NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two

by William Turnage

  “Oh God, they’re biting my neck! Get them off, get them off!” she screamed as trickles of blood dripped down her neck and onto her white blouse.

  Abe moved behind her and fumbled with the catch on her necklace. He swatted at a few of the bots still buzzing around their heads.

  “Ahh! I can’t get it!” he yelled out in frustration. Then he pulled back one of his hands and started shaking it, yelling in pain.

  “Abe, help me!” Victoria screamed, reaching behind her head and trying to undo the chain.

  Chen tried to stand, but his legs were paralyzed from the EM blast. He started crawling away from Abe and Victoria, who were still right beside him. There was nothing he could do for them. He had to save himself.

  “Briggs!” Chen called out. “What the hell are you doing over there?”

  Chen wondered why he wasn’t firing at the bots.

  “One of those damned things got into the machine,” Briggs yelled as he opened up the front of the device and looked inside. ”It’s shot all to hell.”

  He reached into the guts of the device and pulled out electronic and wire entrails still sparking, obviously destroyed.

  “Ahhhhhhh!” Victoria’s blood-curdling screams echoed out into the desert.

  Abe had returned to her necklace, trying once again to remove the death chain. The anguish on his face made him look old and near bloodless. Not only was the woman he loved being eaten alive in front of him, but the bots were still digging into his own flesh and crawling up his arms into his shirt.

  He was finally able to get Victoria’s necklace loose and threw it to the ground with a shout. It was covered with nanobots dividing and multiplying even as they watched.

  Victoria had stopped screaming and stood unmoving, mouth open, staring off into the distance, blood pouring down her neck. Her white blouse was soaked in it.

  “Victoria, Victoria, are you okay?” Abe asked as he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Say something, sweetheart. Oh please, God, make her okay!”

  He tried to hold her up, but she dropped to her knees. Then Abe pulled away and grabbed at his chest. He ripped his shirt off, buttons shooting out, to reveal a chest swarming with nanobots digging into his skin and crawling on a chain he wore around his neck. It was similar to the one that Victoria had been wearing, but a large cross dangled from the end of it.

  Chen was panicked now, desperately trying to get away, dragging his numb legs, his fingers bleeding from clawing and pulling himself over sharp rocks. He glanced back to see the heads of the tiny creatures digging into Abe’s chest, their back legs twitching in ecstasy as they devoured his flesh.

  A stiff wind blew through the desert, kicking up dust. Chen watched through the dust as Victoria sat on her knees in the dirt staring straight ahead, legs folded behind her. Her head tilted slowly up, as if begging the heavens to end her suffering. Her chin rose higher and higher until it was pointing straight up. Then a gaping hole opened up at the base of her neck. It grew wider and wider as both Chen and Conner watched in horror. Screams echoed through the site as others ran, trying to get away from the attacking creatures.

  Victoria’s head fell backwards and off her body, severed by the nanobots. Pieces of hanging flesh and part of her spinal column clung to her head as it rolled into the desert sand. Her headless body slumped and fell forward, kicking up dust as it hit the ground, collapsing in a bloody heap.

  “Nooo!” Abe screamed, tears of anguish streaming down his cheeks and blood covering his mangled chest. "Dear Jesus, please help her. Please! I'll do anything..."

  More of the bots sprang from his body, multiplying as they gnawed away at the cross dangling from his neck. Then they rose into the air and headed for Chen.

  “Oh no,” Chen whispered. This was it. There was no stopping them now.

  But just as they were about to land on him, several of the creatures began flying in erratic circles, sputtering midair. Then they just fell to the ground, legs twitching as they lay on their backs. A few of the deadly things tried to rise again, but they quickly fell back, flopping and writhing. Moments later, their twitching stopped and they lay still, by all appearances, dead.

  Chen picked up one of the rocks closest to him, raised it above his head, and slammed it down as hard as he could. A loud crunch filled the air, and he felt the miniature circuits of several of the creatures crushing under the force of the blow. Greenish goo oozed from their insides and stuck to the bottom of the rock.

  Abe lay just a few feet away, clutching at his chest as the last few bots gnawed and clawed at his flesh in their final violent death throes. Then they simply fell off his body, oozing out of the holes they’d burrowed into. Draped across his bloody chest was a half-eaten cross still dangling from its chain. A single bot clung desperately to it, then it too fell to the dirt. Abe looked at Victoria and started sobbing, despair pulling at his face.

  “Oh, my love. My sweet Victoria.”

  The handful of remaining bots that had attacked and disabled the pulse generator rose into the air, then soared away, heading north.

  The feeling was starting to return to Chen’s legs. By some miracle he’d survived this initial attack. He had no idea how.

  But he knew this was far from over. Those remaining bots were going to be hunting for whatever it was that helped them multiply. If they found that substance, then there would be millions—billions—of the creatures to deal with and their fight for the future of humanity would be over before it even started.

  Chen needed to find out what they were after and stop them before they got to it. But he couldn’t do it alone. He needed reinforcements. He needed to bring in the big guns.

  Chapter 3

  10:00 a.m., July 25, 2002

  Las Vegas

  “Ahh, shit, somebody turn off that fucking phone!”

  The buzzing of the cellphone cut through Jeff’s head like a razor blade. He’d just fallen asleep about half an hour ago after a long night of partying.

  The tall, blond showgirl slowly climbed out of the bed and eased over to the dresser on the other side of the luxurious and sprawling penthouse bedroom. Her long hair swayed gently across the top of her naked buttocks. As she reached over to turn off the phone, the angel tattoo on her back rippled like it was going to fly away. Then she glided back to the bed, stopping at the table in the middle of the room to snort a quick line of cocaine. Her ample breasts bounced as she brushed her hand across the bottom of her nose.

  “Come on back to bed, babe,” said the Asian cocktail waitress lying on the other side of the bed, her voice dripping with lust.

  Jeff had already forgotten their names. They were just two more conquests in a long line going back several years. It was the life of the international playboy he’d become. The money, the fame, and the power came too easily when you knew the future before it happened.

  Jeff turned and buried his face in the cocktail waitress’s long dark hair. She smelled so good. He turned his head to kiss her full lips when the phone rang again. This time it was the room phone.

  “God damn it!” Jeff growled as he reached over and snatched up the phone from the nightstand. ”I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Madison,” stammered the concierge from the front desk. ”But I have an urgent message from a Dr. Patrick Chen. He says it’s a matter of life or death.”

  Well, that certainly got his attention. Chen was usually very stoic.

  “Put him through.”

  “Jeff, thank goodness I got you. There’s been a horrible attack here at the Chronos site. The nanobots are loose, Jeff, they’re loose!”

  The panic rose in Chen’s voice as Jeff tried to clear his thoughts.

  “Patrick, please calm down and tell me what happened; you’re not making sense.”

  Chen took one deep breath and then another. ”It happened just moments ago. The crews were digging down and apparently unearthed a nanobot that had survived underground. It killed two of the construct
ion crew, then killed Victoria and nearly mangled Abe to death. It absorbed a material from my watch and from necklaces that Abe and Victoria were wearing. Then it multiplied. Jeff, if it finds more of the substance, whatever it is, I fear it’ll be able to multiply at an exponential rate. Then there’s no stopping it.”

  That was just too much for Jeff to take in. He looked longingly at the line of cocaine on the table. It’d been a long time since he’d thought about nanobots. He swayed dizzily as he stood holding the phone, still drunk from the celebration the night before. He wondered if this whole thing was just a dream.

  “Jeff, Jeff, are you still there?”

  “Yeah, give me a second, Patrick.” Jeff bent over and snorted a quick line. A second later the euphoria swept over him. It was the same feeling he used to get waking up on Christmas morning as a kid. He smiled, but as he did so, a dark cloud passed over him.

  He was back in Lechuguilla Cave, deep underground, surrounded by darkness and blood-curdling screams. He was standing over Holly Scarborough, her blood covering his eyes and dripping down his cheeks into his mouth.

  Jeff slapped his face to jolt himself out of the nightmare he’d tried so long to forget. The coming apocalypse of deadly viruses and nanobots had seemed so far away, and now it was slamming straight into his addled mind.

  “What about the pulse cannon? Did that have any effect?” he asked, trying to pull himself back to the reality facing him.

  “It knocked out a few of the creatures, but not enough,” Chen replied, his voice calming. ”What are we going to do?”

  “Have you called Paulson yet?”

  “No, I thought of you first since you’ve had direct experience with the nanobots. You and Holly, that is. But Holly has gone missing. No one has seen her in over a week. Do you have any idea where she is?”

  Jeff hadn’t talked to Holly in years.

  “I don’t know where she is. I suggest you call Paulson; I’m sure he’ll be able to handle this. Keep me posted. I’ve got some things to take care of now.”

  Jeff hung up and glanced at the two girls in the bed.

  “Come on back, Jeffrey, we’re not done with you yet,” the blonde said as she draped her leg over the naked, petite body of the cocktail waitress and caressed her shoulder.

  Jeff thought briefly of jumping back in bed with them and just forgetting the world. That was the pattern he’d followed for years now. Many times he felt he wouldn’t even be around to see the disaster looming in the distant future. He figured he would be long dead from some age-related illness or his body would just give out from years of drinking and drug abuse.

  Yes, it would be easy to just slip back in bed with the girls. But this time the fear was building inside him. His heart starting racing as his memories turned back to the damp dark cave and Holly’s severed arm lying in the shadows beside her, swarming with tiny nanobots gnawing and eating the flesh like horrible maggots.

  No, he had to get out of there. If the nanobots were coming, he needed to get as far away as he could—China maybe. He threw on his underwear and pants, grabbed a shirt, and headed for the door.

  “Sorry, girls. Emergency. Gotta run.”

  They could fend for themselves.

  Just as he was heading out the door, the phone rang again. This time it was his cellphone.

  “I’m busy right now,” he barked out. ”This better be urgent.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Madison, I’m sorry to bother you. This is Sam Roberts, director of your satellite communications division. When we put up one of our first satellites years ago, you told me to contact you if we picked up a certain transmission frequency. Well, sir, we did, just a few minutes ago. There was a broadcast from an AM radio station just outside of Albuquerque.”

  Jeff tried to organize his thoughts and remember just what Sam was talking about. He seemed to recall that the nanobots used a special signal to communicate with each other.

  Albuquerque wasn’t that far north of Lechuguilla Cave. The bots that had escaped from the tunnel could’ve made it there by now. It was likely that they had broadcast the signal. Why? Jeff could only guess they were trying to communicate, find out if there were other bots in the area.

  “Thank you, Sam. I have a guy looking into that.”

  Jeff paused at the door for a second, then walked back inside and grabbed a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels from the bar.

  Just a few shots for the road to take the edge off. Too many things were happening at the same time, and his clouded mind couldn’t take all of it.

  “Oh, and sir, there was another signal just after the first, originating from somewhere in San Diego.”

  Jeff’s heart started pounding. Another signal? If the first came from the Lechuguilla nanobots, then what the hell was in San Diego? All kinds of possibilities churned through his head, none of them good.

  “Sir, sir? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, Sam. Just continue to monitor the situation and let me know if anything else happens.”

  "Uh, okay sir. I'm sending you the location of the second signal and I'll continue to search for any others."

  Jeff hung up and looked out of the window of the luxurious penthouse suite, scanning the Las Vegas skyline sprawling out below.

  Paulson can handle this. He was the soldier. Jeff certainly wasn't a fighter. He was... Well, he didn’t know what the hell he was anymore.

  He turned to the girls in the bed. They were in a full embrace now, legs wrapped around each other, kissing passionately, totally oblivious to his presence and the crisis at hand.

  He hit speed dial on his cell to tell Paulson about the signals.

  “Damn it!” He slammed the phone against his leg when he couldn’t get a connection. Even to this day, Jeff missed 2038 technology.

  He threw his shirt on and tried the concierge from the room phone.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but all outside lines are down. The phone company tells me they’re working on it, but they don’t know when they’ll be back up.”

  Not good, not good at all. Jeff had seen this situation play out before. With communication lines down, something bad was likely looming over the horizon.

  So there was no way to get in touch with Paulson. Jeff hung up the phone, returned to the window, and brought the bottle of Jack up to his lips. He wanted to forget this whole thing. Wanted to climb back in bed with the two girls and go back to his life of oblivion. The cool burn of the whiskey touched his lips.

  Ah, sweet elixir.

  Down below his window, the flashing lights of the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino blinked incessantly. Without prompting, his mind flashed back to a time in his distant past, to an event that wouldn’t happen for another thirty years in the present timeline. He was standing beside his daughter as she rode the merry-go-round at the state fair. Her laughter filled the air as she waved to her mom. Then she grinned at Jeff and said, “Daddy, I love you.”

  A day lost in time. Tears welled up in his eyes. He missed his daughter and son so much. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget them. Not a day passed that he wasn’t reminded of them in some small way.

  He still held the bottle of whiskey to his lips. A tear dripped down his cheek, slow and cool against his skin.

  It would all be over if he didn’t do something. His children would never be born. Billions would die.

  Jeff never wanted to be a hero. He never wanted to be a time traveler, and he never wanted to be responsible for saving the world. He just wanted his life back.

  He tipped the bottle up again and let the Jack pour into his mouth.

  Then, like a switch clicking in his soul, he lowered the bottle and spat the whiskey on the floor.

  “No more. Never again,” he whispered softly to himself.

  He turned away from the window and hurled the bottle across the room.

  It shattered against the wall, glass flying everywhere as a dark stain dripped down to the floor.

  The girls looked up in surprise as
he stormed out of the room, but he knew they’d be back in each other’s arms in moments.

  Jeff charged down the hallway to the elevator as fast as his clouded mind would let him. His loyal bodyguard, Chase Arrington, who’d been waiting patiently outside the hotel room, followed. He decided that he’d go to San Diego. He didn’t know what was waiting for him there, but whatever it was, he was going to stop it.

  The future would not end today. Humanity would survive this threat. Jeff might have lost his way for a time, but he was back now, and he was not going to run.

  He would face whatever was coming at them head on.

  Chapter 4

  2030 HRS, July 25, 2002

  Baghdad, Iraq

  Lieutenant Commander Buddy Paulson was finishing up his dinner at a small restaurant on the outskirts of southern Baghdad. He was sitting across from Jamal Bahar, the owner of a large construction company and general busybody who knew everything that happened around town. Jamal had his hands in so many different pots, Paulson wondered how he could keep track of it all. But with his close contacts to Saddam Hussein’s regime, he was invaluable to Paulson in getting done what he needed to do.

  Paulson had known him for two years; Jamal had been providing information on all of the political machinations of the Hussein dictatorship peppered with some really funny stories about his wacky family and friends. Jamal was always jovial and never one to turn down a cold beer and a hearty meal. Nor was he ever at a loss for words. Jamal had just gotten into a story about how his cousin’s wife had found out he was having an affair with her sister.

  “Yes, you see his wife, Fahima, insisted on going to the bar with him last Friday,” Jamal said with a big smile.

  Like a great hairy beast, he tore off a big hunk of lamb from a large leg bone. The juice dripped down his salt-and-pepper-colored beard. He continued on with his story, mouth full of food.

  “When it got too late, she hopped on their mule to head home, leaving Mahmood at the bar with his friends. Now, that old mule had traveled that way so many times before, it knew exactly where to go. Only it didn’t go to Mahmood and Fahima’s house—it headed straight to her sister’s!” Jamal laughed again, eyes wide with mirth.