Extermination Day (24 page)

Good news, Paulson thought. The loss of the men in the chopper was enough for today.

"These guys can handle it from here," he said to Jeff and Holly. "Let's head back to the base and get you two to a hospital.

They were about a hundred yards away,
heading to position Alpha, which was behind a rocky outcropping, when a voice came over Paulson's intercom.

“Ah, sir, something weird is happening over here,” Ensign Redding
said. He was standing beside the fallen Chen.

Paulson looked back over his shoulder and saw Redding kicking the body, which had stopped smoldering.

“What is it, Redding?”

“There are all kinds of things moving inside this guy, like maggots, swarming. It looks like they’re . . . they’re
weaving
strands of thread all around his body.”

"Oh
, no!" Holly said. "The nanovirus is healing him!"

“Get away from that thing now!” Paulson screamed. “Full speed back to position Alpha!  Banks, get another rocket ready.”

As soon as he gave the order, the six men standing around the body started running. But, as they did so, Chen slowly started to rise from the ground.

The resurrected
scientist stretched, as if he were testing his body, moving his arms and twisting at the torso. Paulson started running as Chen let out a terrifying growl of rage and grabbed one of the men closest to him. He lifted Petty Officer Simmons over his head, holding him around the neck and at the ankles. Then he flexed his arms and jerked them outward, ripping Simmons in half.

Jesus!

The poor bastard’s intestines gushed out all over Chen’s head as he threw the two body parts to the ground.

The enraged Chen let out another heart-rending bellow.

How were they going to stop this thing?

For one of the few times in his life
Buddy Paulson was terrified.

Early Morning Hours

Date and Time Unknown

Desert Outside
Lechuguilla Cave

“Banks, fire when ready!”  Paulson yelled.

He turned back for a quick second to see Banks mounting the rocket launcher.
But Chen was on to him and had leaped to his position. He ripped the launcher out of Banks’s hands. In one lightning-fast, fluid movement, Chen punched him in the ribs, and Banks flew twenty feet or so.

Chen then bounced to the other SEALs like some goddamn video game character, landing on top of them and slamming his fists into their backs. Blood and guts flew into the air, splattering Chen’s face and body and spreading out into the desert sand. The men grunted and screamed as they were pounded with the lethal blows.
Guns fired all around them, but had absolutely no effect on Chen. Paulson turned around and kept running. Holly and Jeff were with him as were two of his remaining men.

“Are you ready, Brodsky?  We’ll only get one shot.” Paulson rounded the boulders and slid into Position Alpha.

He glanced at his two SEALs and Jeff and Holly, assessed them quickly, and then turned back to the battle. The SEALs looked angry but Jeff and Holly, who were covered in dirt and grime, looked terrified.

The horizon began to brighten. Sunrise was minutes away. Chen
sniffed the air again, turned his eyes to Position Alpha, crouched, and leaped.

Paulson was already screaming, “Now,
Brodsky, now!”

As Chen flew through the air and was about to land directly on them, a loud metallic hum sounded. Nothing was clearly visible to the naked eye, but a slight distortion of the air shot out from just behind them and hit Chen full-on in midair. Brodsky had fired the electromagnetic pulse device from the ridge.

Chen hit the ground, landing on Seaman Jacoby. Chen looked slightly disoriented, but only for a second. He narrowed his blue eyes, flexed his muscular arms, and reached out and grabbed Jacoby’s head by the temples and crushed the soldier’s skull in a bloody
pop
. Pieces of broken skull and brain matter dripped from Chen’s hand to the sandy desert ground.

“You could have prevented this bloodshed, Commander,” Chen growled. “If you had just given me these two when I asked.”

Paulson seriously doubted that. Chen enjoyed the killing too much to just walk away. Besides, he obviously planned to kill Jeff and Holly when he got his hands on them. Paulson wasn’t going to stand idly by and let that happen.

“Get behind us,” he said to Jeff and Holly.

He raised his weapon and starting firing. The last man beside him, Senior Chief Hartigan, did the same. This time, though, instead of Chen just shaking off the gunshots, he screamed out in pain and flinched with each shot. He dripped with the blue-silver blood as Paulson and Hartigan emptied their clips into his body.

“I’m out,”
Hartigan said.

“Me too,” said Paulson
after he fired his last round.

Chen was rasping as he bent over, struggling for breath. Both hands pressed into his knees, but he would not fall. He just glared at them. Then he flexed his forearms and
in the dim light of dawn Paulson saw something emerge from his fingers. They were small at first, but eventually grew into three-inch claws, hooked like sharp daggers.

“Watch out!” Paulson yelled at
Hartigan, who was standing too close to Chen.

  The warning came too late as Chen flicked his arm out at
Hartigan with lightning speed, using his claws like knives. Hartigan jerked, then tried to speak, but he spit out blood instead of words as a thin red line formed across the front of his throat. He fell to his knees and his head tilted backward, hanging by thin strands of muscle and tissue. Chen swiped his clawed hand again, this time severing the remaining connections. Hartigan’s head simply fell off, rolling a short distance along the rocky desert terrain.

Paulson reacted with the blood rage of battle. All his men had been killed or taken out of action by this monster. He wasn’t about to let it take him too. In one quick, coordinated movement, he pulled
out his knife and jumped at Chen.

Chen had been weakened but was still incredibly strong and fast. And still fighting. He raised his arm to block Buddy’s knife strike. The claws weren’t like long fingernails, but metallic, and just as strong as forged steel. The claws easily met Buddy’s blade with the scraping sound of metal on metal.

Buddy quickly regrouped, pulling his knife back and jabbing it straight into Chen’s stomach. The man screamed. Standing face to face, they were close enough that Chen's breath fogged up the clear cover on Buddy's gas mask. Chen’s clear blue eyes stared him down coldly as he jabbed his clawed hand into Buddy’s stomach. The claws were just long enough to penetrate his body armor, and he felt the sharp points pierce his abdomen.

Buddy groaned and pushed Chen away. At the same time, he jammed his knee into Chen’s groin, then stamp-kicked him in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards. He wasn’t down
for long though. He hopped right back up, still bleeding profusely from the gunshot and stab wounds. At least he wasn’t healing.
Yet
. And if he could bleed, he could be killed.

Buddy lunged again with his knife. Chen dodged and blocked with his bladed hand, then counter-attacked. Back and forth they went like dueling swordsmen, spinning, thrusting, and parrying with precision. Neither could gain the upper hand.

Then Buddy saw something move out of the corner of his eye. A split second later, an arrow zoomed through the air, nailing Chen right in the side of the head. His neck jerked violently from the force of the impact as the arrow penetrated his skull and punched out the other side.

Paulson
paused for a moment, trembling and alert, watching. Kaahtenay stood on a boulder a short distance away, bow in hand, his strong lithe frame outlined by the rising sun, long hair blowing in the morning breeze.

Chen stood unmoving, looking dazed, before he reached up to finger the arrow. But still he did not fall. It was the split second that Paulson needed.

He lunged, planting his foot on a boulder for leverage, and sprang into the air. As he flew, he pulled his arm back, squeezing his knife, and mustering every ounce of strength he had left in his body. When he was within range, he drilled the knife straight down into Chen’s eye socket. The soft tissue rent and tore as the blade dug deep, embedded up to its handle. Buddy violently twisted the knife and more tissue and bone grated and popped.

Chen screamed out in agony and bucked Paulson off. Paulson released the knife, leaving it
wedged in Chen’s eye, and went tumbling over the cool, dry rocks. Chen grabbed at the knife and yanked it out, holding it in his hand and glaring at him with rage and hatred.

“Run!  Run!”  Paulson yelled to Jeff and Holly as he tried to get as much distance as he could from Chen, who was cupping his eye and still reeling from the attack.

“Aschenbrenner! Fire now!” he screamed into his com link.

The familiar
chopping sound of the Black Hawk engine filled the desert floor as a chopper came into view, flying low and fast. A Hellfire missile shot out from its underbelly and flew fast and sure to its target, hitting Chen head-on. An explosion boomed into the desert morning, and the fireball and concussive blast hit Paulson’s back.

The sound was deafening and the blast close and hard enough to knock him off his feet and clear the breath from his lungs. Jeff and Holly lay just in front of him. They were moving, so they were still alive.

They hadn’t been far enough outside the blast range to be safe, but given Chen’s recovery rate, he couldn’t take chances. He lay calm while his lungs filled again, just as he’d learned in his training years ago. Then noticed his arm was on fire. He calmly scooped up some dirt and patted it on his burning sleeve until the flames went out.

Then he rolled to his feet, eager to see what was left of the horrible monster. Bits and pieces of charred flesh and scattered blue and silver remains lay strewn over the desert floor, on rocks and cactus and scrub bushes.
He picked up his knife which lay a short distance away.

He looked down at the blade
, smiling, "I think I'm going to have to give you a name, baby." An honorable name befitting a weapon of respect.

Jeff and Holly stood beside him, studying the devastation.

“I don’t think he’ll be coming back from that,” Jeff said.

“You hit him with an EM pulse first, is that correct?” Holly asked.

“Yes. We’d expected something else here, but I hoped that the pulse would have some effect on this creature.”

Holly nodded and said, “The pulse disabled the
nanovirus that enabled him to heal at such a rapid rate. Then your guns, knife attack, and finally the missile were able to destroy him. You saved our lives. Thank you.”

She wrapped her good arm around Paulson and hugged hard. He patted her on the back.

“Let’s get you two and my men to the hospital. Then we need to have a long, long talk.”

2:30 pm EST, January 16
, 2038

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Dr. Darren
Corvin sat quietly in his homemade bunker reading a book while the world died around him. He’d known this day was coming. Patrick had mentioned it to him several days ago in a phone conversation.

Darren had always been obsessed with the end of the world and he was ready for disaster to strike. It was an unusual preoccupation for a normally rational scientist, but Darren’s mind tended to latch on to
strange possibilities and not let go. So he’d built a bunker under his home several years ago, stocked it with all the essential survival gear from food and water to gas masks, biohazard suits, and multiple types of communication equipment. He’d studied everything he could find about living independently. He was a survivalist.

Now he was prepared to live in his bunker for however long it took for this virus to burn itself out. Before the news feeds went out, he’d seen death all over the globe, so he knew how dangerous this disease was. Patrick told him there could be some type of terrorist attack yesterday, so Darren hadn’t gone to his office at Harvard, but had hunkered down in his bunker, turned on the air filtering system, and started reading some actual books, the old-fashioned way, on paper.
He'd tried to contact Patrick and the team at Project Chronos, but all communication lines were down. He didn't know whether they were alive or not, but he thought their chances were pretty good since they were concealed deep underground.

Quite frankly, though, he was lucky to be alive, and he knew it.

As he got up to get a glass of water, an unfamiliar beep beep sounded.

“What in the world is that?”

He looked around, puzzled, before remembering that he’d stocked his bunker with an old telegraph machine that he’d bought at an online flea market a few years ago. With all satellite communications down, the only way to communicate in a post-apocalyptic world would be through wireless telegraph radio signals.

He ran to the dusty table where he’d
stashed the telegraph and started looking at the printout that interpreted the
dahs
and
dits
of the message coming through.

“President Paulson dead. I am last survivor, Melinda Rider. Infected. Little time left. Secretary of State Farrow was traitor working with attackers. Farrow dead but may have accomplices. Be on the lookout.”

Darren’s eyes widened. It was too much information to process in such a short message. Darren checked it to make sure there were no errors. It looked accurate. If this Melinda Rider was able to get out a message, perhaps she knew of other survivors. He needed to find out more.

“Message received. Will try to help. Where are you?”

Darren was waiting to find out as much as he could about the virus before sending a message to the past. He was the lead researcher at the Project Chronos experimental research facility at Harvard University. As a PhD candidate studying under the supervision of Dr. Chen, he’d been there when the first time-travel experiments began at the research lab. Along with Dr. Conner and several others, Darren witnessed the time-traveling chicken salad sandwich and other world changing events associated with the project. When Patrick had asked him to go to Carlsbad and work on the project on a larger scale, he’d been seriously tempted. But the thought of being out there in the desert, not being able to publish anything and working in obscurity, didn’t appeal. Plus he’d just been granted a tenured position at Harvard, so he decided to stay.

Patrick was happy enough to leave him in charge of the
Chronos test facility at the University, which was a huge bonus. It was only a small-scale version of what they built at Lechuguilla, but it
was
a fully functional time machine that Darren and his team could experiment with.

Of course all of that was over now. That life ended when the virus struck.

Darren waited for almost an hour before the next message came though. So Melinda was at the Greenbrier. Apparently that old bunker was more than just a museum. He tapped his thumb against his lip, thinking. They needed to coordinate their efforts. Darren sent his reply.

“Message received. Need to contact other survivors. My current location is Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

Darren waited another hour. No new message. If Melinda had been infected with the virus, she was now dead. He sighed, his heart heavy, then decided it was time he had a look outside his bunker. He might not be able to coordinate with other survivors just yet, but he did have a message to deliver. He put on his custom bio-suit and headed up to the airlock, emerging in his basement, then walked through his home and outside.

There he found nothing but silence.

It was less than a mile walk from Hancock Street over to the Harvard Science Center  north of Harvard Yard. Normally at this time of day, the narrow tree-lined street with quaint little Victorian-style homes and brick apartments would be filled with students, teachers, and others on the way home from work and study. But today, the street was empty of movement. Several cars had crashed into parked cars on the one-way street. Along the sidewalk, a group of students lay in a distorted clump, holding each in the last throes of violent death.

Darren kicked several crows away and looked closer at the bodies. He nearly vomited as maggots were already swarming inside of the bloody mouth of one of the students. He hurried on, walking
past parks that would normally be filled with students. It was eerie and quite disturbing being the only one out. For all he knew, he could be the only one left alive in the whole city.

As he passed by a friend’s home he thought about knocking on the door just to see if his friend was alive. But after passing more bodies
sprawled out on the street, he knew there was no point. There were no survivors here. He felt sadness and disgust welling up inside him. Could he really be alone? Was everyone really dead? Despite his obsession with the end of the world, now that it was actually here he wanted everything back the way it was. He wanted to see children playing in the street. He wanted to see his friends and colleagues again.

He was a lifelong bachelor and not dating anyone right now, but he had always wanted a family. His work just seemed to get in the way. Now he had been robbed of that chance.

It was hard to believe that one day could make such a difference.

No, no, others had to be alive. He would find them.

As he continued on, past more bodies and wrecked cars, a dark shadow passed overhead. It was a sunny afternoon so Darren naturally looked up. What appeared to be a cloud of locusts swarmed over, moving fast and changing shape frequently. It was heading for downtown Boston. It was so massive that it took several minutes to pass and for the sun to come out again.

"
What hath God wrought?" he whispered.

He had no idea what the swarm was,
and he was not a religious man, but he knew it was a bad omen. The fifth angel of the Apocalypse had blown his trumpet. The end of days drew nigh.

When he reached Harvard Yard on the main campus, he crossed to the Science Center. Beside the Center was the research facility used for the study of particle physics. A secure set of basement rooms housed their mini particle collider and the time vortex generator and doughnut.
The test facility was under government supervision as well, so security was tight. The two security guards, Martin and Juan, who normally worked at that hour weren't at their posts.

Very few people knew what they were doing in the lab. Danger signs on the doors and radiation warnings kept away curious students who may have come up with ingenious ways to get past security
, out of curiosity or because of the dares of fellow students.

Darren used his security key and pass code to enter the facility and the
Chronos test lab. In a few minutes he had the vortex device powered up. The system was set to automatically replenish the fuel supply overnight, so they’d be ready for experiments in the morning. So he didn’t have to worry about generating fuel.

The question now was who to send the message to and when. He could send it to himself one week into the past; that would make the most sense. He was a well-respected researcher and had presented to government officials before, so people would believe him. Since the government had oversight of the facility, getting the message into the hands of President Diaz or his advisors shouldn’t be too difficult. Darren decided it would be best to go back a little farther—one month. That would give the message time to make its way through the proper channels.

As Darren was programming the jump, his computer screen started to flash, as if it were losing power. The irregularity could be just a glitch, but then again it could be a hacking attempt. Some bright computer science students had tried that before, but Darren was too good and blocked every attempt.

This time, though, was different. Darren flipped through a few screens, noticing that several layers of security had been dropped from the system. When he tried to rebuild them, more layers dropped.

If he didn’t do something fast, in seconds the hacker would have access to all the Chronos files.

“That’s quite enough of that,” Darren said to himself as he turned off the wireless connection to the Stream and
CampusNet, making the computer essentially a standalone terminal. No one could access the files from the outside now.

But a nagging fear prodded the back of his mind. Now someone knew he was there.

No students were likely left alive, so someone unknown to him had been trying to hack the system. That someone would have seen the computer drop off the virtual map. He needed to work fast; it wouldn’t be hard for the hacker to find out where the terminal was physically located.

He finished programming the coordinates and the vortex ring began powering up. The whole device was only a few feet across, so they were limited on what could be sent. Yet sending a message through on a two-inch-long data drive would be simple. They’d done it many times before.

The familiar
whoosh
of the forming vortex burst through the room. Darren loaded the drive with the data on the virus and a report on what had transpired over the last forty-eight hours, as well the telegraph message he'd received about the Secretary of State being a traitor.

As he crossed to the vortex, he noticed one of the control panels on the doughnut flicker. He checked the readouts again, finding them slightly off. A quick correction brought them back to
normal. He returned to the vortex and threw the data drive into the empty darkness. It disappeared in a flash, as did the vortex.

“Well, that’s that. A slightly younger me should have it soon, and maybe, just maybe, history will change.
Then this horrible nightmare will just evaporate into nothingness."

He would be able to forget about all of the death and in an instant his life would return to normal, just as it was yesterday. He closed his eyes and waited for just a second to see if anything changed.

Nothing. The same old lab. No memory from a month ago of having received a data drive from the future. Fear returned to him. He knew he couldn't wait here much longer. Someone had been tracking the connection from the lab and they could be on their way right now. So he signed off on the computer and headed out.

As he walked away from the research lab, the sky again darkened. Flying overhead was another massive swarm. Darren quickly
ducked into some shrubs, to hide. The swarm hovered over the science buildings, spinning like a tornado, then dove right into the heart of the structures. Both buildings began melting away, like a child’s sandcastle wiped off the beach by an ocean wave.

Darren watched in horror as the swarm devoured the buildings—entire buildings, down to the foundation—in minutes. Soon there was nothing left but gaping holes in the ground, with wires and cables protruding upward and broken pipes spouting water into the air like geysers. Project
Chronos and all the other research housed in the facilities was gone. He was lucky he got out; otherwise, he would’ve been devoured as well.

He stayed silent and unmoving, scared to even breathe, until the swarm rose and flew away. Once the area was clear, he jumped back to his feet and began jogging as fast he could in the bio-suit. Away from the destruction. Away from the horror.

The whole time he kept looking over his shoulder and up at the sky to see if anything was chasing him.

Perhaps he should try the telegraph again. There had to be more survivalists like himself still alive. Now that the world was officially ending, he would like someone to talk to. Darren doubted he’d have much human contact in the coming months. If he lasted that long.

The world was turning into a bleak and lonely place.

Moments Later, The Oval Office, Washington, DC.

A stiff wind blew through the rapidly dissolving White House. The walls were collapsing from the combined might of millions of nanobots gnawing away at the bricks and mortar of the historic seat of power. The wind passed over President Martin Diaz’s desk, where he'd worked on his State of the Union speech the night before. Papers scattered around the room and file folders blew open.