Z-Volution (11 page)

15.

CDC Headquarters, Atlanta

Arcadia was close to finding a synthesis that actually made sense, nowhere near to a complete understanding of what this thing was, but she was running a program to break down Xander’s complicated algorithms and unravel the protein inhibitors to get at what this prion could do.

She also had to see what this invasive agent couldn’t do. What it couldn’t attack, break down, control and devour. In the midst of all this research and focus, she almost didn’t hear the commotion until the office had broken out into complete chaos. Other researchers and doctors surrounded computer screens and TV monitors at first, pointing with shaking hands, then looks of fear, a bustling of activity, people scrambling for their cell phones.

Arcadia stood up, making to head out of her office, when her laptop screen flashed to a media app they all had running in the background.
Look away,
she told herself, just don’t look. Go out there, and maybe it’ll be something else, something normal like another mass shooting—as unfortunately ‘normal’ that has become in this day and age. The screen changed and of course, she couldn’t look away. Not from the multiple angles and raw footage of the impossible:

Dinosaurs, things out of B-movies, except with greater realism and terror, these things—some she recognized, others were different, like those pale, swift creatures with crown-like appendages.

The cameras were shaky—maybe hand-held phones and video apps—again in this day, all too popular. This was CNN, but she knew they would all be carrying more of the same, and after the initial certainty that this had to be a hoax or the ultimate prank, terror would be sweeping the country, gripping it. The world even.

She sat back down, mesmerized. The horror, the devastation…and the transformations. She watched, and quickly the brutality and the violence and sheer insanity of it all gave way to a scientist’s interest. Her curiosity and observational nature took over. She studied the ferocity of the zombie attacks, the movements of the dinosaurs, the rising of the corpses after attack, and most importantly…the means of transfer.

The prions.

In her mind she saw the protein structures, the way they reacted to and conquered their surrounding cells.

She saw the human victims on these videos. Bitten by other infected humans. Bitten—but surprisingly not eaten completely—by the dinosaurs. It was as if the raging attackers knew they had to leave enough of the flesh and muscle (and teeth) to keep the body alive, to be able to reproduce in the only way they could.

A few more minutes, and she was still riveted, studying details and picking up knowledge most of the viewers likely missed. Scenes shifted, cities changed, but it was all the same. Whether it was Miami or Charlotte or Baltimore… Or the current scene—from Atlanta itself, where something of incredible size, with a huge brontosaurus-like neck, lumbered away from a flatbed 18-wheeler, crushing townhomes, restaurants, people and everything in its wake. It reminded her superficially of a video she’d once seen of an escaped circus elephant rampaging through city streets until it had to be stopped by police with shotguns, only this was so much worse, orders of magnitude worse.

Oh god.

That brought her back, and now she realized what the commotion was all about in her office.

Just then, all the CDC breach alarms went off. The panic buttons had been hit.

They were here.

#

“Levels four through six secure.”

Arcadia listened with only some minor fraction of her attention. She implicitly understood that, at least for the moment, she and her colleagues were safe here, and she imagined that should the building stability or facility in total be threatened, they could take a secure elevator non-stop down to the bunker-level and the highest degree of security, the underground level where all the truly dangerous chemicals and bio-threats were kept behind multiple firewall and security precautions.

For now, she hoped the security measures—including external window sealing, multiple locked entry points and reinforced walls, would hold.

Unless something like that thing with the enormous neck comes this way…what could stop that short of a guided missile?

She shuddered, put it out of her mind and focused on the incoming communication.

Forget for a moment the chaos reigning outside, the prehistoric creatures attacking the city like Godzilla on steroids.

The president was calling.

16.

Veronica listened, but understood only about a third of what the CDC Director said—and she had the sneaking suspicion that even that was half more than the president himself comprehended. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt though, as his attention was absorbed in a million other directions: his country under attack, the capital itself in serious danger. Civilization itself seemed to be hanging in the balance.

She could hear the planes overhead, the sonic booms, bombs and gunfire, and she shuddered with each thudding that shook the building and rattled dust over her. The screen ahead, however, was crystal clear, the president on the left, the CDC Director of Pathogen Research on the right.

They both looked like hell, but Arcadia’s eyes at least held a promise of hope.

“Agent Winters,” the president said, as he winced, looking up and over his shoulder.

“Sir, are you secure?”

“Underground and behind multiple walls of steel? I sure hope so, but there won’t be a nation left to govern if we can’t stop this thing. If Dr. Grey’s infection projections are true, and we can’t end this here and now…”

Arcadia shook her head. “If it was just Atlanta, or just Baltimore? Maybe. You could block all the roads, secure the city, even…do the unthinkable and nuke the area.”

The president closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. They looked hardened and pained. “Scary as that option is, I wish it were on the table. But we have no choice at all. As she says, with six cities and counting under attack, we’ll never have the resources.”

“Then why am I here?” Veronica asked.
And why am I here? Surely these two should be spending their precious time on other alternatives.

The president sighed and settled his attention on her. “We’ll do our best in the air and with ground troops to contain this, repel the…things and control the spread of the infection, and even if we fail, there are secure locations around the country. Even now…” He rubbed his eyes.

Was he about to tell her what she had already guessed?
There were shadow government sites, bunkers in secure locations around the country, possibly NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, among others, where an alternate cabinet and leadership structure stood ready to take control should Washington fall. She knew all about it in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, and how close we had come to another plane knocking out the White House and the Pentagon.

“Contingencies are in effect,” the president said, echoing her thoughts, “but what Dr. Grey has brought to my attention is something that may be a silver bullet, a long shot, but hope nonetheless.”

“And it concerns you,” Arcadia Grey said to Veronica, “since it came from Xander Dyson.”

Veronica’s breath froze. She tried not to show a reaction, but she knew something about Xander might come up on this call if it involved the CDC Director. Arcadia Grey was Dyson’s girlfriend for a time, it was all in the file, and Veronica knew everything about the man, every aspect of his past, every family member, friend, lover and acquaintance. She had left no stone unturned, but also she had a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Grey. She did, after all, dump the bastard and then reveal everything she could about him to the FBI and CIA. She had been mortified by the level of his sadism and the misuse of his talents in the name of some misbegotten undertaking.

Still, discussing Dyson at all was painful for Veronica. He had killed her fiancée, after all, and now…

“I’m sorry, Agent Winters.” Dr. Grey appeared solemn and pale. She shook her head slowly. “I wish I could have stopped Dyson before…before he hurt anyone.”

“Thank you, but…”

“I’m not sure if you were aware of this, but while you were on that island, when it became clear to him that DeKirk was going to sell him out and steal his science, Dyson worked on something that might just be the key we need to reverse all this.”

Veronica tried to think of a question, some response to make any kind of sense out of what she had just been told. “Are you sure? Alex and I…when we were in that facility, it looked like Xander Dyson was bluffing while he was communicating with DeKirk. He claimed he had a ‘failsafe’ just at the time needed it to save his ass.”

“I thought of that, too,” the president said, “but Dr. Grey assures me she’s checked the science, the biology.”

“It’s sound,” Arcadia said. “It’s not complete though, not totally, but it’s close. Dyson knew it, knew if he sent me what he had, that I could finish the work, see how the elements all fit and put the rest of the jigsaw together. I would realize his theory was correct. There’s a way to use the prions’ own transfer mechanisms against them. There’s a way to control them, first off—”

“—which is probably what DeKirk took from Dyson,” the president added, “and why these mindless creatures seem to be acting with more intelligence than they should have.” He sighed. “Not that I’m a goddamned dinosaur expert, but the fact that these things with little more than bird brains are strategically dropping off payloads, running elaborate diversions and hitting key targets all speaks to something—or someone—controlling them.”

Dr. Grey nodded. “Without getting into the complexities of the science, the similarities to group consciousness, migratory patterns and pack mentality, there’s something even beyond that that these things share…”

“No time, doctor.”

“Right. Sorry.” Arcadia glanced down, then winced at some noise in the background.

“Is it still secure there?” Veronica asked.

“For the moment,” Arcadia responded, “but we don’t know how much longer. There was something coming up from the south, something big, saw it on the news, transported by a huge truck.”

“We don’t know what its target is,” the president said, “but we’re not taking any chances. The National Guard has been mobilized.”

Dr. Grey leaned closer so Veronica could see the red in her eyes, the lines around her cheekbones and her thin lips. She wondered if, a lifetime ago, under different circumstances, she and Xander Dyson could have had a normal life. Dinner parties, kids, family outings…

“I’ve uploaded everything I have so far on the research. Sharing it with your lab there at Langley.”

“That’s enough for now,” the president said. “We’re not sure of DeKirk’s reach, or what he can tap into, but we don’t want to tip our hand in any way if this can help. So no word on the Dyson research or this failsafe to anyone. In the meantime, Agent Winters?”

“Yes sir?”

“I need you to perform an extraction.”

“Sir?”

“Dr. Grey is too valuable to leave unprotected, and…with what we can extrapolate from the tactics and behavior of this army of things…the CDC is a prime target.”

“I agree, sir,” Veronica said nervously. “So send in the National Guard to get her out of there, to a secure location…”

She stopped as he was shaking his head. “You don’t understand. All forces are already engaged, or were pulled to other strategic sites to engage the enemy. They would take too long to redirect, and with these things and the way they spread the infection, less is more.”

Veronica swallowed hard. She met Arcadia’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Grey said. “I know I’m probably the last person you want to spend your time saving, and you must have a hundred questions about why I didn’t do more to stop my former boyfriend, but I just hope you’ll understand—”

Veronica’s tone was icy. “I do. You might be our only hope.”

“Exactly what I was going to say,” the president added, then glanced nervously to something on another screen on his end. “Going to have to cut this short. You two work out the logistics, and Agent Winters, there’s a pilot waiting at Andrews. Take anyone else you need, but limit it to one or two more. Get in, extract Dr. Grey and any research materials she needs, and get back in the air. You’ll be heading to Colorado.”

Veronica nodded. Washington might soon be lost. They were already considering the backup plans, and if that was so, everything had gone to shit a hell of a lot faster than she imagined. She wondered if the alternate shadow government waited in Colorado or if that was too obvious. NORAD could be controlled by the shadow leaders after power was transferred, but it was best done from a more remote location. She just wondered where…

She nodded, and as the president—looking grim and pale—disappeared from the screen, Veronica turned her attention to Dr. Grey.

“I’m sorry,” the CDC Director said again.

“Don’t be.” She met her gaze, and they held it together—a look of shared loss, pain and regret. Veronica finally broke the silence.

“When you think about it, we have to be thankful now we never stopped Dyson, because if not for him, I guess we wouldn’t have any hope right now.”

“I hate to admit it, but you’re right. He was a bastard, but a goddamned genius.”

Veronica matched her thin smile. “Okay, tell me about the CDC headquarters, and let’s come up with a quick plan for extraction. I’ll be there in under two hours unless we hit a snag.”

“Like a dinosaur roadblock?”

“Don’t even joke. Can you survive until then?”

Dr. Grey nodded. “Can you?”