The System - Chapter 3: Dr. Anna Mercer
Anna Mercer had already been standing in the stream for several minutes.
The water was cold enough to numb her ankles through the neoprene, moving fast over slate and leaf litter. She stood mid-channel, eyes trained on the bank where the moss thickened and the rocks stayed wet. A good place to find salamanders. This field site was a reliable place she had walked every spring, over twenty years ago, for the better part of a decade, longer than her marriage had lasted.
"Transect C17," she murmured into the recorder clipped to her collar. "Elevation thirty-four hundred. Flow is normal for the season. No visible runoff."
She swept her net beneath the undercut and lifted.
Nothing.
Anna paused, adjusted her footing, and tried again, slower this time, careful not to disturb the silt. Still nothing. She moved downstream, used her boot to flip a flat stone, and crouched.
A juvenile red-backed salamander lay motionless in the shallows, its body curled as if it had simply stopped. The coloration was there, but dulled. She reached down with two fingers and touched it.
It didn't flinch.
"That's odd," she said. As she lifted the salamander, she noticed it weighed noticeably less than it should have. When she turned it over, a thin smear of black residue slicked her glove. Quite a contrast against the white nitrile.
She had seen fungal bloom. She had seen pesticide kills that left amphibians twisted and blistered. She had never seen anything like this. The residue wasn't clotted or granular. It looked spent, like spent material that is left behind after a process had finished. She carefully swabbed the black film, sealed the sample for PCR analysis, and then bagged the carcass for further testing. She made sure she changed gloves before sealing the sample, careful not to carry the residue forward.
She stood up and scanned the bank.
The forest was too quiet. Not silent, but missing something. No insect hum. No bird chatter. She hadn't noticed until now.
A branch snapped behind her.
Anna turned to face the sound.
"You find what you're looking for, Doc?"
The man standing several yards upslope wore a sheriff's uniform faded by years of wear.
"Sheriff H. R. Hollis," she said with a nod.
He walked a few steps closer. "Have we met?"
"I knew your wife years ago in a different life. I was sorry to hear she passed." She didn't say it, but she had also met the sheriff years ago when she was married and much younger.
She noticed his eyes didn't leave her gloves.
"I found something," Anna said carefully. "But it's not disease. At least not anything I recognize. I found a dead red-backed salamander oozing a black residue. I took a specimen for the lab to analyze."
The sheriff took a deep breath. "That's what I was afraid you were going to say."
"Why's that?"
Hollis gestured back toward the trailhead. "Because yesterday, two miles from here, we pulled a body out of a pickup truck. No wounds. No blood. Just, empty. Like someone scooped the insides out and poured tar back in."
"And," the sheriff continued, quieter now, "the wildlife officer said you would be in this area. When I saw your SUV I decided to stop. It sounds like maybe the dead frogs and the dead people are talking to each other."
Anna looked down to where she had found the dead salamander. Yeah, she thought. I think they are.
"Plethodon cinereus," Anna said with a grin.
"Excuse me?"
"You said frogs, but they're Plethodon cinereus. Red-backed salamanders. No biggie."
"Well, anyway, nice meeting you, Doc. I have miles to go before I sleep." Hollis waved and was off.
Anna acknowledged him with a nod. A sheriff with a poet's soul, sans a sense of humor. She grinned and shook her head.
She stepped onto the bank and sat on a fallen log, pulling her notebook from her pack. She wrote carefully and precisely.
Specimen mass inconsistent with expected range. External residue present. Surface residue was swabbed and preserved for PCR analysis. Cause unknown.
She stared at the words. Unknown was safe. Unknown bought time.
She finished the rest of the survey. When she reached the trailhead, her phone buzzed. One missed call. No voicemail. A local number. She didn't return it.
Unbeknownst to Anna and Hollis, somewhere deeper in the trees, something had listened and learned the sound of their voices, attaching meaning to their words.
_____
Back at the motel that evening, Anna showered longer than necessary, scrubbing until her skin reddened. Not knowing the source of the black residue bothered her. She slipped into her night clothes, sat on the edge of the bed, and opened her MacBook.
She quickly started the email memo based on what she had learned so far.
She described the pattern.
She described the depletion.
She wrote the sentence she knew she shouldn't.
The pattern resembles feeding, not disease.
Her cursor blinked at the end of the memo.
She highlighted the memo and then closed the file. She'd have more information after performing a preliminary analysis at the field office tomorrow.
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