The Sixth Extinction: America (Omnibus Edition | Books 1 – 8) Page 2

  Since 2003, the bird flu has officially only killed six hundred and thirty-eight people worldwide, and that is with all fifteen of its different strains.

  Strangely, even though so many people were being infected by the new virus from Madagascar, and across so many countries, the news seemed a little sparse on the details. Whenever an outbreak was registered and confirmed, the military – in whichever country concerned – swooped in and took over, quarantining everything and causing a news blackout.

  In one case in Cape Town, a news helicopter was shot down by the military for crossing over into the quarantine zone.

  The World Health Organization was giving out a few details. They stated, if you felt dizzy, nauseous, and confused, with constant blinking of the eyes, which form a bloodshot clouding over the cornea, then you were to phone an emergency number set up for your individual state. While you waited for the authorities to arrive, you were told to lock yourself in a room away from other people.

  However, everyone knew that if someone in your house was infected, it meant you were too; it was just the symptoms have not shown just yet.

  Within two hours of the announcement, the phone lines across the United States were straining under the response. Several telecommunication providers’ networks collapsed under the strain. They never came back on again.

  The president made a public announcement, telling everyone to collect enough provisions to last two weeks, and to stay at home and tape shut the windows and doors. Do not let anyone in.

  The infrastructure was the first thing to collapse, with people storming the supermarkets and malls panic buying. Within days, the shelves were bare. Bank accounts were emptied, to the point where people were turned away. The banks only held so much money; almost everything was digital; they weren’t equipped to return everything everyone had deposited at once – most of it was tied up in investments. Crowds got angry and vented their frustration out on the banks.

  People couldn’t go to work. The country ground to a halt, and due to people staying at home, behind locked doors, there was no one to transport materials and provisions.

  People waited at home for the promised help. The government stated they were working on a cure – the antidote. However, when people looked out their taped windows, they didn’t see FEMA or soldiers or any assistance, they just saw barren streets with heaped up trash and rubble, and burnt-out cars. A country frozen in time – an image of its, and their, abandonment.

  By the end of the second week, people were rioting in every major city and towns. They smashed up shops that no longer held anything of use. Vehicles were set alight. They destroyed anything they couldn’t carry away with them. Buildings were first ransacked, and then torched.

  Soldiers finally appeared, but not to help, but to use live rounds on the rioters.

  Then the Internet started throwing up broken links – 404 Not Found filled the screen instead of web pages. Then the Internet started going off for a few hours at a time. Then days. Then it never came back on.

  Mobile phone carriers worked spasmodically for the first two weeks, and then on the third they all went dead.

  To start with, the TV channels were filled with long reports and news clips, showing the effect of the turmoil from around the world, twenty-four hours a day in high-definition. Then clips started to be repeated, and it became obvious nothing new was being filmed. Then the channels started turning to static one after another. Those that still aired were filled with a looping message.

  The Emergency Alert System came online. It was transmitted via AM, FM, on broadcast, cable, and digital television, land mobile radio service, VHF, UHF, and Sirius XM satellite, IBOC, and DAB radio. Every device still working and transmitting would automatically pick it up.

  The multi-spectrum broadcast started with a stark high pitch buzzing sound that reminded Alex of the old dialing tones for computers, just like his father used to have. It buzzed three times in long bursts, then three short bursts. Then in a slow modulated male voice, it announced, “This is an Emergency Transmission... This is not a test! Repeat, this is NOT a test!” Then after a second pause, the voice continued. “Do not leave your home. Do not try to leave the cities or towns. Stay where you are. Keep your family together. Tape shut your windows and doors. Keep calm. Your government is doing everything in its power to contain the situation. Do not approach anyone who looks infected.” Then after a few seconds of silence, the same klaxon sounded.

  When the signal first flashed across the TV channels, it also started coming through on any mobile phone that was still switched on.

  Alex could picture the last news feed he saw before the stations started showing only static. After the rapid eye movement, and swelling, with veins mapping around the swollen orbits and neck, people started falling into a coma-like state. Their breathing became shallow, and they didn’t respond to any stimulation. By the time the stations went off air, over a hundred million people were unconscious across the country. Hospitals were overflowing, with people lining the corridors. Football and baseball stadiums, along with any public building capable of holding bodies were full of cots with victims laid motionless – many in sealed plastic pods until they ran out of pods and cots, and then they were simply left lying on blankets on the cold floor.

  Then the unimaginable happened, and the whole situation took a deadly turn.

  The infected people’s hearts gave way under the viruses’ deadly assault – they flat-lined. Then, minutes later, after being registered as brain-dead, the infected people became reanimated – something else had taken over.

  2

  Doctor Nathan Peter Bachman BSc PhD

  Government Biosciences facility

  Groom Lake, Nevada

  Friday 5th January

  Doctor Nathan Bachman stood silently with a clipboard in one hand. He had to wait until he was officially introduced. The man who slowly walked towards him was surrounded by military personnel and assistants who buzzed around him like flies on a cow’s ass.

  The air slowly hummed around Doctor Bachman. Being so deep below ground the air was circulated via huge vents. By the end of each day, he always had a sore throat from the scrubbed air. Everyone in the facility took tablets for sore throats; they arrived each week along with the clean laundry.

  The doctor fidgeted. It was just after four, he should be checking results in Lab 5.

  He stood in a vast white room, filled with long white tables surrounded by technicians and scientists working on computers and medical apparatus. Scattered about were small biocontainment laboratories that were designed to prevent the escape of microorganisms. In these chambers were high containment isolator units. A scientist in type I hazmat suits stood with their arms in thick rubber sleeves going into the sealed units. The area buzzed with activity and the drone of hundreds of mixed sounds.

  Bachman hated showing people around. He had better things to do with his time, not acting like a glorified tour guide. This would be the fourth high-ranking government official he has given the tour to in the last two days. He tried to fob the meeting off, but Doctor Callaway, his superior, always beat him to it.

  “Ah, Doctor Bachman,” Callaway said, as if they were the best of friends, and they had met on a sidewalk somewhere pleasant, not in a secret military base two hundred feet below the Nevada desert.

  “Doctor Callaway.” Doctor Bachman gave a curt nod – one doctor to another.

  Callaway looked worse with each passing day. He had pale, slack skin, with dark rings around his deep-set eyes. He had lost so much weight that his clothes looked like they were hung on a coat hanger. The fifty-year old stunk of stale cigarette smoke – it was so pungent it was like a physical slap to the senses when he stood too close, you always knew when he was around. He smelt like an ashtray left out in the rain.

  “May I introduce Director Grant, the new Director of the CIA and National Human Intelligence Manager.” Callaway shuffled sideways so the short, slightly tubby, unimposing man, wit
h a rosy complexion and balding head, wearing a five thousand dollar suit could step forward, followed closely by two protective agents and a swarm of assistants and military personnel.

  Bachman remembered showing the last director around, giving him the nickel tour. Of course then they didn’t have the live subjects section.

  “Doctor Bachman, it’s so good to finally meet you.” The short man held out a pasty hand with manicured nails.

  “Likewise, Director,” Bachman replied while shaking the sweaty hand. He noticed the buttons on the man’s jacket were straining under his paunches assault.

  “Well I’m afraid I must leave you,” Callaway announced as he rushed off without given them time to reply.

  “A very busy man at the moment, I suspect?”

  If only the Director knew Callaway ran and hid in his office, avoiding the laboratories and subjects in the containment cells. Once the outbreak spread and infected subjects started being shipped in, Callaway spent three days vomiting. The doctor in charge no longer involved himself with the hands-on experiments and research. Instead, he spent his days chain-smoking up on the surface, or sneaking a quick drag in his office with the blinds down.

  “Please, if you’d like to follow me, I’m sure you would like to get started.” Doctor Bachman led the way down a sloping corridor.

  The quicker we finish the faster I get back to some real work.

  “The subjects are held on the lower levels, so if we have a problem, or a containment issue, we can seal them off from the upper sections.”

  The Director walked along beside Bachman, with his entourage of nine followers trailing along behind like a tail of a comet.

  They walked across the vast white medical research room to a bank of elevators against a stark white wall. Everything was white – sterile and practical like an operating theater.

  There was an armed guard to either side of the elevator. They stood ramrod straight and ignored everyone. Bachman knew they normally lazed around, chatting with the female assistants, but today, due to the visitors, they were on their best behavior.

  Bachman placed a hand against a palm scanner. He also leaned forward so his left iris could be scanned. The panel blinked green and the doors swished open.

  “Without sounding rude,” Bachman said, “do all of you need to be with the Director?” He stood waiting for someone to reply. “It’s just it’s not really designed for a whole party of people at once.” There was more than enough room, but he didn’t like the idea of so many people traipsing around behind him. They didn’t need to be there; they were just superfluous hangers on.

  A dark suited guard went to speak, but the Director cut him off. “It’s okay Agent Miller.” The Director turned back to Doctor Bachman. “Just myself and General Gordon will accompany you.”

  “Thank you for your understanding.”

  The three stepped into the elevator, leaving the group to awkwardly mull around by the closing doors while trying to avoid the gaze of the ramrod straight guards.

  There were no buttons on the white walls. Once the door had closed, it started its descent. There was nothing to suggest how far the lift was descending or how many levels they were passing.

  “I understand you had the president down here yesterday, before he continued on to the Raven Rock Mountain Base?” the Director said.

  “Yes sir. I was honored to give him the tour personally.”

  The President had nineteen people encircling him like small satellites.

  They remained in silence the rest of the descent.

  The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors slid open to reveal a long brushed concrete corridor, which had large metal and glass doors at intervals down its length, with strip lighting running down the center of the ceiling. One section was flashing on and off, as if the starter motor wasn’t kicking in properly. Everything reeked of disinfectant and a tangy sweet smell.

  Bachman led the way.

  “This way please gentlemen.”

  Bachman walked to the first metal door. A glass plate showed a large white room beyond. Once again, Doctor Bachman used a palm scanner. The door clicked. Bachman held it open, so they could enter.

  Inside was a chamber forty-foot square. The room was dissected by a thick glass window. Through the glass, they could see the sectioned off part of the room had windows all the way around, like a large fish tank. Behind there was a laboratory with scientists in type II hazmat suits working on various apparatuses. There was a female on what looked like a morgue’s autopsy table being dissected. A large Y incision dissected the young girl’s chest, with a person in protective clothing scooping out her lungs and heart in one block with his rubber-gloved hands.

  However, what caught the two guests attention was what was inside the chamber. There were nine people imprisoned in the glass cell. All wore yellow jumpsuits that were numbered with large black stenciling. The only other objects in the room was a prison style metal toilet in one corner, with a sink above it, with a low metal wall, offering scant privacy, and metal benches against one glass wall that were bolted to the floor. There was a hatch on the opposite side, where their food was pushed in.

  “This is Stage One,” Doctor Bachman announced. “The subject starts to become disorientated and confused. One minute they’re lucid and talking, and then they drift off, staring into the distance.”

  A few people ran to the large thick window. They were obviously shouting, but no sound could be heard. One middle-aged man was flinging his arms around, screaming at the doctor. Spittle hit the glass. The person’s face was contorted in rage, as his eyes blinked continuously.

  An old woman was ambling back and forth, hugging herself. It also looked like she was mumbling to herself, which they also couldn’t hear through the thick soundproof glass.

  Others in the room sat quietly in the corners, or on the benches, or simply laid flat on their backs on the metal decking that had grooves on the floor for easy cleaning when the chamber was sanitized and hosed down.

  All the subjects had one thing in common; they were blinking rapidly, and their necks twitched spasmodically.

  “The first stage lasts about five days to a week. The subjects have bouts of cogitative moments, where they remember who they are and demand to know what is happening. Then, just as suddenly, they withdraw into themselves. It gets worse as the week draws on. By the end of stage one, they are mutes – this is mainly because the larynx becomes deformed and all they can utter is animalistic groaning.

  “It starts with the newly infected blinking uncontrollably. Similar to the condition called blepharospasm, which is a form of dystonia, where the nervous system signals the muscles to contract inappropriately. Towards the end of stage one, the blinking is accompanied by other quick facial changes such as eye rolling and severe grimacing and extreme twitching of the neck and face muscles.”

  “Tell me about the virus itself. How does it latch on?” the Director asked as he watched a blinking mother cradle a small twitching two-year-old girl in the corner. He was surprised to see the child in the same yellow jumpsuit.

  “With help from our British allies we have finally located the locus position of the genotype of the virus on the DNA double helix, and have mapped the individual gene. Quite literally, within the last day we have had a breakthrough with the help from Doctor Lazaro from the British Exeter University.”

  Bachman had spent hour’s reviewing Lazaro’s work after it arrived via email. She stated she was just about to leave and submit her findings to the officer in charge of the University. She also stated she wasn’t sure if the email would even reach him due to the system repeatedly crashing. It obviously managed to send one final message.

  Bachman had gone over her findings repeatedly. He had it almost memorized.

  “The cell cycle has four stages: the first stage is during phase. The prophase is the longest stage of mitosis and meiosis, when the virus is first contracted. The chromatin condenses when the mitotic spindle begins to form
, and the nucleolus starts to disappear, leaving the nucleus intact. Then the virus goes onto its second stage: metaphase, where the duplicated chromosomes line up along the equatorial plate of the spindle.

  “The third stage is the telophase, which is the final stage of mitosis and of meiosis I and II, in which the chromosomes reach the spindle poles, and nuclear envelopes form around each set of daughter chromosomes, and the nucleoli reappear. This would form a different set of characteristic traits in the host’s body.”

  He could envision Lazaro’s crude drawings attached to the digital document.

  “And lastly, the fourth stage of the mitosis and of meiosis I and II, in which the sister chromatids separate and move toward the poles of the spindle.”

  A teenage boy ran and slammed into the thick glass. Blood smeared the divider as his head made contact. The three men ignored the thrashing of the youngster as if they were witnessing a boisterous monkey at the zoo.

  Doctor Bachman held the clipboard against his chest. There was nothing on it with reference to showing the Director around, but he felt better holding onto something. Standing with his hands in his pockets wasn’t a good look for a scientist.

  “Then a completely different cellular process begins, where the cell is divided into two. This stage is called cytokinesis. The divided cell then divides again and again at an exponential rate. The subject can literally triple or quadruple in size within less than an hour.

  “Then the crossing-over is complete; the DNA polymerase phase has been reached, by adding a new addition of nucleotides to the existing DNA chain, and the subject has a completely new form of DNA. Then, as Doctor Lazaro stated in her report, ‘a new species is born.’

  “The genome it creates has the complete instructions for making an organism; all the genetic material chromosomes. So when it is breathed in by another host, the process can start all over again during the replication period.”