Extinction Age

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Wood scowled and yelled, “Everyone, this is not a park! This is a military installation! You’re supposed to be in your designated areas!”

  Beckham swallowed hard, preparing for a confrontation. Wood loped down the stairs and onto the pathway in front of Team Ghost.

  “Master Sergeant, I expected more from you and your men,” Wood said.

  Beckham clenched his jaw and bit back a retort. After a brief pause, he replied, “Sir, we’re waiting for your orders and I thought everyone could use some fresh air after being cooped up all day.”

  “You will have orders sooner than you think,” Wood said dryly. He snorted and continued down the path, walking fast and leaving Beckham to contemplate the words.

  Team Ghost stepped up to flank Beckham. “I’m really starting to dislike that guy,” Chow said.

  Beckham let out a low whistle and motioned for Apollo and his men to follow. “You heard the colonel, everyone. Let’s get inside. Sounds like we’ve got another mission to prep for.”

  -19-

  Kate rushed into the lab and took a seat at her station. She keyed in her credentials and then moused over to a video with the USAMRIID symbol.

  Ellis pulled up a stool as the black-and-white video popped onto the screen. “What are you doing?”

  “Research.”

  Lieutenant Brett’s naked frame came into focus a second later, his body stretched into an X by chains attached to the ceiling and the ground. Kate clicked the fast forward button and stopped as the camera angled toward the three uniformed men that were studying the mutated prisoner.

  “Can we zoom in?” Kate asked.

  Ellis motioned for her to scoot over and then dragged his chair across the floor. “This is one hell of an old video, but let me try something.”

  He punched at the keys and drilled down on the grainy feed. Lieutenant Brett was looking up at the camera in the frozen frame, his eyes crazed and bloodshot.

  “Fast forward a bit,” Kate said. She turned up the speakers and listened to the rattling of chains as Brett thrashed against his restraints.

  “Lieutenant Trevor Brett,” Colonel Gibson said. “Can you hear us?”

  “Keep going,” Kate said. The video sped up to the point that it looked like Brett’s body was being warped. He jerked violently against the chains. Then a second voice crackled over the audio so fast she couldn’t make it out.

  “Go back,” she said.

  “What are we looking for exactly?”

  “Focus on that man next to Gibson,” Kate said, pointing.

  “Calm down, Lieutenant,” the man said. His bored, flat voice was terribly familiar.

  “This guy?” Ellis asked as he zoomed in further.

  “Oh shit,” Ellis said as Kate’s suspicions were confirmed.

  “Shit is about right,” Kate said. The footage was grainy and pixilated, but there was no mistaking the hardened, pockmarked features or the name Corporal Wood on the man’s uniform. He had been there from the very beginning of the secret VX-99 project with Gibson.

  The realization sent a chill through Kate. Somehow Wood had slipped under the radar, his connection to VX-99 hidden until now.

  “I don’t suppose there was another guy named Corporal Wood back then, right?” Ellis asked. “I don’t know much about ranks, but going from a corporal to a colonel…Can you do that?”

  “Obviously,” Kate said.

  “We have to tell someone.”

  “And say what? This is the only evidence we have of him being associated with the VX-99 program. We can’t prove he was ever at Building 8 or even knew about the development of the Hemorrhage virus.”

  Ellis looked like he was about to protest, but then dropped his gaze toward the floor. “How can we trust a man like Wood?”

  “We can’t,” Kate said. “But we also can’t say anything right now.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We keep working.”

  “What if we sent this to General Kennor?”

  Kate almost laughed. “I have a feeling Kennor already knows.”

  “Jesus, Kate. Do you know what this means? Kennor’s like the Emperor and Wood is his Darth Vader,” Ellis said.

  She couldn’t help but laugh at Ellis’s Star Wars metaphor. She hadn’t felt much like laughing for the last month.

  Ellis cracked a smile that vanished a moment later, his eyes locking on the observation window behind them. The chirp of the wall comm alerted her to the two Medical Corps soldiers, outfitted in all black, standing on the other side of the window. Berg and Cooper had returned, and while the glass separating the rooms was thick, she feared they’d overhead her conversation with Ellis.

  One of them—Kate didn’t know or care if it was Berg or Cooper—announced that they were there to supervise all of the lab activity from here on out. Kate felt her heart kick. The twins had already been monitoring her work, but their brazen admission of their orders sounded almost like a threat.

  “We’re heading next door in a few minutes to observe Patient 3,” Kate said, trying her best to control her breathing.

  “We’ll escort you there.”

  Kate nodded and turned to face Ellis, her back to the soldiers. “Say nothing,” she mouthed.

  “Ready to go?” Ellis asked brightly. “Got a lot of work to do.”

  Good, he understood.

  They quickly changed out of their suits and followed the corporals. Kate glanced at her watch as they walked through the hallways of Building 1. It was already eight o’clock. That meant they had only an hour to spare before their call with General Kennor.

  Cool night air washed over the lobby as Cooper pushed open the front doors. Kate scanned the base for any sign of Beckham or his men as they continued across the campus. Besides the heavy machine gun nest in the center of the lawn, the grass was empty. Two bands of Wood’s men patrolled the walkways.

  Wood’s men were everywhere, monitoring everything. Kate cursed herself for not being more careful in the lab. She’d been sloppy today, and the truth she’d uncovered was as dangerous as any Variant. If she wasn’t so valuable, she would probably have already been shunted off the island—or worse.

  Now she had two of Wood’s henchmen flanking her. She eyed their scoped guns, trying her best to remain calm. The only relief was the sight of Sergeant Lombardi waiting for them at the steps of Building 4—although she wasn’t even sure she could trust him.

  “I was just about to radio you,” Lombardi said. “There’s been a development.”

  Kate didn’t bother asking what development. A high-pitched shriek reverberated through the atrium as soon as Lombardi opened the doors. He halted and glanced over his shoulder.

  “Steel yourself, this ain’t pretty,” he said before heading inside.

  When they arrived at the main isolation chamber, Kate nearly tripped over her feet. The Variant strapped to the metal gurney hardly looked like the creature she remembered from earlier. She took a step closer to the glass, her eyes falling on open sores peppering the creature’s jaundiced skin. Swollen veins snaked across its body like rivers that were surrounded by lakes of rosy rashes.

  These were advanced symptoms of immune system shutdown. The chemotherapeutics were working faster than Kate had ever imagined.

  “Jesus Christ,” Cooper said. He picked at his mustache nervously. “What the hell is wrong with it?”

  Patient 3 let out another shriek and flexed every lean muscle in its body, straightening like a board. Vomit dripped down the sides of the creature’s mouth. It choked and coughed out a spray of pinkish blood.

  Kate cupped her hand over her mouth as she watched.

  “What’s happening to it?” Lombardi asked.

  “Multi-organ failure,” Ellis said.

  The sergeant jerked backward as the Variant suddenly broke through the restraints covering its chest. Like a snake, it slithered out from under the torn straps and dropped to the floor.

  Lombardi cursed. He reached for his si
dearm and hurried over to the door.

  “No!” Kate shouted. “We can’t risk that thing getting out. Besides, I don’t think it’s going to last much longer.”

  The other two soldiers fell into line behind Lombardi, their rifles aimed at the glass. The Variant jumped to a crouch and scratched at the sores on its belly. Its talons drew fresh blood. Instead of coagulating in seconds, the blood flowed in a steady stream and began pooling on the floor. The monster puckered its sucker lips and let out a raspy screech. It went back to tearing at the rashes, but the monster’s one remaining eye kept searching the room around it.

  Hunting. Always, hunting.

  Patient 3 stared at the glass. Before Kate could react, it dropped to all fours and used its back legs to spring forward. It threw itself against the glass, sucker mouth sticking to the window. Kate crouched down for the perfect view of its wounds. Nearly every inch of its yellow skin was covered in open sores or rashes.

  The new weapon worked.

  The Variant suddenly stopped trying to chew through the glass and tilted its head to the side. Kate realized it wasn’t looking through the glass but rather at its own reflection.

  Letting out a melancholy whimper, the Variant slid down the window and collapsed to the floor, leaving a streak of blood behind. It lay on its stomach and continued to gaze at its reflection. Despite the monster’s awful transformation, Kate recognized the flicker of sadness in its yellow eye.

  Kate and the others watched for several more minutes as Patient 3 took in shallow, raspy breaths. They came in increasingly shorter intervals, slower and weaker, until it gasped one last time.

  The Variant’s eye met Kate’s, and then the final spark of life left its grotesque body. Kate pulled her hand away from her mouth and placed it on her chest, her heart pounding. It had worked better and faster than she had imagined, but unlike VX9H9, this weapon would kill every last one of the creatures.

  General Kennor sipped a cup of lukewarm coffee on his way through the narrow concrete tunnels leading to the command center. Pedestrians flowed in both directions. Everyone moved with urgency, as though whatever task they were focused on was the most important in the world. In Kennor’s case, his task was the most important.

  Minutes earlier, he’d been informed that the scientists had made a breakthrough on Plum Island. Whatever decision he made in the coming hours would determine the direction of the war—and the fate of the country.

  “Sir,” a pair of guards said in unison as Kennor approached the massive steel doors leading to the command center. Kennor gulped the last of his coffee as the doors screeched open.

  He crumpled the Styrofoam cup in his hand and tossed it into a wastebasket as he entered the dimly lit room. The three monitors mounted on the front wall emitted a ghostly green glow. Five officers huddled around them and watched a live feed from drones surveying several abandoned cities.

  As Kennor worked his way through the stations, the officers on duty stood at attention until he passed. He paid them little attention. When he got to the monitors, he said, “Which cities are we looking at?”

  “LA, Chicago, and New York, sir,” said a woman with short black hair. She looked like she had just graduated from high school. Kennor was accustomed to working with men and women who had experience under their belts, not kids with pimples. It was yet another example of how strained their resources had become.

  Kennor watched the screens for a moment. They showed only destruction and death. With a shake of his head, he continued to the conference room, where he was relieved to see his confidantes. Colonel Harris, Lieutenant Colonel Kramer, and General Johnson stood as he entered.

  He took a seat and looked to Harris first. “Colonel, let’s get started.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harris said. He switched on the wall-mounted monitor and then pressed the conference call button on the phone in the middle of the table.

  “Colonel Wood, can you hear me?” Harris asked. “Are Dr. Lovato and Dr. Ellis with you?”

  “Roger that,” Wood said. “I’ll let them explain what you are about to see.”

  A female voice crackled over the speakers. “General, this is Dr. Lovato. We’re sending you a video of Patient 3 here on Plum Island.”

  Harris clicked the remote again and the video flickered to life. It showed a Variant lying on a metal gurney.

  “The Variant you see was injected with our new weapon. The results happened in a span of seven hours,” Doctor Lovato said.

  Kennor pulled his glasses from his chest pocket for a better look. The monster was covered in rashes and open sores that stood out brightly against its skin. Vomit trickled from its swollen lips. He leaned in closer and flinched when Patient 3 broke free of its restraints and leapt to the window. A few minutes later, it was dead.

  Dr. Lovato briefly explained the medical science behind her latest breakthrough. Kennor understood less than half of it, but he did grasp one thing: the weapon worked.

  “Dr. Lovato, this is General Kennor. I have a few questions. First and foremost, will this weapon affect humans?”

  “Not like this. The antibodies attach to proteins only expressed in Variants. The chemotherapeutics will have minimal if any side effects on normal humans.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  There was a slight pause before she said, “We haven’t had a chance to test it on humans yet. However, since normal humans don’t have the Superman protein, the drugs should mostly pass through their bloodstream, although some might be passively absorbed.”

  Kennor folded his hands together and examined his staff. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  Her reply came across muffled, but Kennor heard every word. “It means it might weaken the immune systems of humans who come into contact with the weapon, but it shouldn’t cause more sustained and permanent damage like in the Variants.”

  “This is the best you can come up with, Doctor?” Kennor asked. “Are you even sure it will kill all of the Variants? What if this—what did you call it? Spiderman protein?—turns out to be a bust?”

  “It’s the Superman Protein, Sir, and so far we have only tested Patient 3. Until we try it on a larger population, I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” Doctor Lovato replied. “If you had waited until we had conclusive findings before demanding a report—”

  Harris pulled the phone closer to him. “Doctor, this is Colonel Harris. Your last bioweapon turned approximately ten percent of those infected with the Hemorrhage virus into something even worse. We can’t afford to make the same mistake again.”

  “I know, Colonel. I’m willing to test this on myself, if I have to.”

  “We’ve run out of time for tests, Doctor,” Kennor said. He let out a frustrated sigh. “Now is the time for action. We have no other option at this point than to use what you’ve designed. The other labs have failed to come up with anything.”

  “General, there’s still an issue,” she said. “We have no way to deploy this weapon on a worldwide scale. Jets won’t do the trick this time. We need something that covers every inch of soil, every—”

  “I know just the thing,” Kennor said. He glanced over at General Johnson. His old friend nodded as if he could read his mind.

  “Doctor, I’m going to have General Johnson read you in on a project the government has been working on since ‘Nam,” Kennor said.

  Johnson pulled the conference phone across the table and said, “From 1967 through 1972, the US military worked on a project called Operation Popeye. Essentially, this was a weather warfare operation that was supposed to extend the monsoon season over enemy territory. By seeding the clouds with silver and lead iodide, we were able to flood much of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was largely successful, but the project was done in secret because Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sponsored the program without the consent of Congress. Since then, the legality of such operations has been hazy at best. Unfortunately, weather modification for military purposes falls under the provenance of the Environm
ental Modification Convention.” Johnson paused and ran a hand over his shiny skull as he looked at Kennor to take over.

  “The US was also running a project called Stormfury at this time, with the goal of weakening tropical cyclones,” Kennor said. “To make a long story short, we have been working on cloud seeding projects for the past fifty years. In 2014, our boys designed a system to distribute payloads into the atmosphere using long-range missiles. They called it Project Earthfall. The goal was to manipulate weather over countries like Iran and North Korea. These facilities are sited at strategic locations scattered across the globe, mostly military bases in allied territories. We would have used them to distribute VX9H9 but decided to go with aircraft due to unpredictable weather patterns. Now Earthfall is our best shot.”

  There was a moment of silence before Dr. Lovato cleared her throat and said, “These drugs are sensitive. If we’re talking missiles, the intense pressure and heat of a detonation could destroy the capsules.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Kennor said. “The missiles are designed to deploy without destroying their payloads.”

  “Then I suppose it could work,” she said. “Initially, I was considering something airborne like VX9H9, but the lungs have all sorts of barriers. In this case, rainwater from the seeding project could reach places an airborne weapon couldn’t. If we use adjuvants that promote skin absorption, then it could work very well indeed. The water will find its way into the sewers and other hard to reach places where the Variants are nesting.”

  “Excellent,” Kennor said. “If that’s all—”

  “General, before we can even think about using Project Earthfall, we need to collect as many of the chemotherapeutics as we can get our hands on,” Dr. Lovato said. “Then we need multiple bioreactors to culture billions if not trillions of hybridoma cells. That will take time.”

  “We are out of time,” Kennor snapped. “Thanks in no small part to the failure of your first bioweapon.”

  He could almost hear the doctor squirming on the other end of the line. “Sir, I’ll need at least a week to establish the cell line. Then another week to expand the cell line in order to begin antibody production.”