Extinction Countdown

by James D. Prescott

  “I don’t give a shit about getting any credit,” Kay barked. “We weren’t fast enough to stop it. Maybe if I’d written it faster, getting it out there a few hours earlier might have spooked the conspirators.”

  “Stop blaming yourself,” Ron said, attempting to reassure her.

  Reeling with shock and confusion, her mind kept returning to the precious moments she had spent trying to convince Ron to run the story in the first place. Add all of that up and the president might still be alive.

  “Where are they taking his body?” Kay asked, putting Ron on speaker as she hopped out of bed and shrugged into a pair of jeans.

  “Body? From what we know he survived, but he’s in a coma. That hasn’t stopped the shit from hitting the fan. They’ve declared a state of emergency. The National Guard is deploying to major city centers to stamp down unrest. Just get over here as soon as you can, damn it.”

  Kay stared down at her phone. Giving all they were facing, she had wondered how things could get any worse. It seemed they had and that it was only the beginning.

  Chapter 23

  Greenland

  Sealed into their biosuits and helmets, packs slung over their shoulders, Captain Mullins, Jack and the rest of the group made their way to the lift. They had offered to let Tamura stay behind at Northern Star, but she had refused, opting instead for a clean bandage and a handful of ibuprofen. It was clear her desire to seek vengeance for her slaughtered brothers- and sisters-in-arms was far stronger than any pain she might be suffering.

  One by one, they climbed into the metal cage and closed the door. A nod from Mullins to Anna signaled they were ready. Already patched into the facility’s computer system, she engaged the motors remotely, causing the cage to shudder. They listened with some unease to the muffled sound of grinding gears through their helmets. From the armory, each of them had been issued a pistol with four magazines. In addition, Mullins, the air crew, Jack and Dag each carried an M4 carbine and backup mags.

  Once the radio jammer devices had been found and disabled, they had reached out to CENTCOM to inform them of the situation. Needless to say, the conversation had not done much to settle anyone’s nerves. Backup, it seemed, would take anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours to arrive, which meant they would need to flush out the assassins already down below on their own.

  The second bit of news had proven far more disturbing than the first. The head of the Joint Chiefs had come on the line to inform them an attempt had been made on the president’s life and that he was currently in hospital on life support. More unsettling still, initial reports from the Department of Justice suggested that top members of the president’s own cabinet might have been in on the conspiracy. Around the country, law and order was breaking down in a way local police forces were hard-pressed to contain. Martial law had already been declared in forty-eight states, with the notable exceptions of Hawaii and Alaska. In India, where Jack knew Mia was currently doing research, civil unrest had led to riots and hundreds of deaths. The planet was having one hell of a rough week. If things kept up, Jack suspected that by the time that alien ship did reach them, there wouldn’t be much left to destroy.

  With those dark thoughts swirling through his mind, Jack glanced up toward the narrow circle of visible sky. He watched as it receded to a pinpoint of light and then vanished. The feeling was strange indeed, as though they were being lowered into the barrel of the world’s longest cannon. In an effort to push the strange optical illusion from his mind, Jack dropped his gaze between his feet and suddenly felt his gut coil even further into a mess of twisting knots. Beneath them lay an ever-widening circle of blackness.

  Anna’s robotic fingers closed around his hand. She smiled warmly, and he wondered if she had spotted the tangle of emotion on his face and thought he needed comforting. Having your nerves calmed was one thing. Having them calmed by a robot made it clear how vastly different this new reality was from the world he’d been born into.

  “When we breach the opening,” Mullins told them on an encoded frequency only the team could hear, “keep your lights off. If the enemy’s waiting for us, I sure as hell don’t intend to give them an easy target.”

  Heeding his advice, Anna’s digital features dimmed until they were barely visible.

  On the ground, Jack thought he could make out a light source in the distance. It was at least a mile or two away, maybe half the distance between where the lift would let them off and where he had seen the giant pyramid.

  “We might not be able to catch them,” he said.

  The others followed the dim outline of his pointed finger and understood at once what he was saying.

  “They had to know someone would come after them,” Eugene said, resting his hand on the grip of his holstered pistol, cutting an uncanny resemblance to Barney Fife, Mayberry’s intrepid deputy.

  “Perhaps they were counting on it,” Tamura answered him, letting her words hang in the air.

  Although she was Asian American, Jack could tell by the crispness of her speech that Tamura wasn’t first- or even second-generation.

  “If it was me, you can bet your ass I’d have sabotaged the lift,” Mullins said.

  A moan of fear rose up from Eugene. “Sabotage?”

  The lift continued to cut through the blackness, the metal groaning and whining as it went, mimicking in some small way the sounds rising up from the back of Eugene’s throat.

  “Sabotaging this elevator would mean entombing themselves down here forever,” Jack said. “It’s clear this was no suicide mission. Whoever’s down here expects to make it back to the surface in one piece. And that’s what worries me the most.”

  •••

  At last, the elevator reached the surface with a thud and a shudder. Jack switched on the light above his helmet and spun around, studying their surroundings. The platform was flanked by azure mounds of ice which rose up to heights of fifteen feet and more. They were in a cavern, carved out of ice and snow deposited over millions of years.

  Mullins opened the gate and let them out one by one. As the cleats on Jack’s boots crunched the mixture of ice and gravel beneath his feet, he couldn’t help but marvel at the idea that he was standing beneath one of the largest glaciers on earth. Above them rested millions of metric tons of compacted snow fallen over an equal number of years.

  As the others descended from the cage, they each bore the same wondering expressions. If there was such a thing as a lost world, this was surely it. Just then, something by Jack’s left boot caught his eye. He bent down to examine it.

  “I think I’ve got something here,” he called out.

  In a flash, Mullins was by his side. “Tracks,” he said ominously. The faint hope they might be down here alone was now gone. “I count a dozen of them. Maybe more.” He pointed at a series of unusual tracks. “Looks like they may have been carrying something heavy with them too.”

  “Some sort of vehicle?” Gabby asked, kneeling next to him.

  Mullins’ eyes narrowed. “Hard to say. These impressions are small and rounded at the front, almost like a horse’s hoof.”

  “Or a donkey,” Eugene offered. “They can be particularly useful when trekking over mountain passes or crossing difficult terrain.”

  The small area illuminated by the lights from their helmets made one thing perfectly clear. Lugging around any significant equipment would likely be slowing them down.

  “We follow these tracks then,” Jack said. “But keep your eyes peeled and your weapons ready.” He turned to Grant. “I can take those briefcases anytime you want.”

  “These old things?” the fifty-nine-year-old biologist said, curling the heavy cases with each arm as though they were filled with feathers instead of delicate scientific instrumentation. The portable mass spectrometer was based on the miniaturized unit sent to Mars on the rover mission. As well, the DNA sequencer was the same kind being used by anthropologists in the field who were studying the movement of Homo sapiens from our species�
� earliest days.

  Grant laughed at his gaudy display of newfound masculinity. Jack did too, but the images of his friend struggling up the ramps within the Atean craft, followed by the fractured hip he had suffered soon after, were hard to reconcile with the man standing before him. Especially since it had only been a matter of days rather than months.

  Jack noticed Anna pushing a spike with a glowing light on the end into the ice.

  “What’s that?”

  “A signal booster,” she replied, matter-of-factly, crushing a handful of ice and sprinkling the crystals over the top to camouflage the device. “I will need to plant others along the way if we hope to maintain contact with Northern Star.”

  “Not just another pretty face,” Jack said.

  Anna winked. “You do not know the half of it.”

  They crossed a distance of thirty yards, navigating past icy obstacles several times taller than a man. The illumination from their helmets shining off the icy surfaces made the space around them shimmer with an eerie, undulating glow.

  “When will we get to those buildings we…” Eugene began to say, but the words trailed off, stopped short by the impressive sight appearing before him. A giant wall loomed out of the darkness, at least fifty feet high. In the center was an archway, twenty feet wide and about the same in height. Tracing its length from left to right, it was possible to see huge portions of it had fallen away, destroyed by time and yet also preserved by the ice and the freezing temperatures.

  “That’s one hell of a wall,” Dag said in awe.

  As they approached, Gabby stopped and leaned back, allowing her light to trace all the way to the top. “What do you think it was for?” she asked.

  “Ancient Rome stood without a wall for hundreds of years,” Jack said with hushed reverence. “Until the city was sacked by the Gauls in the fourth century B.C. But those walls were barely half as tall. What we’re seeing here is on an entirely different scale.”

  Grant nodded. “Not to mention this site is likely much, much older.”

  “Hey, where are you going?” Rajesh called after Anna, who had veered off from the group and was heading toward the base of the wall.

  “I have detected an anomaly and wish to investigate it further.”

  Jack, Gabby and Rajesh followed her, while the others stayed in place, inspecting the impressive engineering feat. Tamura, an engineer herself, seemed particularly speechless.

  By the time the three of them caught up to Anna, she was busy brushing what looked like powdery snow off an oddly shaped mound. But it couldn’t be snow, not down here. Then Jack realized what it was. Tiny shavings from the cavern’s ceiling, having trickled down over millions of years. They helped Anna, wondering where this was going. Gabby shone her light into the strangely shaped block of ice and gasped. Jack moved in for a better look. It was a massive thigh bone.

  “I am making a comparison to all known zoological specimens,” Anna informed them.

  Jack waved Dag, the paleontologist, over. The Swede crossed the distance in record time.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, breathing hard, before he stared down. “Holy smokes. That’s a dinosaur leg bone.”

  “Dr. Gustavsson is correct,” Anna said. “It appears to be a previously unknown relative of Tyrannosaurus rex.”

  Jack glanced up at the imposing stone structure. “If I lived in a neighborhood with meat-eating dinosaurs, I’d probably build a wall too.”

  Gabby brushed her gloved hand against the coarse stone. “Whoever this belonged to, we can be sure they lived on earth millions of years before we showed up.”

  •••

  Quickly the group passed through the archway and into a space that was at once eerily new and disturbingly familiar. A wide avenue stretched out before them. On either side stood the ghostly remains of gutted stone buildings, many of them several stories high. Beneath their feet, more finely cut stone had been used to create a cobbled road well-worn from the sort of traffic they could only guess at. Mixed in with the snow was a fine layer of dust. Jack bent down and scooped up a sample. He then headed to a building on his right. He paused before the entrance. The doorway was three feet higher and two feet wider than anything they were used to back home. Cut into the sides of the stone frame were notches where brackets or hinges had once held some kind of door in place.

  “Looks like the people living here weren’t hobbits,” Jack teased.

  “People?” Anna asked, a few feet behind him, fixating on the odd choice of word.

  “Figure of speech, I suppose,” he replied, grinning. Scattered debris lay strewn at his feet. An archway opened into another room and beyond that he spotted a set of stone steps leading up to a second floor. Missing doors and hinges. It was starting to look as though anything organic or biodegradable had long since rotted away. A pile of dust lay against the far wall. Had this once been a table? To his left was what appeared to be a fireplace. Had this been where meals were prepared? His mind raced with visions of who may have lived here and how they might have looked. Right from the start, one educated guess could be made. Physically speaking, they were much larger than modern humans.

  Dag came in behind him, stretching his arm and failing to reach the top of the door frame. “I’m telling you, man, these guys would have made one unbeatable NBA team. Freakishly tall and fit from outrunning T-Rexes all day long. Can anyone say All-Star?”

  “Then throw in the bulk of a defensive lineman,” Jack added, “and you start to get a picture of what imposing figures they must have been.”

  “What is this?” Dag asked, picking up what looked like a ten-inch black drinking straw. The object was so delicate, half of it crumbled out of his hands, seesawing to the stone floor. “I keep finding this stuff everywhere. Even in the street, except there the pieces are so much bigger.”

  Jack took hold of what was left and examined it. “If it’s everywhere, it must have been important.”

  “Hey, Jack,” Gabby said over the radio. “Where are you?”

  He went to the doorway “You find something?”

  She nodded and motioned to the ground. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  Chapter 24

  Washington, D.C.

  Driving into the city center from Adams Morgan could best be described as hell on earth. Or maybe hell on wheels. With traffic bumper to bumper and moving at a crawl, it took Kay close to two hours to reach the Washington Post’s head office. More unnerving still were the National Guard troops stationed at every major intersection. The further one pushed into the capital, the tighter and stricter the security perimeter became.

  As soon as she arrived, Kay headed straight for the lair in the paper’s basement occupied by Lucas De Silva and the rest of his I.T. minions. Lucas was Brazilian with an olive complexion and a hot temper. He was also incredibly handsome and could just as easily have been a model rather than a computer geek.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he said, standing and kissing Kay’s hand.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” she said, eyeing the piles of papers on his desk.

  “You know I love you, darling,” he began. “But right now we are up to our eyeballs and armpits.” Lucas had a way of letting you down in the most painless and almost enjoyable way.

  Kay shrugged the laptop bag off her shoulder and set it on his desk. “You remember last year’s Christmas party, how Sandy Yeats, our sadistic editor-in-chief, wanted to know who had thrown up in the trash bin under her desk?”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow. “No, I do not remember.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, but I do and I’ll be happy to fill Sandy in on the details. Unless, of course, you could find time to lend me a hand.”

  Lucas waved his arms around dramatically. “Can you not see that everyone is missing? Between that Charlzburg syndrome and news that the world is about to end, I’ve gone from a team of fifteen to a team of two and I’m the second.”

  She didn’t bother correcting
his pronunciation of Salzburg. Kay knew it was all part of the show. “There’s a video and some pictures on a hard drive I want you to take a look at. Sooner or later, the Feds are gonna show up asking questions and I want you to see what you can find on the conspirators before they do.”

  Lucas glared down at the laptop with disdain. “Are these originals?”

  “Yes, but I made copies, so have at it and ring me if you find anything worthwhile.” She turned to leave, then stopped and held out her hand. “What? No kiss?”

  •••

  From there, Kay made her way through the hornets’ nest that was the paper’s newsroom and straight for Ron Lewis’ office. She could see him inside with Sandy Yeats. They were speaking with a man and woman dressed in dark suits. It was starting to look like the Feds had arrived sooner than expected. Ron saw her approaching and waved her in.

  “This is Agent Smith and Agent Granger,” he said, introducing them. “Smith is with the FBI and Granger is with the Secret Service.”

  Smith flashed his badge a second after Granger did the same.

  “I’ve provided the agents with a copy of the video and still images you sent me,” Ron began.

  “We need to know who your source is,” Smith said, cutting to the chase.

  Kay took an involuntary step back. “I wish I knew. If I had to guess, I’d say he worked in the West Wing.”

  “He?” Granger asked.

  “Online, he went by the moniker Laydeezman, so I assumed. But sure, I suppose it could be a woman.”

  “Apart from what you published,” Smith asked, “has this Laydeezman given you any other information?”

  “He sent me photographic evidence of the alien ship heading for earth. He asked me not to run the story and then presumably gave it to other news outlets.”

  “And why did he ask you to hold off?” Granger asked.

  “He was testing me, I think,” Kay replied. “Given what he knew, he rightfully suspected his life would be in danger. Perhaps the lives of his family as well.”