The 6th Extinction Read online

  Gray remembered Harrington’s story of Operation Highjump. No wonder Byrd needed so many ships, aircraft, and manpower. Venturing down here would’ve been like exploring the surface of Mars.

  As the cruiser barreled toward the bridge, Gray noticed several of the railroad ties that formed the span ahead had rotted or fallen away long ago. He pictured the ruins of the other bridges.

  “Think it’ll hold us?” Kowalski asked.

  Harrington chewed his lower lip, plainly searching for some reason to be optimistic. “These old trestles must have been originally engineered to handle the weight and size of Byrd’s cruiser.”

  But that was seventy years ago.

  Still, Gray didn’t see any other choice. The Back Door still lay three hundred yards off. To reach the station in time to stop Wright, they needed the rig’s speed—along with the relative safety of its refuge.

  “We’ll have to risk it,” Gray said. “With enough momentum, we might be able to fly over it before it collapses under us.”

  “You’re the boss,” Kowalski said.

  The big man got the cruiser moving faster again, using the last of the diesel fumes to eke out more speed.

  Gray called to the two below. “Grab something and hold on!”

  He considered kicking Jason, Stella, and Harrington off this bus before they risked this dangerous crossing. But to do so would cost them too much time, momentum, and fuel. Besides, if all went to hell, leaving the three of them alone would be no safer than what they were about to attempt here.

  Maybe even less so.

  “Hold tight!” Gray yelled as the cruiser reached the river and raced for the bridge.

  Gray cringed as the front tires hit the first set of wooden ties, but the stout beams held. He let out a slow breath, still bracing himself for the worst. The rig shot out along the span, which stretched fifty long yards ahead.

  In the rearview mirror, he watched a couple of planks shatter under their passing weight and fall into the churning maw below. But the massive tires rolled their way across any smaller gaps. It was nothing the rig couldn’t handle. So far speed and momentum were on their side.

  Just not luck.

  Something fiery shot low over the river, cruising toward them.

  Gray caught a glimpse of its source. A pool of light revealed the distant presence of the second of the small CAATs. Apparently it had not followed its bigger brother, but instead had been sent to ambush them.

  A figure stood atop that vehicle’s cabin, risking the dangers here, balancing the smoking length of an RPG launcher in his arms.

  The fired rocket struck the bridge ahead of them, exploding old ties and rending apart steel.

  Unable to stop in time, the snow cruiser hit the blasted gap—and plunged headlong toward the river.

  FOURTH

  UNCIVILIZATION

  Σ

  25

  April 30, 12:45 P.M. AMT

  Roraima, Brazil

  Who knew so much trouble could come in such a small package?

  Standing in the shadows at the edge of his estate, Cutter Elwes watched the young woman step tentatively from the helicopter to the summit of the tepui. She held a hand up against the sun’s glare, pulling the brim of her baseball cap lower. She wore a loose blouse and vest, her hair in a ponytail in back.

  Not unattractive.

  But nothing like the beauty that followed out at her heels and grabbed her elbow. Cutter smiled, seeing the twin of his wife, a match to Ashuu’s every feature, except Rahei had a heart of stone compared to her sister’s gentle soul. Even now Rahei showed no emotion at seeing Cutter, only turning those obsidian eyes upon him and drawing her captive in his direction.

  Earlier, Cutter had received a fax of the newcomer’s passport, found while searching her belongings after she’d been captured. A brief background check had revealed many interesting details about his new guest, a woman named Jenna Beck. Apparently she was with the California Park Rangers, stationed at Mono Lake, where Kendall Hess had established his research facility.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Mateo had reported a persistent ranger who had possibly witnessed the kidnapping of the good doctor. The man had also related the details of a hilltop firefight with that same ranger.

  Could this be that person?

  Interesting.

  Curious to know more, Cutter stepped out of the shade of the cave that sheltered his home. The sun blazed above, but still failed to burn off the mists that shrouded the flanks of his mountaintop home.

  He noted several emotions flash across the woman’s face as she spotted him. From the slight widening of her eyes, one expression was plain and easy to read.

  Recognition.

  So she knows me.

  Had her ill-timed visit to that base at Mono Lake triggered events that led to the American team arriving in Boa Vista, inquiring about a dead man? This one question raised others, but there would be time for that in a moment.

  He stepped forward and offered his hand to shake.

  She ignored it. “You’re Cutter Elwes.”

  He gave a slight bow of his head in acknowledgment, seeing no reason for subterfuge at this stage.

  “And you’re Jenna Beck,” he answered. “The park ranger who has caused us so much grief.”

  He found a certain amount of pleasure in her crinkled look of surprise. Still, the woman recovered smoothly.

  “Where is Dr. Hess?” she asked, glancing around, her gaze lingering on the house behind his shoulders.

  “He’s safe and sound. Doing some work for me.”

  Doubt shone in her face.

  Cutter had a question of his own. “How did you find me, Ms. Beck? I’ve gone to great lengths to stay among the deceased.”

  The woman weighed her answer before speaking. A defiant lift of her chin suggested she opted for the truth, devil be damned.

  “It was Amy Serpry,” she said. “The mole you planted in Dr. Hess’s lab.”

  Cutter had already suspected as much, as his prior attempts to contact his young Dark Eden acolyte had failed. Initially he had assumed she had died during the containment breach, but plainly she must have been captured.

  “And where is Amy now?” Cutter wondered how much the woman had told the authorities. Not that he was overly worried. Amy had never visited his tepui and knew nothing about the true extent of his plans.

  “Dead,” Beck said. “From the same organism she unleashed in California.”

  Cutter searched inwardly to judge how he felt about this loss, but he discovered no strong emotional response. “Amy knew the risks. She was a dedicated soldier for Dark Eden, happy to advance the cause.”

  “She didn’t look happy at the end.”

  He shrugged. “Hard sacrifices have to be made.”

  As will many more, which this young woman will soon learn.

  He motioned for Rahei to bring the prisoner along as he turned away. He headed toward his home’s front door. He caught a small face peering from around the edge. His son, Jori, was always curious about strangers. It was his own fault, for keeping the boy so isolated.

  He waved his son back inside.

  Here was one visitor Jori didn’t need to meet.

  “I want to see Dr. Hess,” the woman persisted. “Before I say another word.”

  Despite the woman’s bluster, he knew Rahei had the skills to get her talking within the hour, but that wouldn’t be necessary.

  He glanced back. “Where do you think I’m taking you?”

  12:48 P.M.

  It can’t be . . .

  Kendall stared at the computer screen in the main lab as Mateo loomed in the background.

  After completing his analysis of the genetic code that Cutter designed—the code meant for Kendall’s viral shell—he had shed his biosafety suit and returned to a workstation in the outer room.

  He had used the CRISPR-Cas9 technique to break down Cutter’s code, gene by gene, nucleotide by nucleotide. He d
iscovered the code was a simple one: a single strand of RNA, a common presentation for a whole family of viruses.

  This minimalist approach suggested that Cutter had likely picked an ordinary virus, then engineered new code into it, using the same hybridization technique that he employed to create the chimeric species populating that sinkhole.

  But what was the original viral source?

  It was a simple puzzle to solve. He ran the code through an identification program and found a 94 percent match with the common norovirus. This particular bug was the plague of cruise ships or anywhere people gathered in great numbers. It was one of the most highly contagious viruses in nature, requiring only twenty or so particles to infect a person. It could be transmitted through bodily fluid, through the air, or simply by coming in contact with a contaminated surface.

  If you wanted to create a universally contagious organism, the norovirus would be a good choice. The disadvantage was that it was highly sensitive to common disinfectants, bleaches, and detergents, so could be readily thwarted.

  But if that virus were armored inside my engineered shell, nothing would stop it.

  Still, the norovirus was not generally fatal, especially in healthy individuals. It only triggered flu-like symptoms. So that raised a larger concern.

  What did Cutter add to the mix?

  What made up that other 6 percent of the code?

  The remaining material appeared to be the same repeated sequences for a specific protein-coding gene. To figure out what protein that was, he ran his findings through a modeling program that converted the code into a string of amino acids, then from that chain, the computer built a three-dimensional model of that final protein.

  He stared at the model of it now, watching it slowly spin on the screen.

  Though it had been slightly altered, he still recognized this unique foldable protein. He confirmed it with that same matching program.

  My God, Cutter, what are you planning to do?

  As if summoned by this thought, the door to the lab opened and Cutter arrived. Two women accompanied him. One was his wife—or at least she appeared to be, but something felt off about her. She had none of the sultry allure of Cutter’s wife, nor was there the unspoken affection he’d formerly witnessed between husband and wife.

  Then it dawned on him, remembering the unusual tribal heritage.

  This must be his wife’s twin—Mateo’s other sister.

  Supporting this assessment, the scarred man’s reaction to the woman was very different from the way he had greeted Ashuu. Mateo would barely meet this sister’s eyes, looking strangely fearful and nervous.

  Before he could discern why, the second woman stepped into view. From her clothes and manner, she must be American. Still, there was something oddly familiar about her, like they had met before. But he could not place when or where.

  Cutter made introductions. “Kendall, this is my sister-in-law, Rahei. And this lovely young woman at my side is from your own neck of the woods. A California park ranger. Ms. Jenna Beck.”

  Kendall blinked in surprise, suddenly remembering. He had met this young woman briefly in Lee Vining, over a cup of coffee at Bodie Mike’s. She had been inquiring about his research at the lake. He struggled through his confusion.

  What was she doing here now?

  From the anger in her face and her stiff stance, she was no accomplice in all of this.

  Jenna crossed to his side, touching his elbow in concern. “Are you okay, Dr. Hess?”

  He licked his lips, too shocked to know how to even answer that question.

  Cutter’s gaze fell upon the computer screen. “Ah, Kendall, I see you’ve accomplished much while I was gone.”

  He glanced back to the slowly revolving protein. “That’s some type of prion, isn’t it?”

  “Very good. It is indeed. In fact, it’s a modified version of the infectious protein that causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, an illness that presents with rapidly progressive dementia in humans.”

  Jenna looked between the two men. “What are you talking about?”

  Kendall didn’t have time to fully explain—not that he understood it all himself. Prions were mere slivers of protein with no genetic code of their own. Once a victim was infected, those proteins damaged other proteins—usually in the brain. As a consequence, prion diseases were usually slow, more difficult to spread.

  But not any longer.

  Kendall faced Cutter. “You engineered a contagious norovirus, one that could spread rapidly and churn out this deadly prion in great volumes.”

  “First of all, it’s not exactly deadly,” Cutter corrected. “I modified the prion’s genetic structure so it would not be fatal. Like I promised you from the start, no human or animal would be killed as a direct result of my bioorganism.”

  “Then what is your goal? Clearly you want to insert your creation into my armored shell, to make your code almost impossible to eradicate. Once encapsulated, it could spread swiftly with no way of stopping it.”

  “True. But it was also the small size of your shell that intrigued me, a genetic delivery system tiny enough to pass easily through the blood-brain barrier. To allow these little prion factories ready access to the neurological systems of the infected.”

  Kendall could not hide his horror, and even the ranger understood enough to go pale. Prion diseases were already incurable, the damage they wrought permanent. The typical clinical symptoms were generalized dementia and the progressive loss of higher cognitive functions, turning an intelligent person into a vegetable.

  He pictured Cutter’s engineered disease spreading throughout the population, as unstoppable as the organism that escaped his lab, leaving a path of neurological destruction in its wake.

  Cutter must have read the dismay in his eyes. “Fear not, my friend. Not only did I engineer the prion to be nonfatal, but I also designed it to self-destruct after a certain number of iterations. Thus avoiding complete annihilation of the victim’s brain.”

  “Then what’s its purpose?”

  “It’s a gift,” Cutter smiled. “It will leave the infected living in a more simple state, one harmonious with nature, permanently free of higher cognitive functions.”

  “In other words, reducing us to animals.”

  “And the earth will be the better for it,” Cutter said.

  “That’s inhuman,” Jenna gasped out, equally horrified.

  Cutter turned to her. “You’re a park ranger, Ms. Beck. You should surely understand better than anyone. Being inhuman is human. We are already beasts who feign morality. We need religion, government, and laws to force a level of control over our baser natures. I intend to strip away the disease that is intelligence, to rip away the deception that allows humanity to believe itself mightier and more deserving of this planet.”

  Cutter waved an arm to encompass everything. “We burn the forests, we pollute the oceans, we melt the ice caps, we dump carbon dioxide into the air . . . we are the main driving force behind one of the greatest extinctions on this planet. It is a path that will inevitably lead to our own end.”

  Kendall tried to argue, but Cutter cut him off.

  “Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best. The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. We’re already at that cusp, but what will we leave in the wake of our death throes? A planet polluted to the point where nothing survives?”

  The ranger stood up against that rant. “But it’s civilization . . . it’s our innate intelligence that holds the possibility to save ourselves, too, and along with it the planet. While the dinosaurs failed to see that asteroid heading toward them, many of us do see what’s happening and are fighting for change.”

  “You share a narrow perspective about civilization, my dear. The dinosaurs reigned for a hundred and eighty-five million years, while modern man has only been around for the past two hundred thousand years. And civilization a mere ten thousand.”

  Cutter shook his head for emphasis. “Society
is a destructive illusion of control, nothing more. And look what it’s wrought. During this short experiment with civilization, we as a species are already at the precipice of total ecological collapse, one driven by our own hands. Do you truly think in this industrial world of warring nations, of greed-driven politics, that anything will change?”

  Jenna sighed loudly. “We must try.”

  Cutter snorted. “It will never happen, certainly not in time. The better path? It’s time to uncivilize this world, to halt this ridiculous experiment before nothing of this planet is left.”

  “And that’s your plan?” Kendall asked. “To let loose this contagion and strip humanity of its intelligence.”

  “I prefer to think of it as curing humankind of the disease called civilization, to leave only the natural animal, leveling the playing field for all. To let the only law of the land be survival of the fittest. The world will be stronger and healthier for it.”

  Jenna stared at Cutter, her face full of suspicion. “And what about you?” she asked. “Will you also take this cure?”

  Cutter shrugged, but he looked irritated by her question—which made Kendall like her all the more. “Some few must be spared, to oversee this transition.”

  “I see,” Jenna said, clearly calling him out on his hypocrisy. “That’s very convenient.”

  With his feathers duly ruffled, Cutter faced Kendall. “It’s high time, my friend, that you show me your method for arming your viral shell.”

  Kendall took strength from the young woman’s demeanor. “I can’t,” he said honestly.

  “Can’t or won’t?” Cutter asked. “I’ve been very patient with you, Kendall, because we were once friends, but there are ways to convince you to cooperate fully.”

  Cutter glanced to his wife’s sister. A glint in Rahei’s dark eyes suggested she would invite such a challenge.

  “It’s not a matter of refusing you, Cutter—which I would still do if it made any difference, but it doesn’t. It’s a simple matter that the key you want is beyond both of our grasps. I can’t synthesize it. Not here. The XNA sequence necessary to unlock my engineered shell can be found only in nature.”