Extinction Gene Box Set | Books 1-6

by Maxey, Phil

  It’s Joan… I know it’s…

  The middle-aged woman’s face appeared, just for an instant while other parts fought to stay alive. “Run!”

  Sam turned and staggered across frost-covered grass as a groan then screech rang out behind her. She knew what it meant. It meant they were now coming after her.

  The ground shuddered as things thundered over the snow. Despite one half of her torso burning with pain she surged onto the concrete of a parking lot, dodging round cars. The dark enclave of a building was ahead of her, blocking all other routes. Her only hope was the entrance door would be open.

  She crashed up against it, the reinforced glass barrier swinging back and ran into a large glistening corporate lobby. Large paper boards held images of DNA with smiling scientists in cliched white coats. She smashed into one, then a shelf full of leaflets, extolling the benefits of what Biochron had given the world.

  Light bounced off a glossy floor and counter as she ran into a hallway, running past doors to offices as glass shattered like electricity somewhere behind, but she kept on running, arriving at a final door, pushing it open and running up the stairs.

  “He’s not going to get me… not going to… get… me…” She kept repeating the mantra under her breath as anger fueled her ascent. Soon she was at the top floor of the three-story building, then climbed higher, pushing open a door and coming out onto a snow-covered roof.

  She immediately noticed the spires of central Denver standing proud to the north.

  Home…

  Roars bellowed below from no definite direction, but she could feel them in her mind. Like a nest of ants had taken up residency inside her skull. Spinning around she scoured the roof for an escape route then spotted a possibility. Leaves and branches from a large tree, one of a few which sat near the side of the building, hung over the far side of the roof. Without hesitation she ran forward then winced from the pain jolting through her body with every step. Forcing herself to the wall, she looked over the side. Amazingly, apart from a few vehicles the parking lot was clear. In the building below doors and flimsy walls were being dismantled by angry things, bent on finding their prey.

  “Not going—” She reached up with her good hand, grabbing hold of a strong looking branch. “— to get… me!” She leaped from the wall, swinging her legs up and wrapping her ankles around the branch, which lowered a few feet with a creak of wood. For a moment her heart missed a beat as she thought the branch would keep on bending and break but instead she bounced gently up and down. The sounds of monstrous things weren’t far. Pulling her feet towards her, then away she awkwardly drew herself to the thicker part of the branch then stood near the trunk and looked down, twenty or so feet to the ground. She thought about jumping. She was stronger than she used to be, maybe she would—

  The exit to the roof crashed open and something vaguely human in form emerged. She looked on in horror as a featureless man ran towards her.

  “Not going to get me!” She stepped off the branch, falling while trying to catch what branches she could to slow her fall, but was only partially successful and hit the snow-covered mud hard and rolled forward. For a moment the immense pain from her arm curtailed any further effort to escape certain death, but the sound from the roof above spurred her back to her feet and she broke into a run. Her target was the woods beyond the nearby road and pond, but she only took a few steps before seeing the gold-colored sedan and its open door.

  Keys… please be keys…

  A memory pinged of the smell of coffee and dewy grass and being with her mother on a frosty morning, almost a year ago. They were both sitting in her parent’s old car and as promised for her birthday she was going to get her first driving lesson. Two hours shot by feeling like minutes and by the end she had at least some grasp of how to drive.

  She flung open the passenger’s door and almost wept in relief on seeing the keys dangling from the ignition. Clambering across the seat, she turned them. The engine fired up then spluttered as she quickly got in position then slid the stick into drive and hit the gas.

  For a fraction of a moment her mind couldn’t understand why she wasn’t moving forward, because her foot was all the way down, but then she looked in the mirror and saw… him. His smile was wrapped onto a jaw too large for his skull, as were his bulging eyes and his arm, three times wider than natural was below where she could see.

  “No…”

  She pushed the gas down again and again, rocking back and forth hoping her motion would be enough to dislodge the claw or talon holding the vehicle in place.

  “Please! Come on!”

  Just before her world turned black she heard the sound of the rear window fracturing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  9: 10 a.m. Highway 63. Powell’s Diner.

  “I hate her!” said Josh through the door to Rufus’s living room. He continued but his words became lost within sobs.

  Meg placed a hand on the bare wood frame, its varnish only remaining in a few patches. “They’re coming back, Josh. You know your—”

  The door rattled from a fist or a foot, she wasn’t sure. “You don’t know that! They have left me, again! Why…” More sobs seeped through gaps. “Why didn’t they want to take me with them… Everyone dies…”

  Meg let out a long breath and swallowed her own sadness for the boy just a foot away. Someone cleared their throat behind her in the hallway. She turned around to Brad.

  “Let me try,” he said under his breath. He took her place and leaned in. “Hey buddy.” Silence came from the other side. “I need your help in the diner. There are people coming from the school and Rufus wants to get the diner back up and running. Can you help?”

  There was a pause before Josh replied. “I know you’re just saying that to get me to leave this room…”

  “I am. But Agatha’s driving me crazy. We’re short of hands out here.” Brad looked at Meg who nodded with a smile to him. They both heard the sigh and the living room door opened. Josh’s eyes were red, his hair scruffier than usual.

  Brad put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “There are meant to be some families arriving, with kids your own age.” Josh remained silent but followed Brad out of the front door and down the steps. Meg watched them walk across the snow-covered ground towards the larger building as the floorboards from the kitchen creaked. Syd ran up to the open door.

  “Get back here!” shouted Rufus to his dog, walking to Meg’s side. “Got the boy out then.”

  Meg frowned. “Yup. But he’s right. I basically pleaded with Jess to stay, but… well that didn’t work out.”

  “Trust in the… Just trust things happen for a reason.”

  Meg kept watching as Josh and Brad walked inside the diner. “Never have believed in the big picture kind of world view.”

  “You don’t believe in an afterlife? I have heard you talk to someone when you thought you were alone. Someone called Liam?”

  Meg turned, walking back towards the kitchen. “You got what you need for the diner? Daryl told me on the radio that there are a lot of hungry folks on the way here.”

  “Yes, Arlo’s in the kitchen in the diner, getting the oven warmed up. We have enough ingredients that haven’t gone bad to make several pizzas.”

  Meg poured herself some water and looked out over the yard at the back then the fields and trees beyond.

  Did you find them, Jess…

  As she heard Rufus go into the living room she thought about the child in the diner and the others.

  “Too old…” she whispered to herself. Kids never happened for her and Liam, which was part plan and part life. But here she was, middle-aged and four kids to look after? Oh, and there was that small point of the world having ended. She shook her head and took another sip wishing it was something stronger.

  “Where are you, Jess…”

  *****

  9: 33 a.m. School of Bowlands.

  Esther looked at the small map they had found of the town, then handed it back to
Jess who placed it in the backpack they had retrieved from the truck. They with Landon, Sanchez and Lachlan were standing at the bottom of the main stairwell. The morning sun lit the hallway and classrooms around them and groans from outside penetrated the walls and windows.

  Esther nodded to herself. “Okay, I think I got it. There’s a road that heads south. Takes you to the town of Newgrove. If it’s clear of the thing’s I’ll wait there, if not I’ll go on to the next town and keep going until I find somewhere I can wait. Hopefully you find your kid and get back to me before dark. If not…”

  “We’ll be back,” said Sanchez. “You really think I’m going to leave Bertha behind, after all the work I put into her?”

  Esther smiled then glanced at the woman by her side. She looked back to Sanchez and the teen. “Let’s make sure the path is clear…”

  “Er… okay,” said Lachlan. He walked past the gray lockers with them, looking over his shoulder as he went.

  Landon looked at his wife. “This is going to work. We’re going to find Sam.”

  She let out a breath while looking down.

  “What? We can do—”

  “I have to go alone…”

  Landon’s head jolted as if it had just been punched. His expression then turned to confusion. “What are you talking about? We’re doing this togeth—”

  “Josh needs at least one parent!”

  The anger that came with her words almost made him take a step back.

  “I’m sorry…” Her demeanor relaxed slightly. “I didn’t mean…” He stepped in closer, but she shook her head stopping him. “I know about your hand.” She met his eyes with her teary own. “They might have doctors back west—” Now it was his turn to look away. “— Someone who can help you!”

  He turned back. “You can’t do this alone! I know you’re different… stronger and all that, but this is different, Jess. There’s a whole city of those things that you’re going into!”

  Her face was now one less of anger and more of sympathy. “Landon… He needs one of us to get through this…”

  Landon looked away again, also shaking his head.

  “I need you to go with Esther. And if we don’t return, find your way back east, to the diner and the School. Meg, Daryl… They’re good people. You and the others can start again once all this is over. But I have to go on alone. I’ll find her Landon, I swear to you. And I’ll do everything I can to bring her back.”

  He stood in silence, resistance having already left him. He knew she was right. “You can’t trust him.”

  “Sanchez?”

  “Yup.”

  “I know. I’m not planning to. But I need him to get me where I need to go.”

  “And getting out?”

  “One problem at a time…”

  Landon snorted then swallowed. He moved forward and embraced his wife. “I love you.”

  She held him tight. “I love you too. We’ll all be together soon.”

  “I know.”

  They pulled apart then walked towards the others who were trying not to watch.

  “So I take it one of you is coming with me and Lachlan?” said Esther.

  “We head south as planned,” said Landon.

  “Can’t say I’m complaining about having more company. But I get to choose what CD’s we play.”

  Landon nodded with a brief smile.

  Sanchez looked at Jess. “You ready to do this?”

  She nodded.

  He looked at the door to the basement. “Alright then.”

  “Umm,” said Lachlan to Jess, she paused as the others moved inside.

  “Yes?”

  “I know this is dumb to say, because she’s your daughter and all that but…”

  Jess smiled and briefly squeezed his shoulder. He grimaced a little but then smiled as well. “I’ll bring her back. Don’t doubt it.”

  “I can still come with—”

  “You know that’s not possible. You’re still not fully healed…”

  He frowned.

  “I’ll see you later today, okay?”

  He nodded and they quickly made their way through the door and down the dark steps. The machinery that had once kept the air con functioning was dormant and they moved swiftly past the pipes and electrical wiring, arriving with the others at another door and staircase.

  Sanchez opened it and listened. “They don’t seem too close. This might actually work.”

  Jess was also using her own more enhanced senses and confirmed what he said. She nodded. “The closest one is maybe… fifty-feet away, or closer behind a building, I’m not sure. We should go now.”

  Sanchez did a bad job of hiding his frown, then nodded and they all moved to the top of the stairs, to the final door. Blue sky was visible through the small glass window. He looked out.

  “What’s it like?” said Landon.

  The parking lot they had run across when it was still dark, looked smaller in the daylight and beyond the gate and fence, Bertha and the pickup sat looking unharmed by the creatures that had been patrolling around them. There was no sign of anything to be fearful of in the sunbathed street, or within the nearby trees and single-story homes but they could all hear them. Groans, growls and the sounds of backyards being disturbed.

  Sanchez nodded to himself. “Looks clear.” He slowly turned the handle and pushed the door open. All five felt the rush of cool air as he pushed it further and stepped onto the frosty concrete path. The sounds drifting on the light wind also increased, giving them some idea of where possible danger lay.

  Lachlan nodded towards a pale wooden home, on the other side of the road behind an overgrown lawn and a rusting pickup. “There’s something behind that house.”

  “Shit,” said Esther, spotting movement at the end of the road to their left.

  Sanchez launched himself forward, running in a direct line to the pickup, while the others split off behind him, most running for the cabin of the semi. The background noise increased in tandem to their boots hitting the ground.

  “They’re coming!” shouted Jess as she ran around the other side of the pickup and pulled open the door. The truck in front’s engine was already revving, and with the trailer it jolted forward then pulled away.

  She didn’t need the buzzing at the back of her skull to tell her what her eyes could already pick up in the distance. Things were charging towards them. A fence was demolished as something brown, larger than the pickup they were in with four legs and a beak like head, barged through it while something else, this thing more human looking but with a mass of tentacles for a torso ran onto the road fifty or so feet directly ahead.

  “Fuck!” shouted Sanchez.

  Jess had been too taken by what was about to come crashing down on them that she hadn’t given a thought to the fact that they hadn’t moved. She looked at him. “What is it?”

  He turned the key again, but no response came from under the hood. His expletives were now in Spanish. He looked at her, desperation in his eyes. “The battery is dead.”

  Static came from her radio then Landon’s voice. “Why are you not behind us!”

  Both in the pickup looked forward. Their view of the semi-truck eclipsed by the things thundering towards them.

  She held the radio to her mouth. “Go! We got this! Over.”

  “We can come back! Over.”

  “No. Go!”

  Sanchez fumbled for the door handle. “We have to go back inside!”

  Jess’s head flicked to her right and the run down looking homes bordering the streets. “We’ll make a run for it!” She pushed her door open, ignoring the shocked expression from the man next to her. He rattled off a sentence in Spanish as she jumped out then looked back inside. “We can do this!”

  His head shake became a nod. “Yes, yes!” And he grabbed his pack then jumped from his seat, slamming the door closed and ran after the crazy woman who was sprinting across the yard of a house faster than he could keep up. “Wait!” he shouted after her
as she ran down the side, pushing open a wooden, head-high gate and kept going, he doing the same. The heavy grunts of the things came from all directions, as if they were lost within a stampede.

  Jess vaulted over a small fence as the alarm of the pickup back outside the school briefly called out then was cut short as the vehicle was torn into. She looked left then right along an alleyway which ran behind the homes. Just as she switched her view to the left again, a two-legged thing appeared at the end of the dusty, weed-infested concrete path. Its angular skull was draped in bluish-brown skin with bulging bloodshot eyes. It lowered its head and staggered towards them.

  “Come on!” said Sanchez, pulling on her arm, knocking her mind from its trance at what was moving their way. They ran into the backyard of another single-story house, across the sandy-dirt and past plastic discarded children’s toys then down the narrow space between wall and fence, spilling out into the gloom of an open-fronted garage. It was partially filled by a small silver-white caravan, facing the front of a red pickup. Sanchez ran forward, pulling open the truck’s driver’s door then shook his head. “No keys.”

  “Can you get it started, anyway?”

  He ducked below the steering column. “Maybe!”

  Something clattered into the toys in the space behind the house, drawing Jess’s attention. As more Spanish expletives came from the pickup, she walked forward slowly, back into the darkness of the garage and the flimsy door they moved through…

  She could hear it. The thing’s labored breathing, stuttering from malformed lungs. It was just yards away in the backyard. She backed up, past the side of—

  The door and part of the wooden partition at the back of the garage exploded in a shower of splintered fragments. Instinctively, without thought to how crazy it would be, she reached down beneath the edge of the caravan, grabbed part of the chassis and heaved backwards. As she fell back on her rear, it slid sidewards, slamming up against the brick wall of the house and a frustrated roar bellowed out from the creature so close to its prey.

  She looked up at the large eyes of Sanchez, standing outside the rumbling engine of the pickup. “Let’s go!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet as the caravan rocked and shuddered with the sound of metal being ripped. Not bothering to try to get to the other side, she jumped up and fell onto the bed at the back as Sanchez dove into the driver’s seat and without closing the door, pressed down on the gas, while steering right. He quickly pulled the door closed and they surged forward.