripe angled up one side of her face, starting at the corner of her mouth and extending past her temple.
It was a long, rectangular bandage. But it appeared bent. Distorted. Like a painted-on lightning bolt.
Quinn ran her fingers along the edge of it. She opened her mouth and moved her jaw back and forth, as the surrounding skin pinched and pulled against strips of tape.
A hot holy mess, she thought — reacting at once to the scene behind her, and her own face staring back.
An antique glass doorknob jutted out from the side of the trailer.
It was an unusual relic.
A personal artifact. And a telltale marker of the person inside.
“Meredith,” Quinn breathed, as the door swung open.
A starched white sleeve emerged from within. “I don’t suppose I can convince you not to come in,” Meredith said, grasping the edge of the door.
Quinn hopped through the narrow opening, pressing past Meredith as she went.
“This is a sterile space,” Meredith huffed, pulling the door shut behind her. “A controlled environment.”
She brushed the front of her lab coat with both hands.
“But I guess that’s never stopped you before.”
. . . . . . . .
They called it the Silver Surfer.
From the outside, it looked like a traditional family camper. But inside, every fixture and surface was transformed. Fabric, carpet and faux wood paneling had been replaced with stainless steel and gleaming white plastic.
It functioned as a mobile lab unit, with just enough space for one or two people. But just like every other place Meredith worked, it was spotless.
Quinn eased herself down on a narrow bench in the rear, where she imagined the original bed would have been.
Meredith stepped to a small metallic table in the front. In the muted lighting, her black skin contrasted ever more sharply with the stiff white folds of her lab coat. Quinn observed her long, coiled hair — which was mostly pulled back into a thick knot in the back. A few strands hung freely, which she promptly tucked behind one ear.
“Bleach bullets,” Meredith said, as she pushed her lamp aside. She dropped into a swivel chair and wheeled to the far wall, where a collection of clear plastic containers gleamed. She grabbed a specimen tray and pushed herself back to the desk.
“That’s got to be a first.”
Quinn rested her head against the wall and tried to relax her jaw, which still felt swollen and tight beneath the bandage. She could hear the hum of the generator outside, as it worked to pump cool air through a circular vent in the roof.
“Technically, sodium hypochlorite,” Quinn said, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Technically, still bleach,” replied Meredith.
Quinn exhaled with a groan. She pushed herself up from the bench and approached the collection of specimens lining the wall behind Meredith.
There were two distinct sets, each containing more than a dozen containers. One set was labeled with translucent yellow stickers. The other, pink.
“Don’t touch those,” Meredith said, without looking up from her work.
Quinn pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
“You put me onto it,” she said, blinking at the orderly collection of gleaming, circular lids. “You showed me, back in your lab, what one drop of bleach could do to these things.”
Meredith paused from writing in her notes. “And that somehow justifies your own poisoned ammo cache?” she said. “God only knows how Salvador loaded that stuff into bullets for you.”
“It doesn’t take much,” Quinn replied. “A small solid capsule, pressed under a hollow tip …”
Meredith stopped her. “It’s illegal, Quinn. Highly. Even for us.”
Quinn felt her skin twitch beneath the bandage.
“Listen. I could’ve died out there today.” she said. “Probably would have, if it wasn’t for that bullet.”
A cramped silence fell between them, filled only with the constant hum of the air conditioner vent. Meredith turned back to her work.
Quinn snuck one of the yellow-labeled specimens from the shallow bank of shelves. She held it up to the light of a nearby window. A measure of thick black liquid pooled along the bottom edge of the dish, opaque against the filtered sun.
Hearing the motion behind her, Meredith turned in her seat. “Seriously?,” she groaned.
Ignoring her, Quinn examined the label on the specimen dish. She tapped her finger against the yellow sticker. “Are these from the bus driver?” she asked.
Meredith leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. “Well, they’re not from your new friend Jenkins.”
She passed her hand over a set of pink-labeled specimens on her desk. “Or rather, what remains of him,” she said. “Not much left to sample, considering.”
Quinn stepped toward the bench in the rear, cradling the specimen container in her palm. “The less of him, the better,” she said.
“He was a real asshole.”
Meredith exhaled as she spun her chair back to the desk. She filled a small dropper with a milky white liquid and held it over one of the containers.
Quinn cradled her own in the palm of her hand. She pushed her fingernail under an edge and released the lid.
The exposed black liquid glistened. It reminded Quinn of warm pudding.
“This stuff turns people into monsters,” she said, staring down at it. “One minute, that state trooper was just a guy locked in a trunk. And the next …”
“It’s how aggressive parasites like this work,” Meredith said, “They embed themselves in the host body. Invisible. Cohabitating with the rest of the system. Until they become too strong to ignore.”
Quinn lowered herself onto the bench and tilted the dish in her hand, watching the dark mass slide to one edge. “Back in the lab, you said it was like a stomach bug.”
“A gut bacteria,” Meredith corrected. “Your gut is teeming with them. A whole host of foreign bodies, living inside your own.”
“Sounds fabulous,” Quinn smirked.
“It actually is. And it’s quite remarkable,” said Meredith. “Two separate species, living as if they were one. A perfect hybrid, of sorts.”
Meredith turned to her. “When was the last time you really craved something?” she asked. “Something specific. A real hankering.”
Quinn grimmaced. “Right now, I’d kill for a vodka.”
“Seriously,” Meredith said.
“Okay,” Quinn paused, thinking.
“Bacon,” she said.
Meredith leaned forward, lifting her eyebrows.
“This morning. When I pulled into the diner,” Quinn continued. “The whole parking lot smelled like bacon. Greasy bacon. And if I hadn’t been on this case, I would have gone straight in and ordered a platter.”
“Right,” Meredith nodded. “That was your gut speaking — literally — to your brain.
“More specifically, it was the bacteria in your gut. The ones that thrive on whatever they get from digesting bacon. They’re tuned into it, like a memory of the last time you ate it. And they’re able to signal your brain.”
Quinn squinted at the specimen container in her palm. The substance inside seemed different than before.
Lesser, she thought.
She tilted it in another direction and watched it slump across the bottom of the dish.
“It’s a scientific fact,” Meredith said. “Metabolic products from the microbiome in our gut can cross over to affect brain function. And just like every other animal, we’ve evolved over millions of years to depend on them to survive.
“You eat greasy bacon. The bacteria in your gut that thrive on greasy bacon flourish. They press your psyche to want more greasy bacon. And the cycle continues.”
Meredith’s words fell away as Quinn focused on the black liquid in her grasp. It continued to diminish, receding from the edges of the jar.
Melting away before her eyes.
“I think this organism behaves in much the same way,” Meredith continued. “But it exerts a much stronger pull on its subjects; a control factor that’s seriously off the charts.
“It tells its host what it wants. And believe me,” she paused, “it probably isn’t bacon.”
Quinn stopped her. “Meredith,” she whispered, holding out the near-empty dish.
“I think something’s happening here.”
