The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker (read a book .TXT) 📗

The byssus killer collective consciousness was strengthening over its weakening victims.

And to cap a bad news day, Jones learnt that Stone Man had overcome his diazepam induced coma and attempted to open a third-floor window. Staff were afraid he was going to jump, his reflexes urged by the silent byssus killer.

The Seven Stones reef and Ushant rocks were the gateway to the English Channel or La Manche. Legends would have it the Pillars of Hercules stood on that gateway, the gateway to Atlantis. Recent legends claimed the pillars defined the gateway to the ancient Lands of Lyonnesse and Lyonnais. These two ancient legendary lands appeared to be joining forces with the collective consciousness of the mutated Pinna nobilis shells to kill off their victims.

Jones had less than ten days to distil enough lysozyme to arrest the byssus chitin platelet invasion of one hundred and forty-three victims, all of them on a debilitating death row.

Mason and James had no option. Jones had enough enzyme to give them a risky high dose. If it failed, the byssus killer shells had won. Mason and James were distinctly uncomfortable hosting a ferocious enzyme roaming around their bodies. As Jones predicted from his starfish observations, the lysozyme dissolved the chitin from each platelet then cracked up the diamond hard aragonite. Getting rid of the destroyed platelets caused enormous pain through the kidneys, the urinary tract and the bladder. Mason and James drank Burrator reservoir dry flushing the nano-sized grit out of their systems.

Despite his compatriots’ pain, Jones was delighted. His technicians had taken every possible starfish from the Cornish coast and extracted a quantity of lysozyme. Jones decided he could go ahead with his painful onslaught on another one hundred and forty-one byssus victims. Concarneau were obliging with a back-up trawler delivery of starfish.

 The Enzyme Trial

The technicians worked day and night distilling lysozyme from starfish stomach contents, producing an unrefined brew. Mason and James were on the mend. He could afford to be liberal with the factory ship crew treatment. They were tough enough to survive the pain. Jones recalled he had originally scheduled Stone Man as a trial horse for the lysozyme. Looking up his notes he found he had indeed loaded Stone Man with a horse-sized dose of rough-cut lysozyme on the medical diagnosis that Stone Man was brain dead. Now, he was informed Stone Man was up and about and thinking of doing an Icarus out of a window.

“Get him down to Falmouth where he can be watched with the other one hundred for mass collective conscious lemming madness.”

Jones was quietly informed that Stone Man had emerged from his coma upright, a six-foot four-inch, blond Viking warrior, gruffly speaking in a strange tongue. The women were eyeing him as a potential starter of the next millennium. He was no longer a mad, crazy man determined to be a human wrecking ball.

Jones could only muse that the massive lysozyme infusion had cleared out the byssus-chitin platelet blood stream invasion, normalised his blood fluidity and induced his brain and liver to regenerate. Jones was excited to find Stone Man had lost his collective consciousness infliction.

Elated, Jones had cured one victim of the byssus killer virus.

The trial on the one hundred factory ship crewmen was raised up a gear. Jones looked up his Stone Man dose. It was huge. Perhaps he should mix it with diazepam to ameliorate the lysozyme pain. Too late, the technical medics were following the technicians and injecting massive syringe chambers full of crude lysozyme through holes made over the jugulars. The third batch of technicians closely followed ripping off the softened casing.

Jones was dismayed. The freed crewmen remained in a suspended animated state, heartrate imperceptible, breathing non-existent.

Jones shouted at his technicians to open the trawl entry door to the factory floor. “Get cold air into their lungs or they’ll all perish!”

The wrong button activated the wrong machine. A pump flooded the factory floor with thousands of gallons of Falmouth Bay seawater. It galvanised a couple of the crew to wake up, roll on to their knees, coughing, croaking the Bulgar version of ‘abandon ship’. Six crewmen out of the hundred failed to make it. The byssus killer had struck. The remaining ninety-four had no apparent desire to live.

The mayor’s Concarneau crab boat arrived in Falmouth to pick up the final batch of lysozyme, this time distilled from Ushant coast starfish. The French medic was aboard. He listened intently to Jones’ instructions to hit the byssus ‘virus’ hard and inject heavy doses of lysozyme. Jones was confident all forty bouillabaisse victims would respond. His enthusiasm failed to recognise the diffidence of the French medic whose professional rules insisted on an initial low dose trial. Time was not of his essence. Four victims died during the tardy trial. The mayor exploded and ordered the medic to follow the Jones’ rules, not the professional book.

Thirty-six lives were saved. Jones was thankful the Concarneau trawlerman was in his Falmouth care.

 The Stone Man Revelation

Since Stone Man had arrived on the factory ship, his massive physical presence and quiet gentle nature had impressed paramedic technicians, mechanics, mariners and Jones himself. No longer was this threatening encased beast frightening the wits out of all who went near him. His gruff unintelligible attempts at communication were his only drawback.

Stone Man was signalled to appear in front of the assembled technicians. Jones explained to the technicians he wanted the listless Bulgar crew members to be subjected to a Stone Man physical exercise regime. The hidden purpose; to destroy the overwhelming collective consciousness killing the Bulgar crew’s minds. Get them to focus on a huge warrior of a man who would drill them back to their military style, organised crew life. “Do a PE demo to Stone Man to indicate what we want, then bring the shambles of a crew in, mingle