Extinction Code

by James D. Prescott

  If Jack had spent his life listening to naysayers, he’d probably still be working the oil fields. Twenty minutes later, Jack’s truck skidded onto a gravel road and into the farm. An eighteen-wheeler stood next to the barn, its back doors ajar. Piled inside were the bodies of dead pigs. Jack got out of his car and headed for the barn. Inside, he found a man with an apron kneeling on the ground, a needle in one hand. Pinned under his other hand was a piglet. The little thing was no longer than a shoebox.

  “Stop,” Jack had yelled, only dimly aware of the eerie silence he was shattering.

  Two men with animal control windbreakers appeared out of nowhere, their arms raised, palms out. “You can’t be here, sir.”

  “He’s the last one, isn’t he?” Jack had asked, understanding the situation.

  The veterinarian pivoted without raising himself off the ground and nodded. His face was deeply tanned like worn leather. “Believe me, son, I didn’t ask for this, but these animals were in a sorry state.”

  “I don’t doubt you. But that’s my pig.”

  The vet looked down at the animal, confused, then back at Jack.

  “Fact, this whole place is mine.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “It’s for sale, isn’t it?” Jack said.

  The vet’s eyes dipped. “Technically, it’s going to auction.”

  “And I’m gonna buy it, along with him.” He pointed past the vet to the piglet he was holding on the ground.

  “Whatever you say, mister, but this pig ain’t a boy, it’s a girl.” The vet put the cap back on the needle while the animal control officers looked at one another and returned to the truck. “Gordon LeMay,” the man said, removing his glove, and extended his hand to Jack. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch, you know that?”

  Jack laughed. Yes, he knew.

  Now, back in his cabin on the rig, Gordon’s smoky drawl was still droning into his ear.

  “I got another leak in the stables, about a mile of broken fences and two farm hands eager to get paid.”

  Jack sighed. Being impulsive had a funny way of landing you in piles of shit up to your elbows. There was no way to sugarcoat things. The farm was falling apart, had been for years. Restoring it to full functionality would require more cash than Jack had on hand. Between prior scientific expeditions, he’d started doing seismic work for mining companies. Had even developed something of a sixth sense when it came to finding diamond deposits. Another reason why DiCore had agreed to come on board with little more than Jack’s word and a few pages of data. But even the money he made moonlighting hadn’t been enough.

  “The horses and pigs, do they have enough to eat?” Jack asked, rubbing the pads of his fingers together.

  “They do.”

  “George too?” George was Jack’s llama, a temperamental beast that nipped at everyone but him.

  “George is as big a bastard as ever,” Gordon informed him merrily. “And the goats are fine. All the animals are perfectly healthy.”

  A sense of relief washed over Jack. “Inside the safe in my office you’ll find the emergency cash reserve. Use what’s there to make repairs and pay the boys. I’ll wire you more as soon as I have it.”

  Gordon agreed and hung up.

  Jack was still eyeing the sat phone in his hand when a knock came at his cabin door. He opened it to find Rajesh. Jack nudged past him into the corridor. “Your girlfriend not with you?”

  Rajesh looked momentarily confused, an expression magnified by his glasses, which were bent out of shape. “That’s why I’ve come. She has completed compiling the data from the latest scan.”

  The time it took to compile a seismic scan was usually measured in days, not hours. “You won’t impress me by lying, Rajesh,” Jack said, suddenly feeling bad for the MIT professor.

  “I assure you, I’m telling the truth. She has also begun cleaning up the large dark splotch on the seismic surveys.”

  “How long did she take on the first one?”

  Rajesh’s eyes flickered to a space above Jack’s head. “Um, one hour, thirty-five minutes, ten seconds.”

  “And the second?”

  “One hour, twenty minutes, thirty-two seconds.”

  Jack felt the blood rush up his neck and into his face. “But she had to compile the second scan from scratch.”

  “That’s what I was trying to explain in my presentation, Dr. Greer. She accessed your servers on board the rig and fine-tuned the multi-attribute full waveform inversion algorithm you were using. It’s now far more efficient.”

  For once, Jack was speechless. “So the seismic scans are cleaner?”

  “More than clean,” Rajesh said, his forehead furrowing. “They show something I’ve never seen before.”

  •••

  Jack sat near the television screen as Gabby dimmed the lights. Assembled in the conference room with them were the usual suspects.

  Gabby’s gaze fell on Billy. “I believe you had something you wanted to say?”

  Gone was the wad of chewing tobacco from before. So too was the chip on his shoulder. He stared down at the table, his index finger making a series of rapid circles over a knot of wood. “Two things. The first is that the rig’s anchor lines show no sign of structural damage, so we don’t need to abandon ship or anything.” A spattering of nervous laughter streaked through the room. “And for the other… Look, I knew carrying on drilling when we weren’t sure what we were biting into was risky. At the time, I didn’t put up much of a fight. But when all hell broke loose I ran. That’s the part that bothers me. I’ve been in scrapes my whole life and never chickened out. So for that, I wanna apologize to all of you.”

  Jack rose, acknowledging Bill’s apology. “When you make an executive decision, you need to share the good and own the bad. I took a risk that nearly got people killed. If anyone needs to step up, it’s me.” Jack held his hand out before him. “The truth is I saw the finish line and all I wanted to do was cross it. I got us into the situation. I’m just thankful I had an opportunity to get us out.” Jack settled back into his chair. The chief engineer looked surprised. He’d probably figured Jack was about to throw him under the bus. If that was so, the kid had a lot to learn about Jack Greer.

  With that out of the way, Gabby loaded a scan of the ocean floor onto the screen. It showed where the drill had sliced through the limestone. But even the untrained could spot the gaping hundred-foot fissure that had opened along the fault line.

  “Looks like we triggered some kind of earthquake,” Dag said, pulling at the ends of his long red beard. “Split the ocean floor wide open.”

  “There’s more,” Gabby told them. She swapped images, revealing the scan of the meteorite Anna had just finished sharpening.

  Silence descended over the room as those assembled attempted to make sense of the image before them.

  “The hell is that thing?” Billy asked, sliding forward in his seat, his face scrunching up like a tight fist.

  Jack studied the shape of the unusual object, the sloping angle of the outer edges. Could it be a natural formation? It looked like a… he wanted to say pyramid. But no, that wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right. “Gabby, pull out a little, would you?” he asked her. She went to the laptop and did as he suggested. The geometrical shape shifted, although it was no less startling. What they were seeing wasn’t a triangle, it was something else—and it bore the distinct shape of an enormous diamond.

  “Well, DiCore will be thrilled,” Dag said, trying to lighten the mood without much success.

  Everyone in the room was perched forward, their mouths frozen open. Others had left their seats almost robotically in order to approach for a better look.

  Of course Dag’s attempt at a joke only underscored what everyone already knew. Geologic forces didn’t cut diamonds to fit engagement rings, nor did it make them anywhere near this large. Initial estimates had the object clocked in at a mile long and half as tall. Mystified as they were, one thing was clear, this object was
no meteorite.

  Chapter 6

  After a long shower and an all-too-brief phone conversation with her daughter, Mia headed to the resto bar downstairs. She would grab a quick bite and then hightail it back to catch some much-needed sleep. Tomorrow promised to be a full day and she wanted to make the most of it.

  Mia slid onto a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a glass of red and a bowl of Moqueca, a Brazilian fish stew with diced tomatoes and cooked shrimp. A large window in the restaurant faced onto the Amazon. Warm fingers of fading light danced along the water’s edges, creating a mesmerizing spectacle. It boasted of being one of the longest rivers in the world, second only to the Nile. From here it also looked like one of the muddiest.

  Gradually, a sound from above jockeyed for her attention. It was another darn TV. The folks on CNN had a new bone to chew on. But now, rather than covering Cuba’s artificial-island-building campaign and the growing military tensions in the Gulf of Mexico, they were obsessing over the strange “flash felt by millions”. Hundreds of fender-benders had been reported, and yet the cause of the anomaly was still unknown. Not surprisingly, a panel of experts had taken up the challenge and were at this very moment shouting at one another in what was fast becoming the latest form of gladiatorial combat: the pundit wars. It wasn’t enough anymore to feature differing opinions. Those opinions had to battle to the death. Mia could just imagine the producers prepping the guests before a segment. “Two of you will go on air, but only one of you will make it to the commercial break.”

  The TV flicked off and Mia was silently thankful.

  “They’ve been yammering about the same thing for hours,” a man with an Australian accent complained from a few seats down. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way. His dark button-down shirt and taupe pants looked like they’d spent the better part of a week trekking through the bush. Sitting next to his draft beer was an expensive-looking camera. “You’d think those blokes would wait until they knew what they were talking about.”

  Mia smiled politely, glancing around for reinforcements and finding none. Two couples sat eating at tables nearby, engaged in quiet conversation.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t bite.” He started back for his beer, thought better of it and leaned over, offering his hand. “Ollie Cooper,” he said, pronouncing his last name ‘coopaw’.

  Smiling, Mia introduced herself. “I take it you’re not a reporter,” she said, referring to his rant.

  “Hell, no,” he said, chuckling. He took a long swig of his beer and set it on the bar with a wink. “I’m a sniper.”

  Mia wiggled her head, confused. “A sniper?”

  Ollie raised the camera and clicked off three random shots. Clack, clack, clack. “I’m what you civilians might call a photographer. On assignment for National Geographic. Doing a story on the Assurini people. Did you know that some of them have never seen a white man before? When kids spot you entering their village, they run screaming bloody murder to their parents. Tall and pasty, we must look to them like a bunch of freakin’ aliens.” Ollie burst out laughing, a warm twinkle in his eye. When he was done, he studied her intently for a moment. “My money says you’re here with Oxfam.”

  Mia sipped at her wine, relishing the vintage, cheap as it was. “WHO,” she corrected him, feeling somehow ashamed for being so transparent.

  “Even better. You a doctor?”

  “Researcher.”

  “Ah, I see. Diseases?”

  “Strike three,” she said and pulled away, returning to her meal.

  A moment later, she glanced over. He was still watching her, that twinkle brighter than ever.

  A loud scream behind them drew her attention. Mia spun and saw a woman sprawled on the floor, clutching her leg and moaning in agony. She popped out of her seat and rushed over. The woman was somewhere in her late thirties and in relatively good shape. She and her husband were tourists and dressed the part.

  “Ma’am, what happened?”

  The woman winced. “When I stood up I heard a snapping sound and my leg gave way.”

  Mia followed the woman’s pant leg to where the fabric was pushed out and stained with blood. The bone had broken through the skin.

  Ollie stood nearby, a pained expression on his face. “I think you better call an ambulance,” he told the husband, who nodded and ran into the lobby, shouting at the concierge.

  Mia felt a wave of unease wash over her. The femur bone in a young, healthy woman didn’t just snap. She and Ollie stayed with them until the ambulance arrived.

  “Madam, your food,” the barman said, motioning to the plate he’d just deposited.

  “Would you have it sent to my room?” Mia asked, still trying to shake free from the sense that something wasn’t quite right.

  •••

  At eight o’clock the next morning, Carlos brought the team to the Santarem Municipal Hospital. No sooner had they entered when they were struck by a blur of movement and a cacophony of voices. The emergency waiting room, nearly empty the day before, was now overflowing. Some were on crutches, others sat with bandaged hands and faces. Mia thought immediately of the woman in the hotel dining room the night before.

  What on earth is going on?

  Isabella, the WHO regional director, scurried past them.

  Mia called out after her. “Was there an accident?”

  Isabella shrugged. “I’m trying to find out myself.”

  “Maybe Eric and I should lend a hand,” Scott suggested, scanning the waiting room. “Both of us are practicing doctors. We may not speak much Portuguese, but I’m sure we can find someone to interpret for us.”

  Mia agreed, feeling utterly helpless she couldn’t do more. “Call us on the intercom if you need anything,” she told them. “I’ll have someone add you both to the roster.”

  After struggling through the crowd of patients and their relatives, Mia and Maria headed for the craniofacial research ward. Once there, they found a similarly chaotic situation.

  “Get us two face masks,” Mia said, in case the sudden appearance of symptoms had been caused by a virus or bacteria. Isabella was standing by the nurse’s station.

  Mia began by handing masks to both Isabella and the nurse. “It’s obvious you’re as surprised as we are,” Mia said. “I suggest you instruct all your staff to immediately begin wearing proper protective gear. I also believe you should begin taking blood samples and testing them for every known bacterial infection and virus you can think of.”

  Isabella nodded her agreement, but her eyes already looked a little vacant.

  Mia turned to the nurse. “Swab the mouth of everyone who’s exhibiting any signs of a rash or signs of osteoporosis.” The latter was a disease more common among the elderly and characterized by low bone mass. Often when Grandma fell it wasn’t the impact with the ground that broke her hip. In many cases, the broken hip was what had led to the fall.

  So far, the first day of the rest of Mia’s life was getting off to a glorious start.

  Chapter 7

  Not surprisingly, shortly after the object’s discovery, the meeting on the rig had rapidly deteriorated as each member of the team argued over what they had found. While the sense of curiosity in the room was strong, so too were feelings of fear and apprehension. When it became obvious that voices were only getting louder, Jack called for a break. Maybe a breath of fresh air would do them some good.

  Shortly after, Jack found Gabby on a walkway overlooking the ocean, her silver hair tousled from a salty breeze.

  “This isn’t what any of us signed up for,” Gabby said with unusual vigor as he approached. It was as though the words had been building up for a while, like tectonic plates compressed and waiting for a chance to snap free.

  “We need to go down there,” Jack replied, dimly aware that she had already offered a rebuttal.

  “Jack, you can’t be serious. We don’t even know what it is.”

  Jack clasped his hands together. “Exactly, we don’t
know. And isn’t it our job as scientists to find out? For all we know the thing is man-made, a relic from Atlantis or Lemuria. Wouldn’t Grant be thrilled?” He chuckled, alone.

  “That ‘thing,’ as you call it, has been down there for millions of years and when our drill made contact, it nearly sucked the entire rig into the ocean. I don’t believe in little green men, but I know for a fact it’s not from around here.”

  “I’ll give you that.”

  “The best course of action might be to contact the government or the newspapers,” she said, her gaze darting back and forth as though she could see the options materializing before her. “They must have protocols in place for a situation like this.”

  Jack’s hands went up involuntarily. “Calling in the Feds is a terrible idea. Especially since we still don’t know what it is. Yes, it’s weird and frankly a little creepy, I’ll give you that, but…” He removed his cap and stuffed it in his pocket. “Let me ask you this, why are we here?”

  She stared back at him, blinking in the sun. “I know very well why we’re here, Jack. To dig up the meteorite that may or may not have killed the bloody dinosaurs.”

  “Precisely,” he said, snapping his fingers and feeling the old energy flowing back into him. “And supposing whatever’s down there played a part in that?”

  Gabby either didn’t get his point or didn’t want to.

  “Come on. Do you really think it’s a coincidence we found this thing sitting right where we expected to find that meteorite?”

  Red lines formed under Gabby’s eyes. For years, he’d known her as a level-headed, pragmatic scientist, ready to venture down any heretical rabbit hole. Seeing this new side of her was almost as unsettling as the object itself.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Gabby said.

  “Good, neither do I. A great philosopher once said that only when we face the unknown will we meet ourselves for the first time.”