The 6th Extinction (13 page)

After a couple of minutes, Lance Corporal Schmitt tapped his horn and pointed an arm out the open window.

A waist-high cylinder—one of the chemical monitors—sat roadside. A tall antenna sprouted from its top, along with a three-cup anemometer used to gauge wind speeds. Thankfully the small vane remained perfectly still.

Drake eyeballed it as the vehicle trundled past the marker. “Kiss the clean air good-bye, folks.”

They were entering the hot zone.

The road climbed higher into the scrubby hills, the view interrupted by occasional stands of Jeffrey pines. Everything looked fine at first, just another day-trip into the mountains. Then the first mule deer appeared alongside the shoulder of the road. It lay on its flank, its neck twisted from a final convulsion, a thick pink tongue protruding from soft lips.

Jenna gulped and looked away, but after another mile, there was no relief in any direction. Wildlife in the basin was notoriously shy, hard to find, especially during the day. But the explosion, the smoke, and the poison seemed to have driven everything out of their dens, warrens, and holes.

Soon their tires crunched over the broken bodies of seagulls, rock wrens, and ground squirrels. Furred lumps of cottontails and jackrabbits dotted the surrounding slopes. Larger shadows marked a felled herd of mule deer. Elsewhere one of the area’s rare bighorn sheep lay crashed on its front legs, curled horns tangled in a thornbush.

A tear rolled down her cheek. She couldn’t wipe it away. Even as a park ranger, she had never imagined there was so much hidden life in these hills.

Now all dead
.

The truck made a stop every mile. Drake would take soil samples while Lisa gathered hair and tissue specimens from the dead animals. Jenna helped her try to collect a blood sample from a black bear. Unfortunately, when they rolled the bulk over for a jugular stick, Jenna found a small cub crushed under its mother’s bulk.

Seeing this, Lisa stopped and strode away. “That’s enough,” she said. “That’s enough.”

The quiet banter among them died away with each successive mile, until the only noises were their own breathing, the rumble of the engine, and the crunch of the tires.

When they were about three miles out from ground zero, Drake finally spoke up again. “Look at the vegetation covering the slope up ahead.”

Jenna rose from the bench for a better look.

Until now, the hills had looked normal enough, covered by sagebrush interspersed with monkeyflower, phlox, and a few stands of pinyon pines. But up ahead that all changed. On both sides of the road, the slopes were blackened, without a single shoot of green showing.

“Could the explosion have triggered a brush fire?” Lisa asked.

Jenna shook her head. She had plenty of experience with such blazes, some triggered by lightning strikes, others by careless campers. Between the dry grasses and combustible brush, flames could clear through acres in minutes. All that would be left would be ash and the burned trunks of some of the larger pines.

“This was no fire,” Jenna said.

“Let’s get a closer look.” Lisa touched the gunnery sergeant’s arm.

“Stop the truck,” Drake ordered.

The driver braked at the edge of the blackened fields.

Drake turned to Lisa and Jenna. “Maybe you two should stay here until we’re sure it’s safe.”

Jenna rolled her eyes.

There was nothing
safe
about any of this.

She crossed to the rear of the Hummer and hopped out. Lisa followed, accompanied by the others.

“Grab the collection kits,” Lisa ordered her brother.

“Got ’em,” Josh answered, leaping out of the bed and landing lightly.

With the driver staying behind the wheel, the group set off into the meadow. Jenna stepped carefully. So much that grew in this harsh, alkaline environment had evolved some nasty defenses: long thorns, hooked barbs, sharp branches. She feared puncturing or compromising the integrity of her suit.

They all edged carefully across a landscape of greens, purples, and reds toward the swath of darkness. It looked like a shadow had fallen over the upper half of the hill. The demarcation line between the two areas appeared crisp from a distance, but as they reached the border, it was less well defined, a mix of healthy and dead flora.

Lisa directed her brother. “Josh, you collect a plant that looks healthy in this zone. I’ll bag up one of the charred-looking specimens.” She pointed to Drake. “Let’s get soil samples here, too.”

As everyone set off to obey, Jenna kept to Lisa’s side. Together they stepped into the shadowy fields and crouched beside a patch of tall, thin plants, each stalk crowned by black petals.

“
Castilleja
,” Jenna said. “Desert paintbrush. Sometimes called prairie-fire because of its bright red flowers. They’re just beginning to bloom this time of year.”

She pointed to a healthy spread of paintbrush along the lower slopes, where the flowers budded in shades of crimson.

Lisa grabbed the base of one of the diseased plants and tugged it free of the soil, roots and all. But as she tried to fold it into a large plastic specimen bag, the stalk and leaves crumbled apart, like a sculpture made of sand.

Jenna helped hold open the bag to catch the detritus as it fell away. Once done, they both stood. Lisa gazed toward the summit of the hill.

“Let’s go look,” Jenna said, wanting to know the extent of the damage.

Placing each boot with great care, they scaled the slope to the ridgeline. Jenna gasped as the view opened up ahead. For as far as she could see, black hills spread outward, and a perfect stillness blanketed the area.

Off in the distance, a chain-link fence cut across the dead hills, marking the official border of the research station.

“Could that toxic cloud have caused this die-off?” Jenna asked. “Was the gas somehow extra deadly this close to the base?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it.”

Jenna heard the fear in her voice and knew what troubled her.

Was this a sign that something had escaped the base?
Jenna stared around her.
Worst of all, could it still be active?

Lisa retreated from the sight, drawing Jenna with her. “Let’s continue to ground zero. Search for any evidence and get back to the staging area with our specimens. Then maybe we’ll have some answers.”

Returning to the edge of the dark field, they found Drake and his fellow Marine pounding in a row of wooden stakes along the margin, delineating the border. To the side, Josh stood with all of the team’s samples—both soil and plants—collected in a box.

Together they returned to the Hummer, climbed back into the bed, and continued their journey toward the blasted heart of the hot zone.

Jenna gaped at the destruction around them, noting the corpse of a coyote in a ditch, its fur mostly gone, its body as blackened as the fields.

She stared in the direction of the base.

What horror did you create, Dr. Hess?

6:43
A
.
M
. PDT
Baja California, Mexico

Kendall Hess stood alongside the small prop plane as it was being refueled. He’d been allowed to stretch his legs. His towering guard Mateo passed a stack of hundred-dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band to a local man, his eyes wary under the brim of a cowboy hat.

Likely a drug smuggler
, Kendall imagined. The unmarked airstrip and the lone refueling truck added weight to this deduction.

After the events in the mountains, Kendall had done his best to track their route south. Mateo had abandoned the helicopter in the Nevada desert and switched to a private plane at a small airfield. He changed again to this Cessna in Arizona and used it to cross the border just before sunrise. Since then, they had been traveling along the Baja peninsula. He guessed they were somewhere south of the city of San Felipe.

In the distance, the Sea of Cortez shone brightly, an azure brilliance against the rolling dunes of the surrounding desert. It was a harsh, empty landscape, spiked by a few cacti.

He recognized the tall, spiny plants.
Pachycereus pringlei
, called elephant cacti for their sheer size. This particular species had garnered his scientific attention because of its ability to survive in such hostile lands. It grew to well over ten meters and was capable of living for over a thousand years, often on soil that was little more than rock. It accomplished that through a symbiotic relationship with a unique bacterium. The microorganism helped break down stone and fix nitrogen for the plant. The relationship was so successful that the cactus packed the bacteria into its own seeds.

Kendall had briefly studied that microbe as part of his research into extremophiles, but it proved to be a dead end.

Let’s hope the same can’t be said for me
.

“Back in,” Mateo ordered gruffly.

Knowing he had no choice, Kendall ducked under the wing and climbed into the cabin, shadowed by the bulk of his guard. The aircraft’s pilot was the same man who had flown them from California. As soon as Kendall was seated, the Cessna began rolling along the runway, then lifted off and aimed south yet again.

Where are they taking me?

He didn’t know the answer to that, but he knew who waited for him at the other end. It was the same man who had orchestrated the attack, and who likely had been manipulating Kendall’s research from afar for the past decade.

The bastard—once a colleague—had been declared dead eleven years ago. His plane had crashed in the Congo, and a week later, searchers found the wreckage, along with the charred remains of what appeared to be the flight crew and passengers. Kendall now knew that was a lie, a fabrication, but at the time, he had been secretly relieved to hear about the man’s death, fearful of the dark path he had been following.

If he’s still pursuing that line of research . . .

Kendall trembled with dread, knowing what he had created in his own lab, what had been unleashed in California. With a shudder, he could guess why he had been kidnapped.

God help us all
.

6:46
A
.
M
. PDT

Painter leaned closer to the monitor, shadowed by the base commander, Colonel Bozeman. The computer screen was broken up into five sections, the video feed coming from the various members of the expeditionary team. Through their cameras, he studied the blasted landscape as the truck approached the security fence around the former base.

“Don’t get too close to the actual station,” he radioed, warning the team. “Most of that base is buried underground. Who knows what’s left of its structural integrity after that blast? The mass of the truck—even your own body weight—could trigger a collapse. We don’t want you all accidentally dropping into a toxic sinkhole.”

“We wouldn’t like that either, sir,” Drake answered.

Colonel Bozeman leaned over Painter’s shoulder and spoke into the microphone. “Listen to the director, Drake. No lip. He’s in command.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the colonel straightened, Painter continued. “From the schematics of the base, you should keep at least two hundred yards back. Any closer and you’ll find yourself parked over the station itself.”

“Don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Drake replied.

On the screen, the Hummer trundled through the open gate and up the entry road a short distance where it stopped.

“Are you seeing this?” Drake asked.

To get a better view, Painter tapped one section on the monitor, zooming in on that feed. It came from the camera built into Lisa’s suit. She stood in the bed of the truck, giving him a good vantage of the road ahead.

Fifty yards away, a large crater had been blown out of the flank of the hill. A pall of smoke hung over the blast site. The span of destruction was much greater than he had anticipated. It seemed Dr. Hess had been taking no chances when he designed this fail-safe.

“I think more than just the base collapsed,” Jenna radioed.

Nikko stirred at Painter’s feet, rising to his haunches, one ear cocked to the sound of his master’s voice.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Rumor has it that the military built this station inside an already existing mine. One from the gold rush era. Looks like when the station blew, it collapsed sections of the surrounding tunnels, too.”

That can’t be good
.

Painter swung to Bozeman. “Do we have any map or survey of that old mine?”

“I’ll go check.” He rushed out, already bellowing commands to his staff.

Painter took a deep breath and spoke again. “Until we know the full extent of those old tunnels, you should pull back.”

“What about investigating ground zero?” Lisa asked.

“From the looks of it, you’re not going to find anything useful anyway. It’s safer if you—”

The image shuddered on the screen.

Shouts erupted.

Painter watched as Lisa’s hands grabbed the roll bar behind the cab. The front end of the Hummer tilted downward, the ground crumbling away beneath it. Fissures shattered outward toward the large crater.

On the screen, Drake slammed his palm repeatedly on the top of the cab. “Go, go, go!”

The engine roared into reverse. He heard tires tearing into gravel.

Nikko leaped to his feet, growling to match the timbre of the straining motor.

Slowly the truck retreated, the front end climbing out of the ever-widening hole. The driver drove backward, zigzagging for traction on the unsteady ground. A breathless moment later, they barreled in reverse through the gates and onto the outer road.

Ahead, the sinkhole crumbled and fell away into the abandoned mine, but it did not pursue them any further.

Drake spoke up. “I say we listen to the director and get our asses out of here.”

No one argued.

Painter leaned back and patted Nikko on the flank. “They’re okay.”

He sought to calm the dog as much as his own pounding heart. He switched to another video feed—this one coming from Josh’s camera. As the young man helped his sister down to the bench, Painter studied her face, her features partially obscured by the mask. He noted strands of hair plastered to her cheeks by sweat, but she appeared otherwise unfazed and more important—