Extermination Day

EXTERMINATION DAY

Book One

William Turnage

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EXTERMINATION DAY

Copyright ©2013 by William Edwin
Turnage III

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address William Turnage at
[email protected]

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design copyright ©2013 by William Edwin Turnage III

Visit William Turnage online at:
williamturnage.com

AN EPIC FAST-PACED POST APOCALYPTIC THRILLER

Survivors of a deadly virus must time travel into the past and warn the world of the coming Apocalypse.

January 15, 2038 – Extermination Day.
A surprise meteor shower comes cascading down from the sky one winter night. Most people think it’s beautiful. Others fear it, as civilizations have throughout recorded history. They are right to be scared. Several hours later people start to die. It begins with a simple cold. Within an hour, a horrible cough. Finally your lungs fill with fluid and you drown in your own blood—a painful, crippling death. The horrible virus spreads through the world, viciously killing everyone in its path. U.S. Congressman Jeff Madison is one of the few survivors. He and a team of scientists at the secret underground government base called Project Chronos try to figure out the truth of who is behind the attack.

But the virus is only the beginning. 

What ensues is a desperate struggle against an overwhelming malevolent force bent on the total extermination of the human race. The survivor's only hope may be to escape into the past and try to warn humanity of the impending attack in the future. But what can they do when the very air they breathe can kill them in under an hour? Time is running out, something is hunting them, and there is a traitor trying to undermine their efforts at every turn.

Can Madison and his team survive this disaster and figure out who is trying to kill them, or will humanity become just another extinct species?

8:45 pm EST January 15, 2038

Washington
, D.C.

President Martin Diaz slammed the door to the Oval Office. He was sick of all the damned bureaucrats and their endless doubletalk. No one on Capitol Hill—the scared little rats—wanted to take risks. Diaz didn’t make it to the highest office in the land by playing it safe. He didn’t make it out of the Cuban ghettoes of Miami by being timid, and he wasn’t about to run scared today.

He had just finished up a meeting with the Speaker of the House, a mealy-mouthed, fat little man who’d been in office far too long to remember what the real world tasted like. If Diaz had had to deal with him back in the barrio, he would’ve bitch-slapped his fat face.
But here in Washington, he had to be civil.

“You can come out now, Natalia,” Diaz said.

A young Venezuelan intern emerged from the closet with a coy smile on her face. Diaz kissed her on the forehead.

“You don’t want to forget these,” he said, reaching under his desk and pulling out her bright red panties.

Natalia smiled and quickly put them back on under her short skirt. “Sounded like you were ready to punch that guy,” she purred in her thick Latina accent. “That’s so sexy.”

Diaz smiled and kissed
her again, then swatted her ass to scoot her out of the room.

“Budget talks, dear. That’s how we do it here in Washington. Now run along; I have to get back to my speech.”

Natalia was young and beautiful, but he didn’t want her to get too clingy, to ask too many questions. Their little affair was nothing more than that, just heated physical attraction. Anything more and people would talk. His wife might even get wind of it and that was the last thing he needed. Diaz wasn’t intimidated by anyone, but when his jealous wife’s fiery blood started boiling, he knew to get the hell out of the way.

He sat behind his desk and pulled up his speech on his portable again. He’d been reading it over for about the tenth time when Natalia had walked in with coffee, looking sultry and sexy and wearing that perfume that drove him crazy. He figured he could take a quick fifteen-minute break from his speech.

But then the damned Speaker came knocking on the door before Natalia had a chance to leave. He was worried about Diaz’s latest proposed cuts to Social Security. The system was going to go bankrupt this year if something wasn’t done, so Diaz was taking a bold initiative to solve the problem, something the “old” Washington was fighting him on.

He threw his feet up on the antique desk and sipped his coffee as he
scrolled his fingers across the pad of his portable and smiled.

Among her other talents, Natalia
did make a damned fine cup of coffee.

It was Diaz’s
second time addressing Congress and the American people as president, and he wanted everything to go perfectly. His had been a hard-fought campaign, as he supposed they all must be. But he’d come out on top largely because of his raw determination and the fighting spirit gained from the streets of Little Havana.

As he was going over the wording on his closing remarks, Diaz received a call from the Secretary of Defense. He quickly punched up the video showing the Secretary’s stern face.

“Mr. President, I’ve spoken with several scientific organizations, and they confirmed that those lights in the sky earlier were simply small meteors burning up as they entered the atmosphere. Basically, it was just Earth passing through a dust cloud, nothing else.”

Diaz had seen the millions of tiny meteor trails earlier that night just after sunset. News broadcasts
from all over the world reported the same event. It had been quite spectacular, lasting about an hour, and had terrified most of those who’d observed it.

“Any danger?” he asked.

“No, sir. The end result was simply an elaborate fireworks show around the world.”

“Why didn’t anyone know this was coming?  Aren’t there scientists, astrophysicists or something,
who search for this type of thing?”

“There are, sir, but they tell me that the dust cloud was spread over too wide an area to be seen clearly with our telescopes and Earth passed through it quickly. We had minor damage to several satellites, but nothing else.”

“Okay, thanks for the update, David. I’ll make a short mention of it in my speech since so many got worked up by it. You know, all that talk of the end of the world.”

“No, Mr. President, the sun will come up tomorrow just fine, and we’ll all have to get up and go to work, same as always.”

Diaz smiled. “Yeah, and some of us have to go to work right now. Back to my speech, David. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He ended the call and touched the screen to return to his speech. As he was looking down, a clear stream of fluid dripped from his nose onto the screen.

“Damn.”
I can’t be sniffling and blowing my nose on camera in front of millions of Americans and everyone else watching around the world.

“Patty,” he said to his secretary through the intercom, “get me some cold medicine please. I feel like my head is going to explode in here.”

Diaz made a couple of last-minute changes to his speech and sent it over to the teleprompter in the House chamber. Then he closed up his portable and reattached it to his wristband.

As he was preparing to leave, he noticed an
unfamiliar folder on his desk, one marked “Top Secret.” 

Where’d that come from?  And who the hell used physical files rather than digital anymore?

Patty hadn’t brought it in, had she?

Had Natalia been carrying it?

When she’d walked in earlier, Diaz wasn’t paying attention to what she was holding, only to what she was wearing. Or not wearing, as was the case. She could have left it.

“Patty did you leave this old file on my desk?” he yelled out the door.

“Yes, one of the Secretary of State’s assistants just gave it to me. The assistant said he found it in a pile of documents in the in-box on Farrow's desk when he was looking for something else. He saw the date and the Presidential Seal and thought it best to pass it along to me. I don't think the Secretary ever saw it.”

The Secretary was always traveling, so the document could’ve easily gotten buried under all the other information vying for his attention. Damn, Diaz
knew he should check it out before he left to give his speech.

He
picked up the folder. The edges were worn and the paper was old and faded. It was had been sealed shut with the official Presidential Seal of William Jefferson Clinton, forty-second President of the United States of America.

The damned thing was over forty years old.

Diaz was born during the first Clinton administration, so he had no memory of the man as president, only what he could recall from history books. His interest piqued, Diaz broke the seal and looked inside. The cover page said, “Project Chronos: For the President’s Eyes Only, January 14, 2038.”

He grunted and shook his head in disgust. A day late, of course.
Somebody screwed up, as usual.

The next page was a handwritten letter from President Clinton.

“Dear Mr. President, I hope this letter has made it into your hands in time. An overwhelming disaster is about to overtake you and the nation. In fact, the entire world is at risk. You need to be prepared. This file contains data on a top-secret project we have only just begun working on but that will prove to be crucial for the survival of the United States of America.”

“Knock, knock!”  yelled
Brent, Diaz’s chief of staff, poking his head in the door.

What the
hell was Patty doing?  She should be screening people, keeping them from just opening the door like that. He was the president, after all, and deserved a little privacy.

“Sir, they’re ready for you,” Brent said as he bounced into the Oval Office full of his usual energy. “Now’s the time to make your mark.
You ready?”

“
Aaaaa-
cho
!” Diaz couldn’t hold back a nose-clearing sneeze.

“You should take care of that before you head out,” Brent said,
gesturing toward Diaz’s nose.

“No shit, Brent. Patty!  Where the hell is that cold medicine!”

His secretary came running in, frazzled even more than usual, and handed him a pill.

“I’m sorry, sir. We’d run out, and I had to go to medical to get more. Apparently a lot of colds
are going around.”She was sniffling as well, and pulling a tissue out of the sleeve of her sweater.

He popped the pill and put down the top-secret folder. It had certainly grabbed his attention, but it would have to wait until after his speech. He couldn’t keep Congress, or the American people, waiting. As he
stood, he felt faint and pressed his hand to the desk to steady his legs.

“Are you okay, sir?” Brent asked, reaching over to grab his arm.

“Aaaachooo!” This time it was Brent doing the sneezing.

“I’m fine,” Diaz said.“Just a headache from this cold.
Sounds like you’ve got one too.”

“I think we all do,” Brent said as he wiped his nose with a tissue he pulled from a fancy box on Diaz’s desk. “This one’s come on quick.” He sneezed again. “Maybe it’s allergies.”

Diaz left the Oval Office and hopped in his limousine for the short drive over to the House chamber. Once inside, he paused to greet and shake hands with staffers and well-wishers along with a crowd of elected officials, reporters, and other audience members. Everyone wanted his attention so they could get their picture taken with him or just wave a greeting.

Diaz loved all of it, loved being the center of attention. But more than that, he loved the power. He loved being the man in control, the one they all listened to, the President of the United States
of America. Diaz made his way to the podium at the front of the chamber, continuing to shake hands and smile. He knew all the senators, and many of the House members, personally. He asked several how their families and children were doing.

As he stepped up behind the podium, he felt a lump in his throat and coughed lightly. His nose was still running and his head was killing him. He’d just ignore all the crap for now, though, and power
through the speech.

The main thing was not looking weak. He shook hands with the Speaker of the House and then the Senate Majority Leader. The vice
president was traveling that night, flying the friendly skies on Air Force Two, and not in attendance.

Diaz
stepped up behind the podium, and thunderous applause rose from the floor of the Congressional Chamber. He smiled and waved, feeling the excitement and energy from the crowd. When the applause started to die down, he began his speech by thanking everyone for coming out and wishing them all the best. Then he went into a short moment of silence as he asked everyone to remember the fallen soldiers from the recent conflict in Venezuela. The U.S. was conducting joint operations with several Latin American countries to try to control the chaos that had sprung up after the recent death of Venezuela’s latest quasi-dictator.

“
Vaya con Dios, go with God,” Diaz said at the end of the moment of silence. He then started on the meat of his speech. As he was talking, Diaz noticed a lot of people sneezing and blowing their noses, far more than normal even for a cold January day. His head was throbbing, and his body was icy cold one minute, burning hot the next. Combine that with aches and pains and he knew it was more than just a cold and likely a full-blown nasty flu coming on. When he got to the section of his speech on the budget, he had to stop to sneeze. There was no holding that one in.

When he turned back to the podium he joked, “I think I’m allergic to deficit spending.” Everyone laughed, even some opposing-party members. “From the so
und of it, I think we all are.” More laughs and scattered applause followed.

Diaz continued with his speech for a few more minutes until excessively loud coughing drowned him out. Perhaps the guy was truly going to cough up a lung. It might
prove to be a medical emergency, but it could be some ploy, a protestor determined to disrupt his speech.

Then more coughing started
—a spreading pestilence through the room.

What the hell!

He tried to say something into the microphone, but choked over a huge lump in his throat. Then he started coughing. Just a little at first, then deep, body-heaving coughs. Struggling to take a breath, he felt fluid fill his lungs, as if he were deep underwater, drowning. He covered his mouth as he hacked, trying to clear his lungs, then looked down at his wet hands to discover they were covered in blood. It was suddenly pouring from his nose and mouth.

“Can’t breathe,” he tried to say, but nothing came out except
a gurgle and more blood.

He fell to his knees as his legs gave out, still coughing in heaving spurts, his whole body convulsing. The pain was searing as he struggled to draw air into his burning lungs. Secret Service agents ran to his aid, but they too were coughing and then falling to their knees, blood pouring from their noses.