This was the main problem with transitioning Weasel from a back-room IT troubleshooter to a medical device designer/tester; he refused to accept the failure of a certain design. He kept at it like a dog licking itself. Just a few more licks, and I’ll have it. The truth was more likely that the thing they were licking was long gone or there to stay. Move on.
“We’re moving on to test the three-emitter design,” she said. Weasel looked up at her to complain. She crossed her arms under her breasts and glared.
“Oh, okay.”
“Thank you.”
There was no problem with the larger Februus Devices. The issue was making a smaller, lighter, field version. General Pendleton and Colonel Sleg, the Marine Commander, were both screaming for a small version. Scaling the Februus down was proving a tough nut to crack.
Lisha came by every three days to evaluate Weasel’s progress and provide gentle guidance. Well, sometimes, not such gentle guidance. She wished she still had Oz. The man understood Weasel, and their friendship helped. However, Jeremiah Osborne had taken Oz from her. She shrugged. They were cousins, after all; it was only fair.
She left the practical labs and went into her research lab. Over the last half year, the salvage teams had done a fantastic job equipping her with top notch apparatus. They’d also rescued more than a few qualified technicians and scientists. Dr. Gallatin had elected to set up his own facilities, allowing her to continue to focus on Strain Delta, or Pandora as the Vulpes called it.
The Vulpes had given her some samples of un-differentiated Pandora so she could set up side-by-side comparisons and get a better understanding of how the nanovirus worked. She’d never completely understand it. Their technology was about as advanced as hers would have been to the ancient Egyptians.
Besides using the Februus Device for purifying food and treating people before their brains were rebuilt, she was mostly concerned with how the nanovirus affected humans and other creatures. It was what had initially fascinated her enough to take a former colleague consumed by the virus and turn him into a test subject. Now that she was back in proper quarters and had her supercomputers back in operation, she’d begun resequencing work.
Strain Delta had amazing potential as a tool. HAARP’s goal had always been to remove all disease and suffering from humanity. It was, after all, the reason Project Genesis had funded them. She’d often wondered where the money had come from, and she was surprised Michael hadn’t known. However, Chamuel did, and she’d quietly explained it to Lisha.
“You were the second choice to be Ariel, our biologist member, but it was decided you were better off where you were.”
“Why didn’t Michael know about me?” she asked.
“Michael wasn’t as important as he thought he was. Unfortunately, the way things shook out set up a situation where he had control. Once I realized the probabilities, I cast him aside. The others agreed.”
“How long did you manipulate the situation?” she asked.
“Manipulating is such a nasty word,” Chamuel said, then winked.
Lisha checked on the results of the tests she’d left running when she went to visit Weasel, made sure nothing was out of the ordinary, then checked her watch. She should have met Leon fifteen minutes earlier. He would understand; he always did. The man was kind of clueless, but Chamuel said it was important to keep him close, so she did.
She decided she had a few more minutes and went to the rear of the lab. Like her old facility, the rear of the lab was designed for biological contaminants and specimens. Also like before, it held more than met the eye.
She flipped the light switch and the three infected howled and gnashed their teeth, beating at the armored plastic to get at her. She went over to verify that the wireless transmitters were still attached to the probes in their brains. The Februus Device had worked perfectly on them, shutting them down so she could surgically insert the sensors deep into their cerebellums. Afterwards, she’d placed a miniscule amount of contaminated flesh in their mouths. The speed with which they reactivated was, for lack of a better word, astonishing. A total of 5.2 seconds to come alive.
She’d timed the second reactivation at 4.9 seconds, and the third at 5.1 seconds. “Amazing.” She decided to let Colonel Sleg know she needed more specimens. His US Navy scholarship was paid for by a Project Genesis grant. A potential future Michael.
He could only get her so many at a time. Bringing up more than a couple was obvious and a bit dangerous to his men, which was the reason she needed Weasel to concentrate on developing a portable Februus Device. Next to the three active zombies was a rack of instruments dutifully feeding data from their brains into the supercomputer. She knew it might take years to decode Pandora’s internal dialogue, but she’d get it.
There were two more containment cells. One was empty, available for her next experiment. The last held a solitary figure. He was tall, muscular, and lean. He was in his fifties yet still in peak physical condition. He was naked from the waist up, only wearing dark pants and combat boots. He stood perfectly at attention, eyes looking forward, not responding to any stimulus. Like the other three, he had probes in his brain, but these fed stimuli in addition to reading EEG data.
Lisha tapped the glass in front on his face. There was no response. She nodded and picked up a tablet, making some notes and reading the results. Ninety-six hours and not a twitch. Motion sensitive cameras were watching and confirmed.
“Excellent.”
She went to a table and picked up a handgun. She disliked the devices; however, she wasn’t beyond using the right tool for the job. Standing as far from the case as she could get, Lisha tapped the release button, and the case opened. No response. Good. Next.
“Forward one step,” she said. The figure instantly obeyed.
A smile cracked her face. “Face left.” He turned in a precise military about face. “Go to the table in front of you.” He did. “Pick up the gun.”
A weapon identical to the one she held rested there. He scooped it up and held it at his side, finger off the trigger. She’d realized all the residual data was still in the brain shortly after beginning these rounds of experiments. At least, all the movements and motor reflexes. She’d started giving instructions and was surprised to find they worked. They could learn.
“Raise the gun and point it at me.” He complied immediately. “Shoot me.” The finger went to the trigger but didn’t pull it. “I said shoot me.” There might have been the barest twitch. She was too far away to be sure. “Shoot me!” she yelled and raised her own gun and pointed it at him. There was a twitch this time, though only a little, but the trigger didn’t move.
“Put the weapon back and get in your cell.” A couple of seconds later, she secured the door. Her breath was a little short as she retrieved the other gun and put the two away. The one she’d let the zombie pick up was unloaded; hers was not. She was relatively confident in the conditioning process, but not confident enough to needlessly risk her life.
“Still, not bad,” she said and made some more notes. “Might be time to try another.” She grinned. Imagine the prospect of an army of such workers, all laboring tirelessly for hours, days on end. Pandora had made their bodies into machines. As long as they were in fit shape before the transformation, or maybe she could take them before using the Februus Device and condition their bodies with training. She made even more notes.
Her watch beeped. She was 30 minutes late now. Time to go. She didn’t want Leon mad, just annoyed, as Chamuel had said. By now, Gregory should have gotten to Leon and begun the process of getting the General to agree to defend the Heptagon. Gregory would be sure to make a good show of the trial, all the while ensuring that they didn’t get more than community service. “A lifetime of helping humanity atone for their sins.” Lisha liked the sound of that.
She put the tablet in its charging cradle and turned to go. The soldier was standing at attention, just as she’d found him. The scar on his chest was completely healed, thanks t
o Pandora. She tapped the glass. “At ease, Michael. We’ll do some more work tomorrow. She turned the lights off on the way out. It had been surprisingly easy to reanimate Michael. The process held fascinating possibilities, and the behavioral conditioning was working. Excellent.
As she headed for the ball field, she was humming a tune. “To Everything There is a Season” by The Byrds. It had always been one of her favorite songs.
# # # # #
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About the Author
Living life as a full-time RV traveler with his wife Joy, Mark Wandrey is a bestselling author who has been creating new worlds since he was old enough to write. A three-time Dragon Award finalist, Mark has written dozens of books and short stories, and is working on more all the time. A prolific world builder, he created the wildly popular Four Horsemen Universe as well as the Earth Song series, and Turning Point, a zombie apocalypse series. His favorite medium is military sci-fi, but he is always up to a new challenge.
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle:
Overture
___________________
Mark Wandrey
Available Now from Theogony Books
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from Overture:
Prologue
May 21st
Dawn was still an hour away as Mindy Channely opened the roof access and stared in surprise at the crowd already assembled there. “Authorized Personnel Only” was printed in bold red letters on the door through which she and her husband, Jake, slipped onto the wide roof.
A few people standing nearby took notice of their arrival. Most had no reaction, a few nodded, and a couple waved tentatively. Mindy looked over the skyline of Portland and instinctively oriented herself before glancing to the east. The sky had an unnatural glow that had been growing steadily for hours, and as they watched, scintillating streamers of blue, white, and green radiated over the mountains like a strange, concentrated aurora borealis.
“You almost missed it,” one man said. She let the door close, but saw someone had left a brick to keep it from closing completely. Mindy turned and saw the man who had spoken wore a security guard uniform. The easy access to the building made more sense.
“Ain’t no one missin’ this!” a drunk man slurred.
“We figured most people fled to the hills over the past week,” Jake replied.
“I guess we were wrong,” Mindy said.
“Might as well enjoy the show,” the guard said and offered them a huge, hand-rolled cigarette that didn’t smell like tobacco. She waved it off, and the two men shrugged before taking a puff.
“Here it comes!” someone yelled. Mindy looked to the east. There was a bright light coming over the Cascade Mountains, so intense it was like looking at a welder’s torch. Asteroid LM-245 hit the atmosphere at over 300 miles per second. It seemed to move faster and faster, from east to west, and the people lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light. It looked like a blazing comet or a science fiction laser blast.
“Maybe it will just pass over,” someone said in a voice full of hope.
Mindy shook her head. She’d studied the asteroid’s track many times.
In a matter of a few seconds, it shot by and fell toward the western horizon, disappearing below the mountains between Portland and the ocean. Out of view of the city, it slammed into the ocean.
The impact was unimaginable. The air around the hypersonic projectile turned to superheated plasma, creating a shockwave that generated 10 times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated as it hit the ocean’s surface.
The kinetic energy was more than 1,000 megatons; however, the object didn’t slow as it flashed through a half mile of ocean and into the sea bed, then into the mantel, and beyond.
On the surface, the blast effect appeared as a thermal flash brighter than the sun. Everyone on the rooftop watched with wide-eyed terror as the Tualatin Mountains between Portland and the Pacific Ocean were outlined in blinding light. As the light began to dissipate, the outline of the mountains blurred as a dense bank of smoke climbed from the western range.
The flash had incinerated everything on the other side.
The physical blast, travelling much faster than any normal atmospheric shockwave, hit the mountains and tore them from the bedrock, adding them to the rolling wave of destruction traveling east at several thousand miles per hour. The people on the rooftops of Portland only had two seconds before the entire city was wiped away.
Ten seconds later, the asteroid reached the core of the planet, and another dozen seconds after that, the Earth’s fate was sealed.
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Get “Overture” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077YMLRHM.
Find out more about Mark Wandrey and Earth Song: Overture at:
https://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of The Fallen World:
This Fallen World
___________________
Christopher Woods
Available Now from Blood Moon Press
eBook, Paperback, and (soon) Audio
Excerpt from “This Fallen World:”
He placed a coin in front of me. I looked at it in surprise. It was a solid gold coin from the Old World. Probably worth ten thousand scripts now.
“This is a down payment,” Hale said. “You find her, you get another. Return her to me unharmed, you get three.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Agent,” he said softly.
I nodded.
He passed me a folder, and I opened it to see a picture of a pretty young red-haired woman. She appeared to be late teens or early twenties and that could be bad. This fallen world is hard on young beautiful people.
Warlords could swoop in with their troops and steal people at will. They were Warlords because the held the weapons or tech that gave them control over those around them.
There had been incidents for years. I had a great disdain for the term, Warlord. They were the ones who had found some advantage and abused it, for the most part.
There were a few good men, such as Wilderman, who held the reigns of fourteen city blocks. He provided protection to those who lived in his domain. He taxed his people but he also provided true protection.
Miles to the East, there was Joanna Kathrop. She held sixteen blocks and ruled with an iron fist. She had found a cache of weapons and provisions in her area several decades back. Her cadre of loyal soldiers backed her and she established her rule of that area.
There were others, both good and bad. The majority of them were bad. They ran single and double blocks. The Warlord that controlled the area where the Strike Zone was located wasn’t the worst, but he was far from the best.
I turned the page and found the sector that Hale and his daughter had lived.
“You were under Yamato?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “he took down the Bishop a decade ago.”
“Yamato’s always been fair,” I said. “Did you take this to him?”
“He couldn’t help me,” he said. “She was traveling across the city.”
“What the hell was she doin’ travelin’?” I asked. “Was she in a caravan?”
The Caravans were the only semi-safe way to travel the city. You paid for your ticket, and the Caravans paid their tax to run through the Zon
es.
“She was going to the new College, set up by Kathrop, in a small Caravan run by a man named Drekk. He claims she never showed up for the last leg of the trip.”
“Drekk,” I spat the word out. “I’ve heard of Drekk. If you want to travel anywhere, you have to use the Accredited Caravans. You can’t use people like Drekk.”
His face fell. “We didn’t know about this until it was too late. We aren’t rich people, Mister Kade.”
I looked down at the coin still in my hand, and looked back to him with one eyebrow raised.
“The life savings of both my family and the family of Seran Yoto, her fiancée.”
“Poor would not be what I would call this, Hale,” I said. “There are people right in this room who won’t see this much wealth in ten lifetimes. You dwell inside the Scraper. You have running water and electricity. Don’t ever try to pass yourself off as the poor. It’s insulting.”
He nodded.
“Who set up the Caravan?”
“I set it up through a man in the Scraper. His name is Denton. He owns a supply store on the bottom floor.”
“Ok,” I said. “That’s where I’ll need to start. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
“But the Caravans don’t run at night.”
“Some people, it’s safer to leave alone, Hale. When you get back to the Scraper, tomorrow, I’ll have some answers for you.”
“How will you cross three zones tonight?”
Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live Page 44