by Adrian Smith
It made sense. Keep the general public ignorant before panic spread.
“How will the government let the public know if the virus appears here. Turn the internet back on?” Zanzi said.
Lisa let out a long sigh, as if the years of worry and stress from defending her country were suddenly too much to bear. “It’s something the Think Tank came up with.” She turned and looked into Zanzi’s eyes. There was sadness there. Sadness, but also a fierce determination. “The internet has always been plagued by rumors and twisted facts. Shut off the source. Control what’s being said using government-controlled TV and radio,” Lisa said, her voice soft.
“That’s dangerous. They could leave out important information. Information that could save millions.”
“I know. It isn’t a perfect solution. But we need to focus on now. Food and water. Secure the asset. Then safety.”
“Got it.”
“Good,” Lisa said, handing her the car keys.
A few cars drove by the house; children played in their front yards, riding bikes, kicking balls. Mums and dads were gardening and mowing lawns. Nothing out of the ordinary. How long would that last? As news of the virus hit, would America become like Europe?
Zanzi slid into the driver’s seat of the old Jeep Cherokee Brock had lent them. He had laughed his deep baritone chuckle as he handed her the keys. “An Indian giving a white lady a Jeep named after an Indian tribe.”
She had grinned and embraced him in a hug. “Thank you, Brock.”
“Take care of the director. She’s good people. And no talking of the glittering caves, or we’ll put a curse on you,” he’d said, laughing again.
She’d chuckled to herself as he disappeared into the mist that always seemed to hang around the Oregon coast.
Lisa hobbled into the garage and threw her rucksack onto the back seat. She investigated the back, checking the supplies. She nodded her satisfaction and hopped into the passenger seat. “First stop, supermarket. Then Portland to a friend. I have a feeling we’re going to need some gear.”
Zanzi eased the Jeep out of the garage and closed the door behind them. She checked both directions before turning right and gathering speed. She kept her thoughts to herself as she navigated the small city. Whatever was going on, she was sick of stumbling around in the dark. She sneaked a glance at Lisa. She was sure the director knew more than what she was letting on. Whatever she knew, she must have her reasons for not telling her.
Fifteen
Koyasan, Japan
The mid-morning sun streamed through the dormitory window as Umi let Ryan in. Heavy music blasted through a Bluetooth speaker. Distorted guitars wailed, chugging in rhythm, and drums pounded. A high Japanese voice sang to the music, almost out of place but weirdly suited.
Umi switched it off.
“Who was that?”
“BabyMetal.”
“Japanese?”
“Yes.”
“I like it,” Ryan said, trying to make Umi comfortable.
The room was sparsely furnished, with only a study desk and chair, and a wardrobe that held both clothes and bedding. Umi had several heavy metal band posters taped up.
Iron Maiden.
Sepultura.
Nightwish.
The kid had good taste. Umi was a short girl with large brown eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a Hello Kitty T-shirt. He let his features relax and gave her a reassuring smile.
Umi blinked and nodded her head slowly.
“When was the last time you saw Keiko?” Ryan pressed, eager to get on with his investigation.
“The morning she went missing. We had breakfast together in the cafeteria, and then I went to class. She told me she was going to the library.”
“And you know her from Osaka University, correct?”
“Yes. I’m studying here for one term.”
“Was there anyone suspicious hanging around before Keiko’s disappearance?”
“No.”
“No strange men in suits?” he asked, scanning the room for any clues. Umi didn’t respond.
Ryan turned back to her and frowned. She was staring blankly out the window. Her forehead was covered in sweat.
“Umi? Are you okay?”
“I feel weird. Tingly all over.” She dabbed her brow with her T-shirt.
Ryan’s mind raced. Booth’s voice on the phone, informing him of the virus. The same virus they had seen in Romania all those years ago.
The CDC and WHO scientists had thought it a mutated form of the Tetanus bacteria but, after treating the infected villagers, their condition had worsened. It hadn’t spread beyond the town, and no new cases had been reported. The scientists had taken their samples, packed up, and left, leaving the residents to bury their dead and pick up the pieces. LK3 had taken their own samples, but the sickness had baffled their experts.
“Lie down,” Ryan said, lifting Umi’s feet onto the bed. As he reached for her hands, she spasmed and let out a pained howl. Her body arched, her feet and arms remaining on the bed with her back curving into the air. Like a scene from The Exorcist.
Her muscles relaxed and her head rolled to the side, tongue hanging from her mouth. Globs of drool pooled on the bed.
Umi screamed and held both hands to her head. “Get them out!”
Umi spasmed again and her body arched for a second time. Her joints cracked as they contorted into odd angles. Her skin darkened. As he watched, Umi’s spine and neck twisted, her head going one way, her legs the other. She let out one last tortured howl as her flesh began to turn gray. It seemed to lose its density, taking on a papery quality. Reacting, Ryan poured a bottle of water over her. The water had no effect. Her skin deteriorated like she was self-combusting from the inside.
Within another thirty seconds, all that was left of Umi was a pile of black ash. It covered the futon mattress in a perfect outline of her small body.
Screams erupted through the building and from outside, the same tortured howls. A weird tingling started in his brain like he had dived into a deep ocean trench and was descending at a rapid rate. The pressure built up. He gasped and managed to raise his eyes. It spread to the back of his skull and his inner ears, and wrapped around his brain like tentacles. Squeezed and tightened. Crushed and compressed.
Ryan let out an anguished cry and shoved open the door. He had three thoughts.
Zanzi!
Stop the pain.
Get outside.
Down the hallway, students were stumbling into the corridor, hands clasping their heads. Some smashed their heads against the walls. A male pupil sprinted past him and dived through a plate-glass window, tumbling out of sight. To his right, three people had begun to swell up like blowfish. They fell to the floor, gasping for breath as their throats swelled shut, cutting off their oxygen. Their skin darkened and turned gray.
As quickly as it had started, the pain vanished. Ryan dropped to his knees and sucked in deep breaths. The pressure had dissipated, but the headache remained. A cacophony of noises replaced it. The wails of people in excruciating pain. Vehicles crashing. Horns blaring. Dozens of dogs and cats howling.
He raised his head and looked up. The three who had been swelling were lying still. The putrid stench of decaying meat hung in the air. Despite his dread of what he would find, he forced himself to look. Splayed ribs from their exploded rib cages jabbed out, like something demonic had torn its way from their chest cavities. Pieces of bone, tissue, and intestines coated the ceiling and walls in a Pollock-type pattern.
Ryan held his sleeve over his mouth, trying to block out the stench. During his training, he had muttered hundreds of curses at his instructors, coming up with terrible and invented names for them as they pushed his body and mind over the edge and built it back up. It had become clear to him over the years, though, why they had done it.
Be ready for any situation, always. React. Adapt. Survive.
Ryan pulled the phone from his pocket, searching for a signal, but it remained dead. H
e tried calling the emergency number and got a busy signal. Grunting, he slipped the phone back into his jeans.
Pained screams still reverberated around the building, but they were becoming fainter as whatever was happening either killed the person or they recovered, like he had. Ryan glanced out the window as he gave Keiko’s room the once over.
Outside, an old man and three students were on the ground, twisting and contorting, but instead of swelling or turning to ash, they were shrinking. First their skin withered over their bones like that of an Egyptian mummy. But it didn’t stop there. They kept shrinking and contracting. Their legs broke off, disintegrating. Then their arms. A sharp, whistling sound rang out, like something overcooking in the microwave, and then their heads exploded, covering the flagstones in gray ash.
Ryan shook his head, trying to make sense of what was happening.
Was it the Mortis? Or something else new and terrifying?
Ryan unholstered his Glock and crept down the hallway. Screams of the dying echoed as he gingerly stepped over the three students with exploded ribs.
What the fuck?
In the foyer, he was greeted by yet more piles of ash. Anything the victims had been holding lay on the floor amongst the gray dust. Books, bags, phones. As far as he could tell, the clothes disintegrated as well.
A door burst open from the hallway to the right. A man dressed in orange robes ran into the foyer. He was shouting incoherently and slamming his fists into his head over and over.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
“Hey!”
Orange Robes only shouted louder and continued to smash his fists into his head. His mouth was bleeding. Thick blood dripped from his self-inflicted wounds.
“Hey!” he shouted again, trying to get the deranged man’s attention.
Orange Robes twitched and lifted his eyes to him. They were yellow and bloodshot. A flit of calmness passed over his face.
“Are you okay?” Ryan said, holding his hands out flat after tucking the pistol in his waistband. Close enough in case Orange Robes attacked.
The man cocked his head to one side, observing him for several moments before dropping to his knees. He clutched his head and began to smash it onto the floor, sending drops of blood spraying into the air.
Orange Robes let out a high-pitched shriek and jumped up. He sprinted across the foyer and ran his head through the window next to the door. The monk gurgled as the blood pumped from his jugular and pooled in the garden outside.
Ryan paused and turned, undecided what to do. Leave? Or find his friends? When the strange event had begun, he’d had one thought: get to Osaka. Then home to Zanzi. Make it happen. But there was still the issue of Sofia and Keiko, and his desire to help those in need.
He looked around and spotted an intercom system next to the reception desk. He clicked the talk button on the microphone. “If anyone is still alive, meet me in the foyer. I’ll be evacuating in five minutes.”
He repeated the instructions three times before sitting.
Using his phone, he activated the stopwatch, setting it for ten minutes. Just to be sure.
Two minutes…
Silence.
Five minutes…
Silence.
He clutched the Glock and stared out the windows. The gardens rustled in the breeze but remained empty. The awful sounds of people shrieking in agony had stopped, replaced by the sound of car horns and smoke alarms blaring. He checked his watch. It was twenty minutes since Umi had self-combusted in agonizing pain. Ryan would never forget the sight of her face twisting and locking, her eyes staring at him, pleading for him to end her suffering.
Eight minutes…
A rumbling sound like thunder rolled across the sky.
Eight and a half minutes…
The scream of a powerful engine…
Ryan furrowed his brow and strained his ears, trying to pinpoint the sound. Realization dawned on him. It was a jet engine straining as a plane struggled to stay in the air. Ryan rushed out the front doors and scanned the skies. He gasped at the sight of a passenger jet. It was low in the sky and heading in his direction. Smoke billowed from one engine. Burning oil? It was either going to hit the town of Koya or the mountain behind. Wherever it hit, it would be catastrophic.
Ryan willed his legs to move and started sprinting toward the cable car half a kilometer away, and toward the falling plane.
His brain yelled at him to run the other way, but something his Krav Maga instructor had said shouted louder: “Face the fear head on. Observe and react.”
The crashing 240-ton tube of metal wasn’t a fighting opponent, but Ryan had no way of judging its exact trajectory. At least the cable car was in a slightly different direction, and away from buildings. The whine of the engines grew louder, so loud it vibrated his teeth. He ignored the sensation and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
He dodged around small trucks and cars that had crashed into the stone walls that surrounded the dozens of temples. He sprinted past ash from the victims, human and animal, lying in clumps on the ground.
Ryan kept checking the plane, trying to judge the impact zone. Thankfully it was still a couple of hundred meters above him as it tore through the air, screaming and shrieking. He skidded to a stop and turned around, watching with morbid fascination. The passenger jet slammed into the forested mountain above the town. Clouds of fireballs shot into the sky as it exploded. Waves of black, orange, yellow, and red washed through the trees. Instinctively he ducked behind a bus shelter. The booming sound of the crash echoed over the sacred mountains and down into the valley.
Around the crash site, fires raged, trying to get a hold as flames licked at the rain-soaked trees.
Ryan forced himself to calm his breathing as he stared at the carnage. After the events of the last half hour, it looked like a tornado of unforgiving ferocity had torn through the once-peaceful town with such force, it would never recover.
Out of habit, he checked his weapon and holstered it. He positioned his rucksack and satchel. He had made a promise to Sofia, to find Keiko. Now that she too had been taken, Ryan was determined to find both safe and well.
He prayed that Zanzi was okay and pivoted. Breaking into an easy jog, he headed back toward the university and the bunker.
Sixteen
Koyasan, Japan
Thirty Minutes Earlier
Ten days. Ten days of peace and solitude. Ten days to unwind and forget the world. To Allie, that meant everything. At first, though, she had scoffed at the idea.
“Meditation? Isn’t that a bit New Age?” she had said to a friend.
“I know, but it was fantastic. I feel whole again.”
Now that she was here and able to forget the stresses of her job, forget about the bombsite her life had become, she was enjoying herself. There were no lawyers and their constant emails as her soon to be ex-husband fought over all their possessions. The last correspondence had driven her over the edge. Travis wanted her limited-edition Baggy Trousers LP by British ska band Madness. Reading that email had nearly caused an aneurysm. Travis hated Madness and was only doing it out of spite.
Allie drew in a lungful of air and let it out slowly, bringing her mind back to visualizing a ball of silver light glowing above her head. She imagined the light flowing into her, flooding her limbs. Filling her up. Slowly she let the light diminish from her, relaxing her joints. She would let her mind wander, her thoughts never settling on any one subject. Just drift, like a bottle in the ocean. Let the current take her wherever it pleased. She thought of her childhood. Her father and mother, both in the Air Force. Her childhood had consisted of bouncing from one base to another, never for more than six months to a year. Virginia, Florida, California, Hawaii, Texas, Germany, Turkey, Japan, and back to Hawaii.
Allie had followed her parents and become a pilot, preferring to fly cargo planes and troop carriers to fighter jets. She liked to help people after natural disasters, and her job had taken her to som
e remote and interesting countries. Now she worked for United Airlines, flying 787s all over the world.
Her mind drifted, thinking of Travis the day he’d swaggered into the bar and swept her off her feet. Danced with her long into the night. Fourteen years, all for nothing. Cheating bastard. With his secretary, no less. How cliché.
Allie gritted her teeth and opened her eyes, blinking at the mid-morning sun.
She really wanted something to eat, but they were only allowed one meal, in the evening. Her stomach rumbled in protest as she walked the short distance to the little refrigerator. Taking a water bottle out, she gulped it down.
“What I really want is a black coffee,” Allie said to the empty room. She clamped her hand over her mouth and cursed herself for talking. Part of the course was to always remain silent.
The pain was a gentle throb for the first few seconds. It started behind her ears and pushed deeper into her brain. Allie frowned and tried to relax her shoulders, but the pain only increased. Then a sharp pain pulsed through her whole body, and she dropped the water with a thud, the liquid soaking into the bamboo mat.
Allie fell to her knees and let out a scream as the pain continued behind her eyeballs. She had broken her fibula in a horse-riding accident as a teenager. It felt like that. But this was jagged shards of bone stabbing into her skull, deeper and harder with every thrust. She clutched her head with her hands and banged it against the wooden floor, desperate to get the agony to stop. From the other rooms and all around the monastery, shrieks and screams filtered through. The sounds changed and became gurgled with calls for help. Calls filled with confusion and fear.
The agony stopped as quickly as it started. Allie curled herself into the fetal position and gulped in deep breaths of air. Slowly she stretched out her legs and felt over her skull with her hands. She traced her fingers over the bumps and ridges. Given the level of pain she’d just experienced, she was certain her brain was leaking out of her eardrums.