He touched the door with his finger and held it up closer to his face for a better look.
“Ants?” he scoffed. “Oww! They’re biting me! Little fuckers!”
He tried shaking his hand to get the creatures off. Behind him the leak in the door grew. Within seconds a hole formed, then another and then another, each one spreading. It was as if the door was being devoured by a swarm of termites.
When the holes were large enough, millions of tiny flying creatures poured through. They hit McIntosh in the back first, nearly knocking him off his feet. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, a swarm of creatures ate their way through the back of his head and shot out of his mouth like vomit.
“Fire!” Demetrius yelled.
And the rain of bullets began.
The silvery sphere changed shape as it burst through the holes in the door. It was no longer a uniform sphere but looked like a swarm of bees. As the bullets hit the swarm, it shimmered and shook, its shape constantly varying. The bullets did nothing to stop it as it inched forward through the rapidly decaying blast doors. McIntosh disappeared into the cloud, his body melting away in agony.
When Demetrius fired a grenade, Paulson felt the heat on his face. Part of the cloud fell to the floor in a metallic sleet storm, small drops clinking as they hit. But it was only a small part of the cloud, and the bulk of it continued moving forward, down the hallway, coming for them.
Several more grenades hit the main bulk of the cloud, with a little more being destroyed. It was moving too quickly, however, and seconds later it had cleared the hallway and was flowing into the main lobby of the bunker.
The men in front, behind overturned desks, were the first to be attacked. It happened so fast, Paulson could barely take in what was going on. The men were simply covered by the swarm as it passed over them. They began screaming and violently shaking their arms and legs, clawing at their faces. They started to convulse, their heads turning to the sky as the swarm clawed its way down into their throats and eyes. As they fell to their knees, their faces were eaten away, exposing first raw skin, then bloody muscle, and finally bone. Their skulls and skeletons were covered by the swarm and then they were gone, reduced to dust. Most of their clothes, guns, and ammunition remained relatively intact, although in tatters, but anything organic, anything human, was gone. And still the swarm advanced.
It was a horrific sight, even to a man who’d seen many horrors in war. To be eaten alive, to have the flesh ripped from your bones as you watched, that was an atrocity that shook even Paulson to the core. He felt no anger now, and the shock and disgust were starting to fade as fear began to take their place. Paulson hadn’t known such fear in a long, long time. He was beginning to doubt they’d escape, that there was any hope for America.
“Mr. President, go now. I’ll try to hold it off,” Demetrius commanded as the swarm began crawling over him, first covering his face and then digging down inside his eyes. Paulson continued firing his gun, but he knew theirs was a lost cause. The swarm wasn’t going to be stopped by bullets. He had to look for a quick escape and then a place to regroup and plan a new defense.
He grabbed his crutches and retreated as fast as he could into the underground bunker, slamming doors behind him as he ran, the swarm in pursuit. Fear overtook him as he hobbled faster and faster, feeling the swarm tickling the back of his neck, about to overtake him. There had to be a way to stop it. A flamethrower, perhaps, or one of those new plasma rifles? But there was no time. Right now it was all he could do to stay just out of the swarm’s reach.
Soon Paulson reached the end of the line, which was the sleep quarters and the kitchen. He was breathing heavily, his heart pounding, his shoulder aching from the recoil of his M4, his leg throbbing. But he still had his weapon and ammo, including the missile launcher strapped to his back.
Paulson found everyone else still alive hiding in the sleeping quarters. Some were weeping, some praying.
He said, “We couldn’t stop it. I suggest we split up and hide in different places; maybe this thing won’t be able to get all of us. Quick, run! There’s no time.”
Most ran out of the sleeping area to find hiding places, but a couple stayed where they were, not moving, resigned to their fate. Chad Theobald simply sat in the corner, his arms wrapped around his legs, his bowed head pressed tight against his knees. He rocked back and forth, back and forth, praying quietly. Melinda was still there. She grabbed Paulson and held him tight, sobbing.
“I’m going out fighting, Melinda,” he said as she looked up at him, eyes streaming with tears. “Get behind me.”
Paulson broke away from her tight embrace and headed back out into the hallway. The swarm was waiting, the hum of millions of tiny wings growing louder. It had eaten its way through the last door.
Paulson shut the door to the sleeping quarters behind him, saying, “Melinda, stay inside.” He couldn’t accept that he was powerless to defend those he’d sworn to protect.
He yanked the rocket launcher free and fell onto his stomach, wincing as his leg thumped on the hard floor. The swarm was only thirty feet away. The blast from the missile would surely kill him, but maybe he could damage the swarm enough that it wouldn’t find the others. Enough that it would give up or die or be blasted to Hell.
He pulled the trigger.
The missile flew a short distance, into the heart of the swarm. There was a muffled explosion, some fire and smoke, but nothing like what Paulson was expecting. Only a few parts of the swarm fell. It was as if it had adapted to their weapons or had fashioned a defense. And it just kept coming. A second later, Paulson felt it hit his body.
He looked down at his arm, where tiny blue creatures the size of fleas were eating his skin away. They were crawling and digging in, jaws biting like thousands of tiny needles pricking his flesh. He held up his hand and watched as the flesh was scoured to the bone. The pain was excruciating, then his arm went numb as his nerves were eaten away. He felt the creatures crawling over his face and tried to scratch with his other hand, but as he lifted his arm, there was nothing there, just a bloody stump. He tasted metal and blood as his mouth filled with thousands of the moving creatures. Paulson tried to scream, but couldn’t. The swarm had already eaten his throat away.
Buddy Paulson had lived a long, full life. He fought right up until the end. He was a great leader and a great man. He’d won the respect and admiration of friends and enemies alike. But the swarm knew none of that, nor did it care.
The swarm wanted only to devour and rend flesh from bone.
Chapter 17
9:45 am local time, January 16, 2038
Project Chronos
Gunfire erupted outside the dome. Jeff pivoted, checking every direction, but nothing had made it inside. Several security officers and military personnel were based at the facility, and it sounded as though they were vigorously attacking whatever it was that had breached the base. After a few seconds of rapid machine-gun fire and other pops of various small handguns, the noise stopped. Then there was nothing but silence.
Chen had raced to a control desk and was tapping commands into the interface, leaving Jeff and Holly alone on the platform in front of the doughnut. Jeff looked at Holly; her generally stern face had a look of fear spreading across it.
“It’s coming for us, isn’t it?” she said.
“We’ll be out of here in about four minutes, and then all of this will be just a bad dream.”
The waiting was the worst. Just standing there looking at the empty space in the middle of the doughnut, not knowing what was going on outside the dome, was a killer. The bio-suit was warm, and Jeff was already breathing heavily, fogging up the plastic visor. With a sputter and a booming crack, the lights went out.
“Is that supposed to happen?” he asked Holly. He was regretting not getting more information on the particulars of time travel.
“Just give it a second,” Chen called to them. “We have backup power for the dome and a comp
letely separate power source for the particle accelerator and vortex generator.”
As he finished speaking, the lights flickered back on. More crashing sounds, along with muffled screams, came from outside, and then the dome shook slightly, rocking the entire platform under Jeff’s feet.
Here it comes.
“Dr. Chen! Look!” Holly yelled, pointing up.
A hole began to form at the top of the dome. It was tiny at first, then it started to grow, spreading and eating away like acid. Dome pieces fell to the floor around the platform. One landed at Jeff’s feet, swarming with tiny creatures that looked like greenish-blue beetles. They were feasting on the metal like a colony of ants would devour a piece of bread. Jeff glanced back up at the ceiling. When the hole was large enough, the seething, swarming ball they’d watched on the video feed floated down inside the dome.
T-minus 30 seconds until launch, 29, 28 . . .
The ball paused for several seconds, as if analyzing the setup, just floating in the air, pulsing and shimmering in constant flux. One of the scientists, Howard, hurried out from his workstation and walked up to it. His face was slack with awe, and he held his hands palms out, almost reverently.
“We don’t want to fight you. We can live together in peace. Please, tell us what you want.”
The ball moved closer to him, and he reached out one hand to touch it.
“Howard, no, you idiot!” Chen screamed.
Howard touched the ball and then pulled his hand back and turned it over to inspect it. And then he started to scream. The sound was muffled by his clean-suit helmet, but it was still loud enough to make Jeff cringe.
His glove dissolved away, baring the skin of his hand. He shook his arm, bashed at the contaminated hand with his other hand, but couldn’t dislodge whatever was eating away at his suit.
Then at his skin.
Jeff recoiled when he saw first twitching muscle, then bone, and finally nothing other than the moving, flowing swarm. The horrible process continued up Howard's arm as his screams grew louder. The swarm spread quickly to the rest of his body, dissolving skin tissue, organs, and bones as it went. Eventually his screaming stopped—when there was nothing of the man left.
Jeff drew his foot back to kick away a piece of metal that had fallen in front of him; Holly grabbed his arm and knocked him off balance.
“Don’t kick that. Don’t touch it or go near it. Those are nanobots, just like the virus. Only these are much larger and designed to eat metal or anything else they touch. If you even so much as brush against one, it’ll latch on to you and start eating your flesh, just like it did to Simon.”
Holly was right. The nanobots were swarming and eating right through the metal inches away from his foot.
T-minus 15 seconds, 14, 13, 12 . . .
The outer reaches of the swarm spread into the room, grazing Holly’s arm. Jeff looked down and saw nanobots crawling on her bio-suit.
“You have to take this off, Holly!” he yelled, and she began ripping the suit from her body. She managed to get it off and throw it to the ground before the nanobot swarm could chew through and start eating her skin.
“The data drive!” Holly screamed, reaching out again for the suit. Jeff grabbed her and pulled her away just as she touched it. Seconds later both suit and data drive dissolved away.
“Everything is lost!” she yelled hysterically.
Jeff pulled her to the edge of the platform just in front of the doughnut. There was nowhere else for them to go. The swarm was almost there. Then suddenly Chen jumped in front of them. He’d stripped off his clean suit and was using it to desperately swat at the swarm.
3, 2, 1 . . .
Chen tried to balance himself on the platform girders as they were being dissolving under his feet.
“Ahhh!” he screamed.
The nanobots started eating away Chen’s feet, then his legs. As the upper half of his torso fell to the ground, the dome started to collapse.
A loud whoosh exploded behind them, and a strong wind sucked at Jeff’s back. He turned to see the vortex behind him. It was pitch black inside, like a long, deep underground tunnel.
“Come on, Holly!”
Jeff grabbed her by the waist and they jumped through the vortex, leaving behind the crumbling base and the screams of dying scientists.
Chapter 18
Noon EST, January 16, 2038
Greenbrier Resort
Melinda Rider lay as still as she could, barely even breathing as the sounds of the swarm’s metallic wings and the screams of her friends and colleagues died down. The chewing and gnawing of the creatures’ tiny mandibles was still ringing in her ears. She was terrified that any second one of the things would break through into her hiding place and start crawling on her skin and biting her. Just as she'd managed to slip away, she'd seen them cover Theobald who was cowering in the sleeping quarters.
She was inside a large freezer in the kitchen of the Greenbrier bunker. She didn’t have much time to run when Paulson pushed her away and slammed the door. She thought that the freezer was as good a place as any to give her a shot at making it out alive. She was only guessing, but it was a possibility that the swarm tracked its prey through infrared heat signatures. If that were that case, then it would be less able to find her inside the freezer.
Of course she also risked freezing to death. She wore a thick winter sweater and jeans under her bio-suit, plus another winter jacket over that. However, she could still feel the cold through everything. She exhaled, her breath coming out as thick vapor and ghosting over a slab of beef hanging in front of her.
Should I go out now? Are they still out there?
Melinda shivered and stood up, moving in the darkness as quietly as she could toward the door. She placed her ear against it to see if she could hear anything on the other side. There was only silence. She reached for the door latch to open it and hesitated, thinking about the horrible screams she heard earlier. She pulled her hand away, put her back against the door, and slid down into a seated position again.
Not yet, not yet.
She sat thinking about all the people who had died, her friends and family, all of the group from the plane, Buddy Paulson. Why, why did they have to kill them? What did this enemy want? Was anything so important that they had to exterminate everyone like this?
She was completely alone now. A tear dripped down her face inside of her bio-suit helmet. She couldn’t wipe it away, so it just trailed down her chin. She began to weep softly, the weight of the horror and desperation of the last day weighing heavily on her soul.
As she waited, feeling hopeless, she thought she heard something outside.
What is that? Is that someone talking? Is someone else still alive?
A glimmer of hope ignited in Melinda’s heart, but she had to keep her wits about her if she was going to stay alive. She was protected from viral exposure with her suit on, but there was the possibility that the traitor was still out there. Melinda had overheard Paulson and Secretary Farrow talking about him after Air Force One crashed.
She needed to be ready for him or her. She still had her weapon that Demetrius had given her. Melinda had never fired a gun in her life and the quick lesson she got earlier did nothing to assuage her general fear of firearms. She would take it along with her, though. If she needed to fight for her life, she wouldn’t hesitate to fire. She zipped up her jacket to conceal the weapon as best she could.
The talking continued, so Melinda stood up again and, with a lump in her throat, she slowly opened the freezer door. The light from the kitchen poured in and blinded her. When her eyes adjusted, she looked around and saw cooking pots and utensils scattered across the floor. Near one of the ovens were tattered bits of clothing, maybe a white lab coat and parts of a bright yellow bio-suit. She leaned closer and saw pieces of hair and small white chunks that looked like bone.
Dr. Peebles! Poor woman. What a horrible way to die.
Melinda continued through the kitchen. The vo
ice was still speaking, but she didn’t want to call out just yet; something sounded strange about it. The cadence or the rhythm or something was off. Or maybe she was just petrified.
She peeked around the corner and saw the hallway leading to the sleeping quarters where she had run from the pursuing swarm earlier. The voice was coming from the sleeping area.
Melinda crept down the hallway, careful not to make a sound, then she ducked down and looked around the corner into the sleeping room. Someone was sitting on a bunk, his back to the door. It was a man wearing a cleanly pressed blue business suit. He was holding a portable and talking. But he wasn’t speaking English.
He stood and turned to the side. Melinda ducked back into the hallway, but not before she got a glimpse of the man’s face.
Secretary of State Cameron Farrow! He’d survived the attack too, thank God!
Melinda was about to whisper to him, alert him to her presence, when she noticed something strange. Again peeking around the corner, she saw the Secretary stand and point toward the door, still talking in that unfamiliar language. As he did so, something emerged from behind him. It was a small, bluish silver ball, just like the one that attacked them, hovering just in front of his face!
When the Secretary pointed at the door, the ball started floating away from him and toward where Melinda was crouched. She pulled back quickly, not believing her eyes.
The Secretary of State was talking to the swarm! Farrow was the traitor!
Chapter 19
Date and Time Unknown
Lechuguilla Cave
Jeff landed in complete darkness and deafening silence. The air was heavy and humid as he straightened up, still hanging tightly to Holly. Then suddenly he was flooded with a wave of dizziness and intense nausea. He dropped Holly and fell to his knees, heaving violently and vomiting inside his bio-suit helmet. As chunks of his breakfast covered the visor and started to fill up the helmet, Jeff unlatched it and jerked it off.
Extermination Day Page 17