Extinction Gene Box Set | Books 1-6

by Maxey, Phil

  “Oh dear… I’m sorry to hear that.” He waved the syringe again. “Please, we have very little time.”

  She walked forward.

  “If you could roll up your right sleeve.” She tried to hide her right hand, but his widening eyes told her she hadn’t been successful. She immediately looked at the man next to Amos seeing the same reaction and knew she couldn’t delay any longer. In one movement she moved at Amos, grabbing him with her right, while doing the same with the suitcase with her left, and moved back in front of Sam before any of the men had a chance to react. When her little plan had finished, two M4 rifles were aimed at her, but Amos was in the way.

  “Jess! What are you doing! I’m trying to—”

  She tried to keep behind the older man. A man she once trusted. “You can stop lying, Amos!” She looked at the other man, who she could just about see through the visor. The wrinkles around his eyes and graying hair made him look more like an accountant than security. Someone of authority, but nobody she had seen before. “I don’t know who you are. But I’m leaving with—”

  She felt Amos slump in her arms before her mind registered the slight snip sound of a bullet. She looked down at the hole in his suit, directly where his heart was, then at the short man. Was he smiling behind the visor?

  He turned and started to walk to the stairs. “Get them injected, then take them back to—”

  Amos’s body hit him in the back, throwing him forward into the trajectory of the two soldiers. Jess had flung her old friend as if he was a fraction of his weight and immediately pulled Sam with her, out the door, running to the side stairs and racing up them, it was then she saw the helicopter hovering in the air, a few hundred feet up, completely silent, but she kept on moving, racing past the entrance which the man and the soldiers burst from.

  “Uh uh Jessica Keller! You take another step towards that van, and you’ll both be dead before your next breath.”

  “Fuck that!” shouted Eugene, the barrel of his rifle sticking out from the passenger’s window. “Who are these clowns, Jess?”

  The man who appeared to be in charge, took a step forward, the soldiers behind now aiming their weapons at the van. He raised his hands. “There is no need for this.” He looked up. “Above there are bigger guns aimed at all of you. If you were to open fire, you would be dead seconds later.” He turned to Jess. “We know you took the vaccine, Jessica, but from the looks of how your right hand looks, perhaps a bit too late?”

  Sam coughed then attempted to clear her throat.

  “Oh, it would appear she is about to change. Choose now Jessica, come with us and save your daughter, or die here, as you watch her become something—”

  Sam coughed again, this time doubling over. Jess put her arm around her shoulders while frantically looking between her and those in the hazmat suits.

  “How about a third choice?”

  Shock, relief and joy hit Jess at the sound of Landon’s voice. She spun around to see him emerge from the small forested area to the right of the property, a shotgun aimed squarely at the man in charge, but stopped short of coming completely out from the foliage, keeping the canopy between him and the helicopter above.

  Even from the distance of fifteen feet she could see the anger on the man behind the visor.

  “To me, Jess!” Landon shouted.

  She backed away towards her husband bringing her daughter with her, Sam’s cough now constant. The three of them walking backwards through the undergrowth, which was now blocking their view of the front of the property. An engine roared followed by screeching breaks, and at the top of the bank Arlo’s van reversed into view.

  “Get in!” shouted Eugene.

  They scrambled up the muddy slope, Landon and Jess carrying Sam between them and fell through the open side door.

  “Floor it!” shouted the soldier to the driver.

  As Arlo and Eugene argued about the best way to lose a helicopter, Jess flicked open the latches on the suitcase as Sam’s legs and arms started to flail. “Hold her!” she shouted at Landon, who was already doing just that but quickly losing the battle.

  Pulling one of the small bottles out, she unscrewed it then tilted Sam’s head back. Her daughter’s eyes looked different, not one pupil but many, but the shock didn’t slow Jess down and she pulled Sam’s mouth open and poured the liquid down her throat, closing her mouth to make sure she swallowed.

  Sam continued to fight being held, now taking both of her parents to stop her from slamming her feet and fists into the interior of the van, but slowly her energy subsided, until she stopped moving completely.

  “Sam?” said Jess, placing her hand on her daughter’s cheek then neck.

  The horror on her face told Landon there was no pulse and she immediately opened Sam’s mouth, making sure her airway was clear, then started chest compressions. The two arguing men had gone quiet and the only sound was the engine and Jess furiously pushing down on her daughter’s chest then switching to breathing into Sam’s lungs.

  Landon held Sam’s head, watching and feeling helpless, his mind suspended at the edge of grief.

  “Come on!” shouted Jess, switching back to compressing Sam’s chest again, her daughter’s body bouncing with each new impact. “No… please…”

  Sam arched her back taking in a huge breath, as Jess’s hands froze in motion, just above her.

  “Sam? Sam?” said Jess, as the teen’s eyes opened, looking normal and at her mother above.

  “Being a monster feels the… same”

  Jess hugged her, also pulling Landon in, tears coming from both of Sam’s parents.

  “Josh’s alive…” said Landon to his wife and daughter who continued to cry tears of joy.

  “What happened? Over.” Tracey’s voice came from Landon’s radio.

  He pulled away. “Yes! I have them. I’m in another vehicle. We’re heading north. Can you see the helicopters following us? Over.”

  Jess held another of the small bottles up, indicating that he needed to drink it. He nodded.

  “Yeah I see it, it’s landed on the lawn opposite the property you were at. I don’t think you got long before it goes after you.”

  “We’re going to have to find a way to lose it. Head north, but keep a few miles away. I don’t want them tracking you as well. Try and park under an overpass, anywhere where you can’t be seen from above. Over.”

  “On it. Over.”

  “Who’s that?” said Jess.

  “Someone we found on the way here.” He looked at the small bottle. “Just drink it?” She nodded and he quickly unscrewed the cap and did so, then moved past her to the front, behind the two seats. “Hey, thank you for what you did.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” said Eugene. “Who were the assholes with hazmat suits. Didn’t look standard military?”

  “I don’t know, maybe corporate. We need to find somewhere we get cover from above, or we’ll never lose the helicopter.”

  Arlo looked at his passenger who nodded. The van skidded, Arlo taking a quick right. Pleasant looking homes with white picket fences and neat lawns sailed by.

  “This is Arlo, I’m Eugene.”

  “I’m Landon, detective at Denver PD.”

  Eugene smirked. “I thought there was something about you.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “You got the vaccine right?” said Arlo. “That’s what you gave to your daughter?”

  Leafless trees, bordering double garages that were attached to expensive looking homes slid by as Arlo took another quick turn, glimpsing at the sky. “Are they above us?”

  Both Landon and Eugene looked at the gray-white clouds. “Can’t see them,” said Landon. “That helicopter is almost completely silent. They could be right above us and we might not know. Just keep heading towards the central area. There’s a friend driving another van with my son onboard. I told her to meet us in the city.”

  He felt a hand on his arm and he turned to the red eyes of his wife.

&nbs
p; “Josh is okay?”

  He smiled, nodding. “He’s fine.”

  Emotion flooded across her face as she hugged her husband once again. “I’m sorry, so sorry I left you both, I just thought there was no way you could have… but I believed in my heart that…”

  “I know, I thought the same about you and Sam, but I saw you both leave and took off after you. Daryl and Arlene stayed in the town.”

  “Oh!” She pulled back, looking away at the same time.

  “What?”

  “Meg… She’s out there looking for you. We ran into two men, driving—”

  “Clint and Jay?”

  “Yeah!”

  “They tried taking our car,” said Sam, her voice still gravelly. “Mom, kicked their ass.”

  Landon looked shocked as Jess shrugged her shoulders. He noticed her bulkier looking hand and arm but resisted mentioning it. He looked back to the front window and the block like buildings passing by outside. “There!” he shouted to those in front, pointing at a gas station forecourt. “Park under the pump’s roof. It’s close enough to the store and there are trees everywhere. They shouldn’t spot us from above.”

  He clicked on the radio again. “Tracey, we found a place to hide out. Stay out of sight and I’ll check back once the sky looks clear. Over.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  3: 26 p.m. Jefferson City.

  Jess looked at Sam who was sleeping then to her husband, who smiled back at her, then the two others. Arlo was on his laptop, Eugene in the passenger’s seat up front, keeping an eye on above. The small stove was lit, its blue flame providing minimal heat. There had been no sign of anything in the sky and Jess and Landon had used the time to catch up.

  She shook her head. “Can’t believe you were so close behind us. If it weren’t for those two men, I would never have known…” Her expression changed.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find Meg and Tye. But we can’t stay in the capital for long. I didn’t get to look inside the capital building, but it sure did smell like there were a lot of those things there. We’ll find a place to hold up and hopefully spot them when they show at five… There is something you should know about Tracey though—”

  “Your company,” said Arlo, interrupting. “Sure was into some dodgy shit.” They both looked at him while he continued scrolling through screens of text. “I saved a few hundred terabytes of data before the net went down. Scraped as many government websites as I could.”

  “You a hacker or something?” said Landon.

  “Something,” he said, continuing his reading. “Says here, that Biochron was awarded a defense contract just this year, but it doesn’t say what it was for.” He finally looked at Jess, who looked confused.

  “No, that can’t be right. We have a company policy, have done since the company was founded in the 80s, no work for the military. We work on developmental, medical science. R and D.”

  He turned the laptop around so she could see the screen. “Yeah, well, according to this internal pentagon memo, a three billion dollar contract was awarded to your former employer, in March of this year.”

  She got up and moved closer to the screen.

  “Does Project ‘Ellie’, mean anything to you?” he said.

  She shook her head then looked away. “Umm… maybe… There were some folders in a directory. I discovered them when there was a server glitch some weeks back. One of the files mentioned an experimental drug. It was a form of gene therapy. It was in a folder named ‘Ellie.’”

  “Did you mention it to anyone?”

  “Only my supervisor…”

  “I think we now know why you were fired,” said Landon. “You saw something you weren’t meant to.”

  She thought about Amos and a lump came to her throat. “He was warning me…”

  “Who?” said Landon.

  “Amos. The vaccine could be taken orally, but yet he made it clear when we met in his house that he wanted to inject me with it. He knew I would know… and they killed him like he was nothing… I can’t believe Biochron is part of all of this… ending everything…” She looked at Arlo. “You sure there’s—”

  “Mom?” Josh’s voice came from Landon’s radio. He handed it to her.

  “Hey, I’m here. Everything okay there? Over.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Just bored. When are you coming to get me? Er… Over.”

  She looked at Landon, who looked at Eugene. “Still nothing?”

  The soldier looked up at the sky, craning his neck to scan from the east to the west. “Nope. Not even a bird.”

  “One more hour,” whispered Landon.

  She nodded. “Not long, just another hour. Over.” A sigh came through the radio’s speaker. “It’s better when its dark. The bad people won’t be able to see us from above. Over.”

  “I know… what about the monsters? They can still see when its dark. Over.”

  “We won’t stay too long. Over.”

  “Where are we going after? Over.”

  She looked at Landon. “We’re still discussing that, but it will be somewhere safe. Can you put Tracey on. Over.”

  “I’m here. Over.”

  Eugene pushed his passenger’s door open. “Taking a leak. Over…”

  Jess ignored his sarcastic remark. “How’s it looking? Still no sign of the things or Biochron? Over.”

  Tracey stood in a large open plan modern office, on the fourth floor and looked out over the center of Jefferson. The capital building stood proud, almost lost in mist a few miles to the south.“We got a pretty good view of most of the city from here. Not seeing anything bad to the south. Over.”

  “Soon as the sun is below the horizon, we’ll be on our way. Over.”

  “Make sure to bring something to eat. I’m sure not eating the sandwiches we found in some guys desk drawer.”

  Jess smiled. “Will do. Over and out.”

  “Where will you go?” said Arlo, looking between both of them.

  She looked at her husband. “Somewhere where there are no people, or were people I mean.”

  “Four more days and this is over,” said Landon.

  “You really believed that?”

  “That’s what the president said…”

  He scoffed. “He told people what they needed to hear so they would sit around. The virus got them anyway.”

  Landon didn’t want to contemplate what the portly man in front of him was arguing.

  Jess looked at Arlo whose eyes were now flicking to the passenger’s door. “What about you?” she said.

  “Uh… same plan as yours. Get the hell away from cities, from the things. But we’re going to have to get…”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He went to speak when the passenger’s door opened and Eugene reappeared, with a bag full of candy and chips. He grinned. “From now on, everyone gets to call me San—”

  The spray of blood from the soldier’s disintegrating skull made it all the way inside to Jess, small crimson flecks covering her arm. Landon was already reacting, the shotgun in his hand and thrust past her to the front cab as Arlo threw himself to the floor.

  As Landon scrambled into the driver’s seat, keeping low and turning the ignition key, Jess threw out a hand, stopping her daughter from getting up. She looked out of the side window. Black uniformed men could just be seen at the corners of the gas station.

  “They’ve found us!” she shouted.

  Landon pushed hard down on the gas, turning the wheel and surging from the forecourt. The van bumped across a curb, and back onto the road as he tried to see what he could by peering over the dashboard.

  “Wherever you run, Miss Keller, we will find you.” The voice dripped from Landon’s radio, still beside Jess. She looked at Arlo as the engine roared and the van sped through a suburban street. “This time it was simply triangulating of the radio signals. But why are you—”

  Jess picked up the radio, hitting the ‘talk’ button. “Why are you doing this! You didn’t have to
kill him! Or Amos!”

  “You are correct—” The van skidded around a corner, making her lose her balance. “— We did not have to. But he was an impediment to what I want.”

  “Which is?”

  “Your good self and the vaccine. I do not care about your family, they may go free.”

  She shook her head. “Why me?”

  As he spoke, a chill flowed through her. Small pieces of a larger puzzle were fallling into place in her mind.

  “… patent, number 07851 was remarkable. A breakthrough in molecular and genetic science that at first, even we did not know its true potential. Allowing true synthesis between all genomes, all species if you will. You, Mrs. Keller, are responsible for everything that has transpired over the past twenty—”

  Her hand fell by her side and what little was inside her stomach left her mouth, hitting the inside of the side van door. She knew the patent number, she knew all of those that she had submitted. But it was part of organ transplant research, not…

  “— You are very valuable to Biochron. We are not your enemy, missus Keller. Stop the vehicle you are in. Come to us with the vaccine and your family will be allowed to live.”

  “He’s lying!” said Arlo, streaks of Eugene’s blood across his face.

  She looked at him. He was right, but could they run from her company for the four days? Or longer?

  Think Jess, think…

  “Okay—” Arlo looked shocked, but she raised her hand, allaying his fears. “— Give me your word that you will let them go, and the others that are with us.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Keller. Why would we harm your family if we want you to work for us?”

  “I’m going now to meet my son. Once I have him with me and I know my family are safe, I will arrange to meet and I will go with you. Do we have an agreement?”

  “And the vaccine?”

  “You know full well that they will need that to survive the next few days.”

  There was a pause before he responded. “Fine. We have an agreement. But remember, if you do not keep to your end of the deal, we will find you, and next time there will be no more conversation. I expect to hear from you again within the hour.”