The Sixth Extinction: America (Omnibus Edition | Books 1 – 8)

by Johnson, Glen

  It dawned on her that her family were out there with these things.

  The same day she started fulltime, her ties with the outside were severed, and her workload doubled. She had no time to complain, if she wasn’t sleeping, she was in the clean-room testing samples and passing petri dishes to scientists who had their arms in thick rubber containment gloves, going into small biocontainment isolator units. She loaded the dishes in place, through thick sealed doors, at the back of the unit, so the scientist could work on them without donning the complete suit.

  She considered herself nothing but a glorified lab monkey. Reading a list and loading those particular batches into the assigned isolator until when required. Half the time she wandered in a daze. Numbers, letters, cabinets, chillers, equipment, it all blurred together. Each day identical to the last. She decided it was almost as if she were in prison. The only difference is, she got minimum wage.

  Today started like any other, getting up at the crack of dawn, (she presumed it was dawn she had no window, and hadn’t stepped outside in over three weeks), gulping down breakfast in a cafeteria where no one talked, and everyone ate in complete silence, which always gave her the creeps. Then meeting Peter, whom she shared a clean room with.

  She liked Peter, who was only two years older at twenty, and had already completed his bioscience studies and was also working as a lab assistant until he worked his way up.

  At first, they would chat on the radio, until after two days a stern voice announced over their frequency that they were paid to work, not talk. Until then, she didn’t realize her radio was being monitored.

  The day was as boring as the last, removing dishes from chillers, or warm plates and sliding them into their designated units. It was mind numbing work, and wasn’t anything like she expected when she was offered the job as an assistant in one of the worlds leading biomedical facilities. Well, she presumed it was; she had never heard about the place until a friend stated they were hiring from her year.

  Of course, she had to sign papers stating she would tell no one of her work. Not that anyone would be interested in anything she did. Why would anyone care that dish 17-RgF64 had grown two new spiral lines overnight, while dish 14-HjP53 hadn’t changed? Or that a new crystallization had appeared in the sealed test tube BB8Rs19, that wasn’t in the cooling cabinet, but from the centrifuge?

  Emma would spend fifteen-hour days inside the sterile glass room that was surrounded by attached biocontainment isolator units. She worked in a hazmat suit that was joined to the ceiling by breathing cables that trailed after her like an umbilical cord as she wondered the thirty foot circular chamber.

  Today was the only real action she had seen, and it wasn’t the kind of action she would like to see repeated.

  It first started with an alarm.

  Peter explained, when she first started working there, that those inside the clean rooms, who had delicate experiments that needed constant attention, which would mean having to start the dishes over again losing precious time, were exempt from taking part in fire drills, or any kind of drill.

  So, as the alarms blared, and the scientists slowly put down what they were doing to casually wander to the elevators, in a bored We-have-Done-it-a-Thousand-Times-Before kind of walk, Emma and Peter kept going as if there wasn’t a problem. The fact that the room was a clean room and air tight also went some way in explaining that the sound of the alarm was muffled. So when people first started screaming and rushing around, they didn’t hear anything until the gun fire started.

  When they looked up from their work, they noticed black spores pouring in through the ventilation system. The spores acted as if they were not just carried via the air ducts, but were moving under their own power. This became obvious when they witnessed the spores forcing themselves down people’s throats and up their nostrils.

  People thrashed about on the floor, or ran into things, and each other. It was pandemonium. And all they could do was watch behind their thick, thankfully, protective glass.

  Several people rushed to the secure, thick door. They swung their arms, screaming to be let in, slamming on the buttons which they didn’t know the code for. Neither Emma or Peter moved to press the button to open the outer door into the first section where the person donned the hazmat gear. Then through the fumigable transfer hatch.

  Survival took over. They knew the instant the doors swished open the spores would rush in, regardless of whether they were in protective gear or not. Those outside already ingested the spores. There was nothing they could do for them.

  They had a front-row seat to see the devastating effects of the new strain of spores. A much faster acting strain.

  Within twenty minutes the host collapsed, then their breathing became fast, grasping for air. Then the chest expanded, as they ripped at their clothes, as they grew unnaturally large, as bones cracked and skin split asunder. Then the explosions, leading to a bloody mess of organs and gore getting splattered over the science equipment, tables, monitors, walls, and floor. The large room was redecorated in reds, oranges, and sickly bile colors. Globs of flesh rested on desks. Chunks of hair and scalp hung from white boards (which were no longer white). The glass chamber they stood inside, staring, dumbfounded, was awash in body parts and running with blood and bits of veins, hair, and fragments of organs. It was a blood bath. It was worse than a Tarantino movie.

  The next thing Emma knew she was waking up. She realized she had fainted.

  Peter knelt beside her, with concern showing through the large bubble of his hazmat view port.

  She could hear him asking if she was okay. She stated she was and just needed a hand up.

  It was then she realized her microphone had been damaged in the fall. After Peter helped her to her unsteady feet, she used sign language to explain.

  Emma didn’t know how long she had been out for, but the bodies had changed. Through the thick glass, which most of the splatter had run down, leaving red and brown smears, she could see tendrils had grown from the remains of the bodies that were scattered about like tossed confetti.

  It was like a scene from a horror movie.

  Then, when they thought nothing could get worse, the strange pod-like insects appeared, with spindly long legs, looking like alien spiders, roughly the size of old-fashioned space hoppers that she remembered playing on when she was younger. There was no discernable eyes or mouth, just a black, leather, wet looking egg shaped mass, being slightly larger toward the bottom.

  Emma could see three such creatures stalking around the remains of the bodies. They used their thin legs to touch a root here and there, as if coaxing the spores to release – almost like a maternal gesture.

  Emma had no idea what to do.

  Peter was just as anxious and scared.

  Luckily, they had a water drip on the inside of the hood that they could sip from. And due to how long it took to change in and out of the hazmat gear they were both wearing the equivalent of an adult nappy – which was the hardest thing she had to get used to working in the clean room. So water and the toilet wasn’t a problem.

  Then, after staring at the spider-like creatures for twenty minutes one seemed to notice them for the first time. It stopped what it was doing and seemed to stare.

  Emma knew it sounded strange, referring to this mass of black leathery, eyeless blob as staring, but she had no other way of describing it – she felt scrutinized.

  Then it scuttled over. First, it raised one of its ten legs and tapped the glass, as if testing its thickness. Then, in a violent jerk, it slammed the same leg down with bone shattering force. The chamber rung like a bell, but the glass didn’t so much as chip. It lowered its leg. Then in a feat of strength it launched itself into the air and landed on top of the fifteen high foot circular clean room.

  Only the walls were glass; they couldn’t see what it was doing up there. And even if it did have a glass ceiling, hazmat suits weren’t made for 360 degrees of vision. It was a struggle to look up.

 
; They could hear its spiky legs tapping on the metal, with some experimental clicks. Then, after realizing it couldn’t get at them, it jumped back to the floor and continued with its root prodding without another glance.

  With everything that was going on, it was becoming frustrating to hear Peter’s panicked breaths and screams as the pod tested their chamber. She was annoyed that she couldn’t respond. To tell him to calm the fuck down. Giving her a headache was achieving nothing.

  Then the really scary stuff started to happen. Just when they thought it couldn’t get any weirder, the legs of the dead people started jerking. Then to their amazement, the roots started thrashing about like a beached octopus. Then a large pod that grew straight up, split open, revealing legs similar to the scurrying alien eggs.

  The roots came away from the surfaces they were attached to and pressed against the floor, and the legs clicked down into place, raising the lower torso up, as the feet started moving on their own, in jerking steps.

  Emma brought her hands up to her face, which was stopped by the suit. The remains of the people were being herded to the stairs. The tentacles lashed and propelled them along with the legs, leaving smears of blood, guts, and shit behind them in long streaks.

  Emma was crying.

  Is this happening everywhere? Was her family turning into these hideous, sinuous, tentacled creatures?

  Then Peter started jabbering on, as if someone else had joined the conversation.

  Emma had been hearing heavy breathing for a while, but just presumed it was Peter in his panicked state breathing heavily.

  Then a stranger’s voice cut into Peter’s pleas for help. A firm, commanding sounding voice. Here was someone who could take control, tell them what was happening.

  Even though she could hear Peter and the man chatting, she couldn’t join in. Apparently, he survived whatever is happening and was on his way to them. She just hoped he was carrying weapons of some description, because he was certainly going to need some.

  95

  Alex and Lindell

  In a muddy field heading towards the farmhouse

  Just outside New York City

  They were both soaked through to the skin as they headed toward the lights on the hill. They didn’t know what to expect, but anything was better than nothing. No one had eaten since the meal they were fed at the town. They also checked the small outbuildings, in case there was a well or water pump house. There was neither, not even an animal trough they could boil water from. So far, the only water source was a stagnant barrow of water.

  They hoped to find food, but would settle for a source of water. Water was more important. Finding water was a matter of life and death. They could also scavenge through the house for pots to boil the water in.

  Neither of them actually mentioned what they would do if there was somebody home? Lights didn’t just switch on by themselves.

  The hill was steeper than Alex imagined. His legs ached, and the lower half of his jeans were covered in heavy, wet mud. He slipped numerous times. His hands were also covered in freezing mud, making holding the gun awkward. He dropped it at one point. Luckily, his foot hit it. Else he would have had to get down on his hands and knees and search for it.

  His breath billowed out in clouds.

  He didn’t know what to expect in the house, but his expectations grew with every step. A crackling log fire, with a large pot of something thick and warm bubbling on the stove. Kind, gentle people offering them in and a place at their table.

  Yeah right! Idiot!

  The reality though would be far from his daydreams. There was most probably someone secured behind locked doors with thick metal grates on the windows, with barrels of weapons pointing out, zoning in on those climbing the hill to their retreat. If they were so blatant about advertising the property with lights, then they would be confident that they could defend what they have from people willing to take it from them.

  Alex noticed the clouds were piling up, with the wind picking up, chilling his body to an uncomfortable level. What he wouldn’t give to be snuggled up in his apartment, under his thick comforter on the couch, with the heating cranked up high, and something good on the TV, while he ate a plate of his favorite food – pepperoni pizza, washed down with a cold beer, or two, or three.

  He stumbled again, splashing his face with the freezing mud. He spat the loam from his mouth.

  Lindell would look back every fifty feet or so, to check he was still behind him.

  The house was growing larger, filling their forward vision. Alex could see the two windows that the light issued from. He couldn’t tell what type of room it was due to the dirty windows. It didn’t look lived in. Then again, looks can be deceiving.

  They took their last few steps on muddy ground and reached the farmhouse’s backyard by climbing over a short, crumbling wall. There was a large flat area, where old trucks went to die. One had no wheels, and was supported on its axles. There was a cab for a pickup truck, upside down, full of dirty rainwater. Also a large galvanized shed full of bulky plastic bags of fertilizer. In one corner was a pile of rusty implements.

  Lindell stopped by a stone wall that separated the yard from a small section at the back of the farmhouse. There were some stone flower pots filled with dried, withered plants. An empty wooden dog house and a scattering of muddy Wellington boots under a cover for the back door. The worst part was; the back door was wide open.

  Alex stood beside Lindell, as he flicked mud out of the barrel of his handgun. He hoped it didn’t effect its firing capabilities?

  The heavens opened.

  The rain echoed off the galvanized metal roof of the large shed. It bounced on the compact ground of the yard and instantly started forming into puddles. Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark fields around them and freeze framing the downpour. Thunder rumbled, deep and bass-like, vibrating through their cold bones.

  Alex saw the open door. He waited for Lindell to make a decision.

  “We go in,” he shouted to be heard over the pounding rain and thunder. He then realized shouting was a foolish move; they couldn’t hear each other.

  They were both soaked to the skin, with the mud washing off them and spilling away around their feet.

  It was too noisy to keep shouting at each other, in case there was someone else around. So Lindell pointed at both his eyes and then scanned the area, telling Alex to keep alert. He then pointed to his watch and held up his hand with fingers splayed to state to give him five minutes. Lindell then scooted around the corner and ran through the open back door into the light.

  Just then another flash of lightning lit up the surrounding area. Alex could see something out of the corner of his eye. He spun in that direction. It was now shrouded in darkness. Then another flash. He could see a group of naked infected splashing through the mud and rain heading towards the farmhouse.

  96

  Doctor Bachman

  In the lift on level 36

  The underground bunker

  Quirauk Mountain, Pennsylvania

  “Is the area clear?” Bachman asked Peter, who had been giving a running commentary as to what the pods were doing.

  “Almost. They are just herding the last through the stairwell door. Jesus, it’s one fucked-up display.”

  Bachman wasn’t interested in his observations on a personal level; he needed hard facts. He wasn’t stepping foot on the level until he knew it was clear of danger.

  “They’re gone.”

  “Completely?” Bachman had his finger pressed against the close button.

  “The last spider thingy just scuttled through.” Peter sniffed.

  “I will give it a minute, just to make sure.” Bachman rested his head against the metal doors. He was exhausted. At least these two people will know the way out.

  “Are you still there?

  “I’m asking him now. Stop poking at me, I’m asking him everything I need to.” He was obviously talking to Emma.

  “Yes I’m stil
l here.” Bachman released his finger. The elevator door swished open. A clump of flesh dropped from the opening door.

  The whole level is open plan, similar to the biological weapon’s section he was first taken to. It had glass chambers scattered around. Only one contained infection free humans. There were five other pods, they contained naked creatures.

  However, these creatures were acting different than normal. Rather than thrashing around, throwing themselves against the glass, they were stood motionless, with their heads down, staring at the floor, with their arms placid at the sides; as if waiting for an order.

  Bachman headed towards the young lab assistances, while trying to ignore the nagging feeling that something really bad was about to happen. Not that the situation wasn’t bad enough already.

  “Oh my god, we see you. Thank god.” The two people were now waving their arms as if he needed their help finding them.

  Bachman navigated through the blood-soaked carpet, littered with whole arms, bone fragments, spinal cords, thick veins, and matted hair. It dripped from the ceiling and covered every conceivable surface. He could hear the blood dripping against his suit.

  “You don’t have a gun?” he could hear Peter question. “Where are your weapons?” His voice was getting higher.

  “I’m not military; I’m a scientist,” he stated.

  “We’re fucked!” Peter remarked.

  Bachman could see his hands drop to his sides in quiet resignation.

  He stood outside the chamber.

  They were easy to tell apart, even though they were both in identical suits. Peter was tall, stretching the suit to its limit. Whereas Emma was short and the arms and legs were billowing out, making her look much fatter than she probably was.

  “Well, are you coming out or not? Together we can get out of here,” Bachman stated.

  “But you’re unarmed, how do we fight these things without weapons?” Peters voice became whiny. “We are safer in here. One tried, it couldn’t get in. We have water, filtered air. We will wait for a real rescue.” He attempted to cross his arms, but the suit was too bulky. They dropped back to his sides.