by Bob Mayer
“But this is?” Jack asked.
Doc nodded. “Yeah. Slow. Not much sign. So it can incubate and spread. Then wham, the really bad symptoms and death.”
“What about the family?” Tremble asked.
“They still think he’s isolated in the clinic being treated,” Doc said. “I figure you’re the boss. You get to give them the news.” He shook his head. “The big thing is we don’t know is the vector. Ebola, like HIV, is body fluids. So it can be contained. I don’t think Mike got his from body fluids.”
“Then how?” Jack asked.
“That’s what makes this very dangerous.” Doc pointed up. “I think it’s from the aliens. Can’t be a coincidence that they show up and this starts. If those fuckers are spreading it, then it must be airborne. Like a cold. Except with a cold you have to be close enough to inhale the virus in the air. And most viruses don’t last long in air. They need a host. Living cells in order to survive. This whole thing just doesn’t fit. The deadliest viruses aren’t easily transmitted,” Doc continued. “Most viruses don’t last long when exposed to ultraviolet light. Of course, it might be bacterial.”
“Whoa,” Jack said. “What’s the difference? Both are germs, right?”
Doc thought for a few seconds. “Okay, there are two major types of invasive organisms. Other than bullets,” he added with a nod toward Jack. “Those are bacteria and viruses. Tuberculosis is a bacterium. AIDS is a virus. Most people think they’re both little things that just like to make us sick or kill us, but they’re simply trying to do their own thing, which is live. That is, if viruses are actually alive. There’s some argument on that point.”
“Fuck me,” Jack muttered.
Doc went on. “Viruses need living cells to reproduce and some scientists think that drive to reproduce is a sign of life. Humans are host to lots of benign bacteria and viruses. We actually have three times as many bacteria in us than living cells. About forty trillion or something like that. And they’ve been around a lot longer than we have.” He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. “It’s important whether this is a virus or bacteria. Bacteria are definitely alive. They themselves usually aren’t the problem. It’s the body’s response to a bacterial infection that becomes the problem. The body destroys good cells along with the bacteria. Destroy enough good cells, the body kills itself trying to save itself.
“When it’s bacteria, like cholera, it releases toxins. Some of Mike’s symptoms were like a bacterial infection. People don’t die of cholera, they die of dehydration as the body tries to cleanse itself of the toxins.
“A virus, on the other hand, is basically genetic material. DNA or RNA inside a protein shell. That’s why we’re not sure if they’re alive or not. They really don’t do anything on their own outside of contact with a living cell. But to reproduce the virus needs a host, a living cell. In the process of reproducing, the virus kills the host cell. Enough of a virus replicating inside of you, enough of your cells die and you eventually die. The Catch-22 for a virus is in killing its host, it’s destroying its ability to reproduce. That keep everything in this strange balance.”
“Can you cure this thing, whatever the fuck it is?” Jack asked.
“I gave Mike everything I had,” Doc said. “Penicillin is the silver bullet. Tried that. Tried everything we have and we have a good stock. Nothing made a dent. Viruses are different. You need to be vaccinated before you get infected.” He shook his head in frustration. “Here’s the paradox of viruses and why I don’t understand this. There are some that have a ninety percent kill rate. So you’d think mankind is doomed. But the faster a virus kills a host, the more it reduces its ability to spread. That’s why HIV takes so long to transform into AIDs. That gives it time to spread. What this thing did in the last half hour would keep it from spreading. But it’s the fact Mike wasn’t in bad shape for several days; that’s the scary part. That’s when this spread.”
“What are we going to do?” Tremble asked.
Jack snorted in disgust. “We don’t have any options. If Doc is right, then we’ve all got this bug. People out there have it. And we still got those alien fuckers hanging overhead. Hell, this bug is from them. Wiping us out without having to do much of anything. Just drop it on our heads and wait for us to die out. Then they do whatever it is they came here to do. If we’d sealed up and not let the Beast in, we’d be okay. We’ve got the air filtration system.”
“If the aliens hadn’t already dropped the bug before then,” Doc pointed out. “Plus, you’ve been up here,” he pointed out to Jack. “Doesn’t do us any good to have the silo sealed when we’re coming in and out.”
The last bit of logic gave Jack pause.
“Can you fix this?” Tremble asked Doc. “Come up with a shot or something?”
“You’re joking, right? Hell, it would take the CDC months to even figure out what this is. If they could figure out an alien bug at all. If the CDC still exists.”
“So what do we do?” Tremble said.
“We soldier on,” Jack said. “Some of us will make it through. Let’s button up, though. No point in pushing our luck.”
THE WARSHIPS
The Swarm observed and planned through those days of pause.
Many eyes watched the ground from the warships. Many different kinds of eyes, not just that of the Swarm. That of the Metamorphosis also watched.
Those eyes watched the Scale scurrying, moving, migrating, hiding, coming out of hiding, fighting among itself.
Based on the deep mapping of the planet, a single warship was being modified. In an isolated, open space below the exoskeleton of the Core, a warship was being loaded with a unique product of the Metamorphosis. These were microscopic creatures that were cousins of what humans would call Hadesarchaea, which meant ‘hellish ancient things.’
The warship’s interior was heated to over 150F as the Hadesarchaea were poured into it in order to keep them alive. It was a slow, tedious process but the Swarm was a slow tedious race.
For the warships already in the atmosphere the wait was finally over.
ON THE FIFTH DAY: THE DROP.
EARTH
The warships started down so slowly that at first only the truly observant who happened to be looking up noticed the movement.
From 20,000 feet the warships descended in one even wave. There was little opposition left. Here and there some fighters that had survived the initial onslaughts and whose crews stayed their post, and managed to get the planes flyable despite their onboard computers being fried, took off to fight the unwinnable fight.
At 15,000 feet the arms of each warship began emitting the first wave of the Metamorphosis, especially tailored for this planet, for this environment, and for this Scale.
They looked like dragons. In fact, they were dragons, in a form. Narrow lizards with forty-foot long bodies, huge wings that at full spread were over twice that in width. From each warship hundreds of dragons swooped through the sky, dropping below the descending ship. They didn’t attack the few aircraft that were offering resistance. They took them out by kamikazing them. There were so many dragons this wasn’t difficult. Since this only occurred a few hundred times worldwide it was a negligible loss.
The remaining dragons arced over in steep dives, heading toward the concentrations of Scale.
MIDTOWN MANHATTAN
Early in training the Assassin had been taught that high ground was good. Good for the defense. Good for sniping. She’d never been this high before. If she’d chosen One World Trade Center, she could have gone higher. There was also that thin skyscraper on Park Avenue that was slightly higher than her current perch, but she felt the Empire State Building was appropriate. Her mother used to take her here as a kid; not on the spur of the moment, but whenever out of state family came visiting. That was when the Assassin, who’d grown up in Queens, got to make a rare trip into Manhattan, which meant she’d seen as much of it growing up as her family from bumfuck wherever.
The Empire State Building is class
ic and in midtown. It has absorbed a B-25 crashing into it. As fine a place as any for a last stand if it came to it. Plus, with the elevators out, anyone, or anything, coming up the stairs for her was going to die tired.
The Assassin had smashed out a window on each side of the 102nd floor observation deck. Stacked ammunition at each position. She had clear fields of fire well beyond the reach of her favorite gun, the .50 caliber Barrett rifle which had provided a good workout carrying it up here. According to a placard, on a clear day, one could see eighty miles. The southern edge of Central Park was within extreme range of the rifle. It was a gray, overcast day and visibility was about five miles.
She noticed the warships dropping the instant they began to come down. She was seated, the bipod of the Barrett on the window ledge, the stock tight to her shoulder. Her angle of fire was extreme, aimed at the closest warship, which was slightly offset to the north. She assumed the warships could land, perhaps in an arrangement with one or more of the arms touching down?
She saw large objects begin to spill out of the arms of the warship. It took her a few seconds looking through the scope before she processed what they were: dragons.
She laughed. That made sense. This was truly the apocalypse. The Assassin’s stomach tried to revolt, but she forced the bile back. She’d felt the sickness come on this morning.
She watched as a dragon folded its wings back and dove toward Central Park. There was a cluster of people holding signs, trying to communicate with the aliens, asking for friendship, peace.
There were always those people.
Five hundred feet above the people, who were now beginning to scatter, to run for their lives, the dragon’s mouth opened wide as the wings flared out, slowing the descent.
The Assassin expected flame, an alien napalm attack delivered most unorthodoxly, but she was wrong.
The dragon looked like it was doing what the Assassin herself wanted to: vomiting. A long spew of something dark came out of the mouth, spreading wider, separating into individual items. The dragon flapped its wings, halting, and regaining altitude.
The Assassin zoomed in on what had been disgorged. Small, thin black objects of varying lengths. They hit the ground, some landed on people. She could hear the screams.
They looked like snakes from a few inches to a couple feet in length. Except they didn’t have eyes or a mouth. No front or rear. They just seemed to seek people out. Writhing, twisting, wrapping themselves around a neck, a foot, an arm. Thousands of them. Those that hit the ground or the trees or a building slithered toward the closest person. There was no escaping them.
The Assassin watched as one wrapped around a woman’s arm. Her mouth was open in a scream as she tried to shake it off even while another attacked her, climbing up her body. The Assassin swallowed hard as one went into the woman’s open mouth, silencing the scream.
The end disappeared into the mouth and then a few seconds later the woman became utterly still and calm. The other snakes, whatever the fuck they were, parasites, slithered away in search of other targets.
The Assassin looked at the woman’s face through the scope. It was slack, no more person there.
“Fuck me,” the Assassin said, turning to the side and throwing up.
EARTH OCEANS
The Scale on the water was sparse and widely spread. Most warships had been sunk by the Core during its initial orbits. The Swarm knew there were submarines that weren’t detectable from orbit or the warships. It seemed as if the most powerful of the Scale nations—an interesting concept that there were lethal, artificial divisions among the same Scale on a single planet—didn’t even know where its most powerful weapons roamed the depths of the ocean.
The warships over water emitted the same first wave as the ones over land. Dragons flew to the ships, emitting their gruesome parasites.
But when the first arm touched the surface of the water a new wave of creatures poured out. Kraken jetted into the oceans and lakes. They were of varying sizes, from just a few feet long, to massive ones, larger than the great squids native to Earth who roamed the deepest trenches of the ocean. These had bodies one hundred and twenty feet long and tentacles that stretched over three times their body length. The tentacles had mouths on the end and these would emit the parasites once they found Scale.
If need be, the tentacles could crush any vessels it found in the depths.
WARDENCLYFFE, SHOREHAM, NEW YORK
Shear powered the Tesla cannon. He glanced briefly at the tarp covering Linda’s body, then focused on work. She’d gone fast, going from feverish and sick to bleeding out and dead in a half hour, just after dawn.
He targeted a warship to the west, as far as he could range and deflect the cannon. He knew there were closer ones, but his instinct was to defend New York City. It wasn’t rational but it was human. Try to save the place where the most people were.
The light went green and he fired.
Shear didn’t bother to watch the impact as he shifted to another warship. Once he had a lock, he fired. As he aimed for a third he saw black dots come out of the warships arms. They looked like dragons, but that couldn’t be.
Could it?
He fired and warning lights flashed across the console. The Tesla coil was close to burning out.
The first warship hit by the Tesla cannon lost lift and plunged into the East River between Manhattan and Long Island. A victory for mankind. Negligible in the worldwide onslaught.
Something flashed overhead.
Shear looked out the window.
Dragons.
He glanced at the console, but the coil was still powering up.
Shear considered turning on the shield, but what was the point? He looked out once more. A dragon was heading directly for the lab. The light on the board went from red to yellow. He adjusted the targeting from a warship to the incoming dragon.
Shear tensed as the dragon’s mouth opened wide.
The light was green.
Shear hit the button and the Tesla cannon blasted the dragon into a splattering mass of bio-matter.
The Coil exploded on top of the tower.
He barely had time to register those dual events when another dragon dove at the lab. He put his hands up, expecting to be incinerated. Instead the dragon spewed forth hundreds, thousands of small, thin objects.
“Fuck!” Shear yelled when he realized they were snake-like creatures. They hit the outside of the lab like rain. Some struck the windows and the heavier ones broke through, which allowed the smaller ones to also enter.
Shear ran for the desk where he’d left the pistol. He swore he could hear them slithering toward him. Something touched his leg and he screamed. He reached the desk, grabbed the gun and put it to his temple. They were crawling up his legs. Dozens of them.
Shear pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Shear screamed as he was covered with the parasites. He desperately tried to pull back the slide on the pistol and that’s when a tiny parasite bored into his anus. A longer one wrapped around his hands, squeezing tight, bones in his hand breaking. He dropped the gun. He distantly felt something inside him, in his guts. He also realized these blind, groping things had to be targeted for life somehow, perhaps heat-seeking?
But then the parasite reached his spine and absorbed into it, taking over his nervous system.
Shear went still.
He was still himself in his mind. Silently screaming.
But his nervous system outside of his mind was under the control of the Swarm.
AIRSPACE, AREA 51
Turcotte was buttoned up in the Fynbar wondering how much fuel it had left. Several dragons had flown over Area 51, but the hunting was coming up with little given the devastation and lack of life. More importantly, and interestingly, they also ignored the Fynbar.
The closest warship was on the far side of the long runway. He watched it descend and touch down a single arm. He expected to see the Swarm as he
knew it, orbs with tentacles, come out.
What actually exited made his fuel decision for him. It was a sampling of the collective nightmares of the dark side of human psyche. First came thousands of spider-like creatures, skittering on eight legs, with a circular, flat body from two to eight inches in diameter. On their back were a small forest of parasites, waving about. These were followed by unbelievably large snakes; sort of snakes. These were thirty to fifty feet long with thick bodies sporting multiple heads, from three to seven. They slithered out, heads darting back and forth, searching.
The Naga had been in Duncan’s notes, a creature of legend in many cultures, particularly in southeast Asia.
It got worse.
Following the Naga was huge anthropoids. They fit that definition because they had two arms, two legs, a body and a head. They walked upright. But that was the only way they approached being human-like. Each was thirty to forty feet tall. The skin was rubbery, scaly, mottled dark green and black. The legs bent backward, rather than forward. The feet ended in claws that tore into the ground. The arms were long and also had vicious claws. The arms, when they were extended, were webbed from shoulders to elbows to the body, almost wing-like. But the worst was where the head should be. A lump sat on top of the shoulders, It consisted of a writhing mass of tentacles surrounding a gaping hole. Some were so long they touched the ground. Above the tentacles were two beady red, deep-set eyes. The head slanted back to a large bulb, which had loose ‘skin’ hanging below it all the way to back of the legs.
There had been an image of something like it in Duncan’s files. It had been of the Cthulhu, a creature from H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares. The Great Ancient One. Turcotte briefly wondered if Lovecraft had met Nikola Tesla. After all, Tesla had hacked into the guardian computer in the Mount Ararat mothership. Had Lovecraft been a Watcher? A Myrddin? Had Duncan’s theory been wrong and the ‘genetic memory’ actually been stories told by Tesla to other Myrddin after he accessed the Airlia records?