Origins (The Wasteland Chronicles, #2)

by Kyle West

  “How come Ragnarok took so long to detect?” I asked. “You’d think they would have found it much earlier than they did.”

  “In the Old World, NASA funded the NEO Program – the Near Earth Object Program, designed to do just that. Asteroids the size of Ragnarok or larger were all accounted for, but Ragnarok went rogue, somehow. It changed course in what seemed to be an impossible manner. No one knows exactly when this occurred, but it took a while before people noticed. To this day, no one knows how it was done. But we know why it was done.”

  “Why?” I asked, dreading the answer. “Why did it change course?”

  “Don’t you see?” Samuel asked. “We’re being invaded.”

  Chapter 21

  “Aliens?” Anna asked. “Real-life aliens? I can buy a virus. That makes sense. That is clear...”

  “Nothing else explains the attacks on Ragnarok’s surface while it was still in space,” Samuel said, “or how something the size of Ragnarok could suddenly change course like it did.”

  “Maybe something else hit it,” I said. “Another asteroid. It’s possible, right? It could have been hit and been put on a course to hit Earth.”

  “The odds of that are so small that the alien scenario becomes much more likely. Given enough energy, Ragnarok’s course could have been switched. It’s mind-bending mathematically, but maybe they could do it.”

  “And who are they?” Makara asked. “Those creatures that have been attacking us? Because they don’t seem to be that smart. Their strength is in numbers.”

  “I don’t know everything, and the Black Files don’t speak to that. But there does seem to be something that demonstrates intelligence, something referred to in the Files only as ‘The Voice.’”

  “’The Voice?’” Makara asked. “Are you kidding me?”

  Samuel shook his head. “This is the meat of the Black Files. Everything I explained was only the first twenty pages. The rest of it is about this – the xenovirus, the xenofungus, and the Voice. And a day in the future called Xenofall.”

  “Xenofall?” Makara asked.

  “Xenofall,” I said. “Is it what I think it is?”

  “Explanation, please,” Anna said.

  “Let me start at the beginning,” Samuel said. “Ragnarok hit in 2030, as you all know. Almost immediately the virus took effect. The first instances were noted as early as 2031, in Bunker 23 out in western Nebraska. It was the Bunker closest to Ragnarok, and it was the first to go offline in 2034.”

  “It wouldn’t be long until others went offline, too,” I said.

  “That is true,” Samuel said. “And most Bunkers failed for reasons having nothing to do with the xenovirus. Interestingly, the xenovirus’s main job is not to infect life-forms on Earth. It’s to create xenofungus.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s the food source for all xenolife,” Samuel said. “Yeah, xenolife will eat animals, or even people, from time to time. There are nutrients there. But even I noticed in my research that xenofungus is nutrient and calorie heavy. It is death and poison to any of us, but it sustains anything infected with the xenovirus. It could be that the xenovirus is as much an enzyme as it is a virus, an enzyme that can process the fungus and make it edible.”

  “So the xenofungus is like...alien farms?” Anna asked.

  “Yes. That’s a good way to think of it.” Samuel paused. “It also does other stuff. It reproduces rapidly, and can survive in very harsh environments. It doesn’t need much water. It doesn’t mind the cold, or the dryness of the Wasteland. It’s as if it’s been engineered to survive almost any sort of environment, and especially environments without much sunlight. It’s perfectly adapted for surviving in a world that is cloaked from sunlight by meteor fallout, which explains how it is able to spread so easily while everything of Earth origin dies off. We’re in the process of being transformed from Earth into something not-Earth.”

  “What about the monsters?” I asked. “How does the xenovirus do that?”

  “It’s all encoded in the xenovirus’s DNA,” Samuel said. “It does not have a double helix, like Earth-based life. It’s a very complicated cloverleaf structure, something that is very hard to imagine evolving in the wild – at least on Earth – which is also evidence in favor of the xenovirus’s being designed. But the cloverleaf lends certain advantages. It can hold more information. It’s more adaptable. It has the capability to mix and match genes of Earth creatures, creating entirely new forms of life – hence the crawlers. The xenovirus was created.”

  “Created by whom?” I asked.

  Samuel shook his head. “We couldn’t have done this. We don’t have the technology. It must have been created by an alien intelligence.”

  “So you’re saying the xenovirus was planted in Ragnarok?”

  “Exactly,” Samuel said.

  “What about this Voice thing?” Makara asked. “You didn’t explain that.”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s like a sentience for all life-forms infected with the virus. It’s all based on the fungus, somehow. The fungus, in addition to being food, is also like a giant network. Fungus in one part of the world, as long as it is connected, can communicate with fungus in another part. It’s like a giant brain that can think – and yes, speak.”

  “Speak? How?”

  “Most of it is internal, and can’t be heard. The communication can’t be deciphered, much less translated in any way humans can understand. But nonetheless, it takes place. It creates sound waves, sound waves that directly affect the behavior of xenolife. During the attack on Bunker One, for example, the sound waves escalated as the Bunker began to be attacked. The Voice lends sentience to the entire invasion.”

  “Can the Voice be killed?” I asked.

  “You’d have to kill the xenofungus,” Samuel said. “Whether the Voice is actually connected with a physical form, the Black Files don’t say. I guess they didn’t get that far.”

  “There is still so much we don’t know,” I said. “We don’t even know if we can stop this.”

  “Yeah, that’s the bottom line,” Makara said. “Can we stop this? What’s the next step?” She pointed outside the lab. “Because if you tell me Lisa came out here and died, and those Files don’t tell us how to proceed, we wasted our time. We wasted a life.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Samuel said. “If this sentience, this Voice, were somehow destroyed, I guess that could make all xenolife directionless. I don’t know how we’d go about doing that.”

  “Great,” Anna said. “This just gets more and more impossible.”

  No one said anything. It was a lot to take in. Even though we knew where it came from, even why it was here, we were no closer to knowing how to stop the xenovirus. Nothing definitive, anyway. Kill the Voice – but how do you kill something that isn’t attached to a corporeal form?

  None of this made sense. I was expecting the answer to be obvious. I was expecting something like a chemical or a drug that would kill anything that had the xenovirus – an actual cure that targeted the xenovirus, and eradicated it.

  Knowing how something existed didn’t tell you how to make it no longer exist.

  “Do the Files say anything else?” I asked. “Anything at all on how to kill this thing?”

  “No,” Samuel said.

  So that was it. If these researchers couldn’t figure anything out – in the Bunker with the biggest labs, the most computers, and most expertise – what shot did we have? We were only four. Other than pure guesswork, there was almost no hope.

  Within a certain amount of time, the world would be covered with Blights. There would only be one Blight, and humanity would no longer exist.

  We were facing extinction.

  ***

  “There is one thing you didn’t explain,” Makara said.

  Samuel looked up from where he had been hanging his head. His form was hunched in near defeat – it was disconcerting to see that in our leader.

  “Explain what Xenof
all is.”

  “Xenofall is what it sounds like,” Samuel said. “Ragnarok was only the beginning. The writers and moviemakers in the Old World always thought aliens would attack with giant ships and lasers. Nothing is further from reality. It’s all biological warfare, and the most brilliant kind there is: the kind that harms your enemy, and only helps you.”

  “So when Meteor fell, it was only clearing the way,” I said. “When the rest of them come, the natives will be gone, so to speak.”

  Samuel nodded. “Earth is being terraformed. Not by giant machines of metal, but by tiny machines of life. When they’re through, Earth will not be ours anymore. We will have been long dead, and the planet will be ready for them to use. We are being colonized.”

  “When will this ‘Xenofall’ happen?” I asked.

  “The Files don’t say,” Samuel said. “However long it takes for us to die out, and however long it takes for the Blights to cover the Earth. But we’re the only ones who can stop it. That is, if it can be stopped.”

  Samuel walked from the computer. In that lab, with the hundreds of computers humming around us, Xenofall seemed like a date that would never happen. But it was real. It was coming. And we had no way to stop it.

  “We need more information,” Samuel said. “But this...” He waved his arm around, indicating the entire room, “this is all there is. We know more than anyone else on Earth knows, and still, it’s not enough.”

  “So what more can we do?” I asked. “We’re stuck here in the Bunker, surrounded by hundreds of miles of Blight and monsters, with winter coming on and no way out. And probably no food or water. Looks like we’re as good as dead.”

  Samuel ignored my cheery assessment of the situation. “The only thing I can think of is going to Ragnarok Crater.”

  My insides lurched at the thought. We had just gotten here, of all places, and Samuel was talking about picking up and going to the Ragnarok Crater, another thousand miles away?

  “Why there?”

  Samuel shrugged. “This is pure speculation, but it makes sense to think the Crater would be the center of it all. It’s where Meteor landed and began its work. There might be some central hub where everything communicates with each other.”

  “Key words: pure speculation,” Makara said. “We came here. We found nothing. We lose. We found our answer. The answer is: there is no answer. This was all for nothing. All we can do is hope to get out of here, find the safest place we can, and wait for the end.”

  “We’re not getting out of here,” I said. “Our ride blew itself up. It was a miracle that thing even flew.”

  Something quite unexpected happened. A voice came from every speaker in the lab, booming from the walls.

  “Apocalypse Team,” the voice said, “this is Dr. Cornelius Ashton. Can you hear me?”

  We stared at each other in shock. So he was here.

  “Yes!” Samuel yelled. “Dr. Ashton, where are you?”

  “I am not in Bunker One,” Dr. Ashton said, “but there is little time to explain. With luck, there will be time for explanations later. You all will die if you stay in this lab a minute longer.”

  “Die?” Anna asked. “What do you know? How are you even communicating with us?”

  “Never mind that. I will explain later. All that matters is getting out of here alive. It knows you’re here. The Voice. Every turner within a hundred-mile radius is converging on this point. It never wanted you to know what you have learned here today. Remember that the old axiom is true: information is power. The Voice does not want you to have it.

  “There will be time for answers soon, but for now, you must escape this place. Already they are inside.”

  As soon as those words were said, there was a crash against the vault door. I could hear the creatures’ screams and wails coming from the other side. If they could get in the tunnel when it had collapsed, they could probably get in here, too.

  “Go to the runway,” Dr. Ashton said. “I will provide your escape.”

  With that, the voice cut off. The silence that followed was pierced by more screams from infected creatures.

  We could hear groans. They were coming from within the labs.

  Howlers.

  I guessed that was where all the bodies had gone.

  Chapter 22

  Howlers charged from two corridors into the main lab. Their clothes had long since rotted from their bodies. They slunk toward us, flesh pink and thin, coated with purple slime.

  “Don’t shoot!” Samuel said. “Head for the stairs!”

  We followed Samuel away from our attackers to the staircase that led to the lab’s second level. I didn’t know if there was a way out up there, but there sure wasn’t one on the bottom floor.

  We reached the landing and found no way out. The second floor was just a balcony that surrounded the entire lab.

  “That vault was the only way out,” Makara said. “We’re trapped.”

  “There has to be another way,” I said. “Let’s just keep looking.”

  Some of the Howlers charged for the stairs. We had to keep moving.

  We followed Samuel around the balcony, until we had reached the other side. We were above the computer where we had searched for the Black Files – there were no doors, no windows, nor any other way back down to the lab floor. And now Howlers spilling from the balcony doorway cut us off on both sides.

  This time, Lisa wouldn’t be here to save the day.

  “We’re going to have to kill them,” Anna said. “Explosions or not, we’re dead either way.”

  “Kill these,” Samuel said, pointing to the left. “We’ll bring ’em down quick and jump off for the floor, and run deeper into the labs. I can see no other way.”

  We rushed to do just that. I aimed my Beretta, firing it into the oncoming infected. They shrieked as my bullets connected. I was getting much better at aiming the thing. I hit one creature in the head, and it crashed to the floor; the one behind stumbled over its body. In quick succession, Anna sliced one of the Howlers in half, and beheaded another. Makara fired, each shot finding its mark right in the head.

  They were starting to swell. They would explode in moments.

  “Now!” Samuel shouted.

  We hopped over the railing, landing atop what seemed to be a large computer. We jumped the rest of the way down. Though not as dangerous as the plane jump, the falls were a shock to my knees. I forced myself up, hoping I could run the pain out.

  I hobbled after the others as they went to the empty corridor. Above us, the bodies popped, and purple goo rained down, drenching the floor. We made it into the corridor, following it as it circled downward.

  “We do not want to be going down,” Makara said.

  An infected man emerged from a nearby door, his mouth agape and dripping slime. Quickly, Anna stabbed him through the heart, retrieved the blade, spun, and sliced off his head. She kicked the torso into the room from which the Howler had come.

  “There has to be some other exit,” Samuel said.

  We followed the corridor at a near sprint. The infected were falling farther and farther behind, but their howls still pierced the air. The hallway ended in a giant chamber filled with large machinery. It reminded me of the nuclear reactor we had come across in Bunker 114. This chamber was much larger, though, which was saying a lot; that one had been big. Four reactors rose from the floor, the power source for all Bunker One. Only one was running – likely the only one that still worked.

  “These things can run forever if maintained properly,” Samuel said. “Or maybe not even maintained properly. It explains how this place still has power.”

  “This isn’t time for a lesson, Samuel,” Makara said. She pointed. “That ladder. If we can reach the top catwalk, we might find a way to make it to the runway.”

  We ran for the ladder, which was on the other side of the chamber. We began our long climb. I felt dwarfed by the gigantic size of all the machinery in the room.

  We had reached about
two-thirds of the way up when the chamber was filled with echoes of hundreds of horrifying shrieks. I could not see where they were coming from, but looking up, I saw them.

  Entering through the ceiling, through air ducts and hidden openings, came hundreds upon hundreds of birds. Turned birds. They swarmed for us like locusts, their white eyes glowing and their wings beating madly.

  “Hurry it up, Samuel!” Makara yelled.

  The swarm of birds homed in on our position. There were hundreds – big, small, but they all had one purpose – to kill us and keep us from reaching the top.

  There was no way we could fight these. We had to get out of here.

  Makara fired into the mass from the ladder, and a couple of the flying things plummeted toward the floor.

  Hurriedly, we reached the top. We ran away from the avian swarm, making for a nearby door.

  “Inside here,” Samuel said.

  We rushed in, finding ourselves in another corridor. Samuel slammed the door shut, locking it against the birds outside. They slammed into the door, pecking it, to no avail.

  “Glad we got out of that one,” Anna said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I turned forward, and wanted to scream.

  After seeing what was ahead of us, I almost wanted to try my luck with the birds.

  ***

  Before us stood a creature at least twenty feet tall, with three heads on snakelike necks, and a long, spiky tail – a creature that could only be described as a Hydra.