The Zombie Letters (39 page)

              “. . .
no
. . .”

VI

              The whole place was engulfed in smoke by the time they all got out of the base. There were still people inside, attempting to use rags to cover their faces and hiding in closets with towels bunched up under the doors to get away from the gas fumes. Dennis, Victoria and Darin ran out of the main entrance as the helicopter lowered itself to a clearing within running distance from where the facility was starting to burn. Darin shouted for Ana, who was nowhere to be seen.

              “Darin, we have to go! NOW! She’s probably on the chopper!”

              “No! She was told to wait for us! We aren’t going anywhere without her!” Darin shouted and ran along the perimeter fence. His feet caught something and he fell face-forward. He looked behind him to see Ana’s legs sticking out of a large shipping container. There was a bullet hole in one of them. “No . . . no
no no no no!
” Darin was grabbed by the back of his shirt and yanked upward as he continued to scream. Dennis dragged him away and ran him to the helicopter. Darin’s eyes never left the sight of her lifeless body shoved into that shipping crate. And somehow he knew . . . he knew that a part of his mind will always remain there with her.

VII

              Above the facility that was now engulfed in flames, the helicopter began its ascent. Dennis was the last one to load himself in. He never told anybody from that day on what he saw . . . or
thought
he saw. A man . . . standing at the edge of the burning facility . . . waving at the helicopter. He had the most frightening smile on his face from what he could see. They were too far away and too high up
to make out who he was
, but he was there, looking so oblivious to what was happening; just staring at the climbing chopper, waving at it like he was sending off his best friends. Dennis looked again and didn’t see anything. He only saw it for a split second and then it was gone.

              Even after everything . . . when the horror was over, but the work still far from done . . . in the nights, weeks, months and years that followed after what was left of mankind returned to the cleared-out bunker . . . even to the ripe old end of his life, Dennis Jackson would dream about that one fleeting second hovering over that burning building. The man haunted his dreams and his innermost waking thoughts for the rest of his life. It was like a ghost to him. Something he saw that no one else did. Something that may not have even existed. The more his mind went back to that split second, the more it frightened him. That man . . .

              The entirety of the country could now fit inside that bunker. The people that were retrieved, anyway. The years that followed were dedicated to not only surviving, but Powers sending out teams to try and retrieve survivors that were left behind. The ones that rode out the whole thing. Sometimes the teams came back with people. Sometimes they didn’t. They could only hope that other parts of the world had not suffered such immense losses. Mankind would survive.

Even after this, they would survive.

EPILOGUE

              "Despite stories passed down and written histories, eventually . . . the most important events in our history tend to fade. Things just become lost in time. In closing, ladies and gentlemen . . . we are
this close
to proving the theory that ancient man had faced a near extinction; a great cataclysm that nearly wiped out our entire species. Proving this theory will be a remarkable and significant scientific achievement. In doing so, we can learn about our past. Where we came from. We can learn to avoid the disasters that befell our ancestors and one day, avoid it in the event the human race is again on the brink. The fossil record is proving with more and more research that this near-extinction was not caused by natural means as previously believed. This event was
caused.
I believe that in our lifetime, we will finally find out how and why this disaster happened."

              Professor Daniel Copeland looked into the crowd. Two more of them stood up out of their seats and headed toward the back of the auditorium. An older man at the front was shaking his head with a look of complete distain on his face. Nearly half of the room was cleared out now. He took a deep breath and forced himself to continue. "Thank you all for attending this conference. All of my colleagues in attendance . . . we are the scientific community. Every cosmologist, geologist, historian and everything in between
must
be open to the possibility that what has been proposed in the past may very well be wrong. I will now open this section up for questions."

              One person immediately stood up. Professor Copeland knew who she was. He had seen her at every event like this since he was fresh out of school. "Doctor Copeland, I am Cecilia Grant, director of the World History Institute. You mean to tell us that you are wishing to re-write over two-hundred million years of human existence to fit the discrepancies of the fossil record that are quite honestly, miniscule at best? What is your basis for this theory?"

              "Two-hundred million years . . . there is a concentrated effort within those who work with me that propose human beings have been on this planet for nearly double that. Geological surveys we are just now starting are finding layers previously overlooked that date slightly before the last ice age. We are finding masses of human remains . . . thousands of fossils in concentrated areas in which these ancient people perished at the same exact time. Worldwide. This is speculation right now, but I and some archaeologists are beginning to believe that these humans were wiped out at exactly the same time. These fossils are not just in one area, either. They are at every single corner of this planet. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind of comet or asteroid collision with Earth, which seems to remain the popular explanation. The evidence simply isn't there."

              "Preposterous . . ." a gentleman about Daniel's age stood out of his seat. Grabbing his coat, he walked to the door. When he reached the far wall of the auditorium, he turned around and spoke to the lone man on the stage. "This is your answer? Wild theory, superlative conjecture and flimsy hypothesis that you force us to accept as historical fact? I am appalled that you stake your once impeccable reputation on such a farce of a theory. You are the last scientist that I believed would subscribe to such a thing."

              "My dear sir . . . it may not be the answer you want to hear, but I do
have
an answer, don't I? Since I am the only one who does thus far, it needs to be examined seriously." Professor Copeland returned to address the audience. "Thank you all for your time."

              The car was waiting for him outside. Amazing . . . he had actually ran a little late this time. They actually let him
finish
this one. "Back to the hotel, sir?" the driver spoke, tipping his hat to the once world-renown and respected scientist. He was once known as a man who changed the world. He had discovered things that were known only to be science fiction mere years ago. Lately, this new theory had made him a laughing stock. Never before had he had a backlash like this within his own community. He'd never been steered wrong before and this was honestly irritating at best. Grant money was getting harder to come by. They were making fun of him in the papers. Daniel Copeland, the man who discovered antibiotics. The very professor who went into the history books for being the first to diagnose 'Copeland Disorder,' or its official name . . . autism. Daniel Copeland was a legend already, but this new venture was disturbing his spirit and his career. He needed to talk to the man himself. "No thanks. If you could, drive me to the end of Route nine right outside of town. There is an old friend I'd like to meet. I haven’t been out this way in quite a long time. You don't have to stay there for me. Take the rest of the day off. I'll manage, I think."

              "Thank you, Professor."

              The old man was there on the front porch to greet his dear friend. He sprang out of his old wicker chair and spryly walked down the porch steps. The two men embraced each other with a warm hug. "Daniel Copeland! To what do I owe this pleasure?"

              "Heya, Pop," Daniel said in a low voice. Theodore Cunningham wasn't Doctor Copeland's biological father. Theo was his mentor. Whatever the great man saw in Daniel was anyone's guess. At least that's
wh
at Daniel always thought
.
Here he was . . . the great Professor Theo Cunningham. The man who changed scientific thinking overnight. His theory of relativity was legendary. Everybody in the world knew who he was, but for the
right
reasons. That man was a scientist when real scientists truly existed. Not these overpaid college-boys Daniel went to school with. Guys like Theodore Cunningham were the real deal. His ideas came from nowhere . . . but they were always world-changing . . . like he was receiving whispers from something that knew all the answers.

              "Today not go so well?"

              "No, Pop. Not well at all."

              Theo sighed and patted the younger on the back. "It’s alright. When I first proposed the black hole theory, people wouldn't just walk out. They laughed themselves red in the face. Boy, will they be quiet when the first one is confirmed discovered."

              "I know your black hole theory will be proven, Theo. It is brilliant."

              "Well . . . enough about that. I’m always happy to see you, but I know when you need to talk to the old man. Take a walk with me."

              The both of them walked to the grassy plains that surrounded Theo's home. He liked the wide-open spaces like this. Theodore said in his earlier writings that his solitude helped him really study the world and how it worked. He wrote once that the ability to truly embrace stillness was the mark of a noble intellect. "Pop, you've never steered me wrong. I’ve made some remarkable achievements on my own. Scientists like me are rock stars now. I was really the first one aside from you that became famous for what I did. People are taking science seriously for the first time . . . ever. When you first came to me with this idea about a mass extinction, even I was skeptical. When I started looking at the evidence, it is so overwhelmingly clear. It is the only hypothesis that fits. I just wish I could make everybody see it like I do. You know . . . when this theory is proven, I’ll become
the
renowned scientist. I’ll go down in the books for good. You could have had all this and you gave it to me. You are brilliant, Theo. You’ve guided me to things that would have made you a million times more famous. You helped me figure out how a person can synthesize plutonium and release energies once thought to be impossible, you sparked the idea of the antibiotic to me, you personally proposed to me your schematics for this 'transistor radio' idea that could change the world when we build a prototype. You gave me so much that you deserve credit for. Why didn't you come forward with this idea on your own?"

              "Because I am an old man now, son. I want to enjoy what years I have left here at home, writing my books and looking at Saturn through my favorite telescope. This is
your
time. You do the hard work anyway. You have the resources to take a simple notion of mine and explode it onto the scene of mankind's consciousness. I’m too old to be running around, digging up tombs and staying up all night in laboratories. Too old for all that mess. I
can
prove this mass-extinction happened and I’m confident you will too. Trick is to convince everyone else."

              "Yeah, right. Only two billion people on this planet to convince.”

“And your point? We’ve done it before. Imagine the ancient world and what their scientists had to go through to be heard. It is theorized that there used to be over seven billion people on this rock.”

“I just hate how people blindly accept the timeline. This is not backed up by not only geology, but the fossil record. It fills in the gap with
everything
. This unnatural near-extinction twenty-five million years ago needs to be proven. We human beings were almost wiped off the face of this earth and I have to know why. This can even help me prove that the ice age happened due to some kind of runaway greenhouse effect around the same time. Maybe some kind of o-zone depletion or something. We know for certain that the ozone layer astronomers recently discovered has spots in it that are repairing themselves. These spots are not from the planet’s creation. At the rate we know it is healing itself, it would have been finished already. The damage caused goes exactly back to my proposed timeframe, Pop. This has to be due to some kind of rapid damage done to it by ancient man. But what about before all that? Before humans. Just think . . . massive land animals, huge reptiles and flying creatures that ruled the earth before us. I must sound like I have been reading too much science fiction, huh?"