Running With The Horde (Book 2): Delusions of Monsters (9 page)

I wished I could have willed Eva to obey her desire to follow the passage so I could know for sure but then maybe she would have been killed way back then. The thought of that made me feel bad. I wondered at this. Wondered what effect these memory movies were having on my psyche. Just like with Linus the Pharmacist and Tegan, I now felt a close kinship to Eva. These thoughts were assailing me as I struggled into my boots which I had taken off for comfort. My watchers huddled close by waiting impatiently for news.

“I think I was right, Mark, there is a tunnel,” I told him with a cheesy grin. I was way too excited over the prospect of a passage under the river connecting Northeast Minneapolis with downtown.

“Yeah?” he said. He didn’t return my smile. I think he was not so secretly creeped out by me.

“Yep!” I said.

“I guess we’ll have to go check it out then, huh?” he asked.

“Oh, you bet. You should have been there, Mark, she was incredible!” I said as I got to my feet and headed for the door with the boys in tow.

“Who was incredible?” he asked.

“Eva was.”

“Right. Eva.”

I had just opened the door to the outer room allowing the sound of a group argument to pollute the air when Mark asked me another question. “Hey, George, who is Manny?”

“Oh him?” I paused as I thought about it, “He ain’t nothing but a cold dead pig.”

The boys were looking at me funny and I noticed the outer room had gone deathly quiet and everyone was staring at me. Hell, I was surprised myself. I had just done a spot on impression of Eva Goldstein. Almost as though she had spoken the words through me all the way from the ghost of a 1927 memory. The lingering silence was too much for me. I could worry about what was going on in my head another time. Might as well commit to the bit. I snapped my fingers and sashayed my pert little ass to the center of their chaotic circle. “Listen up boys and girls, mammas got a plan!”

When in the midst of an awkward situation, always try to make it more awkward. Words to live by.

The Past

“I need to see Lab Culture SB-201, please, John.” Andrew said quietly to Dr. Reynolds who had been assigned to help him and Todd speed the process along. In the months since his agreement with Dick, Andrew had given a real effort to engineer the correct mutation for the Simon virus. Progress had been made and today was show and tell.

The bones in his legs and arms felt hollow and he couldn’t stop sweating. The nerves were getting to him. Every time he had to present their progress to Dick, he was sure he would wind up in a box next to Dr. Farnsworth because they weren’t far enough along.

Nothing had happened yet with his coded blankets but still he was relatively happy knowing his mother finally had proof he was still kicking around somewhere on Planet Earth. The video footage gave him great pleasure seeing his mother fawn over the blankets that came in the mail. Although he couldn’t hear her, he watched her having animated conversations with his stepdad, Chip. He could almost imagine her endless fussing about how she knew they were Drew’s blankets. Chip would tune her out of course. He had to if he wanted to avoid insanity. 

“Are you ready for the presentation? We only have a few minutes.” Dick said as he entered the lab like he was on a mission. Andrew didn’t hear him as he was busy taking the culture from an irritated John Reynolds. He was in the middle of prepping the sample for the powerful microscope when Dick spoke up again.

“Hey, dingus, I’m talking to you,” Dick said and Andrew almost dropped the virus culture on the floor.

Andrew sighed and carefully placed the culture in the bio container. “Yes, Dick, it would appear we’ve made some decent progress.”

“Well, that is fantastic news, my friend, at this rate you will be knitting mittens with mommy in time for Christmas. But that isn’t what I asked you. Are you ready for the presentation?” Dick asked again, walking over to join Andrew by his workspace.

“You aren’t going to understand it. Why can’t you just take my word for it that we are almost ready?”

“It doesn’t work that way. You know that so just humor me, Doc,” he replied without a hint of humor in his voice.

“Fine, Todd, prep the projector please so we can do our presentation for Dick.”

Todd grunted and gave Andrew the finger but went about attaching the projector to the laptop in the corner of the lab designated for video review.  “Johnnie boy,” Todd said. “Put your party hat on; Dr. Penisrod is getting ready to lecture.” Todd and Dick both enjoyed a laugh at that one.

              “Hey, it’s no sweat off my back, Dick. I have plenty of work to do if you aren’t interested in hearing what I have to say.”

              “Relax, Doc, don’t let this yahoo get you down. Besides, you’re not really doing this for me; I was never really much for lectures anyway. We are going to have a remote audience for this.”

“Why? You said it would just be you?” Andrew asked. He was suddenly a shade paler. He knew who the remote audience would be. He could never stomach the idea of the unseen Syndicate audience scrutinizing his every word. He didn’t know why the idea of it made him so upset, it’s not like he could see them and they never asked questions. “You could’ve given me some notice.”

“And have you fall to pieces on me? No way, bub. I learned that lesson last time. As far as why, let’s just say they are quite eager to hear what you have to tell them and they want to hear it from the donkey’s mouth. Be sure you give them the full treatment unabridged. Got it?”

              “As you wish,” Andrew said as everyone took a chair around the table and John projected the images from the laptop to the projector. “Shall I begin?” he asked Dick. He cast a nervous glance at the cameras in the room not sure which one to focus on.

“Don’t worry about the cameras, Dr. Penrod, just present to the room and yes, you may begin already.”

Andrew took a hasty sip of water to clear his throat, “Hello,” he said loudly and with far more confidence than he actually felt. “As you are aware, my colleagues and predecessors spent a lot of time over the years with the ship and its occupant. Um, I and my colleagues now believe the pilot to be an early form of prehistoric man. A close ancestor to human beings but not the same exactly.” He took a nervous glance at Dick who was giving him a death stare. This information was not what Dick was expecting though he didn’t appear to be shocked by Andrew’s revelation.

“Move on to the virus, Doctor,” Dick said in a flat tone.

“Um, yes, as I was saying. The ship, the pilot, the technology and the virus all appear, however inexplicably, to have existed well before recorded time. I would say this virus could have very well been the cause of an extinction-level event for life on the planet sometime in the past. The virus itself is quite volatile. Genetically it shares a lot of DNA with the modern day Canadian goose. Dr. Tims and Dr. Dharmesh have theorized the virus was likely engineered in part by using the DNA strand of a predatory prehistoric cousin of the goose. In fact, that may explain some of the hive-like properties it exhibits. John, if you could move to slide two.”

The slide showed a time progression of the virus inside of a newly infected cluster of cells.

“You will notice it not only hijacks the host cells but changes them over a period of time to a mirror image of itself. Its basic function, like any virus, is aggressive replication. But this replicates not only at the cellular level but at the host level. If I were to give an educated guess, I would say at some point in the history of Earth, a highly advanced civilization was doing some pretty cutting-edge viral manipulation and something went terribly wrong.”

He paused to gape at Dick who was giving him the move-it along-signal with his hand.

“I’m sorry. I will get to the point. Ladies and gentlemen, I mean…ladies,” he stammered as he realized he had no idea the gender mix of the Syndicate. He didn’t really even know if they were indeed human.

He stole another glance at Dick as great beads of sweat dropped down the sides of his face. Dick looked like he wanted to murder him. Andrew swallowed dramatically and continued, “In any case, we believe the extinction-level event occurred because whoever developed the virus didn’t account for the voracity of its source DNA.”

              “What the hell does that mean?” Dick asked.

              “They used the nanotech to control it. To set perimeters for it. But whoever engineered it was narrow minded. They didn’t really understand what they were working with. Didn’t give the virus enough credit. Essentially they thought they had trained the beast but the beast was just biding its time before it mutated uncontrollably. It was probably far too late by the time they even realized what they’d unleashed on the world.”

              “So what are you saying?” Dick asked.

              “I’m saying your Project Simon idea is not original. It was tried once and failed fantastically. The ship and its occupant are the final result of the effort. To try it again is both arrogant and foolhardy. I have never seen
anything
like the technology in that ship. They were far more advanced than we are. Perhaps by thousands of years. In short, we aren’t smarter than they were. We are, in fact, quite the opposite. I urge you again to stop this madness before history repeats itself,” Andrew said. When he’d finished his speech he closed his eyes in anticipation of a punch to the face or worse.

              “Are you finished, Dr. Penrod,” Dick snarled.

              “Yes,” Andrew replied.

              “Then for all our sakes would you proceed with your update?”

“Of course,” Andrew stammered, “In order for your bosses to achieve their, uh, vision of world peace you need to leave the masses alive after you deliver the mind-control virus, right?”

Dick said nothing but Andrew knew from the look on his face there would be hell to pay for that little bit of sass.

“And you have made a breakthrough, correct?” asked Dick.

“Oh we have. We stripped away every part of the original genetic code except for the critical piece we believe to be responsible for the controlling properties. We basically neutered it. We call it Simon Lite,” Andrew said with a nervous grin.

John moved to the next slide.

“As you see the virus in this form is still able to hijack the cell but not actually change it forever. In addition, the enhancements we made to the nanotech will provide another layer of control.”

“And this version will not cause an extinction-level event?” asked Dick.

“Theoretically no,” Andrew replied.

“The method of delivery?” asked Dick.

“This is where it gets tricky. We need to manufacture the panic necessary in the civilian population for us to issue a special vaccine to the general public. The people in the pilot cities will get the payload shots of the live virus while everyone else across the country will get a placebo shot so we can maintain appearances. If the pilot is successful and you wish to roll this out worldwide then we would need to revisit the distribution process and come up with something more appropriate for a stage that large.”

“When will you be able to show us a demonstration?”

“Our human trials will begin next week. Provided all goes well we will have something to show within the month.”

Dick was silent for a few moments and his face took on a faraway look like he was listening to some private conversation in his head. Andrew didn’t see an earpiece but for all he knew the Syndicate was communicating to him internally somehow. With the kind of technology he’d witness coming out of Area 51 over the years, nothing would surprise him.

“Well, gentlemen, good work on this, our audience was very pleased and look forward to your demonstration. You have 30 days,” Dick said and then left the room without another word.

Todd and John were beaming and arguing about what kind of celebratory beverage was in order. Andrew was cramping up big time, his stomach a churning vat of bile and acid. He was going to need a toilet soon. He couldn’t believe Project Simon was going to happen and it was all because of him. His pitiful coded-blanket scheme was a ridiculously ineffective attempt to redeem himself and prevent Dick and his power-mad group from achieving their goals.

Hours later he wandered back to his quarters exhausted and heartbroken. That was where he found Dick, half in the bag, waiting in his room. His initial reaction whenever he saw the man was to cower in fear but this time he was too tired to do more than jump in surprise.

“Relax, Doc, I’m not here to hurt you,” he slurred. “I just have one more question for you I didn’t want to ask in front of the others.”

“Aren’t they watching us now?” Andrew asked.

“No, I disrupted the security feed,” he replied, “I’m not a complete amateur, Doc. What in the fuck took you so long anyway? I’ve been waiting for hours.”

“Had to clean up the lab, Todd and John were celebrating.”

“Ah yes, always the martyr, aren’t you?”

“You said you had something else to ask?” said Andrew.

“So the original virus, do we still have it?”

“Of course, it’s in the lab.”

“If we used that one, everyone dies, right?” Dick asked as he stumbled to his feet.

“Most everyone would die. There would be some people immune to it. There always is. That’s the only way we could’ve survived the first time. The human race I mean.”

“How many would survive?”

“I don’t really know. Ten percent or fifteen maybe? I’m just guessing, why?”

“No reason other than I like to stay in the know on things. I bet it wouldn’t be that bad,” Dick said.

“It absolutely would be that bad, Dick, I promise.”

“Okay, whatever you say, Doc,” mumbled Dick as he pushed by Andrew and headed for the door. “Thanks for clearing that up, sleep well.”

Did he not believe me? What the hell was that about?
Andrew watched Dick stumble down the hall before he shut the door. The beginnings of a massive headache started to grip him and he had to sit before he fell down. The insanity of his situation was starting to become unbearable and he wasn’t sure if he would ever sleep again.