“Regular contrails are harmless,” said Peabody. “As you say, there are plenty of conspiracy theories about chem-trails. That nonsense got started after a 1996 air force report was published in which induced weather modification theories were discussed. Alarmists like William Thomas, Richard Finke, and Art Bell stoked the fires of the belief that some contrails were actually the release of ether chemicals or biological agents intended to accomplish a variety of goals. Mind control, pacification of the population for easier rule by the Illuminati, human population control, chemical warfare, and . . . well, the list goes on and on past into genetic seeding by reptilian aliens. Any notable outbreaks of disease, higher statistics of genetic disorders, cancers, and so on in given areas are then linked to these chem-trails.”
I twirled my finger to indicate Doc Holliday, Church, and myself. “Choir,” I said. And then pointed to him. “Preacher.”
He flushed a little. “I had to establish certain things in order to tell you something that is actually happening.”
Very quietly I heard Mr. Church say, “Ah.”
Peabody had visual aids and sent images from his laptop to the big flat-screen in the conference room. The first image was a Google Maps satellite view of a stretch of nearly featureless desert. Endless sand dunes.
“This is Ténéré, a desert region in the south-central Sahara that stretches from northeastern Chad to western Sudan. One hundred fifty thousand square miles of nothing. It is ostensibly owned by Niger and Chad, but sparsely populated and of little value to anyone. You can’t farm it and there is very little water. It is, for all intents and purposes, a dead land.”
He clicked and a picture appeared of a pair of dark-skinned men dressed in white robes leading a string of starved-looking camels.
“There’s a scattering of ethnic groups, but the area in question for us is used mostly by Toubou people, who are descended from the original Neolithic inhabitants of the Sahara region. They are genetically Ethiopians, and are regarded as a tough, nomadic, and noble people. Most of the Toubou are salt miners. They live at the very edge of poverty and starvation.”
Click.
“This is one of the Toubou salt camps,” he said. The image was that of several tents clustered in the lee of a vertical pillar of natural rock that stood up from the sand. A few pine trees leaned away from the sun’s fists, and there were some handfuls of grass. “The oasis is called the Finger of God for obvious reasons. This photo was taken eleven days ago by a National Geographic photographer doing a story on nomad peoples.”
We waited, and I found myself becoming invested now. There were people in the mix and I had a bad feeling this was not going to be a story with a happy ending. In my job we don’t get to read a lot of those kinds of stories.
Click.
The next shot was of the same camp. Clearly days later. Had to be days, because even in the brutal heat of the Sahara, bodies don’t bloat that much. They don’t warp and expand into grotesque parodies of the human form. Doc Holliday made a soft gagging sound. I walked over to the screen and stood looking at it for a long time.
Men and women. Children. Even the camels.
All of them dead.
Sprawled in the sand. Covered in blowflies. Mouths thrown wide, but if with screams or prayers to an unheeding god there was no way to tell. Fingers knotted into fists on stilled breasts, or clutching handfuls of sand, or entwined with those of children. Reaching to each other for help, for support, or to make sure that when the darkness took them, they fell together.
None of us spoke.
Click.
The next image was of a plane flying high above, leaving a double trail of silver-white vapor.
“That was taken by the Nat Geo reporter the same day the first oasis picture was taken,” said Peabody. “The other picture . . . well, that was forty-eight hours later.”