CHAPTER THREE:
BLACK HOLE
SEOUL, South Korea, October 23 (UPI)— A freak volcanic eruption occurred overnight near the Korean port city of Busan, causing widespread destruction that reached as far as mainland Japan, where tsunamis pounded southern Honshu.
Survivors report “rolling mountains” destroying an area tens of kilometers wide. Volcanic gases are blamed for triggering a violent storm system that has caused all air traffic and shipping in the region to be rerouted. All four reactors of the Kori Nuclear Plant have reportedly been shut down. Communications have been disrupted as far north as Daegu, and highways out of the south are jammed with fleeing refugees.
The Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper quotes unnamed officials at Seoul’s Defense Ministry saying that emergency evacuation and rescue efforts are underway despite extremely hazardous conditions at the site. American military facilities based in and around Busan are thought to have been severely impacted, and joint U.S./Korean forces are being mobilized to deal with the crisis.
“It’s a black hole in there,” said Lt. Colonel Paul Atwells, spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command. “As of this morning we have reconnaissance teams doing the groundwork so that we can safely mount large-scale relief efforts.”
No damage estimates have been made available, but officials warn to expect the worst. A nationwide state of emergency is in effect, and the entire southern province of Gyeongsangnam-do has been formally restricted to essential personnel. All others are advised to stay away.
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The first thing Major Queen noticed was the weather. About eighty miles off the Korean coast, a towering thunderhead loomed up out of the clear blue sky, looking like an alabaster toadstool with gills of black rain—a classic mushroom cloud.
“Is that it?” he asked, standing over Captain Deitz’s shoulder in the cockpit.
“Yep. That’s the thermocline.”
“Huh. Does that look volcanic to you, Mike?”
“I guess so. Why?”
“It’s too white—it just looks like condensation, like a regular supercell. I’m not seeing any smoke or ash. If this thing erupted overnight it ought to be dirty as hell.”
The CV-22 passed beneath the dense cloud shelf, losing daylight. Walls of wind buffeted the aircraft. Unruffled as he surfed the turbulence, Deitz said, “Part of it’s offshore, so you’d expect a lot of steam. I saw that when I was in Iceland.”
Queen was searching the windshield for telltale ash smears. “It should still be full of crap.”
“Wait, let me check my crap detector.” Mike Deitz was no expert on volcanoes, but both men had meteorological training from the 10th Combat Weather Squadron, and Deitz thought the major was quibbling. How could you argue with what was right in front of you? “Hey, I’m getting a reading!”
“Okay, so how do you explain this?”
“Well, it has to be something volcanic,” Deitz said. “You can’t grow a mountain without some kind of major geologic upheaval. And there’s definitely something growing in there. Thermal and side-scan radar images confirm it.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make any sense. Mountains sometimes explode without warning, but they never just spring up overnight—not without the granddaddy of all earthquakes, or sustained lava flows. I was at Clark when Pinatubo blew, and that was a hell of a mess. Huge. The moderate seismic activity that’s been recorded so far doesn’t account for what’s going on down there—”
“Moderate! A major city has been wiped off the map.”
“That’s just it: one city. Considering the geological scale of this thing, the earthquakes have been incredibly localized. Seismography shows them emanating downward from the surface, not the other way around. And there hasn’t been any evidence whatsoever of lava activity. The hottest temperature in there is barely a hundred degrees—you couldn’t even cook a hot dog on that. And its source is one intermittent plume of gas venting from a fumarole at the easternmost elevation, about eight hundred feet high. The rest of the formation is slightly cooler. If it was formed from lava it would take months to cool to these temperatures. Hell, it couldn’t form this quick, there’s no way.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Hey, that’s a first. What about recon? We have anybody down on the ground?”
“You mean on site? Not since we lost contact with Stein’s people. As far as I know, SOCKOR and the 17th SOS is on hold until we get there. There’s a joint forward command post set up at Gimhae. That’s our staging area.”
“So nobody’s really had a first-hand look at what’s happening in there?”
“Not and lived to tell about it. We’re it, brother.”
They flew in silence for a few minutes, then Deitz said, “Because, you know, I heard some pretty weird stuff…”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just while we were refueling in Yokota—there was loose talk about intelligence reports filtering out of Yongsan. I thought it had to be bullshit.”
“Spit it out, Mike.”
“It’s just so stupid—”
“Stop being so damn coy.”
“Creepy-crawlies, chief. Everybody who’s come out of Busan has reported seeing people get eaten alive by weird…things.”
Queen hated imprecision; it was a waste of his time. “‘Weird things?’ What kind of weird things?”
“That’s just it: No one knows what they are. But a lot of the refugees are crawling with them.”
“What do these ‘creepy-crawlies’ look like?”
“Here.” Deitz reluctantly fished in his flight jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “A friend of mine at the 160th Airborne forwarded this to me—it’s supposed to be life-size.” It was a color picture of something that looked like a primitive sea-creature: a semi-transparent blob fringed with many hair-like legs. “There are different kinds, but they say this is one of the most common. You can keep that.”
“What is it these things are supposed to do to you?”
“I guess they cling to you like a—a jellyfish or something, and eat your skin. They’re parasites.”
Queen handed the picture back, annoyed at the sudden tightness in his chest. He wasn’t afraid—the thing in the photo looked dead, flattened and unimpressive and probably somebody’s idea of a joke, but it added greatly to the mounting burden of unknowns being heaped on him. “Mike, until we know more, I don’t want you passing this around. Or even talking about it.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
“No, that’s all right. If it turns out to be anything, I’m sure we’ll be briefed.”