Z-Volution (3 page)

“It’s showing up now. Twelve miles out, coming fast. A jet?”

DeKirk nodded, then reached for something off screen and brought it into view. A piece of meat, it looked like: stringy and red, dripping, with skin—human skin—still on one side. DeKirk opened his jaws wide, licking his lips.

“It’s a bomber, Mr. Taggart.”

Still staring at the red blip zeroing in toward his location, Taggart blinked without comprehension.

“I thank you for your service,” DeKirk said as he chewed into the flesh, tearing the strip in half like it was a moist and tender cut of prime rib. “I hope you understand the need for secrecy, and the fact that you’ve done such an exemplary job.” Chewing, swallowing. “You’ve extracted all we needed. Tested and perfected my army per my instructions. To the letter.”

“To the letter…” Taggart said, still staring at the dot. Understanding growing now, realization that the dream was about to end. His wake up call only two minutes away.

“There can be nothing left to discover, nothing to find, nothing to challenge us one day.”

Taggart swallowed. “You’re going to destroy it all. The entire Vostok site?”

DeKirk swallowed the last morsel, licked his fingers and grinned. “All of it. Thank you again, Mr. Taggart.”

Expecting something more, something encouraging or promising, or perhaps a big laugh and the revelation that all this was just a joke, Taggart instead felt that he had certainly stepped into Renfield’s shoes.

There would be no transformation, no evolution, no future. Not for him, anyway.

Only burial and death beneath fifteen megatons of explosives and an avalanche of ice.

3.

Washington, D.C.—5:45 PM

The situation room buzzed with energy and excitement, and more than a little trepidation.

“What are we looking at?”

The president looked distinguished as always in an immaculate blue suit, crimson tie and perfectly combed hair, as if this were a State of the Union address instead of an eyes-only special ops update. He paced like a hungry tiger at the head of the table in front of the Joint Chiefs and a host of advisors and analysts.

On the huge wall screen, bisected six ways, one screen dominated.

Agent Nesmith led off. “Center screen is the one to watch. Our satellite’s positioned to capture a region fifty miles north of Vostok Bay, Antarctica. That convoy of tanker and cargo ships heading away from the ice is about to run into the best in class of American naval might: The
USS Montana
."

“Hails?” the president asked.

“Unresponsive to all radio contact. Not even an attempt at communication. Furthermore, we can’t locate any data on these ghost ships, either. No cargo manifests or crew rosters. The vessel registration trail is just a nested-doll arrangement of never-ending shell companies and flag of convenience arrangements. Led nowhere, but at the same time they don’t seem to have broken any maritime laws.”

“What about this…this GlobalSkyTech corporation? The goddamned U.N. speaker, what’s-his-face, blocked us for months with this bullshit, promised he had this reputable contractor down there to investigate. We were promised transparency and regular updates, and as far as I know—unless you people have been leaving me out of the loop—we’ve gotten squat.”

“That’s all true, sir. GlobalSkyTech…” Nesmith shook his head. “We have a ton of information on them, collected by our agent here.” He nodded to Veronica, near the back of the room, who waited nervously, eying the screen, hoping she wouldn’t be called to speak again, not in front of this audience. To keep herself from getting too nervous, she occupied her mind by trying to calculate how much money the taxpayers were shelling out for this fifteen-minute meeting based on the pay grades she knew were in the room.

Nesmith went on. “However, all of it just leads to more questions concerning their nature, connections and motives. All we know for sure is that they have not been playing by the rules set out by the UN.”

The president rubbed his temples and stopped pacing. Palms on the table, he stared ahead at the screen. “No word from the Speaker? I want him on the line now, before we sink his pet company’s fleet and send them all to Davey Jones’ Locker.”

“Yes sir, trying.”

“Try harder. I don’t want to be on the news tomorrow explaining why we just murdered hundreds of civilian contractors without good reason.”

“There’s a good reason,” a voice spoke up from the back of the room.

Alex stepped forward and Veronica winced. She had fought hard to get him access, promising Nesmith that he had taken them this far and Alex deserved to see the fruit of their labors, that he deserved some measure of justice for what had been done to his father. Veronica knew that only too well. She sympathized more than she could let on, knowing the pain of losing someone you loved right before your eyes, helplessly. She had to allow Alex this moment, and Nesmith reluctantly agreed, after Alex had signed confidentiality agreements and passed an accelerated security clearance process.

All Veronica had asked in return from Alex was that he stay in the back, out of sight,
and quiet
.

“Excuse me?” the president said as he turned. “Who the hell is this?”

Nesmith hung his head. Cleared his throat.

“Alex Ramirez, sir.” Alex stepped forward and lowered his head. “I…voted for you.”

“Thank you. You and fifty-one percent of the other eligible voters out there.” The president looked around at his staff, then back at Alex. “And—?”

“First term only,” Alex clarified. “Not second. I liked the other guy a little more, but that was in my environmental phase, and…”

“Alex!” Veronica hissed.

“No, let’s hear the boy out.” The president turned to face Alex. “I remember your name now. You were part of the mess down there at Vostok, and then the resolution, as it were, on Adranos Island. Quite a bit of scorched earth there, right? Nothing was left for us to be able to piece together and use to support whatever it is you claim to have found.”

“Yes sir, and—”

“And your father,” the president nodded. “Good man, brilliant. I followed his work, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, but as I was saying…”

The president raised a hand, silencing him. He turned his attention back to the screen, where the lead ship continued to move unabated to an intercept with the naval destroyer. “So we have no intel on those ships, what they’re carrying?”

Nesmith shook his head. “None, unless you count speculation from the only living witness to lay eyes on what was down in that lake.” He pointed to Alex.

“Okay,” said the president. “Talk kid, and fast. I know you’ve briefed my people on the nature of some prehistoric microbe?”

“A
prion
to be exact.”

“A what?”

“I don’t really understand it too well, either,” Alex said. “It’s a protein, a nasty one that attaches to a host and disrupts the native cellular components, even at a genetic level, corrupts them and turns people…well, into zombies.”

The president blinked at him. The room muttered to themselves. A few smirks.

Veronica came up behind Alex and whispered, “Should have just said Mad Cow.”

“It’s sort of like Mad Cow Disease,” Alex stammered. “But way freakin’ worse. It turns people ravenous, and mindless. I saw it. The Russians were first, and then anyone they attacked…bit, or even scratched…would turn as well. Fast.”

The president blinked at him. “You’re not kidding me?”

“No sir. My father.. .was infected.”

“And?”

“He shot himself in the head rather than let it take him over. He was one of the lucky ones.”

The president swallowed hard. Turned back to the screen. “And those things…those prions? They were in the lake?”

“In the lake, and in…some other things too.”

The president looked back, about to ask for clarification, but Veronica cut him off, pointing at the tracking display.

“The tanker—something’s happening!”

#

Most eyes were glued on the main screen, but the other displays revealed different angles: one from the deck of the
Montana
, showing a hazy twilight-sort of sky, with windswept clouds over the approaching armada, a ragtag assemblage of flatbed tankers, ice-chipping clippers and larger cruisers all bearing toward the destroyer.

“Engagement protocols active, sir,” said the chair of the Joint Chiefs. “Given the unresponsiveness of the entire fleet, their unmitigated attack posture toward an American defense vessel that has properly identified itself and issued warnings, we are in compliance with international law to eliminate them.”

The president lowered his head, nodding. “To say nothing of the fact that there is… I grudgingly have to admit…the serious likelihood of a biological weapon of mass destruction aboard those ships. Given that, we cannot in good conscience let them pass.”

The Commander-In-Chief sighed, glanced back to Alex and Veronica, then straightened up and gazed at the central screen: the destroyer squaring off against the closing armada. “Give the
Montana
clearance to open fire. Sink the lead ship and let’s see how the others react.”

The chair of the Joint Chiefs picked up a red telephone and gave the order.

Alex held his breath. Veronica moved closer and let her hand drift toward his, sure now that with everyone’s attention locked on the screens, no one would notice this one tender display. Their fingers touched, then interlaced briefly. Alex was about to look at her, to make eye contact and see if they could draw strength from each other.

This was it.

Sink the bastards,
Alex thought.
Drown them all at the bottom of the ocean where no salvage mission will ever reach. Blow them to pieces and—

“What the hell?”

The president flinched, as did half the room. The other half had their jaws open in disbelief.

“Situation report!” he shouted. “What is that, what are we seeing?”

Nesmith struggled to find his voice. “Sir, I…”

Alex’s blood went cold. Veronica was gripping his hand so tightly it hurt. “It’s…”

On the peripheral screens, with feeds from the
Montana
, a wicked silvery blur slid into view, something like an enormous tusk that reared out of the water then slammed down onto the deck amidst planes and men and turrets.

Three of the screens turned to static.

On the main monitor, the satellite transmission captured the impossible. The water erupted between the destroyer and the first tanker, and something rocketed upward with the force of a launching missile.

“Is that a whale?” someone asked, without any degree of certainty.

Alex squeezed Veronica’s fingers hard, then let go.

“I said,
report
!” the president yelled. “What’s happening? Why aren’t we firing on them?”

The commander barked into the phone, but just then his head turned and stared at the screen—at the whirling figure thrashing on the deck, snapping and whipping its tail and massive jaws. In the blur from the satellite feed, it was almost impossible to see with any degree of precision, but Alex thought he saw enough:
the telltale massive sail on its back
.

“That’s no whale. It’s a Spinosaurus.”

“What?”

“I saw that thing enough growing up with my dad, who kept correcting me when I insisted that a
T.rex
was the largest meat-eating dinosaur ever.” He swallowed hard and pointed with his free hand. “No, it was that thing.”

The room remained in mute, horrified shock, while the president stared at the images. The rest of the cameras went to snow after a chaotic sequence of rapid blurs, crashing water, shattered metal and a crewman’s mangled body tossed into the air—almost ripped in half. On the main screen, something like a giant lizard stood on the sinking, smoking ship and seemed to be digging into its metallic guts with its snout, all the while shaking its prehistoric head.

Then everything—the
Montana’s
remnants and its attacker alike—sunk beneath the waves.

“Holy shit.” The president looked back to Alex. “Perhaps you two better give us more detail on what really happened down there. And no more bullshit about proteins and microscopic bugs.”

Veronica swallowed hard but stepped forward, keeping her eyes on the screen, where the maritime convoy continued on, transporting a cargo more deadly than anyone had dreamed. “Sir…we thought…we thought wrong. We thought there were only a few of the creatures, but now…”

Alex completed the thought. “We’re all screwed if any of those ships reach land.”

4.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Headquarters, Atlanta—5:45 PM

Dr. Arcadia Grey fought off the urge to throw the package out, or to call the bomb squad or the hazmat team. Her slender hands trembled and she felt as if someone had just thrown her a ticking time bomb. Director of Pathogen Research for the CDC, she was the main line of defense for the agency charged with defending America against all manner of disease outbreaks, pandemics, epidemics, infections, plagues, scourges, contagions and weaponized biological threats. Right now, she wished she could be anywhere else, or anyone else. Someone who wouldn’t have to face this responsibility.

The parcel was addressed to her and wrapped tightly in a bubble wrap folder, but it was the return address that had made her wish she had never come in today.

A single letter—the letter D.

Dyson.

It had to be. That was the way Xander Dyson had always signed his correspondence to her, whether they were love letters, business propositions, or late night emails waxing about the nature of single-celled life and whether it sprouted consciousness or housed elements of a soul, Xander was always one for brevity in signing his name.

Or was it arrogance?

Arcadia didn’t know, but that was long ago. A relationship she had ended in what seemed like a prior lifetime, after she and Dyson had embarked on radically different paths. Both geniuses and leaders in their field, they were competitors who had become much more, and at one point Arcadia even had dreams of a family and a settled future.

But that was all shattered when Dyson took his genius and his theories and meshed them up into radical notions about genetic superiority and making the world a better place through targeted racial manipulation. Bio-engineered diseases that would only affect certain ethnic groups, things like that. He began associating with dangerous new friends and attracting the attention of people who could—and would— cause exactly the types of mass plagues and extinctions Arcadia was sworn to prevent.

She had risen to a senior rank at the CDC, her skill and promise noted by the current administration, and she had been rewarded with greater and greater responsibility.

Now this.

What to do with a package from a bio-terrorist who just happened to be her former lover—and who, by all accounts, died three months ago?

The only thing stopping her from calling the authorities and having the package checked for suspicious materials—or burning it in the incinerator right now—was the recollection of something Xander had told her one night as they lay in his big bed, cocooned in silk sheets. He had said that she alone was the only person he trusted. The only one he would ever share vital secrets with, and if anything ever threatened her, he would ensure she had a way out. A
failsafe
, he kept calling it, but she knew what he meant: an antidote, or an immunization.

She knew he had been working on such things for all the wrong people. What if he had succeeded, and what if he then made good on his promise and sent her something before he died? Something that finally made its way here after…that island and whatever happened there?

She hefted the package, warning bells chiming in her brain even as she ignored them all.

She tore open the wrapping.

#

The gift—a thumb drive ensnared in gobs of bubble wrap—was in her computer, and the lone file in the only folder sat patiently as she hovered the mouse pointer over it.

What the hell is zrex_kilr.exe?

Having come this far and throwing caution to the wind, she clicked open the file.

What are you giving me, Xander?

Even as the outpouring of data, 3D models and cellular micrographs whipped across the screen, and more and more files were accessed, Arcadia knew her life was about to change forever.

She saw bits of protein strings whipping past her eyes, then flashes of still photos and video files depicting impossible things—things that could have been visuals out of a Hollywood make-up effects lab.

Unblinking, she took it all in, bombarded, mesmerized and overwhelmed, but her confusion and disbelief began to clear away as the scientific data began to roll out, reinforcing her deepest fears while presenting a compelling yet sobering scenario that quite possibly signaled a pandemic unlike anything humankind had experienced—far beyond Influenza outbreaks, Smallpox epidemics and the Black Plague.

She stared more intently at the data, and at the file directories, looking for the one that might represent the culmination of all this work. The antidote.

The ‘Z-rex Killer’.

As started to search, her screen flashed and a popup from the CDC alert center startled her.

Her adrenaline spiked and her skin broke out in goosebumps.

High Priority.
Washington had just sent in the alert. The equivalent of DefCon-5 or Terror Threat Level Red.

Arcadia looked out her window at the sudden flood of activity—all her friends and coworkers had received the same alert and now scrambled to make calls and warn their constituents.

The CDC was now on high alert for an imminent biological terrorist event.

Meanwhile, she had quite possibly just been given a gift from a dead lover that held the key to a solution.

First, she needed to make a call. She had to let Washington know.