by Neil Leckman
possibly mean? I looked up at the empty buildings across the street, and listened to the lonely howl of the wind as it blew a couple of tumbleweeds down the road.
I walked into the station and stood in the middle of a room with three large oak desks, one obviously for a dispatcher, with an old dispatch radio, probably an antique, sitting in the middle of the desk. The other two desks were obviously for the officers that worked there, and one look like it sat unused for the most part. Papers were scattered around the room on the floor, and in two other places were those same puddles, except one also had keys, a gun, and a sheriff’s hat lying mixed in. On the desk that looked unused sat a large wooden crate with the word “Tanna” burned into the side, below that it said “Live Specimens”. There was an odd company logo; it looked like a type of bug I had never seen before, dragonfly wings, on a spider, with a scorpion’s tail. “Science’s answer to natural pest control” was the slogan under the emblem. It the back of my mind that idea surfaced, maybe something had turned everybody into puddles of goo, obviously I was a victim of too much television! Everybody knows that there are too many bones to leave nothing but clear liquid, counting hair, nails, etc. So the question still remained, what were the puddles scattered everywhere with clothes in them, and where was everyone?
Outside I stood looking around for any other clues as to what might have happened here, but there was nothing I could see that helped. The gas pump still remained locked, and unless I could find another pump, or the key I was going to be stuck here. My cell phone did not show any service here, which quite frankly, given the Mayberry feel of the place, did not surprise me. I probably had four or five hours until it started to get dark, so I still had time to find a solution to my problem. I turned and walked towards the main part of downtown, which was only three blocks long. There was an old movie theater in my left, and a hardware store on my right. I figured the odds of someone being in the hardware store were better so I headed in that direction.
For the most part the downtown area seemed to be completely empty of people, except for the man I found dying in an alley off Main Street. He was propped up against a dumpster in obvious pain; next to him was a large cardboard carton that must have served as his home on cold nights. There were a couple of much worn dirty blankets lying partially exposed next to him. I walked over to see if he might be able to tell me where everyone was. As I approached him, it was evident that I should keep the distance between us.
“Excuse me mister, but do you have any idea where everybody went? I can’t seem to find a soul anywhere.”
A sore by his mouth oozed a viscous yellow fluid as his lips moved, rivulets forming lumpy trails as they dropped off his chin, making it almost impossible for him to speak. Reaching up with his right hand, he grabbed my pant leg pulling me, closer than I wanted to be and faintly whispered two words, "Lake Tanna". Took one last breath and died, staring at me accusingly. What did that mean? I could not remember hearing about any lake nearby called Tanna.
The skin around his mouth curled back, exposing a death grin of rotted gums and yellowed teeth. The eyes sank back into their sockets, and then began to shrivel up as some virus ate the flesh. They stared in an odd way as they flattened out, and then vanished into his skull. The smell was worse than anything I had ever experienced before, bringing the taste of hot vomit to the back of my throat. That is when I noticed the twin marks on the victim’s throat. Raised ridged bite marks, side by side, with a tiny trickle of yellow fluid oozing from them. That did it for me; the time had come to get the hell out of here, so I walked back to the gas station. Inside the station, I found a cabinet that contained copies of all the master keys in the office in the back of the station. There was one-marked ‘pumps’ that I grabbed and headed out side to my car with. Unlocking the pump, I began filling my tank. As I stood there I thought I heard the sound of something fly by, but turning so nothing. Maybe the place was getting to me more than I cared to admit. When the tank was full, I got back into my car and headed back towards the highway. As I left the town, I had the very uneasy feeling that I had left a haunted place, and it watched me go. Chills ran down my spine like tiny icy feet.
3
In the sky, the snake/hawk felt a pull, something was calling it and it had to answer, so it wheeled about in a large circle, heading in a new direction.
“Major, both projects are on the move, and it looks like they’ll meet somewhere in the Colorado mountains,” Tim said handing the Major the printouts.
As Tim was leaving, he turned back, “Just one other thing, Ruby left a full egg sac in town. My guess would be that there are close to 200 newly formed babies. They will hatch in roughly fourteen hours.”
“Contact Hanson, we will need to have a surgical strike in that town, make it look like a gas line erupted, or some natural disaster, we will need to EMP first to disable the egg sac Ruby left, and we can’t have those things multiplying. If that happened it could become a much larger problem than we can handle.”
Tim turned and left the major’s office, for the first time since the project had started he was becoming concerned. The design of Ruby should have rendered her incapable to reproduce; however, something evidently had drastically changed for her to leave an egg sac. The monitor showed that Ruby was in hibernation, much like when a computer goes into standby.
4
In the air, the snake rippled with changes, caused by the introduction of the new DNA. Its eyes became more like an owl’s, gaining the ability to see better in the dark. Its face melted away and the face of Tracy Spooner appeared in its place, except that she had owl’s eyes and large fangs. The snake’s body shortened and the tail became similar to a rat’s tail, leathery and long. Twice it spotted small animals below and took them for dinner, one was a mouse, and the other was a raccoon, which was ingested after a fierce fight for its life. The nanites processed the aggressive nature of the raccoon, and its stealth, and added them to the creature’s natural abilities. It cried out in the lone night air, the sound echoing below. Some people who were camping nearby paused, and wondered what type of creature made such a cry. Seeing a small dog below running across an open field it swooped down and using its new claws and violence tore it apart, leaving a trail below of blood drops across the tall grass, black in the moonlight. Pleased with itself the snake began to purr. Suddenly the snake’s eyes went blank, the wings stopped flapping, and it plummeted towards the trees below, hitting the forest floor with the sound of bones snapping. It laid there, blood trickling from its mouth, unmoving. Ruby felt the tenuous connection between them break, she still headed towards the last destination sent her, and her programming required that she comply.
5
“Major, something has caused the snake to vanish from our tracking. I’m not sure if this means that she has been terminated, or something unexpected happened”
“Continue to monitor the situation, see if it reappears again, until then continue to have Ruby head to the destination we originally picked. Have you heard anything on any civilian bands indicating that someone may have come in contact with it? If not continue to monitor their chatter along the route they have to take. If anything has happened let me know, we’ll have to have a team contain the situation.”
“Yes sir.” Tim turned and walked away. He knew containing a situation meant that someone would have to be silenced, forever if need be. A team comprised of soldiers from the Special Forces unit who felt no remorse, fear, or pain. In some ways, they were more machine than Ruby or the snake. Walking back to his desk he thought about how the major, much like this office, was sterile, cold, and without feeling.
6
The motionless body of the snake creature opened one eye, and blinked. Inside some systems were rebooting, trying to restore full function. It had flown in front of a microwave tower without knowing it, and the emissions had shut all the nanites down, since it was low level it had not destroyed the majority of them. Connection was made to the mainframe and data was reload
ed from just moments before the system failure. Sitting up, ripples moved across the length of the body, the sound of bones reknitting back together could be heard, limp limbs became functional again, and it stood taller. Once all repairs had been attained, it flapped its wings and continued towards the original destination. Inside her cocoon, Ruby acknowledged the fact, and remained in standby mode. The military wanted to see if Ruby could destroy the snake creature; they liked the idea of one creation destroying the other, leaving a docile machine. Hopefully, Ruby’s bite would be enough to dissolve the snake, leaving no visible trace that it ever existed. The distance between the two grew smaller, and before nightfall, they would converge.
7
I pulled into the little town around 5 PM, which isn’t nighttime in most places; however, in this small mountain town the sun had a tendency to set early behind the fourteen thousand foot peaks that were west of town. “Cerevent Telecom” was the name of the small telecommunications company that I was sent here to help. They were talking about increasing their cell phone range, and enhancing the microwave network, something they had been working on