by Greig Beck
The gun was reloaded, aimed, and fired. The dart unerringly hit Borishenko’s neck. But this dose was low, and would only take him out for ten minutes.
The men rushed in, removed the darts and then began to prepare for the next phase of their mission.
In his office, Hammerson hummed as he went to a cabinet and took out a half bottle of Jack Daniels and a single tumbler glass. He poured himself a good double shot, and then took the glass to the window and stared out over the training field.
Things would get back to normal soon. The people of the planet would survive and move on, perhaps a little wiser for the brush with the plagues. After all, nothing focuses the vision like potential extinction.
He smiled and sipped again, feeling the heat travel down his throat to bloom like fire in his belly. He felt good. And there was one thing that made him feel even better – a satisfying evening-up of the balance sheet.
*
Borishenko slowly felt his senses returning. He’d been having a wonderful dream and then it became filled with shadows and coldness.
He opened his eyes and smacked dry lips. He went to scratch his nose, but found he couldn’t, and realized his arms were tied behind his back.
“What?”
He came fully awake then, and felt the chill of the night air on him. He was still in his silk pajamas, but was balanced on the balcony edge. And there was something rough around his neck.
“What’s happening?”
Borishenko saw three huge men in all-over dark outfits, and full face-covering masks with night-vision goggles. They looked robotic, pitiless, and utterly terrifying.
He sucked in his stomach and thrust out his chest. “I am Nadi Borishenko, Colonel in Russian Military Defense. Who the hell are you and what do you want?”
The men said nothing, but one was holding a computer tablet, and he stepped up on a stool and held it up to Borishenko’s face.
There was the image of a man there, brutal-looking, mid-fifties, with an iron-gray crew cut. His bearing was military and his eyes bored into Borishenko’s. It took a few seconds, but then Borishenko recognized him – Colonel Jack Hammerson.
Hammerson began to speak. “By now, you are standing on a ledge and there is a rope around your neck. You planned an attack on American soil that was to result in major American causalities.”
“That wasn’t me,” Borishenko spluttered.
Hammerson sipped from a tumbler and stared back at him like he was nothing.
“When I find you –” Borishenko began.
“For your crimes …” Hammerson smiled just a fraction. “… the sentence is death.”
Borishenko’s first thought was to yell and bluster, but he saw there was not a single ounce of give in the man’s rock-like expression.
“I was under orders,” he quaked.
“It was your idea,” the man replied.
Borishenko’s mind spun seeking options. “Ten million dollars … no, euros,” he yelled.
“My one regret is that I don’t have more time to inflict the pain on you that you had planned for our people. But this will have to do.” Hammerson’s eyes were pitiless.
Another of the men stepped forward and held up a note. In his other hand a surgical stapler and he pressed the paper to Borishenko’s chest and fired off a staple into both flabby pectorals, pinning the note there.
The Russian howled with pain.
The man holding the computer stepped back, and before he shut it, Borishenko heard the American utter one last word.
“Goodbye.”
He was then pushed. The second floor wasn’t high, but it was enough to gain the drop speed required so the sudden stop of a man weighing around two hundred pounds would end with enough force to separate neck vertebrae. Which is exactly what happened.
In under a single minute, the three agents had removed all trace of their being there, and like ghosts vanished back into the night.
Borishenko’s body swung, already beginning to drip escaping body fluids to the ground below. Stapled to his chest the note contained a simple message in Russian, a warning or a threat, visible to anyone, but aimed squarely at the President of Russia. It read: If you come at the king, you’d better not miss.
*
Volkov sat bolt upright as the scream shattered the morning air. His maid bringing his coffee had dropped the tray and its thousand fragments of fine bone china plus dark rich coffee now covered his marble floor tiles.
She had a hand up over her mouth, and he scowled, about to reprimand her, when he smelt it, something over the normal odors of his room, and the fresh coffee. It was an animal scent, and something else he knew well, the coppery tang of fresh blood.
Volkov followed her gaze and saw it: his beloved bear, Ursa, or at least a part of her – her severed head was jammed on a coat rack and staring mad-eyed and mouth agape at him in his bed.
There was a sign hanging around its neck in Russian. It contained just three words: I see you.
Volkov jumped up, yelling commands, but then after a few moments he sat down slowly. Because he knew then – they could have killed him. But didn’t. This was a show of strength and skill and also a warning. Next time it’d be his head on the pike.
He closed his eyes. In a sea of predators, he was one of the biggest. But there were always bigger ones.
CHAPTER 50
The mop-up continued for days after the fungal dispersal but there was no further sign of the massive insect-like creatures from the inner Earth.
The search for survivors in areas that had been totally overrun also went on, but in most counties there was nothing left but empty countryside with curtains of mist moving across the landscape like the ghosts of a thousand battlefields of days gone by.
We can rebuild, we always do, Hammerson thought as he watched one of the drone feeds from ground zero in Minnesota. He was about to turn away, when he heard a shout.
“Hallelujah, we’ve got a survivor.” The soldier grinned from ear to ear. “Make that two – there’s a dog with her.”
“Zoom in.” Hammerson walked toward the screen as the camera on the drone enlarged the woman’s dirt- and tear-streaked face. He exhaled and then looked skywards for a second. Thank you, he breathed.
“Get ’em out, ASAP.” Hammerson pulled his phone out and began to dial.
*
Matt hugged his mother tight and wept onto her shoulder. Belle, the huge German shepherd, tried to worm her way between them, perhaps not ready yet to stop her guardian work over the small woman.
Lana watched and smiled with eyes swimming with tears. Matt blinked away his own tears. Karen had just learned of Megan’s fate but she already knew the young woman was lost from that fateful night.
Matt hated himself for being away and not with them when he was needed. What was the value in helping save the human race when he wasn’t even able to save the ones he loved?
“I couldn’t do anything to stop them,” Karen said in a trembling voice.
“Don’t,” Matt whispered. “You survived, that’s all that matters now.” He kissed her cheek again, hard, and put an arm around her shoulders.
He looked down at the dog. “And Belle, you have my permission to sleep on Mom’s bed anytime you want.” The dog grinned up at him.
He looked to Lana. “Ready?”
She nodded. “It’s all over, let’s go home.”
Please be true, he prayed.
EPILOGUE
Drill site 2, Force Energy Corp, West Erregulla, Australia
10 years later – 21 December
Bill Frankston read off the details coming back from the drill sensors, and liked what he saw – they’d intercepted and started drilling through the high cliff sandstone at a depth of 15,280 feet, and they were now the deepest onshore drill site in Australia.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now number one.” He grinned and held a finger in the air.
Frankston read more of the data: cuttings from these sections so
far included clean coarse-grained quartzose sandstone, which had good gas-bearing prospects due to a protective clay coating. Once they punched through the shale, if they didn’t find gas pockets, he’d eat his hat.
The equipment screamed as the drill fought against the harder shale. He might need to change the toothed bit if it began to slow its rate of cut.
An hour later, they finally broke through, and the sensor lights blinked, signaling their success.
“Whoa, cap it,” he yelled.
But there seemed nothing to cap. Jerry Havers swung in his chair in the control room. “We got pressure, but no gas. I’m thinking its just liquid, boss.”
“Oil?” Frankston frowned.
Jerry shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.”
Frankston swore softly, and then sighed. “Okay, grab me a sample and let’s see what we just spent ten million bucks drilling into.”
It took an hour for the core rod to be withdrawn from the thousands of feet below the earth, and brought into the outer analysis rooms. The rod was slid out of the sampler and laid on the long steel bench as the geologists crowded around.
Frankston pushed them aside. “What the hell?” His brow furrowed. “Would someone like to tell me what the hell I’m looking at here?”
The group stared down at the six-inch thick, ten-foot long pipe of multicolored rock, soil, and other striated material, all laying in a spreading pool of viscous-looking liquid.
“I’ve no idea what this is.” Jerry lifted a magnifying glass. “Some sort of fossil, or fossil residue, maybe.”
Frankston leaned forward on his knuckles. “What did we just hit?”
The golf ball sized globes filled the core sample, and as Frankston watched, some of them began to blacken in the air.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Many readers ask me about the background of my novels – is the science real or imagined? Where do I get the situations, equipment, characters and their expertise from, and just how much of it has a basis in fact?
In regards to Extinction Plague, there have been hundreds of large-scale extinctions in Earth’s history. In addition there have been five mass extinctions where nearly all life was almost completely wiped out.
We understand why most of those events happened, except for one that occurred two hundred million years ago at the end of the Triassic period. At that time, something killed off eighty percent of all creatures on Earth, and we have no idea how or what was the cause. Extinction Plague poses my “what if” question.
Silicon-based Life-forms
Silicon-based life has been a TV trope for as long as I can remember. From Star Trek to The Outer Limits, we have seen rock monsters, lava people, and crystal demons.
But there is a good reason this element is used as the basis for “strange” and different life-forms. All known life on Earth is based on the element carbon. It is the fourth most abundant element in the universe, but silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust after oxygen. Like carbon, it can form bonds with four other atoms at once, form long-chain polymers, and bind to oxygen, all of which is essential as the building blocks of life.
Carbon chemistry is perfect for life under the benign conditions on Earth. However, silicon-based life-forms might be possible under different conditions, as silicon bonds are more stable than carbon at high temperatures. Therefore, silicon-based life could arise on a planet that is too hot for carbon-based life.
Or they might not even be found on a planet’s surface at all. The hot, hydrogen-rich but oxygen-poor conditions deep inside our planet, which are lethal to carbon-based life, might be perfect for the complex silicon chemistry. It was this theory that drove my design of the silicoids.
Global Mass Extinctions
The slate of life has nearly been wiped clean on the planet several times. Species go extinct all the time, and scientists estimate that at least 99.9 percent of all species of plants and animals that ever lived are now extinct.
Most extinctions happen gradually over millions of years, and some vanish in the blink of an eye. In mass extinctions, wide ranges of animals and plants have died out, from tiny marine organisms to some of the largest creatures to ever live on our planet. Climate change, volcanic events, and meteor strikes are usually to blame. But some are just mysteries.
There have been many significant extinctions. But a “mass” extinction is when over fifty percent of all life on Earth dies out. To date there has been five. A summary is as follows:
Ordovician–Silurian Extinction: 444 million years ago, 86% of species lost
Life on Earth was still young and confined to the oceans. At that time the abundant sea creatures were filter-feeding animals and were wiped out by a short ice age and change in the environmental gases. Paleo-geologists believe that the mighty Appalachians being uplifted (they once rivalled the Himalayas in size) exposed silicate rock that sucked the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, radically chilling the planet.
Late Devonian: 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost
The seas were now filled with primitive life-forms long before the land was colonized by anything other than primitive plants. Trilobites were the dominant animals and their simple design of tough, spiky armor, multifaceted eyes, and omnivorous diet, meant they were ultimate survivors. But they were nearly wiped out in the second mass extinction. The prevailing theory was the newly evolved land plants that now covered the land fertilized the soils, creating nutrient runoff during rains that fed into the warm shallow seas. This triggered global algal blooms that sucked oxygen out of the water, suffocating the bottom dwellers.
End Permian Extinction: 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost
A collision of natural catastrophes created what is known as “the great dying”, the worst extinction event the planet has ever seen. It nearly ended all life on Earth.
A mega-volcano eruption near Siberia blasted gases into the atmosphere. Methanogenic bacteria responded by belching out methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Global temperatures surged while oceans acidified, stagnated, and began expelling poisonous hydrogen sulfide. It took Earth 300 million years to recover.
Triassic–Jurassic Extinction: 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost
Of all the great extinctions, the one that ended the Triassic is the most baffling as no clear cause has been found.
Eighty percent of all animals vanished, including the large amphibians plus the therapsids (the primitive mammal-like reptiles), and other major predators. This vacating of terrestrial ecological niches had one benefit for our history books (and for fiction writers) in that it allowed for the rise of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic period.
End Cretaceous Extinction: 65 million years ago, 76% of all species lost
Sixty-five million years ago a massive asteroid impact blanketed the world in a cloud of dust and smoke, triggered a global cooling that lasted decades and caused the last mass extinction that wiped out some seventy-six percent of plants and animals and, sadly, ended the dinosaur’s reign. In the oceans, the immense sea reptiles vanished, as well as the once abundant ammonites.
The Theia Impact
The giant-impact hypothesis, called the Theia Impact, suggests that the moon formed out of the debris left over from a collision between Earth and an astral body the size of Mars.
Around 4.5 billion years ago, in the Hadean period of our planet (so named after the Greek underworld to describe the hellish conditions of our world at that time), a massive colliding body called Theia (from the name of the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the moon) struck our planet, then know as Gaia.
Following the collision, the enormous amount of debris thrown up into the atmosphere was captured, and in turn coalesced into the moon. Gaia was also reformed, and became what we know today as Planet Earth.
The Magical Necklace of Harmonia
I came across the magical necklace, referred to simply as the Necklace of
Harmonia, when I was researching for my book The Immortality Curse, and knew one day I would get to use it!
In legend, the Necklace of Harmonia allowed any woman wearing it to remain eternally young and beautiful. It thus became a much-coveted object among women of the House of Thebes in Greek myths. It was described in ancient Greek passages as being of beautifully wrought gold, in the shape of two serpents whose open mouths formed a clasp, and inlaid with various jewels.
Hephaestus, blacksmith of the Olympian gods, discovered his wife, Aphrodite, goddess of love, having a sexual affair with Ares, the god of war. He became enraged and vowed to avenge himself for Aphrodite’s infidelity by cursing, not only her, but her children and all her children’s children resulting from the affair.
The curse of the Necklace of Harmonia seemed to be selective in its rewards and punishments as, along with bestowing eternal youth on the wearer, it could also bring them great misfortune; such as those of the ill-fated House of Thebes.
Was it real? Well, it left its mark on history, as the tyrant Phayllus, one of the Phocian leaders in the Third Sacred War (356 BC – 346 BC), stole the necklace and gave it to his mistress. After she had worn it for years her timeless beauty was said to be second to none. But soon her son became seized with a strange madness and set fire to their house, where she perished in the flames along with all her worldly treasures. She got her beauty, but also her misfortune.
Billion-Year-Old Fungi