Extinction Plague: Matt Kearns 4

by Greig Beck

  On the edge of the growing pond the other spheres also started to darken. Ibrahim momentarily forgot about his lost men as he stared at the tiny spheres. The dark surfaces fully blackened then began to split.

  Pieces fell away – no, that wasn’t right; they were being pushed outwards and then something started to emerge – long black spikes that seemed made of shining plastic. Two, then three, then four, and then the most grotesque little head he had ever seen.

  Eggs, his brain screamed, full of spiders! He flung the handful he was holding away from him.

  On the ground he saw that others were also hatching. Veined wings were lastly drawn from the eggs to lengthen and dry in the sunshine, and then strange eyes turned toward him.

  He looked around – hundreds of the things had hatched … and every one of them stood on their egg casings and watched him.

  The tiny wings started to vibrate. Then one lifted off, then two, and then hundreds, the sound a deep and ominous thrum.

  And they all came right at him.

  *

  The Daily Khabrain Newspaper – 18 July

  TRAJEDY STRIKES MINING COMMUNITY

  A tragic day for Rawalpindi as catastrophe struck the close-knit mining community when the Khan mine became flooded after accidentally cutting into an underground lake.

  All 17 miners on the morning shift are missing, and hopes are fading fast of finding survivors.

  Experts believe that rescue or retrieval of any bodies might be impossible as the miners were working up to 1000 feet down in the tunnels, and the shafts had flooded all the way to surface level.

  Local Mayor Hakim Hamid has ruled out calling in army divers as geologists have advised that visibility in the swirling limestone-infused water will be at zero for many more months and, further, the mine may also be subject to further collapse.

  *

  The Daily Khabrain Newspaper – 19 July

  TOWNSHIP DECIMATED BY MYSTERY PLAGUE

  Dhalla is a small mining town of the Rawalpindi district in the Punjab province and had a population of 620 people that were primarily dependent on the Khan mine for their survival.

  Now, in a double blow to the town, the police are baffled by a mystery plague that has devastated the small Dhalla community. No survivors have been encountered as every person, including all domestic animals, have been killed.

  The army has taken over the investigation and the small township is now cordoned off. As yet, the bodies and their autopsy results have not been released and the authorities have provided no further information.

  CHAPTER 07

  National Defense Command and Control Center, Moscow

  General Yevgeni Ivanovich sat stony faced among all the other military heads as President Volkov roared at them so forcefully his face had turned the color of a ripe plum.

  The Russian leader was already angry that his pet bear, Ursa, was sick. The Kamchatka brown bear, stood eight feet tall, and Volkov liked to have his tame press members film him wrestling the giant beast to illustrate his strength and virility.

  This was just the tinder, as what came next was the spark – following their swallowing of the Crimean port with barely an international whimper, Volkov was on the cusp of his plans to force Ukraine to reintegrate with the Russian motherland as he grew his new Soviet Union. But the Americans had just approved the sale of sophisticated defense weaponry with the new Ukrainian leader – anti-tank missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and even a range of missile defense units that would complicate the Russian advance.

  And worse was the American president promising to do more to support Ukraine and its new leader as he seemed to take him under the eagle’s wing.

  Volkov stopped yelling then, composed himself, and turned to his military leaders, his pale eyes almost wolfish as they touched on each of them. This was more terrifying than his roars, as this meant he had decided on a plan and someone was going to pay.

  “The Americans need to be taught a lesson. They need to be humbled. They need to suffer a setback that will force them to focus internally …”

  He stared at Ivanovich, and the general worked to keep his expression calm.

  “… so we can finish our work,” Volkov said softly. His gaze was almost hypnotic. “Will you do this for me, General?”

  Ivanovich shot to his feet, saluted, and held it. “Consider it done, my President.”

  Volkov stared back from under his brow. “Then make it happen. And make it happen fast.”

  CHAPTER 08

  Central Scientific Research Institute, Ministry of Defense, Shchyolkovo, Moscow

  Nadi Borishenko, Colonel in the Biological Warfare Unit, stood behind the thick glass window and watched the scientists work. They all wore a heavy form of hazardous materials suit, but the ones the scientists wore were more like suits of armor. Beside Nadi was the chief science officer, Doctor Mikhail Verinko, who had been tasked with leading the project.

  “Begin,” Borishenko said softly.

  The small man picked up a telephone and spoke a few words. A group of scientists then wheeled over a coffin-sized glass case partitioned into three sections. The first contained a single white rabbit, the next a large grayish-looking snake, and the last section contained three enormous insects – Lucanus cervus, stag beetles, each an inch and a half long, and armored by a thick carapace shell.

  They were pushed up against another tank; this one filled with black wasp-like bugs, all around an inch in length, who for now seemed dormant. The tanks were joined, and sealed. The partitions between them slowly lifted, and after a second or two, like tiny machines, the heads of the insectoids turned. Then, as a swarm, they began to move toward the open portals in a robotic, jerking motion.

  In another few seconds the enclosures of the rabbit, snake and beetles were filled. The prey ran, fought, and blundered into the glass walls, but were quickly engulfed and subdued.

  As Borishenko watched he felt a curl of revulsion form in his belly as each of the target creatures became floppy and fell flat as if they were nothing more then empty sacks. The beetles, degloved from their external chitin exoskeleton, just looked like glistening puddles.

  Verinko turned. “Complete extraction and consumption of all the silicon and calcium from within their bodies. Of course that means external removal for the arthropods.”

  Borishenko nodded slowly. It was the most amazing and horrifying thing he had ever seen in his life. “So fast.”

  “Yes.” Verinko turned back to the glass. “They have an amazing ability to consume many times their own body weight.”

  “Where did they come from?” Borishenko asked.

  “At the foot of the Ural Mountains. From deep underground, we think. But they are appearing in other places as well. They are extremely hardy, formidable, and aggressive,” Verinko said. “Heat will slow them down. But the sort of heat required to kill them is extreme, and detrimental to everything else as well.”

  “They would make an excellent addition to our arsenal. If they could be weaponized.” A plan began to form in Borishenko’s mind.

  Several years ago he had been tasked by ministerial order to work on the final stages of the Kurgan project, to create the Russian combat soldier of the future. The Kremlin had invested decades and many millions of rubles in the project and developed several soldiers all of enormous strength, speed, and intellect, and then sent them on a field test mission to an almost inaccessible mountain range in Alaska.

  Their task was to recover some high-altitude surveillance data from a downed American space shuttle. But things hadn’t gone to plan and it seemed overconfidence had surpassed competence.

  The Kurgan came up against an American Special Forces outfit known as HAWCs, headed by Colonel Jack Hammerson. Borishenko’s mouth turned down as he remembered. Their expensive soldiers had been lost. All of them.

  The project was deemed a failure, and many politicians and military personnel associated with it had simply vanished. Or been made to vanish. Bori
shenko had only survived through rat cunning, contacts, and a honed ability to cast blame on others.

  But still, his golden career path had been destroyed and to this day he had promised himself that if an opportunity for payback on Colonel Hammerson or America presented itself he would not hesitate to take it.

  And with General Ivanovich calling for covert mission objectives he might now just have his opportunity. He turned to Verinko. “In twenty-four hours, you will tell me how this weaponization will be effected. This is an order.”

  *

  Doctor Mikhail Verinko stood with hands behind his back, fingers clasped tightly as he watched through the toughened glass the next round of conditioning tests on the creatures.

  Their growth rate was phenomenal; when the silachnids, as he now termed them, had been gathered they were little bigger than large wasps. But now, just a few weeks later, they were the size of alley cats.

  They, and everything about them, fascinated the Russian scientist. They consumed silicon and calcium, and preferred live prey where they could inject a salivary enzyme that softened the silicon structures in their prey’s bodies so it could then be sucked out via a hypodermic-like proboscis.

  They were a strange mix of spider-insectoid morphology with their defined segmentation, but also had fur and scales, like some sort of hybrid mammal–reptile creature. Their eyes were hard lens coated, but not the multifaceted bulbs one would expect from an arthropod. More mammalian, he thought again. Though the creatures fascinated him, it was the eyes that unsettled Verinko – their gaze held a little too much intelligence for his liking.

  He had read much of the documentation on the hypothesis of the existence of silicon-based life-forms, but they were expected to come from some other world, not burrow up from somewhere deep in the Earth.

  The two scientists on the other side of the glass waited just outside the controlled environment room and Verinko nodded to them and then stepped closer for a better view.

  One of them used a card key on a lanyard around his neck to open the door, and entered with a dish of silicon in a warm solution of water and sugar. As the scientists entered through the first airlock door the silachnids became aware of them and started to gather close by.

  As the men passed through the final door the creatures surged forward. They clung to the legs of the scientists, but their sharp claws or proboscis had no hope of piercing the tough synthetic fabric of their suits.

  The dish of food was placed on the floor, and immediately was overrun by the swarm. The scientists straightened and then produced slim sticks and proceeded to touch individual creatures while delivering a loud and clear command word.

  Sparks flew as the shock sticks delivered their voltage. Even though the creatures were small, the charge needed was enough to stun a full-grown man; such was the toughness of the creatures and their silicon-armor plating.

  Verinko smiled. The experiment was basic obedience training that worked on everything from dogs to humans – each time a command was given, if it was ignored, a shock was delivered, and if the command was obeyed, then a soothing word, and no shock. After a while, just the command was usually enough to get the creatures to perform their task, whether it was to back away, stay still, or advance.

  “You learn quickly,” he whispered.

  Soon the creatures were all backed up against the far wall, as the scientists held out their shock sticks. Verinko still found the tiny humanlike eyes of the things most fascinating. In those tiny orbs the glare seemed to be of almost pure hatred. They were obeying, but reluctantly, he thought.

  Another aspect he found fascinating was that, while the more painful aspects of the conditioning were being administered, many times every single one of the creatures would focus its strange gaze on him, Verinko, as if they knew he was the one administering the commands.

  The scientist didn’t like them at all. For now, Verinko knew that the creatures could be controlled. But that gaze told him that there would never be bonding between their two species. The creatures were held in check through fear and pain, and saw the humans as no more than large prey animals. Dangerous, large prey animals.

  He tapped the glass and waved to the scientists. The test was successful; Borishenko would be pleased, and he could proceed to his next phase.

  CHAPTER 09

  “Hey, Kook.”

  Matt chuckled into the phone. “Yeah, hi Megs. So you got my message? Where are you?”

  “I’m in a taxi, coming at you fast. And I sure did get those … whatever the hell they were. And I’ve got to tell you they’re the weirdest and most wonderful things I’ve seen in years, if not ever. So, where did you get them? This better not be a prank.”

  “No, no prank, they’re real. They came from a television show about New Zealand’s coast. I saw the stone tablet standing at the back of one of their ceremonial huts. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was special.”

  He looked at a pinboard he had on the wall, where he had a printout of the stone. “So, Miss Wizard of ancient numbering patterns, tell me what you see.”

  “You won’t believe me,” she said. It sounded like her mouth was shaped into a grin.

  “Pfft, get outta town. I’ve seen things that’d make your hair curl.”

  “Oh really?” She laughed softly. “Like what, a language student spilling his coffee in the hallway, or perhaps the university printer running out of ink?”

  You have no idea, Matt thought. “All of the above. Come on, Megan, is it a numbering pattern or not?”

  “Well, uh, the best description I can give you is it’s like an algorithm. You know, like on your computer.”

  “But it has a function?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so. I mean it has a function, but damned if I know what that function is. It’s a recurring algorithm that, depending where you move it up or down a timeline, gives you back a particular date. I’m not sure what it means … yet.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. I got the right-hand column from astrological star dates. And they seem to be ancient ones. Very ancient ones.”

  “Of course, I thought they looked like astral patterns.” She laughed. “Clever boy.”

  Matt thought for a moment. “Uh, any significant dates jump out? Anything interesting?”

  “Yeah, ignoring the prehistoric ones, I can see that one of the columns pinpoints periods that are hundreds of years apart, almost like a timer that goes off to let people know something is about to happen. There are also clusters of small events and then they lead up to a large event. The last one was a major date of around seven thousand years ago, and then, get this, Matt, there’s another one coming up like, around now.”

  “Now?” Matt frowned. “Now, now? What does that mean?”

  “I mean this year, now. There’s no obvious measurement that breaks it down any further than that. So whatever they were looking at or monitoring is happening, or going to happen sometime around now, but …” She seemed to have a thought. “Hey, how old is that stone?”

  “I don’t know.” But Matt could make a rough guess of when the Aztlanteans last existed. “Maybe twelve thousand years. Maybe more.”

  “What? Who was around then? Even the Sumerians were still a bunch of nomads.” She scoffed. “Well, anyway, whoever these guys were, they were recording ancient events and also predicting new ones.”

  Matt heard her pull the phone away and give the driver some directions in her usual brusque tone. “Hey, Meg, can you make out the smaller cluster events with any accuracy? How many are there?”

  “Maybe around twelve, but I can’t make them out right now with what I’ve got.” She paused. “But I bet I could write a subroutine that would determine what they mean or what they’re supposed to point to.”

  “Great, do it and send them through,” he said.

  “Ha! Not a chance, buster. I want to see it, all of it. I’ll write the program, but I want in. This is too intriguing.”

  “It certainly is,” he said, his mind
wandering.

  “This is important, Matt, I know it.” She spoke faster, ”I’ll be there any minute.”

  “Okay, fine.” He barely heard her. “Create the program and we’ll see what it tells us.”

  “Be there soon. Don’t do anything without me. You promise?” Megan asked.

  “Sure, promise.” Matt disconnected and walked slowly to the window. He stared out over the park, his eyes unfocused. The concepts nagged at him. Megan said there were smaller events leading up to a big event. A big event.

  That was the worrying thing, considering that some of the historical dates mentioned highlighted mass extinctions. Now they were big events.

  How had a race that was more ancient than even the Babylonians and Sumerians worked that out? Exactly what was it they were monitoring?

  Matt felt a coil of concern twist in his gut at the implications.

  *

  He opened the door and Megan came in fast, talking a mile a minute.

  “It works, the program. I knew it would. And just as I thought, they were dates.” She dropped her bag and turned. “Dates, a range of them, all leading to an end date. A big date.” She held up her hands, arms outstretched. “We’ve got to see that stone. It’s damned unique, Kooky.”

  “You did it already?” Matt laughed. And that’s twice, he thought. No one had called him Kook, or Kooky, or Kooky Kearns, since he was a kid. He suddenly felt like he’d traveled back in time.

  “Of course.” She jammed her hands onto her hips. “Well?”

  “Yeah, good to see you again too, Megan.” She looked fit, a little overfed, and had on a strap tank top that displayed a matchbox-sized tattoo of pi on her bicep.

  He remembered when she’d got it at sixteen, after professing a love of math. She had told him that pi was derived from the first letter of the Greek word perimetros, meaning circumference. But, more importantly, pi was also an “irrational number”, meaning its exact value is inherently unknowable. And with all the solemnness of a teenager she had declared that was exactly like her.