Extermination Day

by William Turnage

  “Fire everything you’ve got at that ball!” he yelled.

  Christine’s fingers instantly twitched, and five missiles streaked away from the drone. Just before impact, the ball spread apart like a cloud of smoke. The missiles simply passed through it, ramming into the front of the Greenbrier. Several huge explosions rocked the bunker as the missiles blasted the hotel.

  The entire front of the building was ripped apart in a ball of fire that stretched to the sky. Pieces of debris flew out in all directions, covering the beautiful landscaping in front of the hotel. Trees and shrubs burned as the great white columns at the north end of the hotel crumbled.

  The probe was untouched.

  The attack drone was still hovering above the carnage when the probe came for it swiftly and silently. Christine reacted by moving the drone away from the rushing cloud, but the front end of the cloud brushed the drone as it was speeding away.

  “Firing heavy rounds,” Christine said as the drone started chugging away with heavy munitions fire.

  “What is that on the video screen?” Paulson asked as a small blue-green creature crawled across the camera lens.

  “I don’t know, sir,” she said. “But I’m having trouble controlling the drone now.”

  The drone continued speeding over the resort, then suddenly it turned down, and the ground rushed toward it faster and faster. Christine was jerking in her seat, trying to maneuver the drone up and back on course. She had no luck. The ground continued rushing forward and then the screen went black. She jerked in her seat and pulled her helmet off.

  “The drone is down, sir. I lost all maneuverability. I’m sorry.”

  “You did what you could.” Paulson moved to stand, then, when his leg screamed at him, he merely shifted positions. “Can we pull up any video feed from the hotel? I want to see what the ball or cloud or whatever it is, is doing.”

  Mr. Theobald stepped up again and plugged his portable into one of the terminals.

  “Even though these computers aren’t functioning anymore for outside access, I can still reach the hotel’s internal systems.”

  After a few moments, Theobald had a display of one of the hallways off the main entrance. Fires were burning and the hotel lobby had been destroyed by the missile strike. The cloud had reformed into a tight ball and was coming down the hallway.

  It was constantly changing shape, like liquid metal, and shimmering in the hotel’s lights. The video feed switched to the hallway leading to the bunker blast doors. The ball continued its slow and methodical advance toward them, reflecting images of the hallway around it as it came.

  “What the hell!” Theobald exclaimed loudly. “I’ve just picked up a signal being sent out from that thing. And, sir, the signal was sent using the same encryption code as the signal that was sent from here earlier.”

  “Where was it sent to?” Paulson asked. Perhaps they would be able to track the saboteur using the signal.

  “Tracking, tracking,” Theobald said. “It looks like it was sent to this control room.”

  Everyone looked at each in disbelief, knowing that the traitor could be the person standing right next to them.

  All the computer screens went suddenly blank.

  “Shit, someone’s blocking our every move,” Paulson said. “Whoever you are, you goddamn dirty traitor, I’m going to kill you.”

  “Mr. President, we need to mount a defense,” Farrow said. “That thing, whatever it is, is coming for us. We need weapons, and lots of them.”

  “I’m on it, sir!” Demetrius said. “The munitions locker is this way.”

  “Colonel!” Paulson yelled out as Demetrius was running out of the room. “I have a feeling I’m gonna need a big fuckin’ gun.”

  Buddy Paulson was ready for a fight.

  Chapter 15

  9:30 am local time, January 16, 2038

  Project Chronos

  Jeff watched as a greenish-blue reflective ball rose from the crater and started floating toward the main ground-level building of the Chronos Project.

  Multiple cameras tracked it as it cleared the parking lot and hit the wall of the facility, which melted away as the object passed through it. Once it was inside, more cameras followed it until it reached a small break room where it hovered briefly over an abandoned laptop on a table. A small bit of the ball dripped down onto the laptop.

  Chen’s voice came over the portable as he spoke to someone else in the control tower. “It’s hacking our system. Can we remotely turn off access from that laptop?”

  “I’m trying to cut it now,” someone else yelled out. “Damn, that thing is fast. It managed to get some basic data, but most of the core information on the project was hidden. I’ve cut all wireless feeds to any remaining electronic devices on the surface.”

  “Cut the video feed as well,” Chen said. “That thing is looking for us, and I don’t want to leave it any breadcrumbs.”

  “Trying to, sir, but there appears to be a virus already in the system. I’m losing remote control to the surface. All systems underground remain functional, however.”

  The video feed continued to play. The sphere floated away from the computer and moved silently out of the break room. It passed from room to room, pausing briefly at any electronic device. In the hallway it moved up to one of the cameras. Suddenly the camera switched from a view of the greenish-blue ball to the control room. Several people, including Dr. Chen, were huddled in front of a computer screen.

  “It’s tapped into the camera system! It can see us! Quick, cut the link!” Chen hollered.

  “Trying, sir,” said a man at the console as his fingers slid rapidly across the screen.

  Suddenly the screen went blank, and there was nothing but darkness.

  “Dr. Chen, can you hear me?” Holly yelled into her portable. There was no response.

  Jeff turned to Holly. “I think we better hurry up. That thing is hunting us, and it’s only a matter of time before it finds us.”

  Jeff waved to a nearby technician who hurried over and helped him into his launch suit, then he and Holly moved out of the staging area and down an enclosed, windowless white hallway toward the dome and the launch room.

  A clock in the hallway was slowly ticking down the time until launch: 19 minutes, 31 seconds. They passed through the hallway and entered the main dome, which rose twenty or thirty feet overhead, enclosing them on all sides. Several scientists in clean suits hovered over computer terminals. At the center of the dome stood a white plastic and steel doughnut device connected to a platform. The doughnut was probably twenty feet high and the center circle, which was much smaller than the entire device, looked to be about seven feet in diameter.

  On each side of the exterior of the doughnut were large upright cylinders attached to the base. The entire mechanism was then attached to the tubing that ran outside the dome.

  “The tubing runs around the entire base out into the cavern and out underground for several miles,” Holly explained. “It’s the particle collider that produces the fuel for the vortex. The cylinders on the side are where the microscopic black holes are collected.” She pointed at them.

  “When enough fuel has been stored for a specific destination in time, based on the mass of the material to be transported, the fuel is injected into the doughnut. Once it’s inside, high-graviton magnetic devices and other specially engineered materials send the micro-black holes spinning concentrically. The resulting gravimetric forces are enough to bend space-time, creating a vortex in the center of the doughnut. After the calculated amount of matter goes through the vortex, it closes up. We then have to wait to collect more material from the particle collider. It’s an extremely tedious process.”

  “Sounds like it,” Jeff said. He understood the basic concept behind the device, but the science and engineering were way beyond him. “Not something a guy could build in his garage.”

  “Not unless he had about a trillion dollars and four hundred of the brightest scientists in the world
working with him,” Holly said sarcastically.

  Chen, wearing a clean suit, emerged from the hallway behind them.

  “I wanted to come down here personally to make sure there were no screw-ups,” he said smugly. “Follow me.”

  Chen strode to the platform. “This is where you enter the vortex when it forms. You’ll come out on the other side about two feet above the ground, so expect a drop. I suggest jumping through instead of simply taking a step.”

  “Inside the vortex, what should we expect?” Jeff asked. He was surprised to find himself sweating inside the bio-suit.

  “Animal testing has shown the vortex trip can be pretty jarring. Stepping through and emerging on the other side will feel instantaneous to you, so inside the actual vortex you probably won’t feel anything, but when you get to the other side you can expect a fair amount of vomiting. Several of the larger primates came out unconscious, so that’s a possibility. When they recovered, they were disoriented for about ten minutes. In case anything serious happens, you each have a full combat MedKit built into your bio-suits.”

  “Great,” Jeff said. “Scrambled eggs are never good the second time around. And what about our arrival time?”

  “We’ve set the date for you to arrive as April 22, 2017, ten thirty a.m. That puts you arriving three days after the tunnel to this cavern has been built and the area cleared for the first pieces of equipment to be shipped in from my lab at Harvard. The ground should be smooth and there should be a few construction workers here planning the next stages of the base.”

  “And what if one them happens to be walking right where we come out?” Jeff asked.

  Holly opened her mouth, but deferred to Chen when he said, “When the vortex forms in the past, it will push all matter out of the way. Rather forcefully, I might add. If there is any fixed matter on that side impeding the formation of the vortex, like rock—which it shouldn’t be—it’s blasted aside in an explosive manner. If it’s just air being pushed aside, then a forceful wind will shoot out from the vortex into the surrounding space. If a person is standing right where the vortex forms, then he or she will be shoved violently away. Whether that shove would be hard enough to severely injure or kill that person, we don’t know; we haven’t been able to get accurate readings on the exact force exerted by a new vortex forming in the past or future. We’d planned to test and measure that in the coming weeks.”

  “And the data drive?” Holly asked.

  “It’s here.” Chen passed her the small hand-sized device. “It contains all the project data and everything we currently have on the virus. The information is date coded and authenticated using the methods and technology available to people twenty years in the past. When you get this to the younger me, I’ll know it’s the real deal.”

  “Thank you,” Holly said as she placed the data drive into a pouch in the top of her suit and sealed it up.

  “Great, then, any other questions? It looks like you have about ten minutes before launch,” Chen said.

  Before Jeff could say anything, an alarm sounded. It was the same tone as the breach alarm that went off earlier.

  A panicked look hit Chen’s face as he looked down at his portable. “Whatever that thing was that we saw on the surface, it's found us. It just came through the elevator.”

  Chapter 16

  9:45 am EST, January 16, 2038

  Greenbrier Resort

  The ominous blue-green cloud was making its way slowly and silently down the hallway of the plush Greenbrier resort, heading for the secure bunker. It had come in through the main lobby, which had been blasted apart during the failed drone attack.

  Paulson and the others had been watching it float along via the hotel security video feed before all the screens went blank. It was coming for them. And Paulson was waiting for it with his big-ass gun.

  As he stood in the control room, he couldn’t help but compare this moment with other war experiences. In one operation, during Desert Storm in the first Gulf War, he’d been a Navy SEAL tasked with the job of clearing out remaining Iraqi fighters holed up in the Saudi city of Khafji. During that mission, danger was constantly present and death could've come at any time. Now he tightened his hand on his weapon as he pictured his men. He wouldn’t let this attacker take out any more of his people. Not as long as he could hold a weapon, aim, and shoot.

  Demetrius and several of the other men were finishing sorting through the bags of weapons and ammunition they’d retrieved from the munitions locker.

  “We’re not sure what this thing is capable of,” Demetrius said, “so we grabbed Colt Enhanced M4 individual carbines as well as several grenade launchers. There was also one missile launcher that can be used as a last resort. Using it in a closed space, however, is not recommended.” He started laying out the weapons on the table. “We’ll need to take up defensive positions around the entrance to the bunker. Who here has military experience or weapons training?”

  A few of the men said they did, and also two women, including Christine, who’d piloted the drone fighter.

  “Of you others, has anyone ever fired a gun?”

  They rest of the group shook their heads.

  “Very well. All of you will move to one of the back rooms as far away from the blast doors as possible. I’ll leave weapons in there with you just in case this thing gets through us. My suggestion, though, is to hide and stay as quiet as possible. That includes you too, Mr. President.” Demetrius stared hard at Paulson.

  “You know I can’t do that, Colonel. I have more combat experience than anyone here. And I may be old, and on crutches with a broken leg, but I know how to handle a weapon and fight. I’ll be right there with you on the front line.” Paulson returned the colonel’s stare. There was no negotiating on this. If this was going to be a last stand, Paulson wasn’t going to be cowering on the sidelines of the battlefield.

  “Very well, sir. I don’t like it, but I respect your choice. Just meet me halfway on this. I want you to take up the rear position in the entrance room, close to the door to the next room. That way if things go bad, you can move back and defend the women and other noncombatants.”

  Demetrius didn’t say Paulson could retreat and save his own skin, but the message was in there. Paulson could live with that subtle phrasing and nodded his agreement.

  “Just one thing, Colonel. I want that missile launcher in addition to the M4.”

  Demetrius handed it over with a curt nod.

  “Sir, since this thing may be able to breach the door, we should also get everyone back in their bio-suits,” said Dr. Peebles, who had just come in from the medical lab carrying the suits. “The suits have all been scrubbed clean of the virus.”

  “Good idea, Doctor,” said Paulson as he grabbed his suit and waved over Farrow and Melinda to put their suits back on.

  Demetrius then gathered everyone and gave quick instructions to those with no weapons experience on where the safety and firing triggers were located on their guns. Not much training for someone who’d never fired a high-caliber weapon before, but better than nothing.

  Everyone with experience then moved down the hallway into the main entrance hall, where the blast doors were located. Demetrius pointed out strategic positions in the main room and around the entrance to the hallway, where the few military, ex-military, Secret Service agents, and experienced civilians could mount a defense.

  They overturned chairs and desks and anything else they could find as cover, not knowing what might help since they had no idea what weapons that thing would have. Others started moving deeper into the bunker, away from the main blast doors.

  Demetrius turned to see where Paulson had wedged himself, then he ran back and bent low.

  “Watch your back, Mr. President. I don’t know who the traitor is, but I’d bet my left nut he’s gunning for you.”

  Soon everyone was in position and waiting for the attack. Several minutes passed and they heard nothing. Paulson had learned to be patient in the military. An
attack could occur at any time and you always had to be on your guard. Others in the group didn’t have such patience.

  The minutes ticked away and still nothing. Eventually Chilton McIntosh, one of the rich political donors who had tried to buy his way into a bio-suit, jumped up.

  “I’m tired of this bullshit!” he spat out, holding his gun in the air. “There’s nothing coming through those blast doors. Haven’t you all figured it out by now? Somebody’s hacked the Stream and they’ve hacked our video surveillance. That floating ball thing is straight out of some video game; it doesn’t exist.”

  He shook his gun to emphasize his point.

  “You so-called military experts should be planning our retaliation, not sitting here cowering behind tables, hunting ghosts.”

  “McIntosh, get back under cover!” Demetrius bellowed.

  “Fuck you! I don’t take orders from you.”

  “Sit the fuck down now,” Special Agent Jones demanded. “You’re in the line of fire.”

  “Line of fire, ha!” McIntosh laughed. “Do you really think that something is going to get through these doors. They’re eight feet thick and built of solid concrete and steel.”

  He crossed the room and tapped on the door.

  “They’re built to withstand a nuclear blast, you idiot!”

  He slammed the butt end of his weapon into the door, and a clanging rang out through the room. A second later something popped, like bacon frying in a pan. Chilton looked closer at one section of the door.

  “What the hell? There’s something leaking here,” he said.