Z. Apocalypse

by Steve Cole

  Mr Adlar froze, the mobile phone still pressed to his ear. ‘I’ll have to call you back.’ Killing the call, he mustered an unconvincing smile. ‘Ad, what’s up? You should be asleep.’

  ‘What experiments?’ Adam persisted. ‘What do they want you to do? What do they want me to do?’

  ‘Look . . . we’ll discuss all that in the morning.’

  ‘It is the morning. I can’t sleep anyway. Let’s talk about it now.’

  Just then, a loud rapping on the front door made Adam freeze. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Easy, Adam.’ Mr Adlar tried to sound reassuring but Adam could see the fear in his eyes. ‘We’re surrounded by soldiers here.’

  Mr Adlar crossed to the door, unbolted it and threw it open. Colonel Oldman stood framed in the doorway in full uniform, his silver eagles glinting in the light from the hallway. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You said you’d call me back,’ said Oldman, walking inside. ‘But as I was only in my office here, I thought I’d save you the trouble.’ He pushed the door closed. ‘You see, Bill,’ he gave Mr Adlar a piercing look, ‘my unit really does need you to work with Eve Halsall and her team on this straight away.’

  ‘I appreciate you’re under great pressure to react after last night, but—’

  ‘With respect, Bill, you don’t appreciate the wider picture.’ Oldman looked grave. ‘Dozens of the world’s best and brightest scientists, biologists and environmentalists have gone missing in recent months – some of the world’s most credible experts on a broad array of subjects. We’ve managed to keep the whole thing hushed up in the interest of national security, but witnesses at several locations heard weird, screeching cries overhead and found huge claw marks in the area – even though no creature was seen.’

  Adam felt a tingle ghost down his spine. ‘That’s got to be a Z. beast . . .’

  Mr Adlar looked alarmed. ‘Then . . . that thing really was trying to kidnap you.’

  ‘There’s more,’ Oldman went on. ‘In Australia, Germany, Mexico and Russia, genetic reserves have been raided.’

  Mr Adlar must’ve noticed the blank look on Adam’s face. ‘Genetic reserves are where animal embryos and seeds are kept preserved in cold storage,’ he explained, ‘in case of some future disaster.’ He looked at Oldman. ‘Are you sure those robberies are down to Geneflow?’

  ‘Not only did the raiders possess the skill to bypass the highest security systems and safely remove specimens, but also the brute force required to tear steel vault doors from their hinges.’ Oldman nodded slowly. ‘And you know what they took? Mainly livestock and cereal crops – the types of cattle that give the most milk and meat, the staple food plants like rice and wheat and so on.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Adam. ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Messing with DNA is Geneflow’s thing,’ said Oldman. ‘But I can’t see them making a super-sized Z. cow to feed the world, can you?’

  Mr Adlar frowned. ‘You think they’re planning to attack the world’s agriculture?’

  ‘Take away a country’s ability to feed itself and you’re in a real good position to make terms,’ said Oldman. ‘If they infect the food chain with poisoned crops or sterile livestock . . .’

  ‘There could be a global disaster. Starvation, riots . . .’ Mr Adlar looked pale. ‘But how does that fit with an attack on the White House?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Oldman said simply. ‘And we need to know. Right now, before something big and bad kicks off. Which is why I need you – and your son – to join the team at Patuxent.’ He paused. ‘You’ll be properly paid for your time and expertise, of course. Come through for us, and you’ll find the rewards are generous.’

  Mr Adlar chewed his lip, hesitant. ‘Why do you need Adam?’

  ‘Same reason we needed him to run that simulation. Experience.’ Oldman held up a hand as Mr Adlar began to protest. ‘Look, I’ll explain when we get there. Can we get going?’

  Adam blinked. ‘You mean now?’

  ‘I mean right now.’ Oldman half-smiled and checked his watch. ‘Five minutes to get dressed, troops. Then we’re out of here.’

  Chapter 6: To Read Minds

  ADAM YAWNED AS he and his father were driven into the biological research centre in Oldman’s Lexus. Flags twitched on tall poles in a lazy salute as the Lexus rolled past. Security challenged them at the main gate but the colonel’s pass got them straight inside. The road wound through open countryside, wetlands and meadows, lakes and marshes.

  ‘How big is this place?’ Adam wondered.

  ‘Fifty square kilometres, give or take,’ Oldman informed him. ‘It’s a wildlife refuge as well as an institute for applied environmental science. Though I’m guessing there’s never been a refugee like the Z. dactyl here before.’

  The car pulled up outside a huge industrial unit the size of an aircraft hangar. Soldiers in gas masks stood ranged around the enormous shuttered doors, stiffening to attention as Oldman emerged from the Lexus with a briefcase. Nerves gnawed at Adam’s stomach as he and his dad got out after him.

  He had the weird feeling he was being watched. Nervously, Adam looked all around. But there was no one in sight but the soldiers, clearly surprised to be welcoming so young a visitor to the hangar.

  With a shiver, Adam followed his dad and the colonel inside the building through a STAFF ONLY door, into a reception area and along a clinical white corridor. Finally they reached a door marked LABORATORY.

  As Oldman opened the door Adam expected to see a super-high-tech lab bustling with men in white coats, straight out of a sci-fi movie. Instead he saw a large, tanned, grey-haired woman in a dirty white smock sitting at a wooden desk piled high with battered black-and-white monitors that probably looked clunky and past it back in the 1960s. She didn’t look up, apparently engrossed in trying to make notes, eat a sandwich, drink a cup of coffee and watch the screens all at once.

  ‘Good morning,’ Oldman began. ‘I’ve brought the designer of Think-Send to meet you. Eve Halsall this is—’

  ‘Wait.’ Concentrating on one of the screens, Eve held up her sandwich to silence him. ‘I think Zoe’s coaxing our first pictures out of Big Bird’s head . . .’

  Who’s Zoe? wondered Adam.

  ‘Pictures?’ Mr Adlar stepped closer. ‘But how? The brain doesn’t store information as images, it only decodes images.’

  ‘Hey, you’re good!’ Eve declared with false jollity; to Adam she sounded Australian. ‘Now, could you be good somewhere else and let me get on?’

  Oldman looked apologetically at Mr Adlar. ‘Eve’s been flown in from New Jersey at very short notice—’

  ‘And is cranky as hell.’ Eve slurped her coffee. ‘So, colonel – this is the videogames guy you’ve been banging on about, right?’

  ‘Cutting-edge computer-systems architect Bill Adlar, yes,’ Oldman agreed. ‘And this is his son, Adam.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Eve,’ said Adam’s dad. ‘Well, as good as it can be to meet anyone before six a.m. after no sleep.’

  Eve looked up at him at last and flashed him a weary smile. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’d sooner you told me what all this is for.’ Mr Adlar was eyeing the teetering lash-up. ‘It looks, uh . . .’

  ‘Like a pile of junk,’ said Eve bluntly, sloshing down her coffee. ‘But it works. It allows us – me and my daughter Zoe, I mean – to create a connection between us and the animal’s mind.’

  Mr Adlar frowned. ‘You mean . . . mind-reading?’

  ‘It’s not magic,’ Eve said with the weary air of one who’d explained this point one or two thousand times before. ‘We interpret and manipulate delta and theta brainwaves in order to recreate images and take information directly from the subject’s brain.’

  ‘But surely,’ Mr Adlar began, ‘the brain splits up whatever we see into information for decoding – contrast, colour and so on.’

  ‘Yep.’ Eve nodded. ‘But this set-up reverse engineers those brain-patterns, s
o we can simulate the image here on the screen.’

  Adam could almost feel the techy words whooshing over his head.

  His dad came to his rescue: ‘Animals can’t speak or use words. This equipment “sees” what’s on their minds and decodes it into information humans can understand.’

  Eve nodded. ‘Well, as long as it’s hooked up to Zoe, it does.’

  ‘Where is your daughter?’ asked Adam, watching as a big blob of mayo fell from Eve’s sandwich and landed in her lap.

  ‘In the hangar. With Big Bird.’

  Mr Adlar reacted. ‘She’s in there with the Z. dactyl?’

  ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ said Oldman. ‘The creature is caged, under guard and doped up to its oversized eyeballs.’

  ‘And believe me, I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d tried. She’s only fifteen but she knows her own mind. The work means everything to her.’ Without tearing her gaze from the screen, Eve wiped the mayo with the side of her hand and then smeared it on her shoulder. ‘Zoe acts like a kind of conduit, a medium, joining beast and equipment together. The process wouldn’t work without her – she’s not just a gifted animal communicator, her brain’s like an extra computer in the chain, handles a lot of the imaging.’

  ‘And so takes the load off the regular computers,’ Mr Adlar noted.

  Oldman cleared his throat a little impatiently. ‘Now, since this beast either can’t or won’t use language in the way other Z. beasts have, I’m hoping we can interrogate her—’

  ‘Talk to her,’ Eve broke in.

  ‘– by using Adam to ask questions with Think-Send and getting the answers back through Zoe.’

  Mr Adlar shook his head. ‘Why are you set on using my son like this?’

  ‘I’ve had a team of men trying to communicate with that thing using the hook-up you saw at the base,’ Oldman shot back. ‘They got zero response, and I don’t have time to fool around – I need someone with experience of connecting to these creatures using Think-Send.’ He gestured to Adam. ‘Your son has that experience.’

  ‘He’s right.’ Adam shuddered, remembering how he’d once had to direct the sea-monsters surrounding Raptor Island. ‘You have to kind of . . . reach out to the animal. Touch its mind.’ He swallowed hard, looked between his dad and Oldman. ‘OK. I’ll give it a shot.’

  Oldman smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Even assuming Adam can get through to the Z. dactyl . . .’ Mr Adlar looked doubtful. ‘Isn’t there the risk that Zoe brings bias to the results? I mean, couldn’t it be her feelings these scanners pick up on and—’

  ‘Well, let’s find out, shall we, Bill?’ Eve was leaning closer to one of the screens. ‘Here we go – brain pulse low down in the delta zone, two cycles per second . . . Resolution’s usually low but you can see the image forming . . .’

  Adam looked over Eve’s shoulder as his dad and Oldman peered in behind him. The image was bleached white, black lines shading in, sketchy and flickering. Slowly, details formed. Adam thought he could make out a city skyline with clouds overhead.

  And something else.

  ‘I’ve never seen an image so clear,’ Eve marvelled quietly. ‘What we’re seeing is the overwhelming image in that animal’s mind.’

  With prickly shivers Adam saw a face forming slowly in the centre of the screen, staring out at them. The hair stood on end as if windblown. The eyes were wide and the mouth even wider . . .

  ‘No way,’ breathed Adam as the grainy details hardened.

  ‘It’s you, Adam.’ Mr Adlar stared at the terrified face on the screen. ‘You, being carried over DC. That creature is picturing you.’

  Chapter 7: The Dinosaur Whisperer

  WHY ME? THOUGHT Adam, walking down the corridor towards the hangar, flanked by a guard on either side. Why is that monster still thinking of me?

  His dad hadn’t been happy at the thought of him confronting the creature, no matter how many times Oldman assured him the Z. dactyl was both securely caged as well as tranquillized to the max. But integrating Think-Send with Eve’s set-up was going to take time and the colonel kept insisting that was the one thing they didn’t have; which was why Adam had been dragged down here in the first place.

  So while Mr Adlar got busy with the high-tech stuff, he’d reluctantly allowed Adam to go and see the creature ahead of trying to reach out to it, to get used to it a little – and to see if the sight of Adam in the flesh brought any further response. If a fifteen-year-old girl can hang out with that thing, Adam thought, so can I.

  The corridor ahead ended in a wide, heavy-duty door of corrugated metal. One of the soldiers escorting him pulled a pass card from his pocket and fed it into a reader mounted on the wall. With a low mechanical growl, the shutter rose slowly upwards. Cold air wafted out from the darkness on the other side. Adam was aware his escorts were clutching their guns more tightly now.

  ‘Big Bird’s in there, kid,’ said the soldier with the pass card. He paused, looking troubled. ‘It’s all right, we’ll go in with you.’

  Adam nodded, took a deep breath. ‘Well, Zoe’s in there. I bet she’ll be glad of some company.’

  The two soldiers looked at each other. ‘Yeah,’ said one, ‘I expect she will.’

  Pass-card Man waved him in. Not wanting the soldiers to know how scared he was, Adam attempted a nonchalant stroll into the hangar ahead of them. A row of lockers formed a high wall to his left so he couldn’t see the whole space. It gave his eyes time to adjust. The blackness was not as absolute as he first thought; dozens of lights studded the ceiling high above, giving off the weakest of light. He felt a little more confident.

  That was before he ran out of cabinets and saw the Z. dactyl.

  Adam felt as if he were standing on the set of some crazy monster movie. A massive cage at least half the size of the hangar had been erected, towering girders welded messily to floor and ceiling. Behind them, the colossal reptile lay on its side, wings splayed out. Its scale was breathtaking – easily twice the size of a glider, with that huge, elephant-sized body pinned down beneath a vast mesh-like oversized chicken wire, glowing with an eerie ultraviolet light. The long beak, as big and broad as two canoes set together, had been muzzled with steel bands. He could barely make out the head through the morass of wires and sensors placed all round it, but he saw with relief the monster’s eyes were closed. She couldn’t see him for real even if she saw him in her dreams.

  ‘There’s the dinosaur whisperer,’ murmured Pass-card Man. ‘Go ahead and say hi.’

  Adam suddenly noticed a figure in a chair, right in front of the bars, dwarfed by the leathery giant before her. With a quickening of his pulse he saw the wires and cables connecting the two, leading to a stack of hard drives and monitors off to one side that lent their own flickering blue light to the weirdness of the proceedings.

  Gingerly, Adam walked towards her. She had her back turned to him, and was wearing a pair of strange, cobbled-together headphones so she couldn’t hear him approach. He heard her mutter to herself, holding her head at an awkward angle.

  But as his dim shadow fell over her she reacted, jolting as if electrified, turning to face him. Adam jumped too. The first thing he noticed was that the girl’s neck was twisted, tilting her head towards her left shoulder. Then he saw her fingers were miss-hapen, and the high-back seat was actually a wheelchair. Only then, with a guilty kick, did he look at the girl’s face, which was round and white and quite pretty, framed by thin red curls that she pulled on now as if to cover her neck.

  ‘Jeez!’ He saw her surprise change into embarrassment and then harden into anger. ‘You scared the life out of me. It’s a good job I’d just about broken the connection.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Adam quickly, ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

  ‘OK.’ Zoe turned to look at her monitors, which were either dark or flatlining. ‘It just takes me a while to get out of the zone, that’s all.’ She pulled a lever on the left arm of her chair and the wheels rolled backwards; she was ei
ther retreating or trying to get a better look at him. ‘You must be Adam.’

  ‘Uh, yes. Adam Adlar,’ said Adam, staring at her fingers again, then trying not to. ‘You . . . you’re Zoe, right?’

  She nodded, and raised her eyebrows. ‘Giant prehistoric monster trapped in aircraft hangar . . . and still it’s me you gawp at.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to. Your mum didn’t tell me you were . . .’

  ‘Disabled?’ Zoe’s tone grew sarcastic. ‘Gee, I’m sorry. I can only apologize for her thoughtlessness.’

  ‘No! Sorry, that came out wrong.’ Adam felt himself blush and turned quickly to the Z. dactyl. ‘I, um . . . wasn’t looking at this thing ’cause I’ve seen it already. Up close.’ He glanced back at her. ‘I’ve been inside those jaws.’

  ‘So I saw. Inside her head.’ She rolled a little closer, her features softer now but her gaze even harder. ‘The image our girl here shared with me. The ghost boy in her head. It’s you.’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Adam shifted. ‘Now who’s staring?’

  ‘Me.’ Unexpectedly, she smiled. ‘Now that we’ve made each other uncomfortable, how about we shake? I’m Zoe Halsall.’

  ‘Adam Adlar.’ He reached out and took the offered hand.

  ‘You can squeeze harder than that, they’re tough enough.’ Zoe gripped his own fingers with punishing force and grinned when he yelped. ‘Typical whinging pom.’

  ‘Are you from Australia?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Zoe squeezed even harder. ‘Mum and me are from New Zealand, and don’t you forget it.’

  Adam pulled his hand back with a cheeky smile. ‘I probably will. After all, Australia and New Zealand are pretty much the same place, aren’t they?’

  ‘Say that again and I’ll run you over with this chair,’ she countered. ‘Now, Scotland and England, they really are the same place . . . right?’ Her smile matched his for mischief. ‘Where are you from, Edinburgh?’

  ‘Spot on.’ Adam pushed his hands in his pockets. ‘You must have a good ear for accents.’

  ‘I’m just good at listening, I suppose. That’s why I’m here.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s your excuse? If Keera had tried chewing on me, I don’t think I’d be back.’