“Quiet as a fart in the wind.”
“Good.” A group of men, mostly American, joined Powers and what appeared to be a high-up Japanese officer. He was just barely an officer in his own military. Other countries were not his forte yet. The guy could be the goddamn prime minister for all Powers knew. Shit, just a few months ago, he was still a sergeant. “We were just about to head to the area where the Archaeamphora are being prepped for extraction. We are nearly ready to go. Would you like to join us?” One of his own men asked.
“Sure. Yes I would. Thank you.”
They walked through the large inflatable facility. It looked like they had just put tracks into the ground to place doorways and walls, laid concrete down everywhere except where the plants were housed, and put this huge inflatable structure over it. Massive fans were installed in the ceiling to circulate the humid air. It was cool inside . . . but it still smelled like a forest. “This facility is impressive,” Powers said. “Never seen anything quite like this.”
“We got the idea from your military, you know,” the Japanese officer said with a sneer. He didn’t seem to like Powers much. Or any of the other Americans there, for that matter. His hand was resting on the butt of his sidearm the whole time. His eyes jerked around. He was nervous. No . . . that’s not the word, Alexander thought. He hates us. We bring nothing but trouble with us wherever we go. He wants us in and out. They all entered an air-sealed door that hissed when they walked inside. A warm waft of air hit them in the face as they entered. The ground here had been untouched. The forest floor was uncovered and unaltered for about fifty feet around. Powers could see the base of the mountain start to rise up out of the level, flat earth. The Archies were clustered together in a group . . . the trees around them cut down. There were strange, overhead metal cylinders that looked like heat lamps over the plants. The roof of the base was completely open. The blue sky overhead through that little window was surreal. It played tricks on his mind . . . making him think he wasn’t quite where he was. Alexander looked around the room . . . noticing that the facility had a HALON system. There was a glass box on the wall that housed some gas masks. He needed to do something . . . and fast. He was supposed to die with the others. Alexander Powers had no illusions about making it out of the forest alive.
Alexander opened his mouth to speak when a man burst into the room with a large rifle in his hands. “Stay in here! Front gate, sir! They’re attacking us with those smoke bombs! All my men up front are dead!” The second he said it, Powers lifted the canister out of his pocket and threw it against the wall. Before the two men at his side could react, he used a scalpel he found in one of the examination rooms to slice open the neck of the Japanese officer at his left. He snatched the gun off of him and quickly put a bullet in the other’s left eye. The man at the door raised his gun as Powers broke the glass case on the wall with his elbow and placed the mask onto his face. The guy at the door didn’t even have time to aim the weapon when the tuft of white smoke coming from the cracked canister caused his whole body to turn him inside out. Everything that was beneath the skin exploded outward, spraying the walls around him with a dark, red chunky soup. The guy probably didn’t feel any pain at all. He may not even know what the hell happened to him until he watches Heaven’s judgment court replay the footage.
Powers didn’t want to pick up the other gun on the floor. It had blood all over it. He always had a habit of biting his fingernails. God knew what kind of little open areas he had on his hands. Before the smoke reached him, he put on his gloves. The Japanese officer at his feet gurgled and grabbed onto is throat. The thick, cloudy vapor covered him as he attempted to get to his feet. He popped like a balloon, as did the other American officer on Teel’s team. There were red lights mounted on the ceiling of the facility, even in the next room outside of where the plants were being held. There was no alarm, no base-wide intercom. Just the lights. All flashing red. The echo of gunshots rang out in the deathly silent room . . . the only accompanying sound the hissing of the Lynn bomb. From inside the mask, it sounded like someone humming. His breath was fogging up the eye piece, making it difficult to see. When he stepped out of the room, his foot snagged something and he fell to the floor, nearly knocking the mask off of his face. One of the men who no doubt worked at the base . . . an older man, what looked like an American, lie on is back with a gun at his side. The veins on his face were a bright purple and he was shaking horribly. The veins under his skin bulged and began to take on a sickly, horrible black color. The man screamed and clenched his teeth together so hard that he broke one of them. A thin stream of blood rocketed out of his mouth and sprayed the goggles of the mask Powers was wearing.
Two hands grabbed Alexander Powers by the back of his pants and yanked him up. The person who lifted him took his arm and threw him to the side, spinning him on his feet like a top. He drew his gun and aimed it, the world spinning around him. His finger found the trigger and began to squeeze.
“Lieutenant! Alexander! We’re inside!” the muffled voice of Dennis Jackson said.
Powers nearly dropped his gun when he heard it. “Jesus Christ! I almost shot you! Where is everybody?”
“They’re making their way in.” Dennis’ voice behind that gas mask sounded robotic and disjointed. For a second, it almost didn’t sound like him at all. He would never have any idea just how close he came to getting killed. Even if Alexander told him, he would never believe it. Dennis held up a radio and pressed it to Alexander’s ear. “Listen.”
Garbled shouting in Japanese careened through the radio. Sounds of hissing, shouting and loud pops could be heard in the background. Then, a voice in English interrupted. We have a security breach . . . all sections of the base are under alert. We have six intruders on the base . . . I repeat, we have six on the base that must be shot on sight. Take all measures necessary to contain sections A and D-1. The area is NOT on lockdown. Main security terminal destroyed. If anyone can hear me, please . . . The radio went dead.
“Six . . . there are only five of us,” another voice echoed behind them. Victoria Rains walked into the hallway. The American military uniform she had on was sprayed with blood. She held a Lynn canister in each of her hands.
“Six . . .” Powers whispered.
“Maybe they counted wrong,” Dennis said. “This place is in chaos. We are all wearing masks, dressed like military. No one knows who the hell we are. Four of the men stationed here ran right by me a second ago. One of the Japanese officers tried to snatch the mask off my face because he was breathing the gas. Exploded from head to toe. If they don’t even know who the hell we are, how do they know there’s six of us here?”
“Places like these have security devices you’d think are science fiction, Dennis,” Powers said. “We can’t worry about this right now. We need to destroy those plants. Have you seen anything here we can use? Guns will work, but anything we can use to burn with?”
“I saw some of those incinerators in the main security area. When Darin and I tossed one of the canisters inside, we smashed up the console all to hell. We didn’t know what every button on that thing did, so we destroyed it. Apparently, they can’t lock the base down now. Ana is out at the entrance. No one has made it out . . . or in as far as we know.”
“Go back in there, get Darin and grab one of those incinerators. The Archies are down this hall and at the very end. Looked for a door marked D-1. Get in there and burn everything down. EVERYTHING.” Powers patted Dennis on the shoulder and ran to the end of the hallway.
Vic shouted at him when he was nearly out of sight. “Where the hell you goin’!?”
“We need to get out of here, right? I’m going to steal me a helicopter. When I see smoke, your asses better be out of that main gate or I’m leaving you behind. If we leave in a fucking hurry, no one will know what happened here and who did this until we’re back home. I sent word to all the strike teams deployed by our military. Told them that the bunker in Virginia had been overrun. Everyone left there is dead. Ever
y high-ranking officer. That’s where they fucked up, you see? I’m the ranking officer in charge at that bunker now. Hurry up!”
V
Ana Garner stood by the front entrance of the facility. The white cloudy gas was so thick around the area, she could hardly see in front of her. On occasion, someone tried to run out. They didn’t make it three steps past the door. She stood with the stolen radio at her side. For a second, she thought she could see someone at the outer perimeter of the base about fifty feet from the entrance, hopping a fence. Through the fog, it could have been her eyes playing tricks on her, but when she saw the mask on the man’s face, she ran toward the fence with a pistol drawn, shouting at him to stop where he was. He was dressed in a white lab coat . . . the same ones that those Japs in the base wore. Something was off about it, though. It didn’t fit him quite right. The coat was too small. An ID badge was hanging from a lanyard around his neck. The picture on the lanyard was of a bald, older Japanese man. The one Ana saw hopping the fence looked nothing like him, from what she could see. The man turned around and stared at her. Her running slowed down to a walk as she approached him. She lowered the gun in her hands when the man removed his mask and smiled.
“. . . no . . .”
VI
The whole place was engulfed in smoke by the time they all got out of the base. There were still people inside, attempting to use rags to cover their faces and hiding in closets with towels bunched up under the doors to get away from the gas fumes. Dennis, Victoria and Darin ran out of the main entrance as the helicopter lowered itself to a clearing within running distance from where the facility was starting to burn. Darin shouted for Ana, who was nowhere to be seen.
“Darin, we have to go! NOW! She’s probably on the chopper!”
“No! She was told to wait for us! We aren’t going anywhere without her!” Darin shouted and ran along the perimeter fence. His feet caught something and he fell face-forward. He looked behind him to see Ana’s legs sticking out of a large shipping container. There was a bullet hole in one of them. “No . . . no no no no no!” Darin was grabbed by the back of his shirt and yanked upward as he continued to scream. Dennis dragged him away and ran him to the helicopter. Darin’s eyes never left the sight of her lifeless body shoved into that shipping crate. And somehow he knew . . . he knew that a part of his mind will always remain there with her.
VII
Above the facility that was now engulfed in flames, the helicopter began its ascent. Dennis was the last one to load himself in. He never told anybody from that day on what he saw . . . or thought he saw. A man . . . standing at the edge of the burning facility . . . waving at the helicopter. He had the most frightening smile on his face from what he could see. They were too far away and too high up to make out who he was, but he was there, looking so oblivious to what was happening; just staring at the climbing chopper, waving at it like he was sending off his best friends. Dennis looked again and didn’t see anything. He only saw it for a split second and then it was gone.
Even after everything . . . when the horror was over, but the work still far from done . . . in the nights, weeks, months and years that followed after what was left of mankind returned to the cleared-out bunker . . . even to the ripe old end of his life, Dennis Jackson would dream about that one fleeting second hovering over that burning building. The man haunted his dreams and his innermost waking thoughts for the rest of his life. It was like a ghost to him. Something he saw that no one else did. Something that may not have even existed. The more his mind went back to that split second, the more it frightened him. That man . . .
The entirety of the country could now fit inside that bunker. The people that were retrieved, anyway. The years that followed were dedicated to not only surviving, but Powers sending out teams to try and retrieve survivors that were left behind. The ones that rode out the whole thing. Sometimes the teams came back with people. Sometimes they didn’t. They could only hope that other parts of the world had not suffered such immense losses. Mankind would survive.
Even after this, they would survive.
EPILOGUE
"Despite stories passed down and written histories, eventually . . . the most important events in our history tend to fade. Things just become lost in time. In closing, ladies and gentlemen . . . we are this close to proving the theory that ancient man had faced a near extinction; a great cataclysm that nearly wiped out our entire species. Proving this theory will be a remarkable and significant scientific achievement. In doing so, we can learn about our past. Where we came from. We can learn to avoid the disasters that befell our ancestors and one day, avoid it in the event the human race is again on the brink. The fossil record is proving with more and more research that this near-extinction was not caused by natural means as previously believed. This event was caused. I believe that in our lifetime, we will finally find out how and why this disaster happened."
Professor Daniel Copeland looked into the crowd. Two more of them stood up out of their seats and headed toward the back of the auditorium. An older man at the front was shaking his head with a look of complete distain on his face. Nearly half of the room was cleared out now. He took a deep breath and forced himself to continue. "Thank you all for attending this conference. All of my colleagues in attendance . . . we are the scientific community. Every cosmologist, geologist, historian and everything in between must be open to the possibility that what has been proposed in the past may very well be wrong. I will now open this section up for questions."
One person immediately stood up. Professor Copeland knew who she was. He had seen her at every event like this since he was fresh out of school. "Doctor Copeland, I am Cecilia Grant, director of the World History Institute. You mean to tell us that you are wishing to re-write over two-hundred million years of human existence to fit the discrepancies of the fossil record that are quite honestly, miniscule at best? What is your basis for this theory?"
"Two-hundred million years . . . there is a concentrated effort within those who work with me that propose human beings have been on this planet for nearly double that. Geological surveys we are just now starting are finding layers previously overlooked that date slightly before the last ice age. We are finding masses of human remains . . . thousands of fossils in concentrated areas in which these ancient people perished at the same exact time. Worldwide. This is speculation right now, but I and some archaeologists are beginning to believe that these humans were wiped out at exactly the same time. These fossils are not just in one area, either. They are at every single corner of this planet. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind of comet or asteroid collision with Earth, which seems to remain the popular explanation. The evidence simply isn't there."
"Preposterous . . ." a gentleman about Daniel's age stood out of his seat. Grabbing his coat, he walked to the door. When he reached the far wall of the auditorium, he turned around and spoke to the lone man on the stage. "This is your answer? Wild theory, superlative conjecture and flimsy hypothesis that you force us to accept as historical fact? I am appalled that you stake your once impeccable reputation on such a farce of a theory. You are the last scientist that I believed would subscribe to such a thing."
"My dear sir . . . it may not be the answer you want to hear, but I do have an answer, don't I? Since I am the only one who does thus far, it needs to be examined seriously." Professor Copeland returned to address the audience. "Thank you all for your time."
The car was waiting for him outside. Amazing . . . he had actually ran a little late this time. They actually let him finish this one. "Back to the hotel, sir?" the driver spoke, tipping his hat to the once world-renown and respected scientist. He was once known as a man who changed the world. He had discovered things that were known only to be science fiction mere years ago. Lately, this new theory had made him a laughing stock. Never before had he had a backlash like this within his own community. He'd never been steered wrong before and this was honestly irritating at best. Grant money was getting harde
r to come by. They were making fun of him in the papers. Daniel Copeland, the man who discovered antibiotics. The very professor who went into the history books for being the first to diagnose 'Copeland Disorder,' or its official name . . . autism. Daniel Copeland was a legend already, but this new venture was disturbing his spirit and his career. He needed to talk to the man himself. "No thanks. If you could, drive me to the end of Route nine right outside of town. There is an old friend I'd like to meet. I haven’t been out this way in quite a long time. You don't have to stay there for me. Take the rest of the day off. I'll manage, I think."
"Thank you, Professor."
The old man was there on the front porch to greet his dear friend. He sprang out of his old wicker chair and spryly walked down the porch steps. The two men embraced each other with a warm hug. "Daniel Copeland! To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"Heya, Pop," Daniel said in a low voice. Theodore Cunningham wasn't Doctor Copeland's biological father. Theo was his mentor. Whatever the great man saw in Daniel was anyone's guess. At least that's what Daniel always thought. Here he was . . . the great Professor Theo Cunningham. The man who changed scientific thinking overnight. His theory of relativity was legendary. Everybody in the world knew who he was, but for the right reasons. That man was a scientist when real scientists truly existed. Not these overpaid college-boys Daniel went to school with. Guys like Theodore Cunningham were the real deal. His ideas came from nowhere . . . but they were always world-changing . . . like he was receiving whispers from something that knew all the answers.
"Today not go so well?"
"No, Pop. Not well at all."
The Zombie Letters Page 27