Particle Z (Book 1) (8 page)
They sat in silence while the MRAPs pushed, rammed, and squeezed their way down the Interstate toward the airport. Those inside blocked out the soft thuds they all knew used to be living, breathing people and now were something altogether different. The chain-guns seemed to be firing more and more frequently the closer they came to their destination.
“We need to be wheels up in thirty minutes; that means be ready to keep anything that looks dead, or alive yet dead and still seemingly alive away,” Julian said to his men, smirking at his own wit. Continuing on, he said, “We need to offload the gear quickly, get the civilians safely onboard, and we can only load one MRAP this time.”
Mike moved closer to Eric then leaned in and whispered, “We need to talk about things. I don’t have a reason to mistrust Julian and his men but you heard him, they’re interested in Marlee and I don’t really know what that means yet. Once we get to the airport, let’s get Ash and Reid to a quiet place for a minute and talk this through.”
To which Eric replied, “I was thinking the same thing, Mike. These guys let us in no questions asked. Seems like they want something we have. I think a Plan B’s in order.”
It seemed like hours before the fuselages of passenger aircraft were whipping past the MRAP’s small side windows. Terra’s hired guns started checking gear then double- and triple-checked their weapons. There was no room for a malfunction during a time like this. Mike and Eric cleared and checked the assault rifles they were given as well. Reid and Ashley checked the handguns they had been provided. They were as ready as they would ever be.
The MRAP turned suddenly, tossing everyone to the left side of the vehicle. “What the fuck,” Julian said angrily.
The driver apologetically muttered, “I thought I saw someone still normal, still living,” he said as he fought to get the huge vehicle moving in a straight line again.
Davis poked his head down from his position on the turret above and said, “We have a problem; the TC-17 is locked down and surrounded by those bags of shitless carrion.”
“Tell me how you really feel, Davis,” Julian asked, but it was clear to those around him this was not going according to plan and the humor was forced. “Can’t fire into the crowd or our ride goes up in smoke,” Julian said to himself more so than anyone else.
“These vehicles seem pretty safe; why not come back tomorrow when it’s safer out? Maybe we could go catch dinner and a movie while we wait,” Reid said, seeming to be getting back to his old self.
Mike, Eric, and Ashley, who knew Reid said the damnedest things at the worst possible times, just rolled their eyes and started to apologize for Reid’s outburst.
Julian cut them off. “Actually your funny friend here has a good idea. We need to give them a show and move the Changed away from the aircraft.” He barked some quick orders into the radio; shortly thereafter, the second MRAP blasted past and drove off into the night, firing short bursts into the air from its twin chain-guns. Mike figured they were hoping to draw off the crowd. The rest of the convoy slowed, shut down, and went dark. Night had finally descended and they didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention, especially with the other MRAP on a decoy mission. As Mike peered out a side window one of the Changed shambled past then turned to look at the now-silent MRAP. Mike jumped back and felt his blood run cold. The red glow buried deep within the eyes of the Changed was more discernible at night, and Mike could not help but think how nightmarishly demonic that dead face looked. It scared the shit out of him and he felt as if the gates of Hell had opened and its legions of dead had been set upon humanity to atone for its sins. If the four horsemen were to ride past next, Mike decided he would just eat a bullet for dinner and be done with it.
Davis stuck his head back down and said, “They appear to be moving away from the aircraft.”
“Radio the pilot and tell him to wait five minutes then be prepared to drop the cargo door. Let’s circle the aircraft and make sure there’re no stragglers.”
The MRAP roared back to life and took off toward the hulking aircraft. When they were within fifty feet, the driver activated something Julian had mentioned a few minutes before called the Night Illumination System. Seconds later, it looked like a baseball stadium lit up for a night game outside. Although this game, they all understood, was for their very survival. The MRAP’s lighting system revealed scattered sets of dull red eyes; fortunately it appeared the bulk of the Changed had moved off in chase of the decoy MRAP.
“We have a job to do, so get ready to clear out the motherfuckers stupid enough to wait on us,” Davis shouted to his team.
Mike and Eric smiled; they remembered the adrenaline rush you got just before engaging the enemy. It was excitement mixed with a dose of fear and a big helping of bravado, but it was necessary. The MRAP slowed to a stop as Vogel opened the rear door and the four Terra Corp operators moved out one-by-one, weapons ready. Mike and Eric exited as well, but stayed put next to the MRAP. They watched as the four paired off and started down opposite sides of the aircraft, Davis and Shrader to the left and Aggeles and Vogel to the right.
“Shit,” came a panicked call from Shrader almost immediately.
Shrader and Davis were firing off rounds to their left, the silenced pops muffled but still audible. Eric went down on one knee suddenly and cracked a round off into the night. Just to the right and behind Davis one of the Changed hit the dirt with the top half of its skull now missing. Davis looked back, startled for a second, then gave a quick thumbs-up before continuing the task of clearing the area around the aircraft.
“Still got it,” Mike said, slapping Eric on his back. Eric looked back and grinned. It felt like old times.
The cargo door started to drop. A few minutes later, the Humvee backed quickly into the cavernous belly of the aircraft followed by the bus and finally the MRAP. The second MRAP made its way to the others and Haya and the second MRAP’s crew quickly abandoned the armored vehicle and ran into the aircraft. Julian barked the all clear and the huge turbine engines spooled up as the cargo door closed behind them. As the giant aircraft started down the runway Mike could only wonder what was next in store for them next.
The TC-17 they had just boarded was a commercial version of the U.S. Air Force’s C-17 Globe Master. Terra Corp was either well-funded or owned some very lucrative military defense contracts, or perhaps both. The aircraft itself was huge and Mike knew it possessed a range that would allow for nonstop flight anywhere in the continental United States. Unless Julian and Terra Corp had arranged for inflight refueling, Mike was confident they would be remaining in the U.S. Prior to takeoff a small flight crew had lashed the vehicles down quickly and efficiently and helped secure the human cargo to jump seats lining both sides of the interior. Once the TC-17 was airborne and reached cruising altitude, Mike and his three friends were able to find space to gather at the rear of the cargo bay between the MRAP and the rear cargo door. This location allowed them to see and hear when someone approached. The slight movement of the aircraft slicing through the air combined with the dull murmur of sound in the background had Mike and his friends feeling relaxed and safe for the first time all day. Mike looked at the faces turned toward him; they looked worn and exhausted due to the emotional and physical drain from the day’s events, coupled with the realization that the problems ahead of them were unlike anything the world had seen before.
“So what do we know?” Reid asked.
“What we know,” Mike said then stopped, shaking his head in disbelief at the mere thought of the day’s impossible events. “We know people are being killed then coming back, at least as a semblance of their former selves anyway. We know this probably wasn’t a localized event or Julian and his people wouldn’t have been in town looking for someone like Marlee. We know this cannot be an isolated event and since there’s been no media coverage, the government must have kept the media quiet somehow. I suspect this event has legs now and will not stop anytime soon. Finally, I don’t understand why the military wasn’t called in.”
Eric looked at Mike to make sure he was finished talking then said, “The biggest unknown is what they really want from Marlee and what that means for the rest of us.”
Marlee looked up from where she was sitting. In the darkened interior of the huge aircraft, the dull red glow buried deep in her eyes was clearly visible. She looked at each one of them and all but Mike looked away from that stare. She slowly lowered her head again and quietly started to cry. Mike immediately went to Marlee and held her close. Seeing her like this broke his heart, and without knowing her true issues were, he felt powerless to help her.
Ashley, teary-eyed and touched by the love and pain she was witnessing, spoke up. “Mike, we need talk to Julian to see if he will tell us where we’re going and what they want from us.” She sounded nervous.
“Fair enough, I’ll speak with him in a few minutes,” Mike said. A tear slowly made its way down Marlee’s face but she gave him a small smile, letting him know she was okay in that way of hers.
The soft whine of the TC-17’s turbines and the warmth of the aircraft’s interior made Mike want to curl up with Marlee and fall peacefully asleep; he wished he could wake up only to find he had experienced a particularly bad nightmare. The blood and body parts caked onto the sides and undercarriage of the MRAP quickly brought him back to reality. It was time to get details on what was happening so he took that first determined step forward to see Julian.
Mike came upon an enclosed area behind the pilot’s compartment. It looked custom and he assumed Julian had added an office of sorts to the TC-17’s interior. Haya was standing guard in front of a very secure-looking door. The man was trying to look casual, but the former soldier in Mike could tell the difference.
“I would like to talk to Julian,” was all Mike said.
Haya stared back at Mike for a moment. “I‘ll check to see if he’s available.” He then turned and rapped on the door three times.
“Yes?” came Julian’s muffled reply from the other side of the door.
“Mr. Sullivan is here to see you,” was all Haya said before he posted back up in front of the door.
“Please join me, Mike,” Julian called.
Mike opened the door and stepped inside. Julian sat alone in a room that looked more like a CIA surveillance suite than the interior of an aircraft. Upon Mike’s entrance, he swiveled around and motioned for Mike to grab one of the other chairs in the room. Mike did so and looked around at the rows of monitors as he took a seat.
“What’s the purpose of all of this, Julian?” Mike said, waving a hand at the equipment
“This is where I’m tracking the outbreak and how far it’s spread.”
“Why hasn’t the federal government issued an emergency notification to the country?”
“What would have been the point? We have no way to stop it, and the decision was made to let it run its course.”
Mike thought about that for a few minutes, turning it every which way inside his head, and was still unable to come to grips on why a warning was not provided.
Julian, understanding Mike’s inner conflict, went on. “What would’ve happened if the U.S. government announced people were going to change into raving lunatics that would then attack and kill their own families if they happened to be unlucky enough to be with that person? Then the unlucky soul that had been attacked would reanimate after receiving fatal wounds only to turn on the next human it came across and start the cycle over again? Additionally, said flesh-eating raving lunatics can only be stopped by a traumatic head wound. Would you have believed that, Mike? The panic would have only made things worse, and at least this way much of the infrastructure wasn’t raided like some of the other hot zones.”
“Other hot zones?” Mike asked
“Yes, other hot zones.”
“I think you should start at the beginning,” Mike said with a heavy sigh.
“It’s bad news, Mike, but at this point I don’t give a fuck and it’s not really going to matter anyway. Soon enough our way of life will be finished. The modern era has come to a bloody end.”
Mike cocked his head to the side and looked at Julian, waiting but not really wanting to learn how fucked up things really were. Another suspicion was starting to circle inside his head. “
How is it Julian is so informed? Why is he sharing this information with me
? He decided to store those thoughts away for now and concentrate on getting as much information as possible. Marlee needed his help.
“Do you remember that crazy story about the world ending in 2012?”
“Yes,” Mike responded.
“Well that may not have been as far off as people thought.”
“How so? I can’t imagine this has anything to do with those bullshit doomsday stories.”
“That’s the funny part, it does but it doesn’t,” Julian said with a strange look on his face. “The Mayans believed the end of an era would occur on May 21, 2012 as we entered a new period called K’atun 2-Ahau. The Mayan prophecy states there would be food for half, misfortune for half, and an end to the Word of God.”
“They also said the Red Sox would never win another World Series, but that turned out to be bullshit,” Mike said half-jokingly but not liking where this was going. He would have laughed this off as crazy talk if he hadn’t witnessed it for himself.
Julian gave him that “shut up I’m serious look” and continued, “They predicted there would be scarcity of resources, a loss of confidence in government as well as religious leadership due to mechanistic materialism leading into an unprecedented period of global crisis.”
“I’m an engineer by trade and understand the concepts, but what does that really mean?” Mike interjected.
“It means man has gotten too smart for his own good and really screwed this world of ours up. Most people dismissed the May 21
st
date because there was no big bang. What they missed was a much smaller collision.”
“Smaller collision?” Mike asked, now really dreading where this was going.
Julian continued his frightening revelations. “Man created a machine called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) housed deep underground at the CERN facility in Switzerland, and it went online just a few years before K’atun 2-Ahau began. The goal of the LHC was to confirm the existence of the long-speculated but never-proven God Particle.”
“God Particle? I read in the news they found it a year or so ago,” Mike said.
“They did indeed, Mike. In 2010, they successfully smashed two proton beams together on their way toward the discovery of the God Particle. On July 4, 2012, they announced the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson particle. They had finally discovered the long-presumed and much-revered God Particle. This was, of course, just after the new age began, according to the Mayans.”
“That still doesn’t explain the people we encountered today.”
“What most people don’t realize is the LHC has been throwing around protons and all sorts of other things we can’t even begin to explain or understand for years. CERN has a staff of ten thousand from over thirty countries that have regularly rotated out countless times, and now they even provide tours to the public. We estimate they have had no less than thirty million visitors in the last three years alone. Man sowed the earth with its own self-destruction.”
Mike was having trouble wrapping his head around the ramifications of what Julian was telling him.
“It only gets better,” Julian went on without an ounce of humor in his voice. “While they were busy experimenting with Higgs Boson, CERN’s brain trust started to mess with two existing particles. The W and Z particles. The one that is of interest to us is the Z particle. That little bad boy was the baseline when they wanted to determine how a particle decays in a controlled environment. The scientists at CERN started full-scale testing using the Z particle to determine different states of decay on other particles while they were also working on the Higgs Boson discovery.
“This is getting pretty deep, but it sounds like they were mixing drinks at a party and no one was checking what was being handed out. That’s an easy way to get a lot of people sick.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Mike, and now people are getting sick, but there is no cure for this disease that I’m aware of … yet. Now comes the hazy part. The Z particle must have imbued itself with Higgs Boson and millions of people had their DNA scrambled at a molecular level while the geniuses at CERN were playing with something they didn’t understand. The Z particle was used to show the decay of life without actually ending life. Therefore, what occurred between Higgs Boson and the Z particle was fundamental change to the building blocks of life.”
“Change? Is that why you refer to them as the Changed?” Mike asked suddenly.
“Yes, it’s also why some of the guys call them Zs.”
“So what does that have to do with the Mayans, and why did this shit just starting hitting the fan?” Mike asked.
“Good questions, both. People that were exposed to the combination of Higgs Boson and the Z particle must have experienced a global trigger event. We’ve had a dramatic increase in solar activity as of late, or it could have been global warming, maybe even planetary magnetic shifts at the Poles. I really don’t know the exact cause, just the effect at this point. The truth is it really doesn’t matter what the trigger was, mankind is facing a global extinction event unless a miracle occurs or new science is discovered.”
Mike sat back in his chair, stunned at everything Julian had just said. “What does all that have to do with the Mayan doomsday prophecy?”
“The funny thing about prophecy is you really don’t understand its true meaning until after it happens. The end of the Word of God will occur during K’atun 2-Ahau, which began on May 21
st
, 2012. The discovery of the ‘God’ particle was a major blow to organized religion as it proved how life was actually created versus what the Bible would have you think. The second part was ‘food for half and misfortune for half.’ You’ve seen what’s going on, Mike; the changed are the misfortunate and we’re the food.”
Mike was blown away; never would he have given this any credence whatsoever except that it was really happening. He had witnessed the death and decay of people only for them to rise again and spread death to other unlucky souls. This was almost more than he could handle; the weight of what was occurring was crushing. Mike’s thoughts once again turned to Marlee. What did this mean for that poor beautiful woman he was so deeply in love with? Julian was watching him, gauging his reaction, Mike realized.
Why
?
“Who are you really?”
“That we can discuss after you and your friends are rested,” Julian said with a sudden smile.