The sun was blotted out by a cloud, and she looked up to find flocks of birds flying by.
Only they didn’t move like birds.
They looked more like clouds of locusts, twisting and shifting like smoke in the wind. Melinda immediately realized they were swarms of the same horrible insect creatures that had attacked them, stretching so far and so thick that they almost blackened the sky.
As she looked up, she hadn’t noticed what was going on closer to her. But she noticed now. Noticed that the ground was moving, shifting. Millions of termite-like creatures were teeming over the lawn, climbing up the remaining walls of the resort, eating it away.
Melinda staggered back, but she’d already stepped right into the middle of them and suddenly them were all over her feet, climbing up the bright orange bio-suit.
“Oh God! No!” she screamed, trying to kick the hellish creatures off her boots.
She ran blindly, trying to escape the creatures, looking for any bare ground that wasn’t crawling with them. She ran screaming, focused on her feet in thoughtless panic.
Bam! She ran head first into something thick and solid.
The impact stunned her and knocked her back on her butt. Dazed, she slowly lifted her head to find Secretary Cameron Farrow looming over her. He was smiling, down at her, a devilish half grin on his face.
“Looks like we have a visitor,” he said calmly. “I don’t think she’ll be staying for very long though.”
Farrow reached out with both hands, grabbed Melinda’s bio-suit helmet, ripped it off, and tossed it casually over his shoulder. Then his right hand shot out, clamping down around her forehead, his nails digging deep into her temple. He flexed slightly, and she could feel the vice-like grip of his hand. As he squeezed, her eyeballs started to bulge, as though they would pop right out of her skull.
Melinda cowered on the ground, feeling the weight of the crushing grip squeeze at her. As the pain became unbearable, she screamed and tried to pull Farrow’s hand off. It wouldn’t move. Pressure built in her skull and her vision started to go fuzzy.
She only had a few seconds. She unzipped her jacket, yanked out her weapon, raised it, and fired. The small machine gun recoiled into her stomach as round after round exploded out from the chamber and into Farrow’s chest.
He released his death grip and went flying back into a snow-covered azalea. Blood sprayed the pristine white snow and poured from the gaping wounds in his chest. He lay gasping for air, spitting up blood.
“That’s for trying to crush my skull,” she said with venom in her voice. “This is for being a traitor to the United States of America.”
She pulled the trigger and fired a dozen more rounds into Farrow’s skull. Thick red blood and brain matter exploded all over the azalea bush.
Farrow, the traitor, was dead.
Chapter 21
Date and Time Unknown
Lechuguilla Cave
When Jeff woke, his ears were ringing and he had no idea how long he’d been out. The light from his flashlight was still shining, casting dim shadows in the narrow cavern. Holly was beside him, unmoving.
My God, she must need blood and fluids.
He turned to where she lay, his body aching from both the blast’s shock wave and the time jump, and his head throbbing. He reached up and felt dried blood caked on the side of his head where he’d connected with the cave floor. He rolled Holly over. He could barely see her face in the near dark. She looked pale and was cold and clammy. Jeff pulled out the scanner on the MedKit and ran it over her body.
“Subject’s pulse is low,” the Med-AI said. “She needs blood immediately. Synthetic blood compound fabricated and ready for insertion.”
Jeff looked down, reached into the kit sitting on his chest, and pulled out the blood bag. He set it on the tunnel’s floor and it extended automatically, elevated above Holly’s body. He held the needle end in his hand.
“What the hell do I do with this?” he asked the AI.
“Wrap the band around her wrist and it will automatically insert into the vein and begin delivering fluids.”
Jeff looped the band around Holly’s wrist, and it locked into place. “Perfect,” stated the AI. “Now please let the patient rest. If you leave the scanner on her chest, clipped onto her shirt, I can monitor her and let you know if additional action is needed. Excellent work. What is your name, soldier?”
Jeff didn’t know how to respond. He’d found himself in Hell, chased by a nanobot swarm, and now he was being praised by a mechanical doctor. That didn’t happen every day.
He shook off his fanciful thoughts.
He wasn’t a soldier, had no military experience, but what he had just been through could certainly be considered a battle. “Thank you. My name is Jeff Madison and I’m a civilian.”
“Very well, Jeff Madison. I have your voice pattern recorded, and I am prepared to assist you in any way. You may call me Nancy, as in Nurse Nancy, even though my skill level approaches that of a full doctor. I’ve scanned your body; you are injured from the conflict: multiple contusions and impact bruising. Administering painkillers.”
Jeff felt a tiny prick on his arm as the combat suit administered the painkiller.
“Scans also indicate that you have a concussion. I suggest you sit and rest, if possible.”
“Sorry, Nancy, not just yet,” Jeff said as he looked at Holly’s severed arm. The techno-organic bandage was intact and sealing the wound nicely. He knew that the specially designed high-tech bandage had saved Holly’s life. Perhaps in the future she could be fitted with a bonded prosthesis that would allow brain-controlled movement of an artificial hand.
With Holly stable, it was time to look around. First he wanted to make sure that no nanobots were left after the explosion. He hoped they were all destroyed, but with advanced technology, one never knew. He laughed at his thoughts—he was now an expert on nanobots? He made his way back along the tunnel to the main cave.
As he rounded the corner he smelled smoke and burned meat, knowing full well his future self had been barbecued. The man, that older Jeff, must have felt tremendous guilt when Holly died. Jeff had only known her a short time, and most of that time they had spent dealing with crises, but he did feel a connection to her.
Jeff was certainly no coward. Maybe he didn’t fight with fists or guns, but political fights were just as vicious, at least mentally, or so he and his colleagues liked to tell themselves. Tell the media too, when they’d listen. But he knew deep down it wasn’t the same. No one got killed, unless you counted the death of a career, which in many men’s minds was the end of their life. Men, however, could change careers, start new businesses, learn new skills. Death in a fight or war was final; there were no second chances.
Jeff knew himself pretty well, knew that if he’d left Holly to die, the seeds of guilt and despair would've grown over time. After almost twenty years and God knows what else happening in his life, he could see how a future him would want to come back and set things right.
Oh, and there was the data drive. He’d almost forgotten about it. That would certainly reveal information about his future self and the life he led. Also, if it contained all the project data that had been on the original drive, the one devoured by the nanobots, they were back in business. The Chronos Project could be accelerated, and he’d have corroborating evidence of the coming viral plague so that America and the world could prepare.
As he rounded the corner, he walked face first into a wall of rock and debris blocking the entrance to the main cavern.
Shit. This he hadn’t expected.
He studied the barrier in front of him and picked up one of the larger rocks. It was heavy, but he managed to sling it back down the tunnel. He could dig out eventually, one rock at a time, but what lay on the other side? Had the whole cavern caved in? If so, then would the construction crew and designers of the base choose to move it to a new location? Another cavern, perhaps? Jeff knew that much of the Lechuguilla and the nearby
Carlsbad cavern system was unexplored in the year 2017 and large parts were protected by environmental laws. He had no way of knowing what the researchers might do.
He crouched in front of the rock pile to think. Perhaps the data drive held a few answers. He hooked it up to his portable, only to find that the drive was drained of power. That must have happened when the older Jeff fired his weapon to clear it of nanobots. His portable was also low on power and unable to charge or even start the data drive.
The drive’s batteries appeared to be solar-powered, although the model design was different from anything Jeff had seen before. That meant that in order to power it up, he would either have to expose it to sunlight or plug it into an electrical outlet. Neither of those events was going to come to pass deep in an underground cave.
Since he couldn’t access the data drive, Jeff turned his attention back to getting out of the cavern. He’d done it once before, otherwise his future self wouldn’t have been there to save them. However, with the explosion and cave-in, the timeline had been altered, meaning the certainty of getting out alive had dropped significantly.
He could go the other direction, deeper into the cavern, and look for a way out. But they had no food, Holly was injured, and Jeff didn’t know if that direction would lead to an exit or a dead end.
“What to do, what to do,” he said, tapping the date drive on a rock.
He was no survivalist. Didn’t know how to catch cave grubs or collect mushrooms or hunt bats or whatever the hell lived down. And he wouldn’t know what was edible and what might kill them. He didn’t know any old Native American mystical techniques for collecting water from sand, although he seemed to remember seeing a TV show about that once. No, Jeff had spent most of his life as a lawyer sitting behind a desk, staring at a portable or computer screen. His political experience was meeting with people and giving a lot of speeches. Endless speeches. So his greatest skill was talking.
As a politician, if he had a problem he couldn’t solve himself, he would delegate it to the resident staff expert. It only took a quick call or text to get the ball rolling.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, still talking out loud, filling the heavy emptiness with a vestige of humanity. “I have my portable.”
The portable was attached to Jeff’s wrist under his sealed combat suit, so he took off his gloves, loosened the suit connection at his wrist, and rolled the material up so he could access it. A quick flick and it was active. It detected no signal, but that wasn’t a surprise, considering they were deep underground. Eventually though, construction crews would come digging down into the cavern. Jeff just needed to make sure he could get a direct signal through to them using the walkie-talkie feature on his portable. That meant he needed to start digging and get as close to the main cavern as possible.
Jeff had the top-of-the-line amped-up portable from the year 2038 with an enhanced range and a battery that would last at least a month running high-res videos, holos, and games at full power. Of course the last time he charged it was about a month ago, hence the low power. The portable was his lifeline in the future, and right now Jeff hoped it would save his life in the past. First thing, though, was the digging.
“Uhhh . . . ”
Holly was starting to stir down the passageway. He headed back to check on her. As he walked, her moan turned into a scream.
“Oh my God, my arm, where is my arm!”
“Holly, I’m here,” Jeff yelled out as he ran down the passage. He reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders to calm her. She was shaking violently.
“Look at me, Holly. Do you know where you are and remember what happened?”
She looked at Jeff, then turned away. “Y-y-yes,” she said. “We made the time jump after the swarm attacked us in the future.” Her eyes widened again, and she frantically examined her body. “Are they gone? They were eating me. Oh God, I felt them eating me from the inside out!”
“I know. They’re gone now. I . . . I had to take your arm. There was no other way to keep them from spreading over your body. I’m sorry.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Holly, I’m so sorry.”
She was weeping softly, gently touching the stub where her arm once was. “You were right to do it; there was no other way to save me. Are they gone? Are we safe?”
“Yes. There was a cave-in . . . ” Jeff wasn’t sure if he should tell her about the future him coming back, and then decided it was best that she know the whole story. “Somebody saved us. Well, it wasn’t just somebody. It was me. From the future.”
Holly narrowed her green eyes and stared into his. “What? What do you mean?”
“One second the nanobots were going to infect and eat us both, and then I appeared, an older me from the future, with weapons to kill the nanobots.”
Holly’s eyes widened. “Incredible. And where is the future you now?”
“Dead, most likely,” he said. “In an explosion. He was infected with the nanobots and triggered some sort of bomb to kill them, blowing himself up in the process. I was able to get out and carry you to safety.” No way was he going to tell her he was about to abandon her. Not yet anyway.
“Thank you, Jeff. You saved my life.” She awkwardly embraced him. “You’re sure all the nanobots were destroyed?”
“Who knows with this technology, but the explosion was huge. It caved in the entrance to the cavern where the base is supposed to be built. It may have collapsed the entire cavern; I don’t know. The way back is blocked by a wall of rocks.”
“So we’re trapped here, and we still don’t know how long before the construction crews tunnel their way down? So what are we going to do?”
“Right now, you should rest. I have my portable and if I dig through and clear out enough of the rock, I should be able to transmit a message when the construction crews get close enough. Even if they find the cavern caved in, they’ll at least be close enough so I can signal them. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one we have. Your bio-suit didn’t weigh that much, so casting it off couldn’t have thrown off the time jump that much. I’m sure the construction crew will be here any time now.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Holly solemnly.
She was shivering despite the warm dampness of the underground cave. She was only wearing a white form-fitting body suit, and it was torn in several places.
“Holly, you need to stay warm; you’ve lost a lot of blood. Take my bio-suit. You need it more than I do, and it’ll be able to monitor your vital signs better and give you antibiotics as needed.”
Holly didn’t disagree. “Thanks.”
Jeff climbed out of his bio-suit and gave it to her. He was also wearing a form-fitting spandex body suit, but Holly needed the warmth much more than he did. She was very weak and struggled to put it on with one arm. He held her gently and pulled the suit up over her trembling body.
He checked her IV again to make sure there was still enough blood and fluid pumping into her and then looked back to the cave-in area. Hours of grueling work awaited him.
“Holly, this is our only flashlight and I need to take it with me. Are you going to be okay here in the dark by yourself?”
She waved her hand for him to go. Her eyes were slowly closing. Hopefully she’d feel better after a long sleep.
Several hours later, Jeff had managed to clear out much of the debris and create a small hole at the top of the tunnel. His head still throbbed from the concussion, but the painkillers administered by the Med-AI were able to cut out a lot of the stabbing pain in his joints.
The work of moving the rocks was exhausting. He had his portable set to ping if a cellphone came within range. As he worked, he continued to think about the older Jeff. What had that man gone through in the last twenty years? Had he made different decisions than Jeff would make now? And why would he be the only one to come through to save them? Wouldn’t they send in a military team? Maybe the future Jeff had forced his way through the vortex. But why bother to speculate? The data drive w
ould probably answer most of his questions. If they ever got out of the damned cave and accessed it.
Obviously events, and people, had changed in the time stream. Holly was alive this time. He didn’t know what that would mean. He knew that he wouldn’t be involved with any of the science on Project Chronos; his mission in the past was to get his father on board and convince other members of the government that there would be a devastating viral terrorist attack in twenty years. Then what would he do? He wasn’t a congressman any more. Would he just go back to practicing law under another name?
He cleared out a hole large enough to crawl through at the top of the debris pile. Working by flashlight was difficult and the job dirty. The fancy flashlight had long-life batteries that would be good for weeks, so he didn’t worry about it going out. It was just that he couldn’t see very far. He climbed up into the hole and pushed through the debris. As he crawled several feet through the narrow tunnel, his body wedged in tight, shadows bounced along the rocks, and he thought he saw something move.
“Oh shit!” His heart leaped.
Was that part of nanobot swarm, crawling over the rocks and coming to eat him?
Jeff swiped at a rock with his hand. “Get away from me!” He was jammed into the small space with rock all around him and couldn’t move more than a few inches on either side. The thought of the swarm crawling over his body—eating through his flesh—in this damp, cramped space terrified him.
He shifted the light so he could see better and thank God, there was nothing there. Just shadows and his mind playing tricks on him. He continued moving through the narrow gap as fast as he could, crawling along on his stomach, sharp rocks scratching and poking into his body. And then he hit a dead end. More rock blocked his path. It looked like the whole cavern had caved in.
But no, Jeff wasn’t a quitter.
Extermination Day Page 19