Extinction Plague: Matt Kearns 4

by Greig Beck

  “Jesus Christ, Jack.” Chilton exhaled. “And where are we on that – ideas, I mean?”

  “The science teams have some suggestions, but as yet they are just theories. There’s more they don’t know than they do know, right now. Maybe India or China knows more.”

  “Unlikely. They wouldn’t be coming to us if they had the answers,” Chilton said. “What’s Russia doing? Strange that we haven’t heard from them.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they want to wrestle with it themselves for a while,” Hammerson replied slowly.

  “I don’t like it when those guys run silent. Could it be an attack?” Chilton asked.

  “The swarms seemed to have initiated organically, and there’s no evidence to suggest there’s an external genesis to these events, sir.” But Hammerson had wondered the same thing. Especially after hearing about the Ukraine incident.

  “Okay, Jack, but keep your eyes and ears open, I don’t trust those guys.” Chilton sounded like he sat back. “We always wanted to unite the world, but not like this.” Chilton cleared his throat. “Where are the swarms now?”

  Hammerson was ready for the question but hated it just the same. “We don’t know. They just vanished.”

  “How? In your briefing notes you estimated the swarm at being around ten thousand individual entities. Plus they’re now the size of a dog.”

  “I know, Sir. Like I said, these things are like nothing we’ve ever seen or encountered before. We’re learning as we go.” Hammerson rubbed his chin, the stubble making a rasping sound. “We’ve begun an emergency evacuation of Bay City, all eighteen thousand of them.”

  “Good.” Chilton sounded like he leaned forward as his voice grew louder. “Just remember, Jack, we can’t keep retreating. Sooner or later we’ll end up with our backs against the wall. One more thing. Initial reports stated these things were tiny, and now they’ve grown and are growing. So just how big are they going to get?”

  Good question, Hammerson thought. “Going to have to add that to our list of unknowns, sir.”

  “Get those answers, and get ’em fast, Jack. A military leader’s deadliest adversary is the unknown.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m on it.” Colonel Jack “the Hammer” Hammerson heard the line disconnect.

  Hammerson knew he was on it, but not on top of it – big difference.

  *

  The aerial drones hovered over the field of death. The ground was littered with corpses, and they were all flattened like empty suits of clothing laid out to dry in the sunshine.

  Even the hairless and toothless skulls were shapeless bags, with the open eyes still glinting glass-like in the sunshine. There would be no crows, insects, or other vermin to pick at them as they too had been consumed by the plague swarm.

  Hammerson sat still as stone, his gaze unwavering as one of the drone operators detected movement and zoomed in on one of the bodies.

  It was a man, or once was. And like the others, his body was spread flat like a rug. But the camera zoomed in, and then zoomed in even further, just on his face.

  The eyelids fluttered. The muscles still working, and not needing the scaffolding of bones to support them.

  “God damn.” Hammerson breathed.

  The HAWC leader straightened. “Acquire target.”

  On the screen a red bombsite targeting system appeared, and also a grid system.

  “Quadrant F4.”

  The bombsite moved until it was centered over the flat skull.

  “Discharge one.”

  From the drone, a single nine-millimeter round was fired, penetrating the soft skull. The eyelids stopped fluttering.

  “Forgive me, son.” Hammerson leaned forward to put his head in his hands.

  *

  “You asked me were the swarms converging; we now believe they are,” Hammerson said evenly. “The major swarm is moving up from Texas, a rapidly growing swarm in Wyoming is moving east, North Dakota’s swarm is moving south, and Ohio’s is moving west. Plus dozens of smaller outbreaks.”

  “So there is a pattern. I knew it.” Hartigan nodded. “Where are they headed?”

  “Our plotting software can only make a best guess at this stage, and so far it suggests either Wisconsin, Iowa, or Minnesota. Lot of territory.”

  “Too much,” Hartigan responded softly.

  “How do we narrow it down? We need somewhere we can focus our damn efforts,” Hammerson seethed.

  “I don’t know, Jack. Let me think on it for a while.” Hartigan exhaled through his nose. “But it’ll became clearer as they progress, I should think.”

  “Obviously. Then for now, all I can do is try and get people out of their way.” Hammerson hated retreating, but his job was to protect the innocent, and sometimes that just meant getting them out of the way.

  “Keep at it.” He signed off.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Sokelec system, the Owl Mountains

  Alojzy, Maddock, and Klara used their knives to pry the tops off crates, large and small, and then peer inside.

  Alojzy hummed as he worked, enjoying the task. He had hunted for the missing tunnels and their mythical treasure haul for decades, now he felt vindicated for all the time, effort and money he had put into it.

  So many had laughed, he thought. And now, it is proven, so many were wrong.

  The search had cost him his wife, his money, and his former job. It had become his lifelong obsession. Though he had dropped the gold bar before, one thing for sure, he wasn’t just going to hand everything over to the authorities and see it all crated up and packed off to some other hidden vault, possibly to the benefit of the Germans who were responsible for looting it all in the first place.

  He prized the lid off another crate and held up his flashlight to peer inside. There were small black cloth bags tied with drawstrings at the top. He reached in and opened one and tipped it out.

  “Nice,” he whispered. It was jewelry. Beautiful, magnificent jewelry.

  He checked a few more of the cloth bags and found more of the same – gold coin, bracelets, necklaces, some with precious stones and some with diamonds that glinted in his light like chips of fire and ice.

  Alojzy slowly turned his head, checking on Maddock and Klara and found them still fully occupied with their own investigations. So he snuck a bag in each of his pants’ pockets.

  He was about to move off, but paused and carefully checked on the soldiers again. Satisfied, he quickly snuck another bag into his coat breast pocket and one into his back pocket. They were heavy and dragged on his pants, threatening to pull them down.

  “Shit.” He tucked his flashlight under his arm and stepped back to adjust his belt in another notch.

  “Mr. Alojzy …”

  Roy Maddock’s loud voice startled him and made him momentarily cower.

  “… do not even think of pissing in here.”

  Alojzy exhaled, feeling relieved. He shrugged and turned to grin back sheepishly at the soldier. “I will wait then … or go outside in the mud tunnel.”

  Maddock glared for a moment. “Just keep working, we’ve got a lot to check – quick glance, if it’s not what we’re looking for, then move on to the next crate.”

  “Yes, yes.” He saluted with his flashlight and turned back to the crates.

  After another moment he heard Maddock had gone back to his own investigations and he chuckled softly.

  I’ll be pissing gold tonight, he thought. His only concern was if the soldier wanted to do a check on them before they left. The bags were heavy and difficult to hide, at least until he could get them into his pack, which he’d left topside with Mr. Vin.

  Alojzy opened more crates, finding endless boxes of silver plates, candelabras and cutlery sets – probably the results of looting the wealthy houses as the Nazis swept through their conquered cities’ suburbs. Or maybe they simply cleaned out Jewish people, taking everything from family heirlooms to children’s picture frames.

  He finished his first section and moved
onto the next. These crates were more secure, and some of them were constructed of solid iron, heavy riveted, and more like ammunition boxes. Some were even secured with padlocks, although the locks had corroded so he knew a few sharp strikes with the hilt of his knife should break them open.

  Alojzy laid his hands on the largest of them and thought he felt a tingle run through his fingertips. The box wasn’t big, but seemed to be the most securely fortified. There was the eagle crest of the Nazi SS brigade and writing indicating it had been taken from a collector in Greece in early 1944.

  The Polish guide lifted his blade and struck down several times, each time making the locking mechanism shower rust, then warp, and finally break open.

  He smiled and quickly jammed his knife back in its scabbard and lay his light down on the shelf pointed toward the top of the steel box. He lifted the lid.

  Alojzy exhaled almost dreamily. The light made the gold glint, and large precious stones sparkled like carnival lighting. It was a single necklace in beautifully wrought gold in the shape of two serpents whose open mouths formed a clasp. Along its length it was inlaid with various jewels – he picked out sapphires, rubies and emeralds, and the snake’s eyes were the clearest diamonds he had ever seen, both the size of peas.

  Alojzy’s mouth puckered into an “O” as he silently whistled. He chanced a quick look over his shoulder – Maddock and Klara were still working like machines on their own tasks.

  He looked back and his smile pulled up even higher. The single piece would be worth a king’s ransom ten times over. He quickly stuck his hands in his pockets and removed the bags of gold and piecemeal jewelry, preparing to place them in the box in exchange for the magnificent necklace.

  In one hand he took hold of the necklace to lift it out and with the other he placed the bags in its place. Once again his fingers tingled as though there was a mild electrical current running through the gold.

  Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, he thought. It was obviously ancient and he wondered what royal goddess wore this in some long-gone century. And the best thing was, he could wear it, and therefore not burden his pockets. Maddock might make them empty their pockets when their work was done, but he doubted the man would make them strip down.

  Alojzy undid the clasp and quickly looped it around his neck and then pulled his collar up over it. He stroked it under his clothing, smiling contentedly, and then gently closed the lid of the iron box.

  “Dressed in the adornment of the gods,” he whispered. This will change my life forever.

  He felt the tingling again, this time emanating from his neck and right through his chest. He hummed as he moved to the next box.

  *

  Matt saw the dustcovers over the items against the wall, some being the approximate size of the stone tablet he sought. He crossed to them and pulled them away. He could only stare. And then he began to chuckle.

  “So, this is where you ended up.” He backed up. “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”

  In the glare of his flashlight the huge panels glowed like golden honey, and he now saw they filled a hundred feet of one entire side of the chamber.

  He stepped forward, laying his hand gently on one of the ornate panels. It was the Amber Room from the Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg.

  He ran his fingers along the smooth surface, and then stepped back to let his light move over the amber blends: some fiery red, some golden honey, and some creamy white. It was said to be so beautiful that simply standing before it made people weep from its magnificence. And he could see why.

  The 300-year-old amber artwork was estimated to be valued at a billion dollars, and had been missing since the war.

  “Missing no more.” Matt breathed, almost reverently.

  He went to lay his hand on one of the panels again, but pulled back. Focus, he demanded.

  Matt turned back to the tunnel depths, and his light illuminated more items of gold and silver – it was the treasures of empires.

  He continued on until he arrived at an empty section of tunnel. Almost empty. Because there, leaning against a wall and covered by a dust cloth, was something that looked like a gravestone.

  Matt walked toward it quickly, keeping his light trained on it – he ripped the cover away, fanning the cloud of dust out of the air as his smile began to split his face.

  It was a single slab of greenish-looking stone, covered in the familiar pictoglyphs, images, and writing style he had expected and hoped for.

  Matt nodded. “So, you’re –”

  “Kearns!”

  The sharp, echoing shout from back down the tunnel jerked his head around.

  *

  Roy Maddock prized lids from crates, took a quick look inside, didn’t find what he wanted, banged the lids back down, and moved to the next. Further up the tunnel in her own quadrant, Klara did the same. The pair worked like machines, the treasures meaning nothing to them.

  Behind him, Maddock heard Alojzy working, but much slower. He sighed. He knew the guy was probably filling his pockets, and wondered whether he should give a damn. The thing was, it was a HAWC mission, and so Alojzy looting the already looted goods was really on Maddock’s head. Still if the guy just grabbed a few gold coins after seventy-five years it wasn’t going to kill anyone.

  He heard Alojzy getting slower, and then he sounded like he stumbled into the shelves he was working on. Maddock turned to check on him, and saw the man was leaning against the crate he was working on as if all tuckered out.

  “Okay back there?” He yelled and shone his beam back at the guide.

  Alojzy turned and nodded slowly. Oddly, his hair looked longer and also seemed to be run through with white. Even his frame looked a little shrunken inside his bulky clothing. Maddock frowned and stepped back from his work.

  “Hey, Alojzy, you okay?”

  Klara stopped her work and now also turned to watch.

  Maddock slowly began to approach the man, keeping his light focused on the frail-looking body. He saw that the guide rested his arms on one of the shelves and as Maddock watched his head drooped forward.

  “Are you sick?” Maddock stopped just a few paces from him. “Please step out here.”

  Alojzy turned and moaned, long and low. He then staggered out from the alcove where he had been working.

  “Ah, shit.” Maddock’s brows snapped together and for the first time in his career he was confused and frozen with indecision.

  The Polish man had somehow aged, and now looked to be eighty years old. His hair was white and thin, and his skin was like old yellow parchment stretched drum-tight over a skull covered in liver spots.

  He held up a bony hand in front of his face. “What’s … happening … to me?” He staggered closer.

  Infection, Maddock thought. The man must have opened a crate that the Nazi war machine had stored some biological or chemical agent in. Maddock pointed. “Alojzy, stay where you are, we’ll get you help.”

  “Tired. So tired.” Alojzy ignored him and staggered on, now just a dozen paces away.

  Klara joined Maddock and had her gun drawn. “He’s infected by something.” She aimed at his chest. “Say the word, boss.”

  They didn’t need to. Alojzy’s hair now grew past his shoulders, but then in the next instant it all simply fell out like strands of fine silk. His tiny wrinkled head and neck seemed to swim in oversized clothing that had fit his large frame snugly only minutes ago. His rheumy old eyes pleaded with them as the man sunk to his knees.

  Maddock sucked in a breath and turned to yell over his shoulder: “Kearns!”

  “Help me,” Alojzy rasped as he continued to shrink before their eyes.

  “What the hell is wrong with him?” Klara gripped her gun tighter.

  On his knees, he managed to continue to crawl toward the HAWCs.

  “Stay the fuck back.” Klara’s gun was now held tight in two hands as she drew a bead on his wrinkled forehead.

  “Hold fire,” Maddock said.

 
Alojzy’s mouth hung open and his teeth began to fall from his jaws to sprinkle on the ground around him and skitter away into the shadows. He slowly held up his hands as if they weighed a hundred pounds each. “It … hu-uuurts.” The man looked at the gnarled and liver-spotted claws and began to softly weep.

  “Get Kearns, now,” Maddock said to Klara.

  The female HAWC holstered her weapon and sprinted down the tunnel.

  Maddock crouched in front of the Polish guide. “Alojzy, stay with us. Tell me what happened.”

  He knew what he was witnessing was impossible as the figure looked to be the oldest human being he had ever seen in his life. His small yellow eyes remained fixed on the HAWC leader, but they shrunk back into his skull and Maddock doubted whether the man could see or even speak anymore.

  Behind him he heard the sound of running feet and then Matt Kearns skidded to a stop beside him.

  “What the hell? Is that …?” He went to approach.

  “Stop.” Maddock threw out an arm. “Yeah, Alojzy. He must have come into contact with something in one of those crates.

  “Holy shit. What …?” Matt stared, open-mouthed.

  Maddock just shook his head.

  At first it looked like smoke started rising from the little old man, but then Maddock knew it was really his skin as the guy turned to dust.

  Alojzy opened his mouth, but no final words came, as his tongue was shriveled and black inside his mouth. The flesh flaked from his reptilian-looking hands and face and in another few seconds, the tiny frame collapsed in on itself and fell forward.

  The skull clacked on the concrete ground and then rolled free, and Maddock saw that, still hanging around the yellowing vertebrae of the neck, there was a magnificent golden necklace.

  “He wasn’t wearing that before,” Klara observed.

  “No, I’m betting he found it in one of the crates.” Matt approached and waved away some of the floating dust. He crouched in front of the pile of empty clothing and bones. Maddock joined him.