The Alien Plague- Book 2
Page 13
‘What else is he saying?’
‘He says you should kill me.’
‘Besides that.’
‘He says you’ll be rewarded for killing me.’
‘Rewarded? Rewarded by who?’
‘By him.’
It felt like a game, but Missy had to persevere.
‘And who is he? Does he have a name?’
‘He doesn’t want to use names. He doesn’t want to talk about himself. He says he’s not very important.’
‘How would he reward me then?’ Missy crossed to the edge of the vault. She tested the point where the ground met the walls but it was still too hot to sit. Typical, she thought. She had been welded in here without a chair. If she was going to die, she at least wanted a chair.
Missy thought about what Houellebecq had said to her back at the hotel in Chengdu. If talking to government bureaucrats, it’s “extra-terrestrial”. Bureaucrats could process “extra-terrestrial”. But right now she didn’t have the energy for anything fancier than the word she’d been using right the way through this pandemic.
‘He’s alien?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How much does he know about us?’
‘About humans? Everything. His job is to colonize this planet.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s happy about that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because this planet is one of the easy planets.’
‘Easy?’
‘It’s the primitive planets that are difficult. You can’t research them.’
‘While we document everything, spewing it out into space. That’s how he did it, that’s how he built the substance?’
‘He didn’t build the substance. He’s a military man.’
‘But someone designed it, built it? For this planet, I mean. Someone purpose-built the substance to come here and do what it’s doing? Why?’
‘He says resources.’
‘What, commodities? Gold, oil, stuff like that?’
‘No. That has no value where he lives.’
‘Then…?’
‘Soldiers.’
Missy thought about this for a moment, trying to understand. ‘The zombies?’ she asked finally. ‘They’re his soldiers?’
‘He says they can be your soldiers.’
‘Why my soldiers?’
‘He’s not close, he’s a long way away. He’s put a lot of work into this. He needs someone who can represent his interests.’
‘Here on earth?’
‘All you have to do is kill me, Missy.’
She worked through it in her mind, reminding herself she wasn’t speaking to Kilgariff. Kilgariff, her mind, her body, it was all simply a conduit, a way around the effects of carbon monoxide.
Speaking with an alien life form… First contact.
‘If I kill Kilgariff,’ she said, ‘we can’t talk.’
‘He says there will be other ways. He says there are no shortage of ways to talk.’
‘And how am I supposed to kill you exactly?’ But even as she asked this, Missy remembered the pistol. It was still lying at the end of the gurney, exactly where she had put it when first moving to work on Kilgariff’s cuffs.
Kilgariff simply nodded towards it.
‘Just make sure you shoot me in the head,’ she said. ‘I’m like you now. I heal well.’
‘And after I’ve killed you, what then? What does he gain from that?’
‘He says you should be able to figure that out for yourself.’
‘Tell him I can’t.’
‘He says you figured out far more than he expected any human to comprehend. That’s why he wants to recruit you, put you in charge.’
‘Tell him to ease up on the flattery. After I kill you, what happens then?’
‘After you kill me?’
‘Yes.’
Kilgariff just smiled. Missy saw she wasn’t going to get an answer. At least, not straight away. She was being tested.
She worked through it as best she could. ‘Killing you will end the dome,’ she said. ‘How big is it now?’
‘He says it’s very big, too big. He said it’s covering the entire planet or soon will.’
‘And over time, as all water evaporates and returns to earth as rain, it’s going to filter out all Protein Z.’
Kilgariff nodded. ‘At which time, I’ll die.’
‘Me too,’ said Missy. ‘But he can’t allow that, can he?’
‘He’s put a lot of work into this. His job’s on the line.’
But Missy was still following her original train of thought. ‘He can’t allow you to die last because you triggered the dome. His zombies can’t get to us, can they? That’s what he’s scared of.’
‘He’s never scared. This is just a job to him. He just wants his work rewarded, that’s all.’
‘And we’re jeopardizing that.’
‘He wants to reward you, too.’
‘There’s one thing I still don’t understand,’ said Missy. ‘Maybe he can explain.’
‘Maybe he can.’
‘The substance makes perfect sense to me. The substance arrives, it makes use of viruses to carry DNA across different species. He creates mutated creatures which then attack the uninfected. The pandemic never achieved one-hundred percent infection, or even close, so the zombies are a kind of redundancy.’
‘He wants to know if there’s a question coming.’
Missy nodded. ‘Why the domes?’ Missy had a theory on this, but she wanted to hear it via Kilgariff. ‘Why do the infected leave before they get sick, why do they get sicker when they return? Why are the healthy, the uninfected, drawn into domes?’ She had asked a lot of questions, she realized. At one level, she knew it was pointless, but she was scratching an itch. If she was ever going to find out how this worked, what it all led to, it had to be now.
‘He says it’s a test.’
‘A test of what?’
‘A test of control.’
This matched Missy’s theory. ‘Domes disappear when control is assured. The first animal to get infected in an area is the test case. If it leaves the dome, the hallucinations work. The dome fades to nothing. If it doesn’t leave, it dies, but dies slowly. The dome spreads and kills off all mutants in the area. He’s only providing Protein Z to mutants he controls.’
Kilgariff said nothing.
‘He doesn’t want mutated soldiers who could one day rise against him.’
Still Kilgariff said nothing.
Missy realized she had another question. ‘And after all the domes are gone? What then? What comes next?’
‘He says he’ll show you if you kill me.’
‘I have no intention of killing you, not now, not ever.’
Kilgariff’s eyes flashed to narrow slits of black – black on an unnatural white. She jerked forward, hissing.
Missy stumbled back, alarmed by the outburst. She was angering someone, someone who was quite possibly millions of light-years away. It was intimidating, terrifying even.
And yet, what did she really have to lose?
She was going to die soon no matter what.
She took control of her nerves and stepped forward. Kilgariff was laughing now, cackling even. ‘Is he laughing too?’ Missy asked sternly.
Kilgariff turned serious. ‘He never laughs.’
She rose again, testing her restraints; but slowly this time, carefully. ‘Untie me. If you won’t kill me, untie me.’
‘So you can kill yourself?’
Kilgariff sneered. ‘He says join him.’ Her eyes left Missy’s, following the hallucination around the room. When they returned to Missy, her voice was softer, coaxing. ‘Shoot me in the head, Missy.’
Missy picked up the pistol. Part of her was afraid Kilgariff would find strength enough to break free. Though, she reasoned, if that was possible, Kilgariff would’ve done it long ago. ‘It must frustrate him, to have his whole plan ruined by four metal cuffs. He must want to reach across galaxie
s, flick them open, but he can’t, can he? He’s stuck with me.’ She raised the pistol.
‘Do it,’ hissed Kilgariff, struggling to break free.
‘This is the last dome. He needs it gone. Why? What comes next?’
She was asking purely out of curiosity.
Kilgariff gave up and flopped down. For a long moment, she was perfectly still, staring at the vault’s wall.
‘Evolution,’ she said in a near whisper.
‘Evolution?’
‘There are new species. New species with new strengths, new weaknesses…’
‘And limited resources,’ said Missy, understanding.
Kilgariff nodded. ‘They must fight.’
‘Until one dominates.’ Missy thought back to her father’s experiments, his talk of a behavioral sink. Population collapse due to a change in mores. ‘He wants whoever – whatever – is left to fight. He wants one species to prove it’s right to reign supreme, albeit controlled by him.’
‘Correct.’
‘He’s building an army, an army perfectly adapted to this planet. To what?’
‘To keep it, to defend it.’
‘For what?’
‘For who.’
‘For who then?’
‘For him.’
Missy nodded to herself. ‘He told you this?’
‘He’s building an outpost.’ Kilgariff was studying Missy’s eyes intently. Her own eyes had returned to normal, but Missy knew this wouldn’t last long. She leaned in, baring her teeth. Kilgariff came forward, and sure enough, the eyes changed. The pupils lengthened out, narrowed down to slots, then sprouted a string of smaller pupils, like black jewels. The white behind them was almost radiant.
Missy stepped back, grinning. ‘Well then, he has his answer, doesn’t he.’
‘He doesn’t understand.’
‘Tell him the dome is going to stay. Tell him the smartest, strongest creature already rules this planet, and it isn’t hallucinating.’
‘He says you’re being reckless.’
‘He can say whatever he wants. But humans are going to win this fight. I know it, he knows it. We’re going to filter out all his Protein Z. His “on” switch. Tell him I’m shutting him down.’
She put the pistol to Kilgariff’s temple, teasing. ‘He’s not getting an outpost here,’ Missy whispered into her ear, ‘because this is our planet. We might’ve evolved slower, but we did it right. Tell him to find a different planet.’
‘He says you’re infected, too.’
‘He says, he says… he says a lot. But it doesn’t change anything. He can’t change anything. Not anymore. He underestimated my father. This is a reset, a global reset. Zero mutant DNA allowed. It’s over – and he lost.’
Missy didn’t know how to shoot herself in the head, but she figured it was like anything else terrifying. Best done fast.
She didn’t let herself hesitate. She didn’t even let herself question it. She simply put the pistol’s muzzle to her temple, just above her right ear, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 31
Somewhere in the Gobi
Houellebecq looked towards the hangar entrance. They were inside now, sprinting and leaping and bounding. There was a temptation, albeit a foolish one, to press and keep on pressing the elevator button. But the elevator wasn’t going to save him now. Nothing could, nor was anything meant to.
He turned so his back was to the rear hangar wall. He watched them tearing up beds and kitchenettes, coming at him like a tsunami. There were too many, and most of them full of Protein Z from the dam. They were all intent on the one goal: finding the vault and shutting down the dome.
What, he wondered, would’ve come after that, had they succeeded?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t care.
It didn’t matter anymore.
They hadn’t succeeded.
All was as it needed to be.
He closed his eyes, repeating this to himself. He was scared. He felt the vibration through the wall, through the floor. He would be torn open or cut open or crushed. Or perhaps suffocated. But however death came to him, he was confident now that it would be quick. Not painless. But quick.
He heard beds being swept up just ahead of him. The noise was incredible now! A howling, screeching, stampeding wall of it, crashing down on him.
He held out his arms, screaming into it.
Joint FBI-CIA Intelligence Report
September XX, 20XX
Honorable Robert Greene
Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence
United States Senate
Washington D.C. 20510
Dear Mr. Chairman:
In accordance with The Intelligence Act, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency hereby submit a joint FBI-CIA intelligence report assessing the nature and extent of extra-terrestrial threats to the United States of America.
Executive Summary
Since the extra-terrestrial pandemic three and a half years ago, the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) has been working to assess extra-terrestrial threats to the United States. Our assessment to date is as follows:
There exists substantial evidence that the facility discovered two years ago by Agent Cisneros in Mongolia was indeed critical to defeating the attack. Over the past two years, investigations of the site have been hampered both by sluggish global economic recovery and poor international cooperation, however the site has now been processed in its entirety. It is scheduled for destruction by nuclear detonation in late November of this year.
Reports that the site was swarmed by infected mutants have been verified. The site appears to have been custom-built, either for harnessing or defeating the extra-terrestrial bio-threat, though its exact mechanisms remain unclear. The Chinese and Mongolian Governments continue to deny any knowledge of the facility prior to its discovery by Agent Cisneros.
The facility contained a multifaceted vault at its core, which appears to have been critical to its operations. Gold and other valuables were recovered, helping fund further investigation. After cutting through steel, two “sludge corpses” were also found in an upper level of the vault. One appears to have died from a gunshot wound to the head, approximately three to six months before the remaining corpse, which was strapped to a gurney. Little is known about the pair, as nothing was recorded.
Despite rumors to the contrary, there is no evidence of U.S. citizens’ DNA being in the “necrotic sludge” surrounding the facility (nor in the pockets of sludge discovered within).
International efforts to locate and quarantine the substance (using lead) continue to grow in effectiveness, as do efforts to monitor its arrival and journey through earth’s atmosphere. These have shown excellent results, continuing work which began in conjunction with various government organizations even before the bio-attack.
Historical research into Weifang and the Carrick disaster continue, showing promising results for better understanding the substance’s preferred protocols. Historical research into the pandemic itself also continues, though this is hampered by the scale of the disaster, by conflicting survivor reports, and by burnt or buried evidence.
All viral outbreaks worldwide are now checked for evidence not only of the substance, but of “domes” and genetic mutation. Reports of domes worldwide still abound, though none have yet been verified by reputable agencies.
Emergency procedures for critical U.S. staff, both in the U.S. and aboard, continue to be reviewed and refined, and training for an extra-terrestrial threat is now commonplace in all branches of the U.S. military.
Despite extensive testing, no evidence of mutated DNA has been found anywhere on earth since the mass extinction of necrotic, mutated creatures three years ago. Subsequent international clean-up efforts have been effective, though the trend towards “nuclear incineration” remains troubling.
To date, Presidential orders remain in place. A
ny and all extra-terrestrial DNA, be it living or otherwise functional (i.e. not sludge) is to be sent immediately to Cheyenne Mountain – for research contributing to earth’s defensive militarization.