by Rick Chesler
Taggart had dug deeper. He had figured, where there was one anomalous find, why not more? He explored the surrounding areas. The cliffs, the caverns and the lake’s deepest fathoms. Taggart had sent out drones and expeditions, and they found all they needed and then some.
This area had been far richer than anyone had expected. In complete defiance of a century of theories from scientists and expert paleontologists— professionals who should have had more faith—Antarctica had proven to hold its own treasure trove of specimens, as if during the last extinction the creatures had come heeding some call, some primordial instinct. Perhaps, as DeKirk had theorized, the microscopic prions that had infected the specimens had driven their instinctual tendencies, urging them south like migrating butterflies until they had converged on this spot, the most likely place to afford protection amidst the drastically changing climate system. The one place they could literally disappear and yet remain frozen, waiting for a future thaw…
Waiting for their reign to come again.
Time for that status call, Taggart thought, reluctantly. Can’t keep the boss waiting.
Besides, he was eager to warm up, take a much needed drink, and start the next phase of his mission, where he hoped to be right there by DeKirk’s side, leading the world through the next great extinction and evolution.
It had already begun, and there was no stopping it now.
#
DeKirk’s image filled the entire screen, and as always, Taggart found himself noting the subtle changes from when he had first met the billionaire. Certainly, William DeKirk had always been an imposing figure. Despite his age (late sixties?), the man had that weathered look that inspired followers. A leader who had been battle-hardened. Silver hair that was more lustrous than frail, chiseled features and a jaw line that accentuated his feral countenance. Only now, the skin was tighter, sharpened and with a sheen of almost metallic tint. His eyes—formerly like jade Aztec stones plucked from a lost temple—had crossed the spectrum into a sun-like yellow, with slitted pupils, like a selfsame snake god from those very jungle-enshrouded temples.
“Sir, I’m pleased to say that at this time, all our birds have flown the coop. As of now, Operation Vostok-Z can be officially closed. I await your further instructions on departure, and…”
“You’re going to have company very soon,” DeKirk said. He wasn’t smiling, which unnerved Taggart and brought down his mood.
He was warming up at least. The cognac he had just sipped was doing its part in conjunction with the heat in his office, the office where Dr. Ramirez had made his discoveries and where his son Alex had first brought the astounding news that the T. rex (or Z. rex as they had taken to calling it now), was more than just a preserved corpse. So much more.
“Sir?” Taggart checked his monitors, the radar and the long-range scanners set to surveil islands miles away, which had served as early warning points that fortunately—due to DeKirk’s connections on the political scene—had been unnecessary. “I don’t see anything yet.”
“In a few minutes you will. There’s also an American naval destroyer breaking formation with intent to head to your location.”
“We’ll be long gone by then,” Taggart said. Although he wondered to himself, did that mean the cover was blown? Were the political roadblocks broken and was their mission more in jeopardy that he thought?
“True,” DeKirk said in almost an offhand, musing fashion. His voice sounded deeper, throaty and rumbling in a way Taggart hadn’t fully noticed before. He shuddered again even as the heat flooded through his veins. Shuddered thinking of what he knew DeKirk had done—the monumental personal risk he had taken. Some thought it arrogance that went far beyond hubris, while others felt it was foolhardy and suicidal, but Taggart knew better. DeKirk never took a risk, in business, pleasure or science, without first being assured that the outcome skewed in his favor. After all, one didn’t become a billionaire by being averse to risk-taking.
By the look of things, he had more than succeeded. Normally, the prions infected the brain foremost, and all the resulting ancillary biological improvements such as speed, longevity, invulnerability and immense strength came at the cost of destruction of various mental functions including memory, decision-making, logic and self-preservation.
DeKirk, however, had found a way to use the prions to get the best of both worlds.
Hopefully, Taggart thought with a tingling sensation that had nothing to do with the cold, he’s going to share that with me as a reward for this exemplary service. I could use an edge like that. Who couldn’t?
Yet, there was that nagging thought: he couldn’t help but feel a little like Renfield, expecting Dracula to keep his promise.
Nothing to fear, Taggart assured himself. The mission was a success and there was no one else who had proven himself as reliable and downright essential. He tried to smile. “So if the destroyer won’t make it in time, what is this other threat?”
“Not so much a threat,” DeKirk said, “as a…well, before we get to that, what else do you have to report?” DeKirk backed up and folded his arms over his chest.
As always, Taggart tried with some subtlety to look behind DeKirk at his surroundings in an attempt to glean visual clues that would serve as some hint of his whereabouts. It was the biggest secret, and the only one DeKirk truly kept under wraps. Taggart understood: no one could know where he was, and it had always been that way. He was too valuable and had made too many enemies. This communications feed was routed through so many Internet hubs and shielded locations that not even the best hackers could untangle the threads and trace him back to his actual position.
Taggart cleared his throat. “We went over schedule, as you know, by just a few days, but that was due to the problematic extraction of the subject found in cave six-three-one.”
That brought a smile to DeKirk’s lips, and Taggart felt a lump in his throat as he glimpsed those teeth: razor-sharp piercers, row upon row, and a serpentine tongue caressing a double set of incisors. He did that to himself!
“Ah yes, my dreadnought. I’m expecting grand things from that one. You confirmed the state of its preservation?”
“Yes, even better than we hoped.”
Taggart sat and tapped some keys, calling up specs and diagram. Multiple dinosaur species flashed on the screens: pterodactyls with enormous wingspans, smaller crylopholosaurs, several tyrannosaurs, a shark-like creature and a larger marine animal with a face like a trilobite, a triceratops and then…something much larger than the T.rex, a little longer in the neck, but its head more gargantuan, its tail wider and legs meatier. Bio-statistics scrolled down the side of the screen: vitals and prion concentrations.
“It’s in great condition,” Taggart reiterated. “Aboard the last cargo ship along with a cache of pteros and…” he read the manifest, “…twenty seven of our human volunteers.”
He smiled at that term, but it was a smile born of months working with the specimens. He recalled the hours upon hours spent in the windowless room they called simply, ‘The Arena.’ A vault-like chamber where the human volunteers were transformed—injected and then set free. Experiments ensued, carefully tracking their stats and their transformation process, studying them with implanted biosensors. Everything from hypothalamus activity and brain waves to endorphin production and stomach acid levels after feeding. Strength, speed, reaction to various stimuli and food sources, and most importantly—how fast they could overcome and transform another host.
The need for food—pure hunger—was the primary driver of their behavior, but at the same time, there was restraint. Consume, yes, but leave enough behind to provide another host for the prions. The ultimate, and fastest, method of reproduction.
Of course, the most interesting tests happened during the last month. The experiments that proved DeKirk’s latest and most advanced theory: that a sufficient instinctual drive influenced the ultimate behavior of the infected. A biological imperative, akin mostly to migration patterns in birds. No
t a hive mind, but there was definitely something there, an organizational matrix, that DeKirk realized could be manipulated. Taggart didn’t profess to understand that part, it wasn’t his specialty, but he knew the tests he ran at DeKirk’s behest had to do with magnetism and electrical impulses, and much the same way as birds are influenced by the changing tides and the earth’s magnetic field, so could these prions be manipulated.
Controlled.
It worked, in small groups at first, and then en masse.
The effort initially centered on humans, controlling their behavior at basic levels, alternating between blocking and stimulating hunger. Gradually, the aims of the work grew more sophisticated. Directing multiple subjects to converge on one location, or to work together to achieve an objective such as climbing over an obstacle.
It worked perfectly on the humans.
Then, after significant trial and error, but ultimately in triumph—with the dinosaur zombies as well.
Taggart recalled the taste of the vintage cognac he had opened after the first time they had essentially remote controlled a pterodactyl to fly a prescribed course as if they were playing with a radio-controlled model airplane. He was now about to finish that same bottle in final celebration.
“We have achieved the impossible, sir.” Taggart raised a glass to DeKirk, hoping he would get acknowledgment back in kind. And more, he thought, admiring those teeth again, imagining the power he had been witnessing all this time transferred to him, coursing through his own veins.
DeKirk grinned. “We have indeed. And celebration will come soon enough, but for now, we still have work to do. Everything to date has only been Phase One. We are not at the finish line yet, and we must ensure our secret isn’t revealed before its time.”
Taggart put down his glass, regretfully untouched. “I understand.” He needed to get back into this discussion, eager to join in the next phase and eventually find his place by DeKirk’s side. “So what about Phase Two? Patient Zero?”
DeKirk almost let out a laugh of joy. “Ah, my favorite part! Nothing like mixing a little revenge in with our efforts. Patient Zero is at our offshore location, and she is doing perfectly well. Almost ready for transfer back to where she needs to be to unleash our surprise where it will hit them the hardest.”
Taggart nodded. “And Phase Three? Can I assume I will be there…with you to direct operations and track our precious cargo?”
“Our cargo,” DeKirk said, leaning in again, giving away nothing, “will get to its respective destinations in due time, after events play out on the political and military stages as I’ve foreseen.”
His eyes flashed and lost focus, as if envisioning a far off battlefield, or a war map stacked with friendly and enemy markers, poised for global domination.
“Now, back to that visitor you’re about to have.”
Taggart perked up. He was about to ask if it was his personal escort—a fast transport to get him out of this frozen wasteland and back to the world he would soon inherit, but then his radar systems signaled an event.
“It’s showing up now. Twelve miles out, coming fast. A jet?”
DeKirk nodded, then reached for something off screen and brought it into view. A piece of meat, it looked like: stringy and red, dripping, with skin—human skin—still on one side. DeKirk opened his jaws wide, licking his lips.
“It’s a bomber, Mr. Taggart.”
Still staring at the red blip zeroing in toward his location, Taggart blinked without comprehension.
“I thank you for your service,” DeKirk said as he chewed into the flesh, tearing the strip in half like it was a moist and tender cut of prime rib. “I hope you understand the need for secrecy, and the fact that you’ve done such an exemplary job.” Chewing, swallowing. “You’ve extracted all we needed. Tested and perfected my army per my instructions. To the letter.”
“To the letter…” Taggart said, still staring at the dot. Understanding growing now, realization that the dream was about to end. His wake up call only two minutes away.
“There can be nothing left to discover, nothing to find, nothing to challenge us one day.”
Taggart swallowed. “You’re going to destroy it all. The entire Vostok site?”
DeKirk swallowed the last morsel, licked his fingers and grinned. “All of it. Thank you again, Mr. Taggart.”
Expecting something more, something encouraging or promising, or perhaps a big laugh and the revelation that all this was just a joke, Taggart instead felt that he had certainly stepped into Renfield’s shoes.
There would be no transformation, no evolution, no future. Not for him, anyway.
Only burial and death beneath fifteen megatons of explosives and an avalanche of ice.
3.
Washington, D.C.—5:45 PM
The situation room buzzed with energy and excitement, and more than a little trepidation.
“What are we looking at?”
The president looked distinguished as always in an immaculate blue suit, crimson tie and perfectly combed hair, as if this were a State of the Union address instead of an eyes-only special ops update. He paced like a hungry tiger at the head of the table in front of the Joint Chiefs and a host of advisors and analysts.
On the huge wall screen, bisected six ways, one screen dominated.
Agent Nesmith led off. “Center screen is the one to watch. Our satellite’s positioned to capture a region fifty miles north of Vostok Bay, Antarctica. That convoy of tanker and cargo ships heading away from the ice is about to run into the best in class of American naval might: The USS Montana."
“Hails?” the president asked.
“Unresponsive to all radio contact. Not even an attempt at communication. Furthermore, we can’t locate any data on these ghost ships, either. No cargo manifests or crew rosters. The vessel registration trail is just a nested-doll arrangement of never-ending shell companies and flag of convenience arrangements. Led nowhere, but at the same time they don’t seem to have broken any maritime laws.”
“What about this…this GlobalSkyTech corporation? The goddamned U.N. speaker, what’s-his-face, blocked us for months with this bullshit, promised he had this reputable contractor down there to investigate. We were promised transparency and regular updates, and as far as I know—unless you people have been leaving me out of the loop—we’ve gotten squat.”
“That’s all true, sir. GlobalSkyTech…” Nesmith shook his head. “We have a ton of information on them, collected by our agent here.” He nodded to Veronica, near the back of the room, who waited nervously, eying the screen, hoping she wouldn’t be called to speak again, not in front of this audience. To keep herself from getting too nervous, she occupied her mind by trying to calculate how much money the taxpayers were shelling out for this fifteen-minute meeting based on the pay grades she knew were in the room.
Nesmith went on. “However, all of it just leads to more questions concerning their nature, connections and motives. All we know for sure is that they have not been playing by the rules set out by the UN.”
The president rubbed his temples and stopped pacing. Palms on the table, he stared ahead at the screen. “No word from the Speaker? I want him on the line now, before we sink his pet company’s fleet and send them all to Davey Jones’ Locker.”
“Yes sir, trying.”
“Try harder. I don’t want to be on the news tomorrow explaining why we just murdered hundreds of civilian contractors without good reason.”
“There’s a good reason,” a voice spoke up from the back of the room.
Alex stepped forward and Veronica winced. She had fought hard to get him access, promising Nesmith that he had taken them this far and Alex deserved to see the fruit of their labors, that he deserved some measure of justice for what had been done to his father. Veronica knew that only too well. She sympathized more than she could let on, knowing the pain of losing someone you loved right before your eyes, helplessly. She had to allow Alex this moment, and Nesmith reluctantly a
greed, after Alex had signed confidentiality agreements and passed an accelerated security clearance process.
All Veronica had asked in return from Alex was that he stay in the back, out of sight, and quiet.
“Excuse me?” the president said as he turned. “Who the hell is this?”
Nesmith hung his head. Cleared his throat.
“Alex Ramirez, sir.” Alex stepped forward and lowered his head. “I…voted for you.”
“Thank you. You and fifty-one percent of the other eligible voters out there.” The president looked around at his staff, then back at Alex. “And—?”
“First term only,” Alex clarified. “Not second. I liked the other guy a little more, but that was in my environmental phase, and…”
“Alex!” Veronica hissed.
“No, let’s hear the boy out.” The president turned to face Alex. “I remember your name now. You were part of the mess down there at Vostok, and then the resolution, as it were, on Adranos Island. Quite a bit of scorched earth there, right? Nothing was left for us to be able to piece together and use to support whatever it is you claim to have found.”
“Yes sir, and—”
“And your father,” the president nodded. “Good man, brilliant. I followed his work, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, but as I was saying…”
The president raised a hand, silencing him. He turned his attention back to the screen, where the lead ship continued to move unabated to an intercept with the naval destroyer. “So we have no intel on those ships, what they’re carrying?”
Nesmith shook his head. “None, unless you count speculation from the only living witness to lay eyes on what was down in that lake.” He pointed to Alex.
“Okay,” said the president. “Talk kid, and fast. I know you’ve briefed my people on the nature of some prehistoric microbe?”
“A prion to be exact.”
“A what?”
“I don’t really understand it too well, either,” Alex said. “It’s a protein, a nasty one that attaches to a host and disrupts the native cellular components, even at a genetic level, corrupts them and turns people…well, into zombies.”
