Running with the Horde (Book 2): Delusions of Monsters

by Joseph K. Richard

  “Okay?” Horace finally said.

  Andrew didn’t know what to say so he just shrugged. Horace nodded once and left Andrew alone in his new home. He waited five minutes before going to the door, sure it would be locked from the outside but it wasn’t so apparently he was able to move around Level 5 as he pleased. Aside from that, he knew he now basically resided in a cozy prison although the purpose for his confinement still remained a mystery.

  He went to the bedroom, identical to his own and spied the large bag in the corner with a sigh of relief. At least they’d been good enough to send his yarn. He put on his pajamas, plopped down on the bed and wept. He would never see his mother again or their crafting room. He knew he wouldn’t be going back to GGI, tomorrow or ever. He wondered how Dick or his people would explain his disappearance or if they would even bother. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep even as exhaustion carried him into near unconsciousness.

  The next morning hit him like a ton of bricks. The drinks he had the night before catching up to him in a big way. He stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. The cold water did little to improve his outlook. He dressed and shuffled out of his quarters to find Horace waiting to escort him to the conference room.

  …

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Dick said with a smile from the head of the large conference table, “Allow me to introduce our newest colleague, Dr. Andrew Penrod. Although he is still rather unknown, I am confident that we have added yet another brilliant mind to the fold. With expertise in the fields of virology and nanotechnology, Dr. Penrod will be the player we need to finish the work that was started so long ago. Of course, you can read all about Dr. Penrod’s credentials in your spare time if you wish. But for now, Andrew, we just want to welcome you to the team.”

  All eyes were on him as he struggled to shake off the last cobwebs of sleep, “Um, hi?” he said.

  “Spoken like a true scholar,” Dick said with a grin as he did a slow hand clap. There was a gentle spattering of applause from the people in the room, to Andrew it seemed halfhearted and perhaps a bit sarcastic but he managed an awkward smile for each person as they introduced themselves.

  “Dr. Theodore Farnsworth, Virology, 18 years.”

  “Dr. Savannah Tims, Biology, 1 year.”

  “Sarah Silinski, Technology and Engineering, 2 years.”

  “Dr. John Reynolds, Engineering and technology, 9 months.”

  “Dr. Gupta Dharmesh, Anthropology, 6 years.”

  The last person in the room was a tall awkward fellow with a thick mane of blond hair and the most hateful expression Andrew had ever seen another human being muster. When it registered that those death rays were directed at him, Andrew got very still in his chair.

  “Todd,” Dick said at last. “You need to use your speaking voice; Andrew hasn’t received his ESP chip yet.” The comment was enough to elicit a few nervous giggles from the room and break the tension.

  Andrew glanced from Dick to Todd to find the hateful look was gone, replaced by a startling full-mouthed grin. “Todd Coody, Virology, 2 months, I’m gonna be your lab tech,” Todd said and then he followed it with the most grating and juvenile sounding high-pitched laugh Andrew had ever heard.

  “Shut your goddamn mouth, Todd,” Dick shouted, “Your fucking big-ass teeth make you look like you belong in a cage.” Todd immediately shut his mouth and looked down. Dick turned to Andrew, “Sorry about that, Dr. Penrod, Todd considers himself to be higher than his actual station in life. I need to remind him sometimes that he washed out at MIT. Don’t let him get to you, okay?”

  “Sure,” Andrew said quietly but the truth was Todd gave him the willies big time. Andrew found that he was sweating profusely; he picked up a cloth napkin and dabbed his face, “So,” he asked, “what’s with all the years and months?”

  “That’s how long we’ve been down here working on the project,” Dr. Farnsworth said dryly. Andrew looked at the older man’s face, his skin was slack and the bags under eyes his spoke volumes about the quality of time he’d spent inside Area 51.

  “What is this project you are working on?” he asked. Nobody answered. Except for Todd, who was still smiling like a ghoul, they all just looked away. The mood in the room was so somber he decided it would be a good time to bring up the elephant in the room. “Dick, since I’m here do I get to see the UFOs?” he said with a smile hoping to delight his new colleagues with his wit. But the folks around the table all looked to Dick with odd expressions on their faces.

  Dick smiled and crumpled up the paper agenda in his hand. He said, “Hell, I don’t see why not. This meeting is for you anyway, Dr. Penrod.” He glanced around the room with a grin, “Well gang, what Andrew wants, Andrew gets. Today is his day. Let’s take him on a field trip.”

  …

  “You are looking at the most sophisticated weather balloon in the history of the world, Dr. Penrod.” Dick said leaning over the safety railing that surrounded the spherical room. His voice sounded muffled through his helmet. “At least that is one of the rumors we’ve spread over the years. We tried to keep the dig site private when we found it but people talk and we can’t go around kidnaping everyone,” he said with a hearty chuckle.

  “It’s not a UFO?” Andrew asked, trying to ignore the sour smell he was producing in the uncomfortable bio suit. Nobody answered him. Powerful lights from the ceiling and walls around the large room illuminated the craft into surreal detail. Somehow it looked to be extra three dimensional.

  “It’s the lights, Dr. Penrod, they are called high definition,” Dr. Sarah Silinski said. “We’ve got every kind of light you can imagine beaming down on the ship. They’ve been added over the years as we’ve tried different tests and experiments. Just ignore Dick, he is about as funny as Todd.”

  Andrew didn’t need the clarification. The ship was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. He circled the elevated viewing platform to get a look at it from every angle. The rest of the team waited by the entrance to the cavernous room. Clearly they had already spent copious amounts of time with the craft. Its shape reminded him of Saturn with its rings, though more oval than circular. He could see no windows or entrance points. There appeared to be no metallic substance to the shell just a thick, algae-green fibrous skin that seemed to ripple in the light as the ship hovered a few feet off the ground.

  “What is supporting it?” he shouted back to the other side of the room.

  “It supports itself.” Someone yelled back.

  “Oh my,” Andrew said as he scrambled back to the group, “this thing actually works?”

  “Of course it works, Dr. Penrod,” Dick said, “it’s not like we’ve been sitting on our asses for the last several decades. This thing has been down here since 1947 for shit’s sake.”

  “Did it have a, um, you know?” Andrew asked almost reverently.

  “A pilot?” Dick replied, “It sure did, doc, that’s one of the reasons why you are here. Back on the bus, kids!”

  The group moved out of the ship room to the anteroom to remove their suits.

  “The suits are largely just a precaution. We are 99.9 percent sure the virus isn’t airborne but we don’t know everything,” Dick explained while he pulled his polo shirt over his head. The scientists were getting into their lab coats.

  “Virus?” he asked Dick as they trooped down a gleaming hallway. Dick either didn’t hear or chose to ignore him as the group trooped down a hallway toward another set of rooms.

  “Welcome to your new home, Dr. Penrod,” Dick said as they entered the laboratory. It was Dick, Dr. Penrod, Dr. Farnsworth and Todd Coody. The rest of the team had been dismissed to their own respective work areas.

  The lab was a scientist’s wet dream, making all the other labs Andrew had spent time in look like rolling meth trailers in comparison. Like a kid at Christmas he raced around looking at top of the line technology and equipment to meet essentially any lab related scientific need. Todd and Dick followed him around with bem
used expressions on their faces while Dr. Farnsworth busied himself at a computer terminal in the corner of the lab.

  “Are we working on a cure for cancer or something? What is this virus you mentioned?” Andrew asked and Todd laughed his irritating chuckle.

  Dick replied, “Been there, done that and have the tee-shirt to prove it. And before you ask, no we didn’t release it to the public. Can’t have everybody living forever now can we? No my friend, you and Todd the Bod here, will be working on something far more important than that.

  “What could be more important than curing cancer?” Andrew asked, incredulous at Dick’s flippant attitude.

  “How about world peace?” suggested Dick.

  “Okay, I get it, you don’t want to tell me. It’s top secret, right?”

  “No I meant what I said, we are going to deliver world peace. I don’t really care if you don’t believe me right now because you will. My time is short today so I’m gonna nutshell for you and trust you can study up in your downtime. What you will be working on, what everyone is working on at the present is a little thing we like to call; Project Simon,” Dick said as he marched Andrew and Todd to the rear of the lab which ended in floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas that looked into a dark chamber. Dick pressed a button and room on the other side began to brighten with a soft light, its contents slowly becoming more visible.

  Andrew gasped and took a step back, bumping into the much taller Todd and causing him to giggle hot breath onto the top of Andrew’s head. The creature in the room was humanoid in shape and was resting in a Dracula-style open coffin suspended at an angle off of the floor. To Andrew it looked like a severely decomposed human being. If this was the pilot the find must be very old indeed.

  The creature was most assuredly dead except for its two terrifying red eyes. They were currently fixed on Dr. Penrod like it was sizing him up for a meal. Zombie was the silly word that kept coming to his mind. What Hollywood might show in a movie but that was ridiculous. The way its eyes seemed to move must have been a trick of the light.

  “Creepy, how it to stares at you, eh, Penrod?” Todd said.

  “You okay, Doc?” Dick asked as Andrew was sweating again.

  “Is that thing…alive?” he asked.

  “Alive as we would define it? I would say no but it certainly isn’t all dead,” Dick replied.

  “So it’s undead?”

  “Andrew, let’s not be childish, it just exists at a level we haven’t been able to understand yet. Not for lack of trying, mind you.”

  Andrew turned to look at Todd and Dick, “So here we are, deep underground with proof that we are not alone in the universe. Why are you just sitting on this? Why not tell the world?”

  “It’s not a UFO, Andrew. That much I promise you. This gentleman and his ship originated on Earth. Just a very long time ago.”

  “Okay so you found proof of some highly advanced civilization from our past. It is still a major find. Seems terribly selfish to keep it quiet.”

  Dick laughed, “You really are naïve, Andrew. Can you imagine the panic if a discovery like this was made known to the public? We are talking about rioting and looting in the streets at the global level. No, the world couldn’t handle this kind of truth. Don’t look so shocked and don’t worry, the sheep all benefit. Most of the leaps forward in innovation the last few decades can be traced right back here to Area 51.”

  Andrew was disgusted with the man’s take on the world but the scientist in him couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t at least partially correct in his assessment of what the reaction would be. Those blood-red eyes really were terrifying.

  “Okay, fair enough,” Andrew said with a nod and then glanced around the lab, “I don’t understand what you expect me to do here.”

  “You certainly are an impatient little cuss, Doc,” said Dick. “You and Todd are here to continue the very important work of Dr. Farnsworth.”

  Andrew looked at the older man in the corner who glanced up at him with a sad smile.

  “Before you ask,” Dick said with a grin, “he is retiring after many years of distinguished service. Isn’t that right, Teddy?”

  “Looking forward to the golden years,” Dr. Farnsworth said. Though he didn’t seem very excited about it. More like resigned to his fate. Andrew, didn’t like the implications of that but he held his tongue as Dick continued to explain what he’d be working on.

  “The ship you saw and this fellow here, we were able to determine years ago that they operate on a symbiotic relationship. You see, they are both alive in a way, both organic. Like any vehicle, the ship would respond to commands given to it by its pilot. But in this case those commands were given through a mental connection,” he said, gesturing to the creature in the other room. “Through many years of study and experimentation, we’ve been able to determine how. Furthermore, we are very close to being able to duplicate that technology for use in humans.”

  “So we can fly gross looking planes with our minds?” asked Andrew.

  “No, dummy, so we can deliver world peace,” Dick snapped, “I told you that already.

  Andrew stared from Dick to Todd in complete confusion until it hit him. “Are you talking about mind control?”

  “Ding! Ding! Ding!” yelled Dick while Todd clapped. “Hence the name, Project Simon, after the children’s game. I named it myself!”

  Andrew was stupefied, “That is not only impossible and preposterous but it’s also evil. You want to take away free will, like for the entire world? Are you out of your damn minds?”

  “Calm down, Sally, and think about it. With a simple command we will be able to take away all sadness, all pain, make everybody happy, and instantly impart the wisdom necessary to end hunger and poverty all across the globe. The possibilities are endless! I’m talking about the kind of collective global unity and productivity that hasn’t been seen since the Tower of Babel.”

  Andrew started laughing, quietly at first but then from the belly, loud and obnoxious. “It is madness,” he said between breaths, “Complete and utter insanity. Sorry I’m laughing, I’m sure you are quite serious about all this,” as tears streamed out of eyes. “Even if you have made this breakthrough you claim, have fun creating something that will reach every living person on the planet!” He almost had himself under control but then saw the angry looks on both their faces and started up again. “I mean, really, the only kind of delivery method that might work would be-” He stopped laughing when he understood why he was here.

  “A virus?” Dick said with a grin, “You win the door prize, Doc. And guess what, it already exists! We just need you to make it work.”

  “I want to go home. Now!” Andrew screamed. But then Dick started laughing. Andrew lunged for the bald bastard but Todd intercepted him and pinned his arms to his sides which made Dick laugh harder.

  “I’ve told you already, Doc, you are home. Now why don’t you, Todd and Dr. Farnsworth get better acquainted? I’ve got shit to do.”

  …

  He had several weeks with Dr. Farnsworth who gave him the lowdown as well as walked him through all of his research and progress. When the creature and the ship were discovered they were already infected with a deadly virus that had been combined with the most advanced form of nanotechnology Andrew had ever had seen. A truly terrifying creation which had, at some point, a very long time ago, been engineered by someone or something.

  Farnsworth would never confirm it out loud because the man was terrified of Dick and whoever he represented but in his own way he made it clear the creature from the ship had looked a lot different prior to infection. Two things became clear to Andrew almost from the start. The first was that the virus, the ship and the creature were very old, possibly millions of years old. The second was that Dick and his people had been searching for it for a very long time.

  Those fateful first weeks were now several years in the past. Dr. Theodore Farnsworth was long since retired though Andrew knew what that really meant. There hadn’t b
een any golden years for his distinguished service. Just an unlabeled box of ashes in some dusty storeroom right here in the facility. Of that there was no doubt in his mind but he also knew there was nothing he could do about it.

  At first he had tried to fight back after Farnsworth left. He refused to work, even went on a hunger strike. But that ended when Dick paid a visit to his room and showed him a video of his mother and stepdad at their house in Virginia. He didn’t make any threats. He didn’t have to, Andrew realized Dick would kill his mother if he didn’t cooperate. If there was one person he loved more than anything in the world it was his mother. So Andrew poured himself into the work with gusto.

  Thus Andrew spent a string of his best years slaving away in the lab. Forced to work with Todd who was both irritating and a pervert. In truth, he provided more of an obstacle to Andrew’s progress than a help so making sure Todd stayed around helped delay Project Simon. Andrew was having difficulty engineering a mutation of the virus that wouldn’t be deadly to human bodies but would still possess the mind control properties it had been designed for.

  The home sickness was difficult on Andrew, he would often sit alone in his room and cry as he looked at pictures of his mother. Todd didn’t help, the guy was so weird it set Andrew constantly on edge. It would impact his work from time to time and Dick would pay a visit to Todd and things would get better for a while. But Todd was a bully and similar to a herpes outbreak. They might appear to go away for a time but they always come back.

  For the rest of the team, the work progressed over the years and Project Simon was starting to take shape. Dick was constantly haranguing Andrew for better results. Kept pounding it through his head that a deadline was fast approaching. If Andrew couldn’t meet it, Andrew’s mom would pay the price. Dick seemed to have it in his head that Farnsworth had poisoned Andrew to the work from the beginning and that he was intentionally stalling. Andrew would just stare at the man during these tirades, secretly hating him for his inability to understand the scientific process.