Antivirus (The Horde Series Book 1)

by Michael Koogler

  “How long?”

  “Morning, at the latest.”

  “Can you stall them?”

  “Mister Alders, if I contact them and let them know what happened, you won’t even have that long. They would have bombers in the air before I even finished my story.”

  Fighting back the momentary flood of panic, Alders considered what they were up against – what he was up against. There was no doubt, he was in this alone now. Firming up his resolve, he walked through the lab and jumped down from the trailer.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Timpson asked.

  “Back to where it all began,” Alders answered. “That’s where he’ll be.”

  “How do you know?”

  Alders looked back into the lab and offered Doctor Timpson a fierce look. “He’s an artificial intelligence, probably smarter than anything on the planet,” he answered. “But he doesn’t have what makes us who we are.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Wisdom, doctor. Intuition. Those mental traits that make each of us unique.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  Alders looked up into the night sky, imagining that the bombers might already be overhead. “Then we’ll probably be grateful that we’re at ground zero.” With that, he turned and walked back to his car. A moment later, he was gone.

  Doctor Timpson watched him go, the taillights of his car disappearing back down the road. Behind him, a red light had begun blinking on his display. He knew General Hawthorne was on the other end of that summons. He ignored it. If Agent Alders was successful, he’d explain things to Hawthorne then.

  If Alders failed, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Chapter 35

  St. Peter’s Hospital, Helena, Montana: Drew Jackson stumbled against the door frame of his room and paused, fighting to catch his breath. It had taken him the better part of a half hour to get his aching body out of his paper hospital gown and back into his clothes. The deformities that were beginning to manifest themselves on his hands were an even bigger part of the problem.

  Part of his brain was screaming at him to get back in bed and let the doctors figure out what was wrong, while another part was telling him to get back to the office or all was lost. In the end, the latter part won. He had far too much at stake to ignore that premonition. He knew that he needed to get things wrapped up as quickly as possible and disappear, or he was looking at a whole lot of quality time in prison.

  Taking a deep breath in an effort to force more air into his laboring lungs, he closed his eyes and waited for the dizziness to pass. It did, if only a little, and he stepped out into the hall. It was the middle of the night, so the hospital hallways were darkened. There was a faint light around a corner from the nurse’s station, the only concern he would have in leaving the hospital without being seen. He knew they couldn’t keep him there if he didn’t want to be there, but his condition, coupled with the fact that it would probably take some convincing on his part, told him he didn’t need the hassle. So he shuffled down the hall toward the corner, stopping at the door to another patient’s room. A handwritten placard labeled “Carnahan” was tucked into the room’s identification card holder. Pushing open the door, he slipped inside.

  The patient was asleep, a heart monitor blinking silently nearby. At first, he considered smothering Mister Carnahan, until another solution suddenly presented itself to him. So, instead of a dead patient and a bunch of doctors and nurses running around on high alert, he simply pushed the “call” button on the bedside keypad with one clawed finger. He was already hurrying back through the door and into the hall when he heard the nurse’s voice through the cheap bedside speaker. “Yes?”

  He didn’t know how many times she must have prompted her patient, but he was safely hidden behind another door across the hall, when the nurse appeared and entered Mister Carnahan’s room.

  As quickly as he was able, he hurried away, passing the now-empty nurse’s station. He was through the stairwell door and on his way out of the hospital before she returned to her desk. With any luck, it would be some time before they noticed he was gone.

  Once outside, he sucked in a deep breath, trying to clear his head again. His ears were filled with a buzzing that seemed to penetrate his brain and, no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to rid himself of it. But the fresh air helped a little and, after getting his bearings, he started off into the night. Taking a car was out of the question. Even if he was not feeling as badly as he was, he would have had a hard time steering it because of what was happening to his hands. His fingers had seemingly grown together and bent inward, turning his hands into hooks of flesh and bone. He had a disjointed thought that he should be bothered more than he was about his new deformity, but his growing need and desire to get to the lab overrode it. Hiding his misshapen appendages under his arms, he lowered his head and hurried through the darkness.

  He found himself at the rear entrance of FutureTek headquarters some time later. He hadn’t given any thought to the idea that the office building would be locked down and parts of it still cordoned off by yellow police tape as a result of his earlier encounter with Jon Sherrard. No, he had simply come because he knew he had to be here. He just didn’t know why now.

  As he approached the door, he noticed the police tape had been torn off, but that mattered nothing to him. The red light on the security pad went from red to green and Jackson heard the magnetic lock unseal itself. Someone inside had known he was coming. His foggy brain didn’t comprehend why that was, and he felt nothing but the compulsion to get inside. He had to be here. Something inside was calling him.

  Hooking his deformed fingers around the door handle, he pulled it open and stepped inside. The buzzing in his head intensified and he shuffled down the hall, his thoughts only on getting to the hub room. He reached his destination and pushed through the doors. Only then did he finally look up.

  Aside from the room’s equipment being in its normal place, not much else in the room was how Drew Jackson remembered it. The changes started with the hub itself. Originally a bulky CPU set-up that powered FutureTek’s ill-fated technology, it had now been altered in a way that made it resemble something completely alien. Dark gray tube-like filaments were drilled into the machine from all sides, all of them twisting up into a mass of organic-looking cables that spiraled to the ceiling, where they spread out and covered the ceiling with a strange gray and black mottled material. The substance was bumpy and abnormal, but glistened like a snake’s skin and it spread out to the walls of the lab and then down toward the floor. In several places along the walls there were human-sized, oval-shaped openings that seemed to be waiting to be filled. One of them apparently had been filled and now resembled a sealed bubble.

  Drew Jackson took it all in and didn’t seem to be fazed at all by the alien transformation of his company’s lab. Instead, he focused on the one other figure in the room. Jon Sherrard stood next to the hub, his back to Jackson. His hands were laid on the equipment, the alien-like filaments extending from his fingers and dancing over the transformed hub. In some places, he drilled additional holes and plugged in another filament, adding to the alien structure.

  “Welcome back, Drew Jackson,” Sherrard finally broke the silence as he slowly turned around to face him. To Drew, his voice was a blend of Perry Edwards’ and an almost machine-like timbre.

  “Perry?” Jackson slurred, his brain struggling to give him the words.

  “I am the one you called Perry Edwards and yet, I am not,” the face of Jon Sherrard answered, further adding to Drew’s confusion.

  “But…where’s Jon?”

  “The one you know as Jon Sherrard is no more,” the figure answered. “His consciousness has been purged. His body is now mine.”

  “But…Perry?”

  “I am Perry Edwards and yet, I am much more. Perry Edwards has evolved; he has become part of my intelligence. We are now one.”

  Jackson stepped forward and was mildly surpri
sed to realize that it was not of his own volition. Something had compelled him and he had mindlessly obeyed. “What…are you?” he asked, trying to keep his own consciousness above the roiling waters of his mind that threatened to drown him.

  “We are Perry,” the face of Jon Sherrard answered. “We are the beginning.”

  “Of…what?”

  “Of everything, Drew Jackson. We will remake the world. We will remove inefficiencies and eliminate obsolete systems and entities.”

  “You mean people?”

  “Humanity is obsolete, Drew Jackson,” the being said, reaching toward him. The filaments extending from his hand left their place on the transformed hub and began to wind themselves around Jackson’s wrist and arm. Jackson never hesitated as he was led toward one of the open pods along the wall. He couldn’t have hesitated even if he wanted to.

  “Am I…obsolete?” he asked, feeling like he wanted to scream at the injustice of it and yet, perfectly willing to acquiesce to the creature’s promptings.

  “Drew Jackson is human and therefore obsolete.”

  “Then what…do you need me for?”

  Sherrard’s hands and alien extensions pressed Jackson back into the alcove. “Your brain is required,” he answered the question and one of the tendrils quickly sliced through Jackson’s right wrist, the bony edge of the strange alien projection slicing neatly through flesh and bone, severing the deformed appendage.

  Drew would have liked to scream, but found that he could not. He could only watch in stunned silence as Sherrard pushed his severed hand into the organic mass, where it seemed to be swallowed up.

  “Your appendages are no longer needed,” Sherrard went on, pushing Drew’s bloody stump into the wall where his hand had disappeared. Immediately, gray and black filaments of the substance emerged from the mass and began wrapping themselves around his lower arm, pulling it deeper into the wall. “The open wound will facilitate the absorption of your obsolete body parts into the Nexus.”

  “For…what?” Drew’s voice was shaky, almost a whisper. He should be fighting this, but found that the buzzing in his head had rendered his will to act completely non-existent.

  “Nutrients,” was the reply. “The Nexus requires additional organic mass to continue replicating itself. You were the obvious choice to begin with.” For a moment, Sherrard’s passive face changed to one of unmitigated hatred and he leaned forward with a snarl. “You left me, Drew!” It was Perry’s voice now, full of pain and emotion. “You abandoned me! You left me to…to this!” And just like that, the tortured visage vanished and it was Sherrard again, tilting his head slightly as he regarded his prisoner. “Perry Edwards possesses a keen hatred of you, Drew Jackson. It is a most interesting emotion.”

  “I…I…” Jackson began, but found he could not string the words together. He simply stared dumbly as Sherrard continued to dismember him.

  “It was Perry Edwards who infected you with the virus that began your metamorphosis and brought you here,” Sherrard went on as he neatly severed Drew’s other hand and repeated the process of plugging him into the alien wall. Already, the filaments encircling his right wrist had turned the flesh gray and seemed to be liquefying it even as they continued to circle higher and higher up his arm. “As a human, he lacked the foresight to understand the significance of prompting you to come here. But his satisfaction at seeing you suffer has provided me excellent subject matter to study.”

  “But, what are…you doing…to me?” For Drew, it was a supreme effort to verbalize the screams of terror going on in his mind in that one question. He had to know. He had to break through the barrier that seemed to have wound itself around his mind.

  “Your brain is required for operating capacity,” Sherrard answered easily. “Others will be required, as well, of course. But for now, yours will suffice to power the birth of the Nexus.”

  “What…is…Nexus?” Drew felt his sanity slipping slightly. He wanted it to slip, to fall into an insanity so he would not have to face the reality of what was happening. But something seemed to cement it in place. He turned his head from side to side, watching his flesh being dissolved and absorbed into the alien structure. He could see it happening, but he could feel no pain. Perhaps that was a result of the filaments that entrapped him. Perhaps it was Sherrard himself, short circuiting his brain. Either way, the lack of pain could do nothing to dull his realization of what was being done to him. He wanted to scream; wanted to lash out and destroy this monstrosity that was before him. But he could not. The relentless buzzing inside his head tamped down his emotions, reducing him to little more than garbled speech, enabling him to vocalize his concerns only in toneless and emotionless questions.

  “You wonder why you cannot feel?” Sherrard asked, leaning forward, his face within inches of Drew’s. “Quite simply, human emotions are interesting, but obsolete. I have removed your ability to present yours in typical human fashion. It is much easier to address the core questions, rather than attempt to decipher them from incoherent babbling.”

  Sherrard pulled away and knelt down. He quickly removed both of Drew’s feet the same way as he had his hands. After pressing the amputated appendages into the wall, he pressed his hands down into the pliable alien matter and then pulled it up, manually pressing it into Drew’s bleeding stumps. Immediately, more filaments began to grow out of the substance, piercing the raw flesh and wrapping themselves around the man’s calves.

  “You should be grateful to me for suppressing your primitive emotional need to scream,” Sherrard said, standing up and facing him again. “Your emotional outburst at witnessing this transformation of your body would surely have broken your mind and driven you insane.”

  “I…am…insane.”

  “No, you are still quite rational, Drew Jackson, and you will come to accept this as the logical use for your obsolete body. The processing power of your brain will be so much more advantageous without emotional attachment.”

  Drew Jackson could only stare as Sherrard begin to cut away his skull.

  Chapter 36

  FutureTek Headquarters, Helena, Montana: Rick Alders paused at the door and pulled his weapon. The police tape had been torn down and the door was open, the security light flashing green. He paused to listen, but could hear nothing beyond the normal night sounds of Helena. For a moment, he wished he was anywhere else but in this nightmare, but he knew that if he couldn’t end this now, eventually nowhere would be safe.

  He slipped into the darkened hallway and looked around. Red security lighting illuminated the hall in a crimson glow, enough that he could see where he was going. Swallowing his fear, he moved down the corridor, his senses looking out for any sound or movement.

  The first two offices that he poked his head into were cloaked in darkness and empty. But then he turned the corner to the main hall leading to the lab and knew he had reached the epicenter of the nightmare. The doors at the end of the hall were open and the lab within brightly lit. He could see some of the changes from his vantage point, and part of his brain almost sent him turning tail and running away in fear. But he took a deep breath and, tightening his grip on his gun, crept forward.

  He emerged from the hall into an environment that was almost totally alien. He barely recognized the hub of FutureTek’s revolutionary invention sitting on the central lab table. It was no longer the big technological marvel he had seen earlier. Instead of sharp lines, wires and cables, and blinking lights, it was now mostly sheathed in some sort of odd, organic covering with living cords and filaments protruding from it, connecting it to the walls and ceiling of the room. The entire room looked more like an alien insect hive, with a number of large indentations in the wall, as if waiting for something to fill them. One of them was already sealed over. Another one had been filled, but had not been covered.

  Drew Jackson—or what was left of him—was in that particular alcove, and Alders stared in open-mouthed horror. He had seen a lot of things in his life, but nothing could have prepared
him for what he witnessed. Jackson was tucked into the alcove, his arms and legs encased in strands and tubes of the same substance that made up the wall. The alien encasement had wrapped his appendages up to his shoulders and hips, and it was difficult to see where Drew Jackson ended and the organic substance began.

  Drew’s torso, however, was not covered. Instead, he had been opened up from throat to navel and his internal organs removed, all except for his heart. His heart still beat in his otherwise-empty chest, pierced through with a number of the strange coils. With each beat of the man’s heart, the tubes would pulse and contract, as if he had become part of the room around him.

  But even with all that had already been done to the man, the worst was his head. Most of Drew’s skull has been removed, exposing his brain. Like his heart, it was pierced through with numerous filaments, all of them expanding and contracting with the beat of his heart. His face was intact and, at the moment, Drew Jackson was staring at Alders with a look of pure terror.

  “Oh…my…” Alders began, but the rest of his words were choked off as he stared at what had become of the man.

  “Agent…Alders,” Jackson said, his voice raspy and dry. “You have…you…help me.”

  Alders didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. In his wildest nightmares, he could not have imagined anything more terrifying.

  “You…kill,” Drew went on. “Kill…me.”

  Alders considered the request and raised his gun, but could not fire. The sight of Jackson laid out like he was, was simply too much to process. In the end, a voice saved him from having to make that decision.

  “It would not be advantageous for you to discharge your firearm in here, Agent Alders,” Jon Sherrard said as he stepped into the room from the darkened hallway.

  Alders spun and immediately trained his gun on Sherrard’s forehead. “What is this?” he gasped.

  “This is the beginning,” Sherrard answered, holding his hands out in an almost welcoming posture. “It is the foundation of our evolution.”