Extinction Plague: Matt Kearns 4

by Greig Beck

  “Something hit me.” She brought her hand away and her mouth dropped open. She held her hand out. “Blood.”

  “Falling rock?” Klara asked.

  “No, it felt … alive.” Lana scowled in the light beams, and kept a hand on her head.

  Maddock drew his weapon. “Eyes out, there’s something in here with us.”

  Matt suddenly remembered the small gust he had felt before – it wasn’t a breeze, but something taking a swoop at him.

  “Could it be bats?” he asked.

  “How?” Hartigan asked. “The cave is sealed … and underwater.”

  “Can’t see anything,” Vin said.

  “Let’s get into the tunnel, at least it’s a smaller place to defend,” Matt said.

  “Agreed. Let’s move it.” Maddock waved them in.

  The tunnel mouth was cramped and the small space turned out to be an alcove only about six feet deep. The group had their backs to the wall, facing outwards.

  “What were they?” Matt asked, shining his light out.

  Something flew past that was too fast for them to see in their light beams.

  “Too quick to draw a bead on them.” Maddock had his gun up.

  “Whatever they are, they’ve been trapped in here for about twelve thousand years,” Hartigan said. “They could be bats, some type of nocturnal bird, or even giant insects.”

  “More bugs, huh. That’d be fucking great.” Klara shook her head.

  “Whatever they were, who knows what they are now.” Hartigan shone his light around. “Standard rule is it takes around one thousand generations before one species evolves into another species.”

  “What the hell have they been feeding on?” Lana asked while backing in closer to Matt.

  “Given they’re taking a run at us, I’d say they’re meat eaters,” Hartigan added.

  “If we can see them, we can hit them,” Klara said, holding up her gun. “I can light ’em up with a flare. Just say the word, boss.”

  “Save your ammunition for now,” Maddock replied.

  “We need to be away from them.” Lana turned to face the wall and placed her hands against the damp stone. “This can’t be all there is.”

  “No,” Matt said. “Give us some more light here and also a little more room.” Matt stood back but saw that the end of the tunnel was far too flat and straight for it to be natural. One thing he had learned: nature doesn’t do straight lines.

  He snorted softly. “Yep, this has got to be a wall, or maybe a door.” He pushed against it, but there wasn’t an ounce of give in it. He felt around the edge, looking for a button, lever, or some other ancient mechanism that was used on sealed crypts, or chambers.

  He crouched and brought his light close to the floor – there was a line along the bottom of the wall – it wasn’t attached. He ran his hands along the mossy ground, feeling some tiny grooves in the stone.

  “Gotta be a pivot point.” He stood. “Vin, we’ll just push on one side, and see if we can budge it.” Matt put his shoulder against the stone. “Count of one, two, three … heave.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Try the other side.” Matt moved along the wall face.

  The two men pushed hard and were rewarded with an inch of scraping.

  “That’s it,” Matt said. “Again, on three, two, one … now.” The pair shoved even harder this time, and the huge seven by six foot slab made a grinding noise as it was pushed inwards on a central pivot. A gust of air was thrown back out at them.

  Maddock stood aside. “Vin, Klara, check it out.” The HAWC leader then got behind the group and faced out at the dark cavern, making himself a shield. He grabbed at Matt, who went to follow them. “Give ’em a minute, Professor.”

  “Okay.” Matt looked into the new tunnel’s darkness. There was nothing but blackness and silence coming from inside, and just the pipes of light from the soldier’s flashlights swiping one way then the next.

  He got on his toes and sniffed a couple of times. The new section smelt of seawater, and dark dank spaces like from under rocks, or in sunken wrecks washed up after a storm. Lana moved up right behind him.

  “Clear,” Vin shouted from the darkness.

  Matt and Lana went in fast with Hartigan right on their heels. Though their curiosity was urging them on, they also wanted to be away from the large chamber where the mysterious flying things were darting around in the darkness.

  Maddock backed in slowly, keeping his eyes on their rear position. Multiple lights now moved around in the total darkness. Matt saw huge shelves of stone, rock pools of fetid water, and dripping slime everywhere.

  “Lana, tell us what we should be looking for,” Matt asked.

  “They should be impossible to miss.” Lana turned about. “Like I said, a thirty-foot tall stalk of asparagus.”

  “From their fossil records, I suspect they’ll be spongy but firm. As wide around as a light pole, I think,” Hartigan added.

  “I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing anything like that.” Matt grimaced. “Damn.”

  The chamber wasn’t that huge, maybe two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet square. But the rocks were slick and black and the humidity in the air carried the scent of salt within it.

  “You said they didn’t need much light, right?” he asked.

  “Yes, they can survive with little sunlight.” Lana shook her head. “But I doubt they could thrive for long in total darkness. Plus there’s too much seawater,” Lana crouched and scooped her hands through the slime. “Anything that was sealed in here would have been turned to mush in a few years. If this place has been seawater-logged for twelve thousand years, then I’m afraid not even the tiniest spore would have survived.” She stood and wiped her hand on her pants. “Or even its DNA.”

  “We just bounced around the world for an empty cave. Someone fucked up,” Klara seethed.

  “Feel free to get a second opinion.” Matt glared. “If you can find one.”

  “Shit.” Maddock shook his head. “This is not a call I want to be having with the colonel.”

  Me either, thought Matt. “Look, this place was sealed for a reason. They were here, right here, and they knew something about the plague. And they knew enough to seal the answer, or remedy, or cure, or whatever it was, away in this hidden place.”

  He flashed his light around. “Look at the walls, the floor, everywhere – they must have left some sort of mark or record. They must have.”

  Beams of light waved around as the group separated. Lana was at his side.

  “Matt …” she eased in closer to whisper. “Do you think we missed something?” she asked.

  “No, no, impossible. This is the place. I know it is.” He sighed. “More like we’re just too late.” He kicked at the slime on the floor and it stuck to his boot. “This crap might be all that’s left of the prototaxites.”

  “We don’t even know how we were supposed to use them – drink it, spray it, burn it …” She waved her light across the cave floor.

  “Here!” Vin leaped up onto a rock shelf.

  The group followed him over. There seemed to be a slab of stone like a cap over an area. Its was roughly six feet long and three wide. Plus about three inches thick. The young HAWC grunted from the strain for a moment but then slid it aside, and shone his light down into the cavity.

  “Something in here.”

  Matt leaped up to also shine his light into the hole. There was nothing but rocks, all sitting in a few inches of glistening slime.

  Lana got down on her knees and reached in. “Same as the stuff on the floor; its all degraded to nothing,” she said. “Maybe the rocks were holding down the plants somehow.”

  She got down even lower by the side of the cavity, and reached into her bag, pulling out a small sample jar and long probe. She spent a few minutes reaching and scooping some out, and dropping it into the glass vial. She held it up, shining her light in on it.

  “The protein coat on fungal spores is incredibly str
ong, and can survive freezing, extreme heat, radiation and, in some cases, acidification. But immersion in seawater will eventually destroy it. We can test it when we get back, but my view is that it’s all gone now.” She reached back into the pit to rummage around a little more.

  Hartigan sighed. “Fungal spores can definitely infect insects, and some fungal types disperse millions of spores from a single organism. They adhere to the carapace and can cause sterility, abnormal behaviors or can even short-circuit their nervous system.” He shone his light around, and the beam was reflected back off the glistening walls. “There’s nowhere in here that hasn’t been soaked.” He turned back to Lana. “Twelve thousand years ago, this cave was probably dust-dry and the spores would have remained in a state of dormant preservation for many millennia.”

  “But not now,” Vin said.

  “Well, the spores might have remained intact … if where they were stored was sealed.” Lana straightened. “And they probably were.”

  Matt turned to her, and saw her rubbing her fingers together. She sniffed them, and then held them out.

  “Beeswax.”

  Matt and the rest of the group just stared for a moment, processing what she had told them.

  “Look.” She reached back into the pit, grabbing a few things and then placed them on her palm.

  Matt craned closer. In among some small dark pebbles, there were brownish pieces of a broken circle, like a rim, and made from wax.

  “I’ve seen something like this before,” Lana said, pushing them with her fingertip. “From within the great tombs of Egypt where the pharaohs and high-ranking people were mummified. Their internal organs were removed and stored in canopic jars.” She looked up. “And then sealed with beeswax.”

  “Where …” Matt frowned. “Where are the jars then?”

  “Ah, shit, boss.” Vin shone his light down into the stone-lined hole. “I got a boot print here.”

  “What?” Maddock surged forward, and Matt noticed his eyes seemed to burn as he stared at what Vin had found. “Goddamn!” he roared. “Someone was here before us.” He spun, his eyes near volcanic. “Who did you speak to?”

  Klara pointed her flashlight into Matt and Lana’s faces like a gun. “Dammit, Matt.”

  Matt held up his hands. “Whoa, no way, we told no one.”

  Lana also shook her head. “We only just deciphered it when we were with you guys, back at the USSTRATCOM labs. And we’ve been with you the entire time since. Spoke to no one. Why would we?”

  “They’re right,” Hartigan said. “We’ve all been together.”

  “Damn civs, leak like –”

  “Sieves?” Matt finished.

  The female HAWC, normally so friendly to him, growled. He wondered what had made her change.

  “Professor, we’ve come a long way. For nothing.” Maddock’s light shone in Matt’s face, and for the first time his voice had a bite to it.

  “My translations were good. I mean, just look around – the Aztlanteans were definitely here.” Matt held his hands out. “This is the place … or was.” He hiked his shoulders. “And someone else thought so as well.”

  “So someone is dogging us. Somehow.” Maddock lifted his eyes to the roof and groaned. After a moment he dropped his head. “So, we think there was one or more sealed jars in there. And someone came in and beat us to them.” His jaws worked in his cheeks for a moment. “When?”

  Lana got to her feet. “Could have been centuries ago for all we know.”

  “Or yesterday,” Maddock added. “That’s a boot print, not a damn Roman sandal.”

  “Yes, of course.” Lana dropped the wax fragments into another sample bag. “Unfortunately, they even took the jars. We might have been able to gather some of the residue if they’d have at least left us a broken shard or two.”

  The group stood in solemn silence for a few more moments, before Maddock turned to Matt.

  “Professor, could there be another site? Anywhere?”

  Matt hiked his shoulders. “I don’t know. Islands are perfect places of isolation, especially ones a long way from anywhere else. I’m guessing there could be. But it seems like, twelve thousand years ago, Easter Island was the last holdout for the prototaxites and the Aztlanteans collected some samples and stored them, knowing that they might disappear one day.”

  “There might be others, somewhere,” Lana said. “Remember the Wollemi pine that was discovered in a hidden valley in Australia? It was supposed to have been extinct for two hundred million years.”

  “True,” Matt said. “But we don’t have time for an exploratory expedition.” He turned to Hartigan. “Is there any way you can synthesize the compounds?”

  Lana shook her head. “What compounds? From where? There’s nothing for us to work with. There might have been something unique here to begin with. But right now, we have no way of knowing what that was.”

  Matt crouched again beside the pit, and carefully shone his light around the exterior, finding nothing, no markings, writing or pictoglyphs. He even had Vin and Klara turn the capstone over, but it too came up blank.

  “Nothing.” He stood.

  Maddock took one last look around. “We’re done here, let’s pack it up.”

  “But …” Lana held her hands up, but then murmured, “nothing.”

  Matt had that empty feeling of disappointment in his gut as they walked toward the entrance.

  Lana grabbed his arm. “I still think we’re missing something.”

  “Maybe. We can look at the stones again, but the reference to this place and our translation was pretty solid. Also this island cavern was sealed up because it held something important. And it existed at the right time.”

  “You were right, this was the place.” She looked up at him, the whites around her deep brown pupils luminous in the darkness. “Someone else sure thought so as well.”

  He nodded. “But who? And what do they plan on doing with those samples?”

  CHAPTER 35

  The Schneider compound, Treptow, Germany

  Rudolph Schneider held up the test tube, looking at the murky liquid inside. He jiggled it and then turned to his chief scientist.

  “This is it?”

  The man nodded. “It is the distillation of what you recovered. The properties are quite unique. But of course, whether they make a difference, remains to be seen.”

  Schneider smiled. “It will. This is what the ancient race at the bottom of the world used to control the plagues. I’m confident it will work. But as to what effect it will have, that is what we must ascertain in a test.”

  Schneider hoped for some sort of stupefying effect, or something that rendered the creatures docile enough to control. Adolf Hitler had expended many millions of marks, and countless hours in pursuit of the aussterben steins, which were to lead him to this very substance.

  He looked one last time at the muddy fluid in the tube. It was fitting that Schneider should be the instrument for enacting the Führer’s grand plan.

  “So, you will be testing them on living specimens?” the scientist asked. “You secured living specimens?”

  “Yes and no.” He smiled. “They proved a little more dangerous than I expected or am able to deal with. So, I have developed a partnership with a Russian laboratory. They have facilities and several of the creatures ready and waiting for me.”

  “Good, good. I wish you luck, Herr Schneider.” The man almost bowed.

  Schneider could barely contain his pride. If the test were successful, then he would be at the dawn of the new Reich.

  Rudolph Schneider smiled as his vision turned inwards. He would be there, standing at the shoulder of his master. And the world would once again tremble.

  CHAPTER 36

  ​The Kearns family home, Walnut Grove, Redwood county, Minnesota

  Karen Kearns was woken by the shaking of her bed. She lay with eyes open, listening and waiting as the rumbling and movement finally settled down.

  Belle rested her c
hin on the bed and whined. Karen laid her hand on the German shepherd’s large head and rubbed it.

  “That was a big one, wasn’t it?” she whispered in the darkness.

  Karen kept stroking the dog’s fur, waiting to see if there were any aftershocks. She turned to the west wall of her room – there were no windows in the large main bedroom as it was situated in the middle of the house, but she stared as if seeing through it to the yard outside.

  Belle whined again and Karen looked into the dog’s large liquid eyes. “I know, I know, we should have evacuated when they told us to.” She turned on her bedside light.

  Her room was a treasure trove of memories, and she remembered why she didn’t evacuate. “Because if we did, the looters would have emptied my house by now.”

  Karen wondered whether Megan had been woken by the tremor, and after a few more moments of quietude was about to lie back down when a distant shriek of hair-raising intensity pierced the air.

  “Oh.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  Megan knocked on her bedroom door and then opened it. Karen looked back at her niece. “I heard it.”

  “What was it?” Megan seemed unperturbed, and her suntanned arms were athletic-looking in her pajama top, which exposed her pi tattoo on her bicep.

  “Probably just a deer.” Karen gave her a fragile smile but didn’t believe it either. “We can look in the morning.”

  Megan nodded, but there came another scream, this one definitely from a man, and this time the voice held bone-chilling fear. It finished with a strangled gargle of agony.

  Belle whined and licked her lips, a sure sign the dog was nervous. Karen just stared, indecision freezing her.

  Megan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m going to take a look. Call the sheriff.” She paused. “Do you still have Uncle Dan’s gun downstairs?”

  “You’re not going outside, are you?” Karen jumped to her feet, her hands balled into fists in front of her chest.

  “No, but … just call the sheriff and see what he says we should do. I’m just going to have a quick look downstairs. The gun?”