Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (87 page)

“Enjoy your run?” Michelle asked as she dropped the
almost one inch thick slab of meat into a bath of marinade that she had
concocted. I looked on the counter and identified at least seven different jars
of ingredients, one of which was the bottle of peach schnapps that we had taken
with us several nights ago. It had been returned unopened, but a single glance
now confirmed that the seal had been broken.

“Interesting choice of marinade components,” I said.

“Who said anything about using it on the moose? I've
been told that the more alcohol you drink, the better my cooking tastes.”

I chuckled and shook my head. Michelle was an
excellent cook, and I could personally attest to that fact. Behind me, Max's
panting face poked through the open door.

“Why is he so winded?” Michelle asked curiously. “I'm
sure you didn't run him that much.”

“No, but he's been cooped up for so long that he's
literally been running circles around me the entire time . . . and get
this—when we were upon the ridge top, we saw another wolf.”

“Was it alone?”

“I don't know, but we only saw one. It crossed the
logging road about 300 yards ahead of us. You should've seen Max's tail move
when we got up there and he caught the scent.”

“Do you blame him?” Michelle smirked in my direction.
“Of the three of us, he's the only one that didn't get lucky last night.”

I took a step backwards and dropped to the ground with
my arm around Max. Both of us looked up at Michelle. Her waist length reddish
blond hair was cascading over the loose folds of a tee shirt that she was
wearing. One of my tee shirts. She wore nothing else but a smile.

“What do you think boy?” I asked Max. “Wouldn't it be
great if we could find you a girlfriend that’s as beautiful as Michelle? Maybe
she'll even have red hair.”

Michelle flipped the steak over in the marinade,
replying as she did. “Yes Max, and while your redheaded girl wolf did all the
work to feed you and clean up after you, you could just sit there on the floor
and be lazy like Eric.”

I creaked to my feet with a laugh, and then walked up
behind Michelle. My arms draped around her, and I squeezed against her sides as
I planted a series of kisses and nibbles on the back of her neck.

“I'm sorry . . . I'll get busy and set the table.”

“It's already done.”

“Then I'll make the bed.”

“That’s done too.”

“Well then, how may I be of service, ma’am?”

“Why don’t you trim the freezer burn off the venison
roast, and then slice up the good stuff so it will cook faster.”

I replied with another kiss, this time accompanied by
a wink and a halfhearted "yes ma'am" before getting busy.

A little bit after 8:15 AM, we were sitting on the
front porch of the cabin on a bench that my uncle had built out of steam bent
willow limbs. Both of our stomachs were full, and we were quietly watching a
flock of about seventy Canada geese that had landed on Uncle Andy’s lake. I was
about to suggest a little bit of fishing when the radio broke the stillness of
the morning.

“This is marina calling cabin, do you copy?”
It was Amy’s voice.

Michelle was closer, and she picked up the radio and
responded.
“Go ahead marina.”

“Hey Michelle, the crew here want to try and schedule
a lunchtime meeting to go over what they found on the drive. Can you and Eric
be here?”

“Yeah. Do you mind asking Walter, Andy, and Bernice if
we need to bring anything from the cabin.”

“OK, hold on a minute.”

Michelle pointed toward the geese and echoed my
thought. “Nice day to drown a few worms.”

Before I could reply, Amy’s voice returned.
“OK,
you had to ask. Do you have a paper and pencil handy?”

By the time we were done filling the list it was
almost lunchtime, and we hopped in my truck and headed down the dirt road. Max
had taken over our place on the willow bench.

Lunch was served by Bernice and Lynn. It was bow tie
pasta with a light coating of vinegar and olive oil. Canned peppers and
tomatoes were drizzle on top, and parmesan cheese was available to sprinkle for
those who wanted. Everybody also got a multivitamin. I located the plastic cup
that I had autographed, and filled it with water from the cooler before sitting
down in the living room. Someone, probably several ‘someones’ actually, had
decided before we got there that this was going to be an adults only meeting,
so Leah had volunteered to take the children downstairs to play games. Glenda
had whipped up a batch of very tasty chocolate chip cookies as an enticement
for the children, and after that they had no problem heading to the basement.
As I sat down next to Michelle, a look of pure, unadulterated bliss was spread
across her face. At first I assumed it was from her memories of last night, but
then I caught a whiff of the cowboy coffee brewed by Bucky that filled her cup.
I was about to comment on the situation when Sam cleared his throat and got the
crowd’s attention. “OK folks, let’s pipe down a bit and focus this way.”

There was palpable tension in the air as Uncle Andy
stood with crutches next to Sam. It reminded me of the morning before report
cards were issued in grade school. Not that I had anything to worry about,
though. Well, not much.

“Ladies . . . gentlemen . . . before I cede the floor
to Lieutenant Oakley, I want to make a few announcements. The first thing, as
most of you know anyhow, is that we’re going to be continually moving people,
assignments, shifts, and job duties until we come up with a workable daily
schedule. Sam and Amy are your contact points for the civilians here, and
Sergeant Keene is the contact point for military personnel until further
notice. Any suggestions or difficulties you have should be routed through
them.” He cleared his throat and tore open a foil wrapped candy before
continuing. “Sorry, I’m a little dry.” I watched as he popped the candy in his
mouth and swirled it around. “The second announcement applies to
everybody—military or civilian. Leonard,” he pointed toward the chubby man in
the far corner, “is your point of contact for this. “We need you to come up
with a written list of items. For simplicity, split the list into three parts.
Part one are items that you really,
really
think that you need. Part two
are items that in your opinion would benefit either you personally, or us as a
group. Part three are items that you’d like to have access to for either
sanity, sustenance, or entertainment, but that you can live without for
extended periods if you had to. Anything that you list in part one, please be
able to explain the urgency. The reason we’re doing this is because at some
point in the future were going to need to go on a resupply mission, most likely
to Richland. My third announcement is that this very morning, a good sized deer
wandered into Walter’s backyard, and by some miracle as yet unexplainable by
modern science, Walter managed to down the critter. I’m of the belief that the
sight of Walter in his threadbare, trapdoor pajamas was what done the creature
in, but Mr. Sheldon swears that he actually pulled a trigger. In any event,
I’ve been told to announce that the wonderful smell of homemade bread should be
hitting your noses around 3:00 PM, and that sometime around supper, you should
each expect a monster sized venison burger.”

Almost two minutes of applause, catcalls, and whistles
sounded throughout the upstairs living room. Uncle Andy finally waved them back
under control for his final announcement.

“Lastly, the reason we sent the children downstairs is
that some of what you’re about to see, and most of what you’re about to hear
can be pretty graphic.”

Uncle Andy stepped aside and motioned towards Oakley.
The lieutenant moved up to the table where Samantha’s laptop had been
positioned. He used the small remote to activate the projector.

“Ladies and gentlemen, normally I wouldn’t be standing
in front of a video screen pointing to pictures, but thanks to the creative use
of a camera by Emily, we’ve been able to capture roughly seventy percent of the
accessible data on the drive. Now, I know that you’re going to have a lot of
questions, but if you’re patient I’ll probably answer most of them in the
course of my explanation, OK?”

Several people nodded their head silently. I was one
of them.

“Great, now it’s time for some of my disclaimers,”
Oakley said. “I’m not going to pull any punches or try to sugarcoat things. All
I’m really doing is making the information more ‘user friendly’ for the
audience—you. And I’m not here to recommend a course of action, although I
imagine that at some point in the future, after further study of the
information available, I may be able to contribute to that conversation. So
with that said, let me take a step backwards and explain something that, by the
looks in some of your eyes when I mentioned it, you’ve already keyed in on.
We’ve been able to duplicate via photography about seventy percent of the
accessible
data on the micro drive. What that means is that we ran into an issue where a
large part of the data inside the drive was further encrypted. I’ve never
encountered that before in any of the presentations I’ve done, and all I can
tell you is that the file name that we can’t access is called
Crystal Wind.
That
still leaves us with a substantial chunk of information that we didn’t have
before, and with all of that out of the way, ladies and gentlemen,” Oakley
thumbed the remote and brought the projector screen to life, “I give you
FALCON.”

The image on the screen was a remarkably clear
microscopic view—I was guessing electron microscope—of a vaguely bird-shaped
squiggly blob.

“This little guy,” Oakley said, “is the culprit in our
current dilemma.”

My natural impulse to ask questions was already lining
up several thousand, but I bit my tongue and kept my hand around my drink. My
other hand was around Michelle.

“In in order for me to tell you what this thing is,
it’s actually easier for me to tell you what it’s not. It’s not a bacteria. All
the antibiotics in the world won’t touch this critter. It’s not a fungus. It’s
not a disease. And, there’s even some speculation on whether or not FALCON is
truly alive, at least as we understand it. So, let’s move on to what it is.” He
switched to the next screen. “FALCON stands for . . . First strike weaponized,
Atmospheric enabled, Low survivability, Command level, Organic, Nanotechnology.
And believe it or not, that’s pretty much exactly what it is. Let me briefly
dissect that.”

Oakley took a sip from the cup next to the laptop
before continuing. “First strike weaponized—simply put, this is not a natural
phenomena, it’s a weapon. Like most biological weapons, its roots reach back
into the natural world, but this particular one has been tinkered and tampered
with on levels that would make Einstein cringe. Atmospheric enabled—this does
not only mean that it’s able to be dropped on an enemy via an airplane or
something similar. It also means that it’s transmissible through non-direct
contact. In other words, one of the ways it’s contagious is through airborne
vectors. Low survivability—this means it’s fatal to about ninety-eight percent
of the people it’s able to infect. There is a caveat here that we’ll get into
later, though. Command level—this is a national security marker that probably
less than 200 people globally would qualify for. We’re talking the president,
vice president, the heads of our various intelligence agencies, top military
brass . . . those kinds of people. In other words, not us. Well, I guess we’ve all
been promoted. And that brings us to the last two; the two that really define
what we’re up against. I’m going to be jumping back and forth between them to
better explain. Organic nanotechnology.” Oakley flipped slowly through several
screens, finally stopping at a picture of an obviously dead, human female
strapped to a medical procedure table. The picture was black and white, but
even so we could recognize the grayish cast to the skin.

“You’re looking at ‘Betty’ . . . which is what the
researchers apparently called the first successful clinical trial of FALCON.
Who says that evil scientists don’t have a sense of humor. She was the first,
or the Alpha test subject, and somebody propagated that word further into
Alpha-bet. That, of course, morphed into Betty.” He turned and looked at the
audience. “When you think of nanotechnology, what comes to mind?”