He’d clear a few more rocks just to make sure.
He yanked at one of the rocks lying in front of him and dragged it backwards along the path where he’d just crawled. It was so heavy, he had to stop frequently to catch his breath, crawling and pulling, crawling and pulling, slowly and consistently moving backwards. When he got to the main tunnel, he slid to the cavern floor, letting the rock roll to the ground.
Then he crawled back into his little tunnel and started the whole process again. But this time when he reached out to pull another rock loose, he grabbed something soft and fleshy. He jerked his hand back in surprise and shined his flashlight up ahead. What had he felt?
It was a hand!
Brown and dirty, covered in rock, trembling, the hand made a feeble attempt to find him.
“Please help,” someone whispered from beyond the layers of rock, the voice muffled.
“Hang on!” Jeff couldn’t believe that anyone could be alive after the explosion and cave-in. Yet it looked like a small pocket of space had formed in the center of some large rocks, insulating the person from the brunt of the power of the cave-in. Was he about to pull his future self free?
He cleared more debris out of the way until he was able to shine his light inside the pocket.
Dr. Chen?
Somehow he had followed them and made it through the vortex alive.
Chapter 22
1:30 pm EST, January 16, 2038
Greenbrier Resort
Melinda dropped the gun and stared down at the bloody remains of Secretary Farrow. She quickly ripped off her bio-suit, which was covered in the little insects, and threw it at the dead body.
“Eat that, you motherfuckers!”
She checked her body for the creatures and quickly made her way back to the hotel before any more of the horrible insects could find her. There were trails of them moving along the ground and she was careful this time not to step on any of them. Once inside, she reached up and massaged her temples. She could still feel the ghost of Farrow’s grip, his fingernails digging into her skull. She was going to have one hell of a headache. Which wouldn’t matter for long since she knew she’d be dead within the hour. Without a bio-suit, she imagined the virus was already spreading through her body, eating her from the inside out.
But she wasn’t ready to give up yet. There might be people still alive somewhere. And Farrow no doubt had accomplices, so people needed to know about him and them. She didn’t know who was behind the attacks, why Farrow was involved, but she could try to tell what she did know.
She ran back to the main control room inside the bunker. The satellite communications were still down, so there was no conventional way to get a message out. But telephone lines might still be accessible through the miles of fiber optic cable running underground. Melinda searched frantically for an old phone, but couldn’t find one. She closed her eyes, thinking, trying to concentrate. She turned and ran back to the main auditorium. The front entrance, where the old bunker was located, was a museum, so maybe there was an old land-line phone there.
She started in the command area. Under paper printouts of bogus data and file folders marked urgent, she found an old phone. She picked up the receiver, but didn’t hear a connection. She pushed at the buttons on the base unit, but nothing happened. She turned it over. It was hollow. Like the printouts and file folders, it was fake. Just a plastic prop.
Feeling hopeless, Melinda dropped into one of the metal swivel chairs behind the work desks and tables. There had to be a way to get a message out. She sat and spun the chair around and around looking at the ceiling, then slid across the floor and bumped against the wall. Finally she put her head down in her hands and cried.
Each breath she took and each sob pulled in more and more of the contaminated air. The nanovirus was coursing through her veins now, breeding and expanding, exploding inside her cells and spreading throughout her body by the millions. Soon she would start to sneeze, then cough, then death would come swiftly, violently, and painfully. But she wanted, needed, to do something as a final gesture. She pried her head from her hands and wiped her face with her sleeve, laughing at the return of a childhood habit.
“One last look around, Melinda. Don’t give up now, girl,” she said softly.
That’s when she saw it, sitting in the corner, covered in spider webs, and long forgotten—a rusty old wireless telegraph machine. God, please don’t let it be fake too.
She remembered the device from history lessons. She had no idea how to use it, but the encyclopedia on her portable could give her the answer. The government must have thought it was worth keeping, maybe in case all other forms of communication were cut off.
She studied the apparatus, discovering it didn’t have a battery and the power cord was broken and frayed. Apparently nobody bothered to inspect the damned thing. Before she could try to reconnect the wires, she needed to turn off the power to the wall socket.
She made her way to the hotel’s maintenance office—detouring into the kitchen to snag a bottle of water—and used the building’s computer to shut off the power. Inside the maintenance office and kitchen she stepped over the bodies of hotel employees who had died the day before from the virus. After splicing the wires back together as best she could and turning the power back on, she sat down in front of the telegraph.
“Now how do I work this thing?” she asked.
Seconds later she pulled up a tutorial video on how to send a message using Morse code. The question was what to send. She thought for a few moments, then typed into her portable, where the message was translated into Morse code. She propped her portable up on the table next to the telegraph and started tapping away, first three quick dots then three longer touches on the device’s sending tab to represent the dashes, followed again by three quick dots. “SOS.” Then she sent the rest of the message.
“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.”
Melinda sent the message nine more times. Then she pushed her chair back and allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. But that was quickly followed by doubts.
She had no way of knowing if anyone got the message. It was the longest of long shots.
Several minutes passed with Melinda just looking at her portable, flipping through pictures of her family, her dog, and her boyfriend. She couldn’t believe they were gone, but soon she would be with them all. She was smiling, watching a video of her and J. T. at the beach last summer, when suddenly the telegraph started moving.
Dah, dah, pause, dit, pause, dit, dit, dit.
Melinda quickly pulled up the Morse Code letter key to try to translate the message. It sounded like nothing intelligible to her, so she also hit record on her portable. Slowly, with the help of her portable, she was able to decipher the sounds.
“Message received. Will try to help. Where are you?”
Someone got the message! There was still hope. But then a nagging doubt began to wind its way through the back of her mind. The person on the other end was asking where she was. But she didn’t know who they were. It could be someone working with the attackers. She decided it was best not to reveal her location.
Melinda stood and backed away from the telegraph. Just as she did, her nose started dripping. She wiped the clear fluid away with the back of her hand. Her throat was parched, and she fought back a cough. She guessed what was coming, but she drank down some more of her bottled water, hoping to ward off the symptoms for a moment. For just a moment. She’d thought she was resigned to her fate, but she didn’t want to go out in pain. Not after what she’d seen happen to the others.
She glanced at the wireless again and thought about sending a message asking where the other person was, just for the comfort of connecting with someone, but her time was limited. She wanted to die under the sun, outside, not hiding in some bunker under the ground.
“We’re not done playing yet, my dear.”
Melinda whirled around, her heart hammering.
Cameron Farrow stood across the room, blocking the only way out, one hand on his hip, the other over his head as he casually leaned against the doorframe. He had taken his shirt off and caked and hardened blood still covered his body, but the bullet holes in his chest and head had almost completely healed over.
“What the hell! You. . . you were dead!” Melinda recoiled in horror.
“I’m much harder to kill than you think. You see, I heal very, very fast. So what were you doing over there?”
Melinda glanced at the telegraph and then looked back at Farrow, but she didn’t say a word.
Farrow strolled over to the table and inspected the device.
“You were using this to send a message. Who did you send it to?”
Farrow was right in her face now, eyes narrow, his anger rising.
“I said, who did you send it to, bitch?” Farrow smacked Melinda across the face with the back of his hand. The force of the blow spun her around and almost knocked her off her feet. The taste of blood filled her mouth.
“Is there another base out there? Are there more survivors?”
Melinda spat into his face.
“Fuck you! You traitor! I’m not telling you anything.”
“Oh, but you will.”
Farrow reached over with lightning speed, inhuman for a man in his seventies, and grabbed her around the waist with both hands. She struggled to get away and raise her arms to hit him, but he was too strong. He wrestled her around so he was behind her, then he pushed her forward and over the table. A computer reel, the fake phone, and papers went flying. He placed a firm hand on her upper back and shoved. Her chest and head hit the table hard, nearly knocking the breath out of her.
Farrow stood behind her, breathing heavily, holding her down. She tried to kick him, to push herself up, but Farrow was too heavy and too strong. Then she felt him reaching around to the front of her pants, unbuttoning and unzipping them. She struggled harder and began screaming, but she knew no one was around to hear. No one was going to come save her. All of the heroes were all dead.
Farrow yanked her pants down from behind and pushed them to her knees. She could feel him fumbling around with his own clothing and then heard his zipper.
“So, what’s it going to be, bitch? Are you going to tell me what message you sent and where that base is or am I going to hurt you in ways you can’t even begin to imagine?”
“Please, please don’t hurt me,” Melinda sobbed. “I’ll tell you. Just let me up, please.”
Farrow paused for a second. Melinda felt his ice cold pelvis press up against her warm buttocks as he used his knees to force her legs apart. Then he leaned over her back and whispered into her ear.
“I think I’ll have a little fun first.”
Chapter 23
Date and Time Unknown
Lechuguilla Cave
Jeff dug and pulled a grunting, barely conscious Patrick Chen over the rocks and out of the cavern. When he finally got him through the small tunnel and clear of the cave-in, he saw how severely injured Chen was. Both legs were gone, eaten away by the nanobots, up past his knees and almost midway to his thigh. Jeff quickly checked him for nanobots, but there were none. He checked again, turning Chen over several times. Even more unbelievable was that Chen wasn’t bleeding out. He actually wasn’t bleeding at all. A thin, bluish-silver membrane had formed over the injured tissue on his legs. Jeff gently touched the spongy substance. It was nothing he’d ever seen before.
“I’ve got you, Doctor. You’re going to be okay now. We have a MedKit to treat you.”
Chen was barely conscious. Jeff pulled him back to where Holly was lying and got out the MedKit.
“My God! It’s Dr. Chen.” Holly sat up. “I can’t believe he’s alive. How did he get through the vortex? I thought it closed behind us?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for him to regain consciousness.”
Jeff ran the MedKit scanner over Chen’s body to see what other injuries he had. When he got to his legs, Nancy said, “Subject is contaminated with an unknown substance. Please take a sample for analysis.”
Jeff tried to scrape off a bit of the material covering Chen’s legs, but the knife wouldn’t cut it. It was too tough, like hard rubber, but flexible and spongy.
“That could be some type of bandage on there,” Holly said.
“When would he have had time to apply a bandage? If he jumped through the vortex right after us, there would have been no time.”
“Nancy, is he stable?” Jeff asked the Med-AI.
“Subject has gone through tremendous trauma resulting in internal damage, including a broken pelvis and broken ribs. I suggest taking a blood sample to check for infection.”
Jeff pulled a needle out of the kit and drew blood from Chen. The doctor continued to lapse in and out of consciousness, babbling nonsense. He was also sweating profusely, with beads dripping down his forehead. He most certainly had a fever. Jeff placed the blood sample into the MedKit for analysis.
Several minutes later, Nancy came back with a response. “Subject is infected with a foreign antibody. Recommend further analysis before treatment of any type.”
Jeff and Holly both backed away from Chen. Jeff knew all too well what foreign antibody meant. It was the nanovirus they had left behind in the future.
“Is he contagious?” Jeff asked Nancy.
“Unknown.”
“Is this the same virus that infected the population in the future?” asked Holly.
“Checking files. I don’t have direct data and lab samples on the virus you refer to. However, the Chronos mainframe did load an overview of the virus that was obtained from the CDC into my files. Running a comparison analysis.”
Several minutes passed before the AI spoke again. “Analysis complete. The cells are virtually identical, with one subtle difference. They both contain organic and inorganic materials, but the cells in the blood of this subject are constructive regenerative cells, not destructive virus cells.”
“So these cells are healing him?” Jeff asked. He didn’t know what to make of that.
“They are reconstructing his damaged organs and cells at an astoundingly rapid rate.”
“Okay . . . ” Jeff looked at Holly. “We’ll need to wait until Chen wakes up and starts making sense, then we can ask him what happened. In the meantime, I should see if I can dig out more of the tunnel back to the main cavern.”
Holly bit her lip.
Jeff laid one hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay with me leaving you here with him? You’ve got the Med-AI monitoring your condition, and you can call if you need me.”
“I’m good.”
After several more hours of the grueling work, Jeff broke through to the main cavern. The entire thing was caved in. By that time he’d had enough. He felt the hopelessness of their situation pulling him down, sending him further into exhaustion. Discouraged and worn out, he trudged back to where Holly was lying asleep, and curled up beside her. He peered at Chen, who was a bit farther away on the other side of the tunnel. He hadn’t moved from where Jeff had placed him, but he was shaking and his head sporadically thrashed from side to side, as if he were having a horrible nightmare. Beads of sweat still ran down his forehead.
Jeff dozed off, but it was a very light sleep on the hard rocky floor of the tunnel.
Twenty-Five Hours Underground
Jeff woke to hunger pangs and extreme thirst. According to the clock on his portable, it had been just over a day since they’d time-jumped and he’d vomited up his last meal from the future. The cavern was warm, about sixty-eight to seventy degrees, according to his portable, and oppressively humid, so they were sweating constantly. It was hard to stay hydrated, so they were getting low on water again.
They’d carried no food with them, so he checked the MedKit for supplies. All the fluid reserves had been used up in H
olly’s IV and in the replication of blood. The AI said it could recycle and filter their urine, which they could drink as a temporary solution. But very soon they’d need a source of water.
Holly had moved further down the tunnel and was waking slowly. Jeff went to check on Chen who was awake and looking much better.
“How do you feel, Doctor?”
“Like a ton of rocks fell on my head and nanobots made a meal of my legs. How the hell do you think I feel?”
Same old Chen.
“I was lucky to find you alive,” Jeff said smugly. “We thought you were dead. How did you get through the vortex?”
“As you can see, my heart is still beating. As for how I got here, I don’t exactly recall. The last thing I remember was nanobots crawling all over my legs and falling to the floor. After that, everything else is a blur. I must have fallen through the vortex.”
“But there are no nanobots on you. How did you get rid of them?”
“I don’t know,” Chen said angrily. “Maybe they didn’t like the taste of strong Chinese flesh.”
“The Med-AI said you have multiple internal injuries, so maybe we should do a quick check.” Jeff didn’t like playing nursemaid to Chen, but since he made it through the time jump alive, he’d be crucial to their mission. This Chen, who knew everything there was to know about Project Chronos, would be able to effortlessly kick-start the project.
Jeff got the scanner out and ran it over Chen’s body.
“Subject is showing remarkable recovery,” Nancy reported. “Most injuries, including the cracked ribs and broken pelvis, show recovery levels consistent with at least six months of natural healing. Viral infection is still present.”
"What is that AI talking about a viral infection?" Chen asked, concerned.
Jeff told him about the medical findings they had discovered earlier.
"Well that is strange. But I feel fine, although there is some weird tingling in my legs."
Chen reached over and touched his legs. As he did so, Jeff noticed something strange. He recognized the healing as being remarkable. He moved the flashlight closer for a better look and saw jagged protrusions and vine-like growths pushing out from the bluish-silver membrane covering the stumps. He moved even closer. They looked like roots coming out of a growing sapling.
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