Contaminant
by Jessica Brown
When she woke, the sun was already out and shining, blasting the dust and pavement, infusing everything it touched with blistering heat. Summer is always brutal as hell on the coastline.
Sarah rolled over and checked her phone. No calls; nothing scheduled in the little touch-screen planner. Her weekend was free to do whatever she felt with it, and what she wanted, as usual, was to spend the day at the beach.
She called Kasey before she even crawled out of bed. “When do you want me to pick you up?”
“Not today,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I'm not feeling it.”
“Seriously?” Kasey was a diver, a beach bum, a snorkeling fiend. Once, last year, she'd insisted on diving the wreck of an old single-engine plane during a storm, at night, when they had seen sharks only a mile away that afternoon.
“There was some kind of accident offshore last night. One of the drilling operations, some kind of spill. I don't think the beaches are even going to be open. People died. I can't remember how many offhand, but it seemed like a lot. Something about an underwater explosion.” She yawned and Sarah could hear her wandering about her kitchen, plates and cups clattering together.
“I haven't heard anything.”
“Did you watch the news last night?”
“No, not really. Not the late news, at least.”
“Well, there you go.”
“I'm going to head to the usual place, and if the beach is shut down I suppose I'll be turning right back around.”
“Suit yourself. If it turns out the water's fine and they've got everything under control, give me a call.”
“Sure thing.”
* * *
When she got to the shore there were no sunbathers around. Crude signs reading BEACH CLOSED were hand painted in shaky lettering on particleboard nailed to two-by-fours. Out in the distance, the lights of the rigs blinked off and on like lazy eyes, while police boats and various government agencies and rescue crews surrounded them at cautious distances.
The wind picked up speed, and as the breeze passed her face Sarah noticed a scent that had never been present before, a smell of putrefaction overlaid with the acrid, burning odor of industrial chemicals. Occasionally, when seaweed washed ashore there was a smell of general organic decomposition, but this was more complex and offensive. Underneath it all, below the layers of ocean decay and nostril-burning chemicals, was the gut-churning, vomit-inducing scent of meat gone to rot. The same scent that lingers with the corpse of a car-exploded mammal left on the side of the road for weeks.
Sarah watched as some of the police boats returned slowly to the shore. By then, there were news vans returning, ambulances converging in tight groups with their lights and sirens unused. Everyone was silent. Not a single motor was running, no cameras at the ready.
The boats came aground and began unloading casualties, and as the vessels cut through the water she could see a thin layer, like an oil slick, drifting across the surface. Body bags and tarpaulins were used to block the dead from view, but she could glimpse, underneath the thin shrouds, the outlines of faces and trunks, arms and legs.
“Out of the way,” one policeman barked as he passed. His voice was hoarse and his face pale, dark half moons smudged beneath his eyes. As he and his partner pulled a stretcher past her, he coughed, his lungs full of something harsh and wet. Sarah could smell his breath, and it wasn't pretty. It was tinged with that same smell of mammalian rot.
The camera crews were beginning to assemble, and people from the rental cottages up the road were making their way down, point-and-shoots in hand. The crowds and excitement, the rumors and paranoid questions, would begin soon.
Out of the corner of her eye, so as not to draw attention from the rotten-breathed policeman, Sarah watched the crews loading bodies into the waiting ambulances. At first she didn't believe it, and willed it away as overactive imagination, but after the third or fourth zippered shroud was loaded she couldn't ignore it any longer. The bodies, underneath their airless, protective coverings, were moving. Nothing wrapped up in a body bag should ever move like that.
Sarah made her way back to the car, locked the doors once inside, and tried to subdue her trembling. The smell of rot was all around, coming in from the vents, floating through the air like smoke. She checked her breath against the palm of her hand. It didn't smell any different, but with the scent permeating everything, she couldn't be sure...
Sarah pulled the phone out of her pocket, unsure of how much she should tell, or if she should say anything at all. Whatever happened, it wasn't a normal drilling accident. Drilling accidents can be fatal, but rig fatalities don't start moving around under the plastic once they're dead.
“Kasey,” Sarah said when she picked up. “No swimming today.”
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