Extinction (6 page)

‘Yes,’ Alyssa confirmed. ‘I’m a senior investigative reporter on staff.’ What was it Karl did? Alyssa thought it had something to do with computers but couldn’t remember exactly.

‘I need to talk to you about those things going on. You know, planes crashing, animals going crazy. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Alyssa said. Everyone in the world would know what he meant, it was all anyone was talking about. She wasn’t on the story herself, as she was in the middle of a piece on tax evasion by the country’s biggest companies, but she had read all about it in the past few days. ‘What about them?’

There was a pause before Karl spoke again, as if he was summoning the courage to go on. ‘I think they’re being caused by something connected to where I work.’

Alyssa was momentarily at a loss for words. Birds attacking airplanes, millions of fish dying, a massive stone statue moving, and Karl, the friend she had not seen in years but who had something to do with computers, was suggesting that the events were not just linked but actually caused by something at his workplace?

Her years in the field had taught her to be sceptical and this sounded fantastical, but she couldn’t ignore it. ‘Where do you work?’ she asked him cautiously.

‘Not over an open line,’ he answered quickly. ‘We have to meet.’

A
LYSSA NEGOTIATED THE
crowds as she headed for the subway, amazed by the density of human traffic on the city streets. And everywhere she looked there were people with replicas, models – even blown-up photographs – of the great statue which had moved, the glorious ‘miracle statue’, which everyone seemed to think was heralding something.

The fact that the statue was a religious icon only helped to confirm people’s feelings. And it wasn’t just the crazed mutterings of a few hard-to-believe fanatics who might have dreamt the whole thing, either; the entire incident – Alyssa still wasn’t sure if she could use the term
miracle
– had been filmed by several people, and had now been seen by an estimated two-thirds of the planet’s population. Lapsed members of the faith were suddenly finding their faith renewed, and all sorts of other groups had sprung up, preaching messages far removed from the mainstream. Some were cults of the statue itself, proclaiming that it had always been divine, although Alyssa suspected that most of these cults had been around less than a week. But the ones that caught her attention as she was jostled by the crowd were the so-called ‘apocalyptic’ cults. For every ten members of the recognized religions, she suspected there must be at least two or three from these new ‘end of the world’ sects, and there were more with every passing day.

Her attention was drawn to a group over on her left, not the closest, but with the most people crowded round the speaker. The man who was addressing the crowd was tall, muscular and dark-skinned. It was hard to estimate his age – he could have been anywhere from his late twenties to his early forties, his skin young but his eyes old. But it was not his physical characteristics that drew her gaze, nor his dress – shamanic white robes with gold bracelets along his arms and a gold headband pushing back his thick, wiry hair. Instead, it was something more, an energy that radiated from him and seemed to draw people to him. She felt it herself, pulling her towards the crowd to listen.

‘My brothers and sisters,’ he intoned in a deep, melodious voice that seemed vaguely hypnotic, ‘we stand today at a crossroads. Believe me, it is the crossroads between life and death.’ He opened his hands wide above him. ‘The time is coming, the great change is upon us. The world needs to refresh itself, to cast us out and start anew. The earth needs to be reborn. Believe!’

Those gathered closest round him dropped to their knees and bowed down; then they looked up at the sky and bowed down again, and continued to repeat the action, whispering prayers of a type Alyssa had never heard before.

As they did so, the man spoke once more. ‘The governments of the world are trying to control the natural order of things but nature is more powerful than the government. Nature is more powerful than Man. It will not be tricked, it will not be stopped. The time is coming! Our time is at an end, and there is nothing we can do about it except embrace it. Yes! We must embrace our fate. The earth must cleanse itself, so that life can start anew. We must die to ensure our survival. Believe! Believe! Believe!’

Alyssa had heard enough. It was similar to the other groups, nothing she hadn’t heard before. It was common enough when anything strange happened, when something couldn’t be explained, or it seemed that the world was threatened. Cults and sects would always emerge, claiming that the world would indeed end, nothing could be done to stop it, so followers might as well forsake their worldly possessions and wait, unencumbered, for the end. The cults would typically take responsibility for those possessions – money, cars, houses, shares, anything that was ‘unnecessary’ to face the coming apocalypse – and get rich overnight in the process.

The dark-skinned man was impressive certainly, a master of his craft, no doubt, but Alyssa was under no illusions about his real profession. He was a con man, plain and simple.

Turning away, she continued on her way towards the subway, wondering what light Karl Janklow would be able to shed on such strange events.

For his part, the dark-skinned man also saw Alyssa Durham. Oswald Umbebe had never seen her before in his life but he knew the type.
Damn reporters
. They were a cynical bunch, he knew that from experience. She probably thought that the Order of Planetary Renewal was just one more made-up sect cashing in on the current situation. She probably had no idea that the Order had been around for a long time. A
long
time; much longer than anybody realized. And she probably had no idea that his prophecies about the end of the world were not simply empty words designed to separate the gullible from their hard-earned money.

No, his words were far from empty; what he prophesied, however hard it was for people to accept, was the truth.

A
LYSSA COULD HEAR
the excited chatter of teenagers behind her as she sat next to Karl Janklow on the comfortable leather bench seat. Giggles erupted as the rollercoaster started to move slowly forward and upward.

Alyssa had been surprised when Karl had suggested the amusement park as a meeting place, but on reflection she could see the logic of it. The area, a seaside resort on a peninsula just outside the city, had three such amusement parks, and Karl had chosen the oldest and, in Alyssa’s opinion, most charming.

She’d spent many happy hours with her family and friends on the rides here. It all came back to her in vivid, living colour – the roar of the coasters, the screams of the thrill seekers; the smell of candyfloss and hot dogs; the glare of the neon lights; the carousels and the big wheel delivering thrills and excitement to the hundreds of people who visited the huge pleasure ground.

Karl Janklow had been a friend of both her and her husband, many years ago. He was a systems engineer, Alyssa remembered now, and Patrick had told her how good he was. A good climber too, he had accompanied them on several trips. But then Alyssa had become pregnant, her and Patrick’s priorities had changed, and despite a couple of attempts to meet up, they had finally lost touch with their old friend.

They’d been here once before, she remembered, the three of them. Before Anna, before Patrick’s illness, before the accident that had changed Alyssa’s life forever. It had been a summer’s day, and the three of them were young, carefree, just enjoying the pleasure of life as it came. Those had been good days, Alyssa thought, and the throng of visitors here today seemed completely unaffected by the growing chaos back on the streets of the city beyond. Yes, it was a good place to meet, and more importantly, perhaps, it was noisy and crowded, an ideal place to lose anyone who might be following you. It wasn’t likely they’d be overheard, either.

But when they met, Karl seemed nervous, jittery, and even more paranoid than he had sounded on the phone; he wanted to ride the rollercoaster, claiming that he feared their conversation might still be monitored despite the noise from the rest of the park. His paranoia made her feel a little bit better about the fact that she’d disguised herself for the meeting, a longstanding tactic she always used when meeting sources.

Karl even remained silent as the rollercoaster train started to move, pulling them inexorably upwards to start the ride. She let him be, patiently waiting for him to tell her what he knew.

They reached the top of the first peak and, despite herself, Alyssa felt the excitement rise within her. It was a combination of the physical thrill of the old wooden rollercoaster and the anticipation of the secrets Karl had to tell her.

As the train started to tip over the peak to its stomach-churning first descent, Karl finally turned to Alyssa. As the teens behind them let out unbridled screams and the train shot down the coaster at a speed which rippled the skin, he gestured with his head, beckoning Alyssa to come closer.

She leant in, but even with his mouth at her ear, she still had to strain to hear.

‘Alyssa,’ Karl shouted above the roar of the tracks and the screams, ‘the things that are happening, they are
not
natural. They—’

Alyssa didn’t catch the next words, Karl’s head had moved away. She leant in even closer and felt the weight of his head resting on her cheek.

She pulled back to look at him, and her stomach lurched violently, independently of the motion of the rollercoaster. Karl’s eyes were still open, staring straight ahead, his mouth agape. And, to Alyssa’s horror, there was a neat hole in the centre of his forehead and blood was dripping over his disbelieving face.

And then, for the first time during the ride, she screamed.

‘Good shot,’ Colonel Anderson announced over the radio headset worn by the sniper. The professional soldier was lying comfortably on a shooting rug, positioned strategically on the roof of a building over half a mile away. ‘Now take out the woman,’ Anderson ordered.

The sniper followed the path of the coaster with his optical sight, tracking the unknown woman as she turned, realized what had happened, and started to scream. The angle wasn’t quite right yet, but down the next hill, up and round a bend, would be just perfect.

‘Yes, sir,’ he responded confidently.

He would be putting away his equipment and high-tailing it out of there within thirty seconds.

Alyssa could feel herself starting to hyperventilate. As she hunched reflexively down in the train, trying to minimize her target profile, she tried to get control of her breathing, her years in the mountains having instilled in her the knowledge that panic would be her worst enemy.

Where had the shot come from? A sniper could be literally anywhere. Was she a target too? Of course she was, she quickly realized; if they had killed Karl to keep him quiet, they would kill her too in case he had already told her anything.

She knew nobody else would have any idea what was going on – the people behind her would be too wrapped up in the rollercoaster ride to notice, everyone was screaming anyway, the ride was too far away and going too fast for anyone on the ground to realize what had happened. She was on her own.

The speed of the coaster wasn’t helping her think, but she knew immediately what she had to do. In the train, she was a sitting duck. Karl had been hit right in the middle of the forehead, so whoever was out there, they weren’t amateurs. She couldn’t stay on the rollercoaster. She was going to have to get off while it was still moving.

What the hell is she doing?
the sniper wondered, watching as his second target started squirming in her seat.

She had previously ducked down as far as she could, which he had anticipated – it still wouldn’t stop him making the fatal shot in just ten seconds’ time – but now she was twisting, wrenching, and—

She’s trying to escape!
The sniper couldn’t help but admire her. Most people would have just capitulated entirely, fear overcoming their faculties of reason. But not this woman. Oh no, she was going to get out of the train and then – what? Jump?

Knowing the futility of her actions, the sniper settled down and waited to take the shot.

The lap bar that secured Alyssa had also secured Karl, and because he had significantly larger legs than she had, there was a gap of at least an inch between the bar and her own thighs. Space enough to move; space enough to escape.

Alyssa had no idea what she was going to do when free, but she knew it was first things first. She had to take things one at a time, and her primary task was to get out of the confinement of the coaster train.

She shifted in her seat, trying to slide through and across. Ideally, she would have just pushed down on the bar and levered herself out upwards, but the acceleration of the coaster prevented this; even if it hadn’t, her instinct for self-preservation made her want to get down low, not make more of a target of herself.

She lay down across the seat, her head in her dead friend’s lap as she tried desperately to manoeuvre her legs out of the narrow opening. She clawed herself across, straining to release her lower body from the safety bar.

She gasped as one knee popped out, and quickly extended her leg out over the seat and then shifted her hips, pulling free the other leg as the coaster got to the top of another rise and started to slow down.

Her legs free, she pulled her head away from Karl’s lap and risked a glance at the track. There was a bend up ahead, which meant the coaster would be slowing down even more before accelerating down the next peak.

If she was going to make her move, it would have to be soon.

‘Target’s moving,’ the sniper reported, his voice cold and professional.

‘What do you mean?’ Anderson asked from his mobile command centre in a converted motorhome just outside the amusement park.

‘She’s trying to get out of the car.’

‘Can you take a shot yet?’ Anderson asked quickly.

‘Negative,’ the sniper replied. ‘Not yet. After this bend. She. . .’