Z-Volution (5 page)

7.

Grenada

Alex made a less than perfect landing, but a landing nonetheless. His late friend Tony’s words came back to him from Antarctica, haunting him…
Any landing you can walk away from…

He climbed out of the cockpit on the deserted airstrip, a little curious as to the lack of a reception. No maintenance people, no security, just the disembodied voice from the tower clearing him to land.

Curious, but not alarming. Yet.

He shrugged off the nagging concern and turned to the sound of an engine approaching him. The day was hot, humid and somehow overly dry at the same time. It was like his mouth was full of sandpaper filings and he had the unshakeable notion that trouble was coming, with his mother at the center of it.

Why was she here? Did it have to be treatment outside the continental U.S.? Was that all it was? During the flight here he had questioned everything. The tone of her voice, the timing of all this. Something wasn’t right.

But now here she was, coming toward him. He could see her in the back of the Jeep.

Guess we’re not going to the facility,
he thought.

He took off his aviator’s sunglasses, hooked them behind his collar and made for the ground transport, expecting to help her out. Instead, even before it parked, his mother—head wrapped in a yellow scarf, wearing tan slacks and a white silk blouse, sprang from the open door and ran to him. Elsa threw her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely.

“It worked!” she yelled over the winds and the Jeep’s engine. “It worked!”

#

"What do you mean?" Alex asked. "How are you better, what…?"

A thousand questions ran through his mind, along with a small nagging alarm bell which was subsequently droned out in a wave of excitement and joy. His mother was not only alive and well, but she was going to make it. A miracle had somehow occurred here on this little island.

But that warning bell chimed one more time. The coincidence of it all… She had suffered so long with this disease, but now that it had nearly run its course this mystery treatment works?

He pulled away slightly, and with a trace of terror, searched her eyes, then her skin.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice bubbling with uncontrolled happiness.

"Nothing, just…" He studied her features. Couldn't tell what was under the bandana-scarf, but she just seemed…healthy. A modest sunburn at worst, but her eyes were strong and vibrant, without a touch of (dare he say it) yellow or reptilian.
Why would he think that? Why consider that any miracle in this day and age had to come with a curse?
Couldn't it just be a modern triumph of medicine here on this island, far away from FDA rules and lengthy testing periods before new treatments and drugs could be approved?

"Did it really work? You feel better? I mean, you look great and all, and I am doing all I can to not drop to my knees and praise God right freaking now, but…"

She squeezed his shoulders and nodded fast. "It worked, Alex, and it's real, but…" She looked over her shoulder at the driver and the man in a black suit and sunglasses sitting beside him. “I wonder if something
else
is behind the treatment, behind my selection in the first place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've heard things while they thought I was unconscious. I heard your name, and something about Vostok.”

Alex paled.
It is too good to be true.
“What else?”

She shook her head, leaned close and hugged him again. “Just trust me, we can't go back in there.” She cocked her head back toward the facility. “I know you had dealings with these people down there. Your father too. Bad people, and I know his death was no accident. So I'm scared. I don't trust them, don't trust any of this.”

She pulled away, locked eyes with her son, then glanced toward the airplane.

“Is it still fueled? Can we just go—how fast could we take off?”

“Mom, I don't know if we can. We…"
Shit
, he thought, looking at the driver, who now stood up and started to get out of the Jeep. There was a gun holstered at his right hip.

“Better not just yet.” He stepped in front of his mother and addressed the men. “Hey there. I’m Alex Ramirez. Thanks for the greeting party. What do we do next? Is there a release procedure, sign out form or something?”

The driver said nothing, but the other man, still in the Jeep, lowered his sunglasses. He stood, then spoke into a walkie-talkie, something lost in the wind and the rustling palm tree branches alongside the runway.

“Get ready,” Alex’s mother said to him, over his shoulder.

“For what? What’s going on here?”

“Told you,” she whispered, pointing back toward the airport, “nothing good.”

The man in the Jeep lowered the walkie-talkie and finally spoke, leaning over the Jeep’s railing. “Mrs. Ramirez, Alex, you’re to come back to the treatment facility for further observation.”

“No.” His mother was defiant, shouting the word as firmly as she could.

“Listen,” Alex said. “Who’s in charge here? I’d like to meet with him and review a few things. Including what authority you have here. Otherwise, I would like to take my mother home.” He took a breath, and added: “Now.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” The man nodded to the driver, who then reached to his side for his weapon.

—only the holster turned out to be empty. A look of shock crossed his face as he looked down at the vacant leather accessory, then back up sharply.

Alex’s mother stepped forward, raising the .45 and pointing it with both hands.

“Looking for this?”

“Mom!”
Holy shit.
“When did you—?”

“Not now. Alex, start the plane.”

The man in the black suit shook his head. “Think about what you’re doing, Mrs. Ramirez.”

“Think about what
you’re
doing. I’m getting out of here before you can do anything else to me.”

“Like finish your cure?”

She shrugged. “I feel great, and I’ll take that any day rather than risk whatever else you have planned.”

“Mom…”

“You need more treatments,” the man said. “Monitoring. We have to be sure…”

“I’ll take my chances. I’ll trust in how I feel, that whatever you gave me, it did the job. As to the rest of it, the rest of you…no way. I’m not going to let you hurt my son, or use me for whatever the hell you’re setting up.”

She aimed the gun, steadying her hands as the driver approached. “I mean it.”

“Drop the gun, ma’am.”

“Uh, Mom, maybe you should listen to them.”

She fired, blasting a round right at the driver’s feet, knocking him back in alarm.

Elsa screamed. “Call off the dogs! Tell your friends to turn back.”

The man in black raised his hands in surrender. “Fine, you win.” He mumbled something into the walkie.

“Now what, Mrs. Ramirez, since you have the gun?”

“Mom, really…”

“Trust me,” she said, almost barking the command. “I feel right about this, just as I feel so wrong about that place. You weren’t there. For days I felt like a prisoner, told nothing, just injected over and over. Put under and…I have no idea what they did. No one told me anything from the moment I got here.”

“Okay, Mom. Okay.” Alex had to agree at this point. She had stolen a gun and taken a shot. There was no way he was going to give her up and go back with these guys at this point, no matter what.
And the connections with Vostok, holy shit…
He reached out and gently took the gun from her.

“Let me handle this. I’ve had some experience lately.”

He pointed at the driver, then the other man. “You heard the lady! We’re leaving. Get back in your Jeep and turn around. Don’t try to stop us and nobody will get hurt.”

The man in black gave him a vile look, then lowered his sunglasses. “Whatever you say, Mr. Ramirez.”

The driver went back to the Jeep as Alex backed away, his mother tugging at his shirt. They continued backing up until the Jeep advanced, then turned in a large half-circle and drove off.

“Now that that’s settled,” his mom said, “let’s get off this island.”

#

“We can’t go back to the U.S.,” Alex told her as soon as they were airborne. She gave him a worried, confused look but he shook his head. “It’s all a big cluster—”

She narrowed her eyes and he stopped mid-curse. “It’s all under quarantine. Feds issued a high threat level.”

“Even for you?”

“Especially for me.” He banked to the left and ascended, checking gauges and especially fuel reserves.

“We have enough to make Miami, but I know they won’t let us land. Hopefully there’s another option.”

“Like what? Alex, I’m scared, but my, I’m proud of how you can handle this plane!” She beamed, even as she white-knuckled the arm rests in the co-pilot seat. Her gaze swept out over the crystal blue sea and the shimmering noon-time sky.

“Mom, thanks, that means a lot, but… I really can’t process this yet. You’re better, after all you’ve been through! It’s beyond comprehension, but I’m not complaining.”

“Don’t. I’ve never felt so good. Other than a rumbling in my stomach—and oh Lord, why wouldn’t they give me a decent meal? Just once, they could have offered me a juicy steak or even just a cheeseburger. I was so hungry…”

She licked her lips and Alex slowly turned and gave her a long, careful look before hitting some turbulence and wrenching his attention back to the flight path and the control panels.

“Ummm…” He saw something glinting up ahead, in the water. Something large. “Mom, what—”

The radio crackled and a voice shot out. “
Cessna 1104
, this is the aircraft carrier
USS Alabama
. Identify yourself and your passengers.”

“Here we go,” Alex muttered to his mom. “Wish me luck.”

“
USS Alabama
, this is
Cessna 1104
. Alex Ramirez, piloting, I am returning to the U.S. from Grenada with one passenger and I request landing permission at the nearest air base, or—”

“Negative, Mr. Ramirez. You are ordered to turn back, return to your point of departure and await further orders or clearance arrangements.”

“Uh,” Alex said, “no can do. I have an elderly passenger with a medical condition and I’m low on fuel. Can we at least get an escort and a landing permit?”

An idea came to him, even though he had no time to consider the logistics. “How about we land on the
Alabama’s
flight deck?”

“Can you do that?” his mother asked, eyes wide, leaning forward in an attempt to see the distant carrier.

Alex shrugged, then released the transmit button. “No idea, never attempted that but it can’t be too hard, right? If those super-fast fighter jets can do it…”

“Negative,” the
Alabama
barked in return. “Once again, you are ordered to turn back.
Turn
—”

The transmission broke off.

“What are those?” his mother asked, pointing down, out of the window. Alex squinted, wondering at how his mother could see better than he could, then his vision finally adjusted and he saw it: two smallish specks like birds circling around the carrier and above it. Then he noticed something else: a cargo ship approaching the carrier fast, like it was preparing to ram it.

As he was about to try raising the
Alabama
again, he saw things that awakened PTSD-like symptoms inside him: explosions on the deck, balls of fire and smoke erupting outward and upward, and as he closed in, bird-like shapes that grew and grew more detailed as they approached.

“Not birds,” his mother said, her voice cracking in horror.

“They’re dropping something on the carrier’s deck!” Alex said in shock, watching payloads fall, then erupt into living, scrambling things—humans, he realized, dropped onto the deck. But not humans, he realized, seeing their speed, the way they hit the deck and then got up racing in all directions, hungrily hunting the crew.

“Not birds,” his mother repeated in a hollow voice as they completed the first fly-over, zipping through clouds of burning smoke. The Cessna banked hard, and Alex tried not to get distracted by the chaos on the deck as he prepared for another pass.

His mother craned her neck and narrowed her eyes.

“Pterodactyls.”

8.

USS Alabama—moments earlier

Major Casey Remington, thirty-one years old and just two weeks away from being a proud father for the first time, found himself thinking about, of all things, names for his future daughter. Olivia was due to deliver any day now, and under normal conditions, Remington should have been on the first day of his two week leave right now; they would be sipping wine on their balcony at their Kansas City condo, continuing their playful bickering about what name to pick, making sure it was insult and mockery-proof for school and beyond, making sure it was cute enough to be fun yet respectable if she grew up to make something important of herself.

Instead, this High Alert had gone out, and all the carriers, coast guard vessels, destroyers and hell, the entire U.S. Navy—every ship that could be spared—had been mobilized. All hands were needed to guard the borders. No ships got in, and all pilots were on standby. He had hoped being on a carrier would be deterrent enough for anyone foolish enough to dare the blockade, that whatever the threat was, it would surely seek out a weaker entry point.

So when he got his orders and he suited up to launch—preparing to intercept an incoming cargo vessel that hadn’t responded to radio contacts—Remington was sure it was just a simple mistake. Someone asleep at the wheel, a trader with a malfunctioning transmitter.

Just a simple launch, flyover and report back mission.

Except it wasn’t.

Ten seconds after he went airborne in his F/A-18, soaring up and over the Atlantic, he picked up a bogey at the same time his orders came barking through.

“Airborne targets imminent!”

What?
Remington ascended, shooting for higher altitudes while zeroing in on the red blip, tearing in from the direction of the cargo vessel.
Could it have been launched from there?
Impossible! The specs on the boat were that it was little bigger than a freighter, and unless it had a heli-pad… No, this incoming threat—if that’s what it was—appeared now in his vision, growing as he streaked toward it.

“Not a plane,” Remington yelled into the mic.

One other pilot had launched with him, coming up strong on his right.

“Alvarez,” he said, looking across his shoulder. “Take it easy and hold your fire.”

“Ain’t nothing but a bird,” Alvarez shouted back, then eased ahead of Remington’s ride. “A big-ass bird, but hell, that’s all. I’ll just…”

Another red blip appeared on the screen, this one coming up closer, as if it had been
underneath
them the whole time.
Impossible,
Remington thought. Nothing that big could fly under the radar, so close to the water, but yet…

Another bird?

He tilted the F/A-18’s nose, then angled right as Alvarez streaked ahead—and Remington caught just a glimpse of something brown, leathery and enormous. Wings and a huge pointed head with a single searing red eye that seemed to look at him and up at the other plane simultaneously.

“Alvarez!” Remington felt a cross current— a sudden thrust from the creature’s wings? He compensated, executed a full spin and turned, craning his neck—only to see the huge creature complete its missile-like approach and snap its jaws in perfect timing. Sparks and flames kicked out from Alvarez’s left wing, where a chunk of the aircraft had ripped off into the attacker’s mouth.

Alvarez got off a few rounds of machine gun fire, but then his smoking plane was nose-diving.

Get out, get out!
Remington urged, horror-struck as he flew on and upward, away from the range of that…whatever the hell it was.

“Eject,” he said in a hollow tone. “Alvarez?”

The other bird-creature came into view, flapping hard, flying lower as if struggling with a heavy weight. As Remington flattened out, turned and gave chase, he thought he could make out things in its hind talons—moving forms, arms, legs…hideous faces? He was seeing shit now, probably. Other figures clung to its body, grasping at gouges in the creature’s flesh, passengers along for the ride.

Far below, Alvarez must have ejected. Remington could see the parachute open, a bright red, white and blue beacon floating to safety…

…until the first beast swooped down in pursuit, its giant wings blocking out the sight for a heart-rending moment, and then it was up and ascending again… this time, with shredded ‘chute pieces hanging from its beak, and no sign of Alvarez.

The creature—a pterodactyl, Remington thought, finally putting a name with the monstrosity (
Names are important, Casey.
That’s what his wife would say
. Let’s pick one for your daughter already
) ascended, fast. Faster than he could have imagined.

He caught a glimpse of those crimson eyes and long-dead pupils, locking on to their next prey.

#

The next moments were a literal blur of clouds and sea, wings and eyes. Teeth and machine gun fire and maneuvers, the likes of which Remington had never attempted. His stomach was in knots and his lungs felt depleted, head throbbing with the pressure, but somehow he had managed to avoid the creature’s first swiping attack.

Ascending until the pterodactyl tired, the stunt was basic Escape Maneuvers 101, but never in any training simulation could he have imagined this scenario.

“Command, what the hell is this thing?”
Where’s the Intel?
Certainly the Brass had more information than they were sharing, and given what he had just witnessed, he understood the reluctance at revealing too much. Probably determined it would be easier to declare a general quarantine and blindly order an attack on disobeying ships than it was to sound bat shit crazy and go all SyFy Channel on them, spouting on about prehistoric monsters invading U.S. soil.

Leveling off at 40,000 feet, Remington looked back down, seeing nothing but the blue-gray slate of sea far below. On his radar, the blip was a fast-moving dot heading toward home base, joining up with the other dot that was already engaging the carrier.

“Command?”
Why aren’t they answering?
“Shoot that bird down! It’s carrying a
payload
of…”

Jesus, what in God’s name
was
it carrying? Infected humans?
Remington swallowed hard as he straightened out the nose, armed his two AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles and accelerated. “Command?”

“
Alabama
to Remington!” The voice was shaky, uncertain. “New orders.”

“What? Sir, I repeat, two birds inbound to your coordinates, one carrying a payload—”

“We are on it, defenses intact and activated.”

Launch some other planes then, damnit!
He thought.
Take them out before…

“Be advised, another plane is inbound.”

“What?” He glanced over his shoulder—down, all around. Eyeballed his radar, then saw the electronic representation emerge, coming from the southwest.

“A Cessna, two Americans from Grenada demanding we either let them pass or let them
land
. You have to turn them back, escort them to…
holy shit, get—
”

The communication cut out.

In defiance of orders, Remington accelerated, closing on the
Alabama
, angling down and pulling up, coming in at a level approach until he could see something that chilled him to the bone.

A battle raged on deck. Marines opened fire on a ragged group of humans—humans that seemed to be moving way too damned fast, and somehow (did they have body armor?) they weren’t even slowed by the bullets. He got a glimpse of a dozen marines swarmed and…shredded, just literally shredded en masse before his eyes, before they could react. Then he was past, zeroing in on the pterodactyls.

The one that had been chasing him was way ahead, near the bow of the carrier. It swooped down in what had to be a second attack upon the control tower, returning to finish the job. It landed on a broken edge, perching there as it shoved its entire beak inside, locked hold of something and pulled back in an explosion of sparks and something else—gore… As half of a marine’s body flopped up into the air then down into its gullet.

Remington swore, lined up the creature in his sights, then riddled its body with machine gun rounds. Massive 20mm Gatling gun bullets tore through the thing’s hide, shattered its spine and destroyed its wings, sending it rolling and screeching off its perch onto the deck where it flopped about, damaging three other waiting F/A-18s.

Feeling the first faint tinge of satisfaction, he banked around the deck, turning sharply for another pass to take a run at the human invaders—when he realized he forgot about the other pterodactyl. It was still there—higher up, flapping its wings, keeping itself in place.

Remington adjusted his sights, about to fire a Sidewinder when he saw that the creature still had its weird payload gripped in its talons, that only the stowaways on its back had been released to fight—still ravaging the deck and locked in combat with more marines emerging from their stations.

Remington hesitated.
Were they captives being extracted? Civilians?
He couldn’t fire until he knew what he’d be killing.

And then there was his last order—stop the Cessna.

Damn. He took his finger off the trigger but flew by close, getting a better look at the beast.

He saw two things at once.

First, he was no expert in prehistoric biology, but the pterodactyl seemed to be more like a CGI monstrosity—all torn up in places, ribs and organs not only exposed but…chewed on. Its throat was slashed open and fleshy parts dangled from the open esophagus. Its neck and abdomen were clearly gnawed upon, with sizable chunks devoured.

Second, and the thing that made him regret not firing the missile, was that the humans in its talons—the humans that were dropped the instant he passed by—were in actuality far from anything that resembled human.

Whether or not they were even alive was questionable. Yet they squirmed, kicked and snarled, seemingly of their own accord. Then there were those eyes—hideously yellow, primordially vacant. They had fallen hundreds of feet, smashing to the deck—and instead of staying dead and broken, got right up and raced toward the nearest marines, those valiantly staving off other attackers.

Pissed now, Remington punched up the throttle. He banked hard around and zeroed in on the pterodactyl, which had turned tail and was flapping energetically, back toward that cargo vessel, probably for another payload, Remington guessed. He had to stop that.

He locked on and launched the heat-seeker.

Eat that,
he thought with satisfaction as the missile roared free, leaving a glorious smoke trail. Resisting the urge to watch the attack to completion, he turned his attention back to the carrier deck, trying to locate targets he could strafe with the 20mm without hitting marines…but then he saw something that made absolutely no sense.

Marines attacking marines.

Without guns, the attackers moved with the same speed and ferocity as the uninfected marines, overwhelming their former comrades, falling upon them and…
Dear God…
eating them?

Still, Remington couldn’t fire. What was this? A plague that acted so quickly, turning humans into…

He couldn’t say it, couldn’t think, but he had to do something. Maybe there were others still below deck, in the tower, the engine rooms? Comm was down, but if they could seal off the lower doors…?

No, he saw on the end of his pass that the hangar doors were open and a few stragglers were taking cover, shooting from behind crates as their former mates turned and rushed toward the sound of gunfire.

He had to do something. Flying over the smoking wreckage of the tower and the shattered wings of planes on the runway, he was about to make another turn when his brain registered an alarm, something not quite right. Not right at all, in fact.

The pterodactyl he had shot through with machine gun fire should have been lying there dead among the wreckage. Instead, it was gone, it—

Reared up in his view, drenched in water, ascending from the waves where it had fallen into the ocean. Very much animated, very much hungry.

#

Remington swore and banked hard, executing a dizzying series of rolls to get out of the way, just barely escaping from the snapping jaws as the creature burst into his previous path. Regaining control and pitch just over the water, he banked and ascended, and through his window he caught a beautiful, if distracting sight: the other pterodactyl was swerving and looping madly, trying to shake the missile on its tail. A series of swirling vapor trails marked its erratic path, but the outcome was inexorable.

Whatever these things were, even if there were undead, they still gave off heat due to muscle activity, and the missile’s one track brain was just as hungry as its prey. Frustrated, the pterodactyl turned and snapped at the pursuing pest. Its wings were outstretched in an angelic pose and for a fleeting instant, Remington admired the creature’s tenacity and poise, but then the missile struck home, detonating in the dinosaur’s jaws, lighting up the sky in a frenetic explosion of blood, guts, fire and bone.