The 6th Extinction

by James Rollins

  “Then I could get used to this place.” Kowalski stalked off, perhaps looking for a quiet place to light up.

  Gray turned to more practical matters. “What’s the status of food and water?”

  “No food in the module,” Jason answered. “Only what the tractor driver brought with him. It was meant to last him several days in case he got stranded, but his reserves are not nearly enough to cover our numbers. Water shouldn’t be a problem, though. We can always melt snow or ice.”

  “Then we’ll have to ration what food we have.” Gray turned next to Karen as she sank to a seat, her face wan and tired. “About what happened . . . those munitions that blew off that chunk of ice must have been buried for some time. How could that be?”

  “I can only hazard a guess. The bombs could’ve been drilled into place and frozen over long before the station arrived.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “It wouldn’t be that hard,” she speculated. “We shifted Halley VI closer to the sea about three months ago, so the climate scientists could complete their study of the accelerating thaw of the continent’s ice sheets. Our move had been mapped out and scheduled a full year in advance, including picking the coordinates for our new location.”

  Gray considered this. “So somebody with such foreknowledge could’ve easily laid this trap, ready to destroy the station at a whim.”

  “Yes, but it still doesn’t explain why.”

  “Perhaps it has something to do with Professor Harrington’s research. Your station acts as the gateway to Queen Maud Land, where the professor’s group set up shop. If somebody wanted to suddenly isolate that secret site, getting rid of Halley VI would be an important first step.”

  She looked even more ashen.

  He asked, “Do you have any idea what Harrington was working on?”

  Karen shook her head. “No, but that doesn’t mean rumors didn’t spread about what was going on out there. Stories ranged from the discovery of a lost Nazi base to the secret testing of nuclear weapons—which was done in this region by your own country, I might add, back in 1958. But all of this is wild conjecture at best.”

  Still, whatever the truth was, it was clearly worth killing over.

  And likely still is.

  He glanced to one of the triangular windows. “We’ll need to post lookouts. All sides of the module. And at least one person patrolling outside, watching the skies.”

  Karen stood from the table. “I’ll begin arranging shifts.”

  “One other thing,” Jason said before she left. He pointed to a figure in oil-stained coveralls. “Carl says he can stay with the John Deere.”

  The man nodded. He must be the tractor driver.

  “Its cabin is heated,” Jason added. “Carl can tweak our position to keep the module under the fog flowing down from the coast. It should help hide us.”

  Gray admitted it was a solid plan. But how long could they hold out?

  And more worrisome: Who would find them first?

  11:43 P.M.

  As midnight approached, Jason pulled into his parka and gathered his gloves, scarf, and goggles. He was scheduled for the first shift of the new day. They changed patrols on the hour, to avoid anyone standing watch for too long out in the frigid weather.

  While he had taken a nap in preparation for his shift, he felt far from rested, nagged by worries.

  And I’m certainly not looking forward to the next sixty cold minutes.

  Once suited up, he headed to the hatch. He found Joe Kowalski leaning against the frame. He had the smoldering stub of cigar between his back molars, looking like he’d been chewing on it for a while.

  “Shouldn’t you be catching some shut-eye?” Jason asked. Sigma’s demolitions expert was scheduled to relieve him at 1 A.M.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He took out his cigar and pointed its glowing tip at Jason. “You be careful out there. From what I hear, Crowe’s got big hopes for you. Don’t go getting yourself killed.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  “That’s just the thing, planning’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the unexpected that’ll bite you in the ass every time. Blindside the hell out of you.”

  Jason nodded, recognizing the practical wisdom buried behind those gruff words. He stepped to move past Kowalski, when he noted a small photo clutched in the man’s thick fingers. Before Jason could get more than a glimpse of the woman in the picture, Kowalski tucked the photo away.

  As Jason hauled open the door, he wondered if the man’s warning was less about the dangers of a mission and more about the pitfalls of a romantic life.

  But such thoughts vanished as the cold struck him like a hard slap to the face. The wind came close to shoving him off the high deck. He half slid his way to the ladder and climbed down. He found one of the researchers sheltered on the leeward side of one of the giant ski towers.

  The man crossed, patted Jason on the shoulder, and with a voice quavering from the bitter cold said, “All quiet. If you get too frozen, hop into Carl’s cab to warm up.”

  With those few words, the researcher headed up the ladder and toward the promise of a warm bed.

  Jason checked his watch.

  Only fifty-nine minutes to go.

  He slowly paced the station, staying out of the wind as much as possible. He studied the skies, searching for any telltale lights of an approaching plane. All remained dark out there; not even the stars were visible through the ice fog rolling across the shelf from the distant coast. The only light came from the south, a slight yellow glow, marking the John Deere’s location. He used its position like a compass as he made his rounds.

  After a while, the howl of the wind seemed to fill his head, rattling around inside his skull. His eyes began to play tricks on him, seeing phantom lights in the gloom. He blinked or rubbed them away.

  As he circled yet again, he considered hopping into the tractor’s cabin—not for the warmth, but to escape the monotony of the darkness and the perpetual howl of the katabatic winds. He moved out from under the hulking module and stepped toward that patch of yellow light, only to have a vague glow catch his eyes to the far left, to the west.

  He tried blinking away that dull light, only to have it become two eyes shining out of the gloom. Through the roaring in his head, a lower grumbling intruded—accompanied a moment later by the crunch of ice.

  It took him another half breath to realize it wasn’t a trick of the night, but something huge, barreling through the winds toward the lone module.

  Jason hauled out his radio and brought it to his lips. “I’ve got movement out here. On the ice. A big vehicle approaching from the west.”

  “Copy that,” the lookout inside said. The man shouted to others inside the station before returning to the radio. “I’m seeing it now, too!”

  Jason moved behind the cover of one of the ski supports, the radio still at his lips. “Tell Carl to douse his lights out there!”

  After another couple of seconds, that island of warm light extinguished. The only illumination now came from those twin beams of light that rapidly grew larger and brighter. Jason estimated that what approached was the size of a tank. This particular guess was heightened by the sound of treads grinding across ice.

  Jason heard the hatch slam shut above. Then Gray and Kowalski came clambering down the ladder, pistols in hand. Only then did Jason think to remove his own weapon from inside his parka.

  “Over here!” Jason called to them.

  The two men joined him.

  Gray pointed to the other hydraulic towers. “Spread out. Stay hidden. Let them get close. Offload even. Any signs that they’re hostiles, we’ll use the darkness to wage a guerrilla war on the ground. Barstow is on the roof with Karen, armed with our last two rifles, to help cover us from above.”

  After getting acknowledgment from Jason about this plan, Gray headed to one pillar, Kowalski another. They ran low, trying not to be seen.

  The lumbering vehicle had slowed, its eng
ine changing timbre.

  Then it stopped forty yards off.

  The winds shifted the fog enough to reveal a strange sight. The arctic machine was the size of a massive tank and looked like one, too. Giant belt treads flanked both sides, each rising taller than an elephant’s back. They supported what appeared to be an armored bus topped by what looked like the wheelhouse of a tugboat.

  Lights flared up top, along with shadowy movement from within.

  A door opened in that wheelhouse, and a dark figure stepped out onto the open deck that circled the upper structure. A shout cut through the wind’s howl. It was not loud enough to discern any words, but it sounded like a query, a challenge.

  Another figure passed something to the one on the deck.

  From the sudden increase in volume of the speaker, it must have been a bullhorn. “HELLO! WE INTERCEPTED YOUR RADIO COMMUNICATION EARLIER! WE KNOW ABOUT YOUR TROUBLE!”

  The speaker was clearly a woman, British from her accent. She must have eavesdropped on Gray’s earlier radio call to Karen.

  “WE FOLLOWED YOUR TRACKS AND CAME TO HELP!”

  Gray bellowed from his hiding place, needing no bullhorn to be heard. “Who are you?”

  “WE REPRESENT PROFESSOR ALEX HARRINGTON. WE WERE EN ROUTE TO COLLECT A GROUP OF AMERICANS WHEN WE HEARD OF THE ATTACK.”

  Jason bit back his shock and considered this possibility. Painter had told them that the professor’s contacts would be flying over to Halley. But after eavesdropping on the station’s attack, had they turned back and come overland instead?

  “WE MUST HURRY! IF THE AMERICANS ARE HERE, THEY MUST COME WITH US RIGHT AWAY.”

  “And who exactly are you?” Gray pressed, plainly wanting more proof. “What is your name?”

  “I’M STELLA . . . STELLA HARRINGTON.”

  Jason took in a sharp breath, recognizing the name from the mission files. The speaker confirmed this in the next breath.

  “THE PROFESSOR IS MY FATHER—AND HE’S IN DIRE TROUBLE!”

  15

  April 29, 7:55 P.M. PDT

  Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

  If they poke me with one more damned needle . . .

  Jenna paced the length of her section of the newly expanded patient containment unit. She’d been quarantined here for the past twelve hours.

  Inside the hangar, the CDC team had added new pods to the original quarantine hospital. Through a window on one side, she could see Josh, unconscious on his bed. He had suffered two more seizures during the past afternoon, fading in and out of delirium.

  From her pod, she watched the young man being subjected to another battery of tests. A nurse held him rolled up one side, while a doctor performed a spinal tap. There remained little doubt Josh had become septicemic with whatever microbe was out there. But from what Jenna had been told, they hadn’t been able to isolate the presence of the infectious virus in any of his tissues or blood as of yet.

  They kept taking samples from her, too, looking for the same.

  On the other side of her pod—my cell, she thought angrily—another window revealed Sam Drake in the neighboring section. Like her, he was dressed in a hospital gown and looked no happier as he sat in his bed. They had both been thoroughly scrubbed upon arriving here, a humiliating procedure that included having to huff through a pressurized nebulizer that delivered an aerosolized dose of a powerful broad-spectrum antimicrobial. It was a precaution in case they had inhaled any of the infectious particles at the Yosemite cabin—not that the drug had yet to be proven effective.

  But better than nothing, I suppose.

  Since then, she and Drake had been swabbed, scraped, poked, and had every bodily fluid collected. So far neither of them suffered from any of the clinical symptoms Josh had shown within the first twelve hours: namely a spiked fever and muscle tremors. Because of that, the doctors believed she and Drake might have escaped exposure at that cabin. Still, as an additional precaution, they had to stay quarantined for another day. If they remained asymptomatic, they could be discharged.

  Could be being the operative message.

  Very little was certain at the moment.

  With one exception . . .

  She paced another lap in her cell. Worry kept her moving, agitated, unable to sit or lie down for long. There was a third member of the Yosemite team whose fate was less uncertain.

  Nikko.

  Her partner had been whisked over to the suite of research labs across the dark hangar. Lisa assured her that he would be well taken care of, that she would keep Nikko kenneled in her own lab. Unfortunately, Nikko was spiking a fever already, accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea.

  My poor boy . . .

  Jenna longed to break out of here, to go to him. If only to comfort Nikko, to let him know she loved him. Anger fought with grief, leaving an ache in her chest. She hated to think of him suffering alone, wondering where she was, believing he’d been abandoned. But worst of all, she could not fathom losing him.

  “You’re going to wear a rut right through the floor.”

  She turned to see Drake at the window, his finger on the intercom button. He smiled softly, sadly, plainly knowing she was hurting.

  She crossed and pressed the intercom’s talk button. “If only I could go to him.”

  “I know, but Lisa will do everything she can.” Drake’s gaze moved past her shoulder to the window behind her. “Especially since she’s got a personal stake in all this.”

  Jenna felt a twinge of guilt. What was the loss of a dog compared to a brother? Maybe she needed to gain a better perspective about all of this, to stay professional. After all, Nikko was just a dog.

  But she refused to accept that.

  To her, Nikko was just as much of a brother.

  “What we can do while we’re waiting,” Drake said, lowering his voice, “is to figure out what we’re all fighting. If we knew what was brewed up in that damned lab, then both Josh and Nikko would have a better chance of surviving.”

  Thunder boomed overhead, rattling the hangar, reminding her that it wasn’t just Josh and Nikko who were at risk. The storm had finally reached Mono Basin, and the rain had begun to fall in the highlands beyond. According to Director Crowe, emergency crews were using helicopters to dump piles of sandbags into all of the lower streams and dry creek beds, to try to limit the contagion’s spread.

  Not that anyone expected total containment.

  Even if the initial sandbagging efforts were effective, how long would those makeshift dams hold? And what if the organism reached the subterranean aquifers that drained throughout the region, contaminating the very water table?

  Drake was right.

  She kept her thumb on the talk button. “But how can we help find out anything more about that damned microbe? Especially locked up inside here. With the saboteur dead, that was our last direct lead.”

  “Then what about indirect?” Drake offered.

  Jenna took a deep breath, trying to push back her anxiety and frustration. With the base blown up, with Hess kidnapped and still missing, the trail seemed cold. As far as anyone knew, Hess’s inner circle of researchers was present at the lab at the time of its destruction. Amy Serpry had been their only hope.

  With more time, maybe another clue could be found.

  But they didn’t have that time.

  “Is there something we missed?” Drake asked, plainly racking his own brain.

  She reviewed everything in her head: from the initial SOS received by Bill Howard to watching Amy Serpry’s body being airlifted away, sealed in a body bag. Her corpse had become the focus of attention over at the suite of BSL4 labs across the hangar.

  Jenna closed her eyes, walking herself through the horrors of the past forty-eight hours. It was hard to believe only two days had passed since that call from Bill Howard.

  That call . . .

  She opened her eyes, letting the shock show.

  “Jenna?” Drake asked.

  “I have to reach Painter Crowe!
Now!”

  8:12 P.M.

  For the moment, Painter had Colonel Bozeman’s office to himself. It was a rare moment of privacy in what had become the command center for emergency operations in the area. In the past two days, a hurricane of political, military, and law enforcement agencies had crashed down upon this area, mostly falling upon Painter’s own head. If an agency had an acronym, they were here, needing to be pacified, directed, or consulted.

  As was usual with such matters, it had quickly threatened to become an ineffectual clusterfuck. Luckily, due to past efforts by Sigma, the president had personally intervened and granted Painter emergency authority, tapping him as the top dog here.

  But be careful what you wish for . . .

  Painter was still struggling to rein in the various agencies, to get everyone moving as a team. It had left little time for him to think, only react, to put out fires where he could.

  So he took advantage of this momentary calm, while knowing this was only the proverbial eye of the hurricane.

  I should go down and check on Lisa.

  It had been hours since he’d last visited her. Not that talking through a window was the same as holding her. She had looked a ghost of herself even back then. He knew what drove her to such a ragged edge. Josh was getting worse, and there remained no effective treatment on the horizon.

  He shoved his chair back, ready to comfort her as best he could—when the door opened. It was the Marine who had been assigned as his aide, a straight-laced young woman in a crisp uniform and cap named Jessup.

  “Director Crowe,” she said, “I have Ranger Beck on the line. She said it’s urgent.”

  “Patch the call through.”

  He had spoken only briefly to Jenna and Drake after they returned from Yosemite. So far, the pair remained in good health and had likely avoided exposure. It was a small bit of good news in an otherwise bad day, especially as there remained no word from Gray’s team in Antarctica, not since he had reached that British ice station. So far Kat was not overly worried, reporting that a massive solar flare was compromising communication across most of the southern hemisphere.