In Situ (13 page)

“Howdy there.”

Alex froze, her head buried in the engine compartment. The sound of the voice was not more than fifty feet away.

“Howdy there,” the male voice repeated, slightly closer.

Alex backed slowly out from under the hood and turned. There were two men in front of her, both dressed almost identically in jeans and camouflaged hunting jackets. One appeared to be in his late fifties. The other, probably mid-thirties, looked as if he could be the older man’s son. They carried shotguns loosely slung over their shoulders. Alex prayed that Mot was not in their line of sight.

“Do you need a hand?” the older man asked.
There was something disturbing in his tone.

Alex looked at both of them, still concerned about Mot.
She was accustomed to running into people when she was out, even in the remotest areas. Most that she ran into were fine folks, but there was something dangerous about these two that she could instantly feel. This is why I always carry a gun, she thought to herself as she sized them up. Unfortunately, her handgun was underwater back in the cave and her shotgun was out of reach in the cab of the pickup. No matter, she reminded herself, the only time a gun is any good against another gun is when it is loaded, first out and first pointed with the safety off. These men had theirs in their hands.

“No, I’m
OK. I was just looking for my spare key,” Alex said sheepishly, “seems like I’ve lost my other one.” Obviously, thought Alex, they have not seen Mot yet or they would be shitting their pants and shooting.

“We saw the hood up,” the older man said as he eyeballed Alex up and down in the same obvious way
the younger man was doing. Alex noticed that the older man’s hands were filthy, with black lines around his yellowed fingernails. The younger man had tattoos across his knuckles, and she could see the tops of other tattoos around his neck line. There was also something odd about their clothes, she noticed, they just did not seem to fit right.

“What are you fellas doing out here?” Alex asked
as nonchalantly as she could, her heart pounding.

Both men continued to look at her like ravenous dogs
, not seeming to hear the question.

“Huntin’ for birds,” the younger man finally offered, still looking at Alex as if she
were a hotdog and he hadn’t eaten for days.

“Having any luck?”
Alex was worried. She had to try to appease these guys so she could send them on their way and work on getting Mot out of there. She was still amazed the men hadn’t spotted him, but she did not dare look to see where he was.

“Not ‘til now,” the older man snickered
, shooting a glance to the younger one. “Not real smart for a pretty lady like yourself to be out here all alone. You are all alone, aren’t ya?” The man craned his head around, looking past the truck.

Alex felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
OK, this was real trouble. She prepared to fight. “My husband is just over the rise that way,” Alex indicated over her shoulder, sure that it was obvious that she was lying. “We’re paleontologists,” she added, trying to bring a note of truth back into her tone.

“Bone hunters, huh?” the older man said.
“We get plenty of those around here, that’s for sure. Don’t see a lot of women doin’ it though. Junior, jump over the hill there, and see if this young lady’s husband needs a hand.” He looked back at Alex and grinned, flashing his yellow teeth.

“
OK, Pop.” Junior gave Alex a good long stare and started up the narrow canyon that she and Mot had come down earlier. Alex took a deep breath, sure that Junior would spot Mot the minute he passed the truck, but nothing happened as he moved around vehicle and up the hill.

“What’s your name?” Alex asked desperate to buy some time.
She watched the man carefully, trying to judge if she could get close enough to disarm him before he killed her. If she were going to make a move, she knew she needed to do it before the other man returned.

“I go by Senior,” he chuckled, “and that there,” he said, indicating
the younger man already over the rise, “is my boy Junior. Been so long since we used our real names I practically forgot what they are,” he continued, winking at Alex. “Ya know, we been a long time without any female companionship…,” he interrupted himself. “Junior, see anything?” he shouted.

“No
, Pop,” came the answer from a distance.

“
Well then, get your ass back down here!” Senior yelled back. “Ya see, as I was saying lady….”

“Alex.
It’s Alex,” she said. Decide, Alex, decide.

“Well
,
Alex
, as I was saying. Been a long time since Junior and me had the pleasure of any female companionship. I was just wonderin’ if, well, seein’ as how it’s pretty obvious you’re lying about the husband and all…,” Senior’s eyes narrowed.

“What are you talking about?” Alex
asked, but she knew. She felt as if she would vomit.

Junior strolled back.
“I didn’t see no one, Pop.” He stood by the old man and gave Alex an accusatory look.

“Anyhow, I was just telling the lady here, that if maybe she were a little bit cooperative, that maybe we would
be a little gentle, and maybe, we’d even leave her alive.” Senior pulled his gun off his shoulder and pointed it directly at Alex. “Whaddaya think, Junior?”

Junior’s eyes narrowed and he smirked as he also pointed his gun at Alex.
“Sounds good to me, Pop.”

Alex was pinched between the two men and the front of the truck.
She considered trying to run through them but they were too close for that, and just far enough away to blow her face off with their guns. She admonished herself for not trying to take out Senior when she had the chance. All she could think of saying was, “No!”

“Guess we go
tta do this the hard way, Junior,” Senior said, moving the barrel of his gun right up to Alex’s face.

In what seemed to be less than a split second, a shadow crossed behind the men
, then Mot was between Alex and her two attackers, hissing and snarling, holding the long knife Alex had used for the steaks earlier.

A look of surprise, confusion, astonishment, then fear,
and finally pain washed over both men’s faces. Junior dropped his gun in the dirt and fell to his knees. Senior waved his gun in the air, trying to say something, but words seemed impossible. Blood gushed from his mouth as he tried to speak, then he too fell to the ground, his shotgun firing harmlessly into the desert sky in the process. Both men ended up face down in the dirt, blood flowing from nearly identical wounds in each of their backs. They convulsed for a moment then stopped moving.

Alex looked at the men, then at Mot
-his back to her, still protecting her-the bloody knife clenched in his fist. Somehow, he had gotten behind the men, knifed them and then moved in front of Alex so swiftly she hadn’t seen him do any of it.

Mot glanced back at Alex, then hunched down carefully over the men.
He sniffed Senior first, then turned to Junior and did the same. Satisfied, he grunted, stood back up and turned to Alex. “They are dead, Alex. They cannot hurt you now.” He looked back at the men, then focused on the shotgun Senior had fired.

The males
’ sudden appearance had surprised Mot. He had first sensed their footsteps, and then smelled them coming down the canyon only moments before they came into view. Mot could tell from their scent that they were human, but apart from that they smelled nothing like Alex. Then, there had been no time to warn Alex before they had appeared. Mot had immediately found cover under the large metal box Alex called her “truck,” and had waited to see what would happen.

Mot looked again
at the dead humans, berating himself for not having detected them sooner. Fortunately Alex had told him her species could be dangerous, so he was ready for anything, but as Alex had spoken to the two males it had been hard for him to probe their minds and find out exactly what they were up to. When Alex had finally said “No,” a clear picture had formed in his mind of what they were planning, and he had taken action.

Mot thought at first about trying to fight them
, which would have been easy, but he had no idea what the males held in their hands; some kind of hunting sticks he had never seen, some kind of weapons. Whatever the objects were, it was clear that Alex was as fearful of them as she was of the humans, and Mot had been in too many scrapes before to resort to half measures. Usually, even among Arzats, the conflicts he was used to amounted to kill or be killed. No, he could not afford any mistake. He had silently taken the long knife from the back of the truck, then, as quickly as he could, he had attacked, aiming for what he thought must be the area of the creature’s hearts.

Alex continued to stand by the front of the truck
, staring at the two dead men. Senior, in a fit of post mortem nerves, twitched briefly and blood ran from his mouth and nostrils again. “This is not good, this is not good,” she kept saying.

Mot stood over Senior’s shotgun studying it with great interest.

If Batter had cared t
o, he might have looked down from the Chinook he had commandeered and spotted Alex’s white pickup and the four figures around it, but the helicopter was already too high for him to have made out any detail, and he was too engrossed in a phone conversation with the President to have noticed anything anyway.

*

Just before he had gone to see Tom he had been summoned on an urgent mission.
He was to assess the preparedness of another ARC project that he had been working on for some time in Area 51, a military base in southern Nevada that had become infamous during the fifties and sixties as a highly top secret government facility. Over the years, many rumors had circulated about the goings on there from government testing on extraterrestrials to the development of flying saucers and various other top secret weapons. But, despite decades of research by curious journalists and the enthusiastic speculation of Area 51 hobbyists, nothing of note regarding its operations or actual purpose had ever come to light. This level of secrecy was no doubt helped by the fact that there was a standing order to ‘shoot to kill’ any intruder attempting to breach the complex’s twenty three by twenty five mile perimeter. The secrecy was further ensured by the fact that all of the personnel working there had to have a Level One security clearance to do so, with a potential charge of treason hanging over the head of anyone who might dare to violate the government’s trust.

Aside from the Area 51 staff
, Batter was probably one of the few other men on the planet that was completely familiar with the base’s main purpose. During the Cold War, a vast underground complex had been constructed including a secret subterranean railway that ran all the way from Washington D.C. to the heart of the underground facility. The whole thing was a monumental project that was originally designed to serve as an alternate center of government for the United States in the event—god forbid—that D.C. should ever be attacked by nuclear means.

Over the years, the entire facility had been continually upgraded as new technology came on line and new threats emerged.
A huge component had morphed into a major research and development center. The rail, once a high speed diesel system, was now all-electric. The power for the entire operation, once a very complicated system of underground hydro, was now all provided by self-contained nuclear pods. Ventilation systems had been reworked to protect the occupants, not only from radioactive fallout, but from pandemic diseases and biological weapons as well. The facility was massive and had even amazed Batter when he had first seen it in the ‘80s. The ARC component had been redesigned to house all of the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Administration, and various support staff. All in all, room for over a thousand souls should they be lucky enough to make it there in the event of a disaster. It was like a giant, one level convention hotel without windows. Families unfortunately, as well as most of the normal support staff that worked outside of the specific parameters of the ARC, were not to be provided for in the event of an actual catastrophe.

*

“Yes, Mr. President,” Batter had answered once a secure line had been established
, and the young lieutenant sitting next to him had given him the thumbs up that the line was safe and open.

“Batter, how well can you hear me?” the President asked, aware that Batter was in the air.

“You are coming through five by five Sir.”

“Listen, I have two new situations I need for you to assess for me.”

“Yes sir.”

“The first is
this: we may not have as much time to prepare the ARC units as we previously discussed this morning. It appears that there is another smaller asteroid actually in front of the one we first spotted. According to Pan-STARRS, there is ‘a shadow’ asteroid in front of the Diabolus, and the computers just picked up on it. Apparently, the trajectory is almost exactly the same as Diabolus, but this one is way out in front of it. It’s not as big, but big enough. The astronomers are still trying to work out the exact time line and potential impact damage, but suffice it to say that this new asteroid is going to get here much sooner. They are calling this one Depraedor.”

Batter’s mind was going.

“Batter, are you still with me?”

“Oh, ah, yes
, Sir. I got it.”

“Obviously, I need to know exactly what you can get ready and what the time line is for all of the ARC units.”

“How much time, Sir?” Batter asked, wondering what could be worse than a twenty-eight day notice.

The President paused.
“72 hours.”

Batter looked at the airman who was assisting him with the call.
The young officer had turned away from him and seemed busy with other tasks associated with the operation of the helicopter. There were two pilots up front, but all Batter could see was the back of their helmets. For some reason, he vaguely wondered about their families and how many children they might have.

“Batter, are you there?”

“Yes, Sir. I will get on it, and I’ll have a report for you right after I touch down. We had a little snag with Utah yesterday that I am trying to address. Nevada, of course, is always ready, but I will reconfirm that when I get there. I’ll check on the status of Colorado and Kansas as well.”

There were a total of four ARC units that had been developed
. Of them, Utah was the least complete. The original criteria for the three additional units had been that they all needed to have proximity to the Area 51 rail line, away from any major historical seismic activity, and spread out enough to give each of them a chance of survivability should one or more others suffer a close or direct hit from a nuclear attack or—now it seemed—from a massive asteroid impact event.

“I’m counting on you
, Batter. We are preparing to move personnel soon. I need to know how many, and where.”

“Yes
, Sir.”

“Now,” the President continued
, “I have one other thing. You know about the K-T samples that were taken from the Utah site last week?”

“Yes
, sir.”

“Well, apparently the find was astonishing in many respects.
In short, the scientists believe they may have finally identified the missing link in their cryogen research. As you know, this had been an integral component of the entire ARC project even before we were faced with this shortened timeline. In any case, if true, they are telling me it might now be possible to complete a cryogenic unit that could actually work long range. I need you to meet with the researchers when you arrive and let me know what you think.”

For years
, there had been wild speculation about how long it might be necessary to remain underground after an asteroid hit, particularly if it happened to have the magnitude of something like the K-T. The scientists had speculated that it might be as much as a few centuries before it was safe to venture out on to the surface, far beyond the time that food and supplies would reasonably last in the ARC units. Were cryogenics actually possible, there might be a way to preserve at least some semblance of the human race into a time when it once again became possible to inhabit the planet.

Batter was only somewhat familiar with cryogenics.
He knew of several private companies that claimed they had perfected it, but they were really just a bunch of cowboys milking the Indians as far as he was concerned, and they certainly seemed to be a whole lot better at freezing things than they were at thawing them out. The government research in cryo, on the other hand, which had initially been pursued for use with astronauts in space travel, was much further along in development. In fact, the scientists at 51 had recently revived a primate that had been frozen for just over a year with minimal cell damage. According to Pete Wilson, everything they needed to produce viable cryo units had been completely vetted with the exception of a fully tested cryo-protectant. With some misgivings, Batter had approved the construction and installation of several cryo-beds at each of the ARCs, on Pete’s assurance that they were “just one molecule away” from perfection.

“May I ask sir, what leads them to believe this?” Batter asked.

“Well, apparently when they thawed out that one dinosaur specimen they managed to save—are you ready for this
, Batter—its heart started beating!”