The Alien Plague- Book 2

by A. T. Avon

  The Chinese soldiers edged in, interested now.

  Her father glanced at them, showing no surprise, then resumed his story.

  ‘Mrs Liu firmly believed the only reason he didn’t kill her was her own steadfast refusal to untie him. Right at the very beginning, she understood the importance of good rope, good knots. The first time he mentioned a hallucination, the very first time he tried to leave the house, she knew what she was up against. She had tied him to the bed, and even when his wrists and ankles bled, she left him like that. She believed she was dealing with an evil spirit. She believed it was the same thing which had gripped the town decades ago.’

  ‘She didn’t get sick?’

  Her father straightened up a little and tapped the closest bed again. He stared off towards the north, as if listening for something, and it was a moment before he spoke again.

  ‘Eventually she did, yes. But only very late in the outbreak. She was always incredibly careful around her husband, and at that earliest stage, the virus wasn’t plague. We still don’t know what it was exactly, but it seems it was some kind of fever, airborne most likely.’

  Her father started walking again, still moving north. Missy studied the northernmost end of what she was now mentally calling the hangar. It had a door the size of a football field.

  They walked past another fifteen or so beds, stopping at the next kitchenette. Missy took note of the small faucet built into the kitchenette, with its equally small basin. Presumably the water supply?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, testing the faucet and finding it worked. Water came out. Not a strong stream, but adequate. ‘Why make military-style accommodation for 15,000 soldiers and have nobody down here?’

  ‘I’m coming to that.’

  ‘Well get to the point. How did Mrs. Liu’s story convince you to build this bizarre hangar? I don’t understand. How did you have the confidence to build all this?’

  ‘I didn’t. Nor did the American government. Nor did the international organization I tried to establish. Only the Chinese had the foresight. As soon as they heard about all my research, they trusted but verified. And once they had verified there was no stopping them.’ He pointed to the Chinese soldiers. ‘That was when I realized my mistake. I arrived in the country as a tourist, but that was delusional. As soon as they knew my purpose, well, I might as well have been a U.S. diplomat, a visiting government official. They watched me exactly like that, round the clock, every move I made. I didn’t know about until afterward, but they were tracking me – trusting, as I said, but verifying. Always verifying. The Chinese understand the long game, Missy.’

  The two soldiers remained expressionless. If they understood they were being complimented, they had modesty down to a fine art.

  Missy felt her earlier fatigue returning, her frustration at her father’s inability to get to the point. She said, ‘Okay, rewind. What happened to Mrs. Liu?’

  ‘Mrs. Liu was rounded up in the first purge. The first serious purge. The first one to use vans. No one knows where the order came from. No one ever will know. But most likely it was the highest authority at the time.’

  ‘Mao Zedong?’

  ‘There’s no need for names.’

  ‘We’re bugged?’ Missy looked around. ‘Even down here?’

  ‘In this place, you don’t do anything without it being seen or heard.’

  Missy nodded. ‘You were talking about the purge.’

  ‘The government solution to the Great Leap outbreak at Weifang was a genocide of sorts. And they used the simplest methods known to humankind at the time. That is to say, they copied the Nazis – the mobile death squads which had followed soldiers through Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Only they didn’t have access to the same poisons the Nazis used, not exactly. They fell back on carbon monoxide. It was cheap and readily available.’

  The mention of carbon monoxide immediately put Missy on the defensive, but she had a feeling she was finally getting an answer to a question that had haunted her throughout most of her life.

  Her father continued. ‘With great difficulty, they managed to get the infected into these vans they had constructed, killing vans I suppose you could call them. Only, they didn’t work. Some died, but not all.’ Her father put his hands to her shoulders. His expression was somber, almost apologetic. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sighed. ‘This had never happened before. There was nothing in the published literature suggesting human beings could survive ten or twenty or thirty minutes of carbon monoxide poisoning. It had simply never occurred.’

  He looked up at the roof again, and this time Missy followed his gaze. She realized there were showerheads, pipes.

  ‘This entire hangar,’ she said, ‘this entire segment of the facility, it’s a gas chamber?’

  Her father nodded. ‘The largest in the world, save for the other three we built.’ He shrugged, showing no obvious sign of pride at what he was revealing. ‘You’ll recall I told you about Mrs. Liu’s husband having hallucinations… Well, they weren’t confined to Mr. Liu. Far from it. All the infected were suffering, and that was the incredible thing. Something about the carbon monoxide, something about its effect on the brain, killed off the hallucinations.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We don’t know. We’ve run tests, but…’ He shrugged. ‘We only know it works.’ He was silent for a moment, and Missy suspected his thoughts were drifting back to 1994, to the car, to her mother.

  ‘If you have any understanding of history,’ he said finally, ‘you’d understand that a program like the one we’re discussing now doesn’t turn on a dime. Rather, it’s like an enormous container ship. Once started in one direction, well, it’s incredibly difficult to turn a genocide around, to stop it. And so even though it wasn’t working, even though fifty and eventually sixty percent of the infected were surviving, they pushed ahead.’

  ‘Mao did?’

  ‘Names, Missy.’

  ‘The highest authority did?’

  Her father winced but nodded. ‘Eventually they started using different gases, and they achieved their desired outcome. They killed off all the infected and ended the outbreak. But a record of the carbon monoxide remained.’

  ‘How did you know it was reliable?’ Missy asked.

  ‘Because I had living breathing proof.’

  Chapter 9

  Somewhere in the Gobi

  Missy’s father told her the rest of the story as they walked back to the ladder.

  ‘Mrs. Liu was rounded up and forced into one of those vans, along with her children. One of her children died, her daughter, by far the most difficult thing she had even needed to endure besides her husband’s death. But the other two survived. Her sons survived, and she survived.’

  ‘And the hallucinations?’

  ‘Gone. She had come to see the visions, too. She had shared them with her husband after falling ill – the beautiful woman who taunted them all, inspiring depravity. But that woman had disappeared now. As Mrs. Liu coughed and choked in the back of that van, as she gave herself up to her fate, she was saved.’

  ‘Cured?’

  ‘Cured… no. But saved.’

  Missy didn’t understand the distinction, but she let it go.

  ‘She escaped the killing, escaped the guards, and eventually, many years later, her path crossed with mine. I found plenty of other sources verifying the effect of carbon monoxide on an infected brain, but the one I trusted most was Mrs. Liu. And she’s been vindicated since. The current outbreak aside, where no one has yet thought to use carbon monoxide, my own experimentation proved she wasn’t lying. You and I both know, the gas was highly beneficial.’

  Missy was stung by these words. She shook her head, not wanting to hear what she knew was coming next. But there was no stopping it.

  ‘I’m sorry Missy. I wasn’t careful enough. I thought I was. Or rather, I thought there was no danger. The outbreak had been so long ag
o. I didn’t think anything of digging through old bones. There were days when I didn’t even bother with protective clothing. And I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t. Not until long after I got home, by which time…’

  ‘Me?’

  He nodded sadly. ‘Both you and your brother, then your mother.’

  Tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘Words can’t describe the guilt I felt, Missy. The horrid realization that there was only one way to save you.’ His voice trailed off. The tears broke free and ran down his face. He looked away, wiping at his eyes. ‘You never saw it, but I triggered a dome. Our house, in America, a perfectly safe ordinary street… and a dome. Within a day of triggering it, I was hallucinating.’

  ‘This can’t be true.’

  ‘1994. I had to make a choice. And so I did.’

  ‘You killed them.’

  ‘Yes. But I saved you.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Do you think there isn’t a day where I wouldn’t trade places with your brother, your mother? I loved them more than life itself, you have to believe that Missy.’

  Missy didn’t have the words to respond. She took a few steps backward, shaking her head. ‘And now what, you’ve taken our car and made it the size of a hangar?’

  ‘You asked where the confidence to build this came from. I’m simply telling you. I’ve lived it, Missy. You’ve lived it. You survived in that car, and you survived when West shot you, because you’re changed. You’re….’

  ‘A mutant?’

  ‘For lack of a better word, yes. We both are.’ Her father held out his hands, both trembling. ‘I worried you were too young, too weak to withstand it. I never thought it would be your brother, your mother.’

  Missy tried to put herself in her father’s shoes, tried to imagine his panic as a dome spread in the perfectly ordinary street of her childhood. But there was no time to summon up sympathy for the man, because at that movement the entire hangar began to flash red.

  An instant later, the alarms sounded.

  Part 2

  Report of the Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents

  Report of the Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents into the loss of HMS CARRICK on 21 October 1993.

  Part II – Factual Account (Cont.)

  All times in GMT.

  2.1 Three days prior to the first recorded instance of illness on CARRIK, there was contact reported on CARRICK’s port bow. The source of this contacted occurred while DUVALL provided opposition to CARRICK during a series of exercises in XXXXXXX Channel.

  2.2 While DUVALL provided opposition, CARRICK was required to make frequent alterations of course and speed, which, along with a change of watch, resulted in disagreement as to the exact location and nature of contact.

  2.3 There is no report contact was made with another vessel, besides DUVALL. The Sonar Controller in the forward sonar room reported contact “on the net”, however, meaning it was broadcast through loudspeakers in the control room.

  2.4 32 seconds after this message was broadcast on the net, three sharp “banging sounds” were heard on the outside of the hull of CARRICK, all starboard forward.

  2.5 On hearing these noises, the Navigating Officer put the position of CARRICK on the chart using the CP inertial navigation system (accurate to 1.5 cables). The position of CARRICK immediately after these “banging sounds” was XX°XX’.XX X°XX’.XX.

  2.6 Subsequent investigations of damage by three Able Seamen suggested contact with “projectiles”. They had punctured the hull. Theories subsequently put to the Officer of the Watch ranged from ammunition to plane and space debris. No evidence of such debris was found, however, and after repairs CARRICK resumed exercises on 21 October, 1993 (the date of first illness).

  2.7 Illness spread rapidly through the crew on 21 October, 1993, and Able Seamen connected the earlier “meteorite strike with a wine-like substance found hovering near the repairs”. This was subsequently conflated with illness (though evidence suggests illness did not originate from this section of CARRICK).

  2.8 What followed is difficult to determine, but there appears to have been growing concern not simply about the number of Able Seamen rapidly falling ill, but about morale and the possibility of mutiny. At XX:XX hrs, all exercises were canceled. The Officer on the Watch gave the order to stand-by to return to periscope depth. “Teacher” then took charge of CARRICK, steadying CARRICK on a course for home.

  2.9 At XX:XX hrs, after a series of explosions (equivalent to 3.5 tons of TNT), all contact was lost with CARRICK. Four fishermen on a trawler 3.6 kilometers away from CARRICK at the time of the explosions report seeing a “dome, which had a strange, shifting surface”. These reports have since been dismissed as unrelated.

  Chapter 10

  Somewhere in the Gobi

  The two Chinese soldiers led Missy and her father back to the elevator, then on through the facility to a control room. Tang was waiting for them here, along with Houellebecq and West. There was no sign of Kilgariff.

  ‘It’s started,’ said Tang, shutting off the facility alarms and pointing to aerial footage of the desert. ‘This is one of our reconnaissance drones. You’re looking at a live feed. We’ve been sending them out on the hour every hour since I triggered the dome.’

  ‘Since you did what?’ asked Missy’s father.

  Missy could’ve sworn all the color had drained out of his face.

  ‘I put a soldier in the vault,’ said Tang. ‘We inserted the substance along with a sample of Deng Fever – as the facilitator virus. So far the results have been as expected.’ He smiled his inscrutable smile. ‘You’ve been wasting my time, Daniel. The experiment you ran with the rats was a charade, and we both know it.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Missy, glancing at her father. ‘Will someone please explain what all this means? What vault? What dome?’

  But it wasn’t her father who answered.

  Houellebecq said: ‘The vault sits at the center of this facility. It’s impenetrable. It’s designed to do exactly what Tang is using it to do now.’ Houellebecq added, ‘But the plan was to hold off a while.’

  ‘What,’ Tang said, addressing Missy’s father tauntingly, ‘you thought I wasn’t listening? I was listening to everything you said down there in the northern hangar. I’m in charge of this facility, Daniel, not you. I make the decisions.’

  Missy noticed the Chinese soldiers gripping their weapons a little tighter. There were a number of tech personnel tapping at keyboards and they perhaps picked up on this increased tension, too, because the clacking of keys paused momentarily, leaving the room silent.

  So silent, in fact, Missy could hear the tiny engine from the live drone feed.

  It was eerie.

  She moved closer to the monitor displaying the drone footage. There was some kind of group trudging through the desert. The drone was too high to see much in the way of detail, but it looked like some sort of Gypsy group. The odd thing was, they had no vehicles or even horses. Nor did they appear to have anything in the way of supplies. They didn’t even have sun protection. ‘Have they had some kind of a breakdown?’ she asked. ‘Where are their vehicles?’

  No one answered.

  ‘Are you going to send out someone to get them? We can’t just leave them out there. They’ll die of thirst.’

  She felt her father place his hand on her shoulder, subtly guiding her back towards him. ‘That is precisely why this place is in the middle of the desert, Missy. We don’t want a group of people like that getting close after a drink.’ He looked uncomfortable saying this and he refocused on Tang. ‘Launching a dome before we’re ready, before we’ve finished any kind of serious testing… Inviting this, Tang, it’s reckless. You’re gambling, and we’ll all end up paying for it.’

  The words rolled off Tang like water off waxy feathers. ‘Like I said, I’m in charge Daniel. I say when we start.’

  ‘You need to kill that soldier,’ said Houellebecq. ‘The one in the vault. You need to shut down this dome.’

  ‘We’re n
ot ready, Tang,’ agreed West, finally weighing in on the debate. ‘We’re not even close to ready and you know it.’

  ‘You stay out of it,’ Tang said sharply. ‘And even if you did all happen to be right, which you’re not, it makes no difference. Waiting is out of the question now. Who else has a facility like this one?’ He held out his hands. ‘We don’t know. Who else is ready? Again, we don’t know. And this only works if the Chinese do it first.’

  Missy’s father groaned. ‘That’s a horrible reason. By rushing it, in some misguided effort to be first, you jeopardize everything. You’re a fool, Tang!’

  Three of the Chinese soldiers took a step forward. They raised their assault rifles ever so slightly, an unspoken warning.

  ‘Escort them out,’ said Tang, nodding to Missy’s father, then to Houellebecq. ‘You, too, West. I need a word with Missy – in private.’

  Chapter 11

  Somewhere in the Gobi

  Missy’s father didn’t go quietly. In point of fact, he went out shouting abuse and dire warnings. Even Houellebecq gave Tang a serve on the way out.

  ‘He’s lying to you,’ said Tang, as soon as they were both alone save for the techs and security staff.

  ‘Who, my father?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been lying to all of us. He wants to see us all dead.’

  ‘Not true,’ said Missy matter-of-factly. She didn’t know where her confidence came from. Perhaps it was the conversation with her father down in the hanger. Perhaps it was just the fact he was her father. Whatever the case, she felt duty-bound to defend him.

  ‘He and I, we have very different goals,’ said Tang. ‘My loyalty is to the Chinese Government. His… well, I think you know where his lies. Think about it, Missy. Think about all his decisions up until this moment.’

  Missy did try to think about it, but without success. For reasons she couldn’t immediately comprehend, she found herself thinking about bananas instead. Specifically, the bananas Tang’s troops had placed on their heads that first day she met the man. She thought of the soldier who had first let the banana drop from his head, about the way he had made himself sick eating as many bananas as was humanly possible. Punishment. She hadn’t seen the end of that sad ritual, but she had seen the soldier’s determination.