Detonation Event, page 28
Karen paused and turned slightly. “That’s a perversion of logic.”
“Then their world is perverted and I am, in Poe’s words, ‘The Imp of the Perverse.’” He laughed and made a gesture. “Wait, we have a guest for Ry Devans!”
Lassiter Nuro walked out from behind a door, flanked by guards.
Devans stopped and turned. “So, you two terrorists are pals now.”
Schiflet laughed. “Nuro flies with a new pilot now.”
“Must be tough to fly in here,” Devans said, staring at Nuro. “Nice face ink. Does this terrorist crap with a thing for alien microbes let you talk, terrorist crap?”
Nuro grinned through the new tattoos. “Why so hostile, Ry, ol’ buddy? All that time together and you had no idea I was EFF. What a stooge.”
“Why don’t you come around to this side of the glass so we can discuss it in depth?”
“You wouldn’t survive, old man.”
“You weren’t getting out of the choke,” Devans said icily. “Shakuri should have let me ice your pathetic existence.”
“His mistake, huh?” Nuro laughed.
“You went from the freedom of space to a cage. Enjoy it, terrorist.”
“Things are changing quickly down here,” Nuro said. “We’ll get to try it again soon.”
“Anytime.”
“Plenty of room in the prison yard.”
“Surrounded by convicts? Sounds great, but I’ll pass. We’ll pick neutral ground, if you ever get out of here. Just you and me, not your prison or terrorist buddies,” Devans said.
“It’s a date.” Nuro winked and grinned.
The guards directed Devans and Wagner from one checkpoint to another. The test kit was waiting at the final exit. They walked out the gate and were outside the prison walls now. Devans led the way back to the hoverjet. Karen took the copilot seat, analyzing the test results and blood sample. She emailed the findings to her superiors at NIH, her children, and her lab crew on Lunar One.
“Well, that was fun,” Devans said, checking the gauges in the cockpit. “What now?”
Karen Wagner tapped the field kit. “I want to take this back to the NIH lab on Lunar One. All my research tools, including my assistants who helped me test for the microbe, are there. So, Dulles Airport for a planetary shuttle would be the fastest way.”
“Got it.”
They rose vertically in the small jet, then Devans positioned the thrusters for lateral flight. It was a short hop to Dulles and the planetary shuttles that waited there.
“There’s a lot of research and experimental work to be done,” Karen said after they landed at the busy airport.
“Wish I could help you,” Devans said. “But I’m not wired for genetic research.”
“I still need a pilot,” she ventured.
“A private jet on Earth is about all the flying they’re going to let me do, Karen.”
“We’ll wear them down after we arrive on Luna.” She placed a hand on his forearm. “I could use the company, and I’m pretty sure you could, too. Who knows, we could be one of the last generations of humans.”
He grasped her hand. “We shared a blip of time. And we could have something here.”
“Agreed.” She raised her brows and looked into his eyes. “But it seems like there’s something else?”
“Not sure I’m ready for space to kick my ass again just yet.”
“Space, or a relationship?”
“Space. You know what a grind it’s been.”
“Might be better with a little company now and then. We’ve got a race against nothing less than human extinction now, but it would be nice to see a friendly face.”
“Not sure how friendly my face is these days, but you’ve pulled me out of my pity orbit and I’d like see more of you.”
Her brow furrowed.
“Not what you’re thinking, after all?” Devans ventured, silently scolding himself for missing something.
“Hang on, getting a text from Trent.” Karen blinked a few times. Her face turned pale as she turned to Devans again. For a moment she just stared, speechless.
“TWags up in the Kuiper Belt, surfing asteroids?” Devans said, in an effort to lighten things.
“The president just pardoned a bunch of EFF terrorists.”
“Including Nuro?” Devans said. Visions of ending the traitor danced in his head.
“And Schiflet. Just like the terrorist trash said was coming.”
“Why would the lame-duck president do this? She’s not EFF, and the other one doesn’t get into office until January nineteenth.”
“The president-elect made a request, and it happened.”
“Still don’t see why,” Devans said.
“Given the violence level of the run-up to the election, I’d say they promised to spare her life. Trent says the president-elect…What? This can’t be right. Is this a joke? No. No, he’s not joking.”
“What, are they killing Mars expansion proponents en masse now instead of using terrorism?” Devans laughed harshly.
She gazed at him with eyes gone wide. “Yes.”
Devans stood stone still, but his mind raced. Out of the billions of people at risk in the world, he had blood ties to just one. He considered the planetary shuttles here at the airport, but there was one tenuous tie to Earth he could not simply abandon. “Come on, let’s go find the next lunar flight.”
The flight was only half booked.
“Flying two?” the ticket agent inquired.
“Just one for now,” Devans said. “You have to be on this flight to Lunar One, Karen.”
“Aren’t you coming?” she said. “It’s dangerous for space advocates here.”
“I’ll catch up. I’m going to see my son. He lives around here. I’ll catch the midnight flight.”
“Are you sure? I’m telling Gwen and Trent to hop on the nearest planetary shuttle and get to the moon, and from there the orbiters.”
“Good plan.”
“Come with me!” she said.
“I will, but first I have to see about Cal.”
Karen’s forehead wrinkled with worry. “Trent and Gwen said Cal is EFF.”
“Truth.”
“And the political wing of it at that. If he even sees you, it may not go the way you want it to.”
“Cal’s my son, and my only living blood relative. Your kids are already headed up, so you’ve done your part and looked out for them. I need to do mine.” He pulled her close for a kiss, then gently separated. “Check in with Dan Shakuri once you get to Lunar One. Get some idea of how many EFF crazies are in the population—there’s going to be some. Better yet, don’t wait for them. Get to MOS-1 and set your labs up there. Shakuri should go with you, along with whoever else he trusts. They’re going to try and shut it all down, but the orbiters are mobile where the moon is not. I’ll be there within twenty-four hours.”
“The EFF is already trying to scuttle passenger flights. Ry, you have to come now!”
“Make sure you’re on the next one out. I’ll find a way up!”
She looked away. “We’ll never see each other again, Ry.”
“I’ll be up there before you know it.”
Devans turned from Karen Wagner and the escape that space could have offered.
Chapter 14
Death had advanced in relative silence, cloaked in anonymity. Now that it had been exposed, Dr. Karen Wagner’s deepest fears were creeping to the fore. She arrived back at the NIH labs on Lunar One in a state of rising panic. Paton Schiflet had tested positive for the Martian microbe, and now she received results from the tests of the recently deceased fetuses, infants, and several grieving mothers and fathers.
Almost all were positive for MS274S34.
She ordered a broader swath of tests, highest priority. More results came in from other regions in the United States. And then other countries.
They were too late to contain the spread.
“Get teams of lab researchers from every country involved,” Karen Wagner told her superiors at NIH. “We don’t know how to fight this alien microbe, and the clock is ticking now.”
They asked if she was exaggerating. What was her most realistic opinion of the effects on humans?
“Extinction,” she replied.
The government actually listened and followed her direction, despite the presence of many EFF proponents whom she suspected secretly welcomed the event.
SCONA also dispatched researchers, astrobiologists, and physicians to try to find a cure.
The EFF made use of the situation. The Department of Justice sued SCONA financially, and Congress passed legislation to ban further expeditions to Mars. The president signed it into law.
SCONA fired back with a naked threat. If it had to pay the fines, it might no longer have the funds to provide adequate asteroid protection, and the technology to do so would be at risk.
The government replied that if the microbe were not stopped, asteroid protection would be irrelevant.
While they bickered, the number of failed pregnancies and miscarriages rose exponentially. As did infant mortality. Even the strictest controlled laboratory pregnancies failed, including the cloning farms.
The news stories followed suit and flooded in afterward in a plethora of links on the internet sites.
Crisis: Where are the babies?
Martian Epidemic Targets Human Young.
Curiously, there were also some very different, far less alarming stories. These planted the seeds of reassurance in the minds of many. Various scientists pointed out that while tragic, a generational gap in Homo sapiens was favorable for the Earth. In just a year, the population had declined ten percent. There were no births to offset the thousands of adult deaths that occur each day. They would find a remedy for the alien microbe, but in the future, population controls were a must if the Earth—and humans—was to survive.
The media aligned themselves to this point of view. They worked to acclimate humans to lower expectations of generational gap and fewer offspring. They often cited one story in particular as “proof” the scenario was not a bad thing: Pros and Cons of Fewer Humans for Ultimate Survival.
But even the most rabid Earth First proponents were alarmed with one documentary:
Human Eclipse.
And they sought to have it banned. But while it was removed from many news websites, bootleg links to the report remained.
Video footage drove home the threat.
Playgrounds creaked and groaned as the wind pushed empty swings back and forth, chains red with rust. Several seats dangled at extreme angles, one side detached, to scrape the sand. Another spun just above the ground in a lifeless spiral.
Baby strollers vanished from neighborhoods, parks, malls. The ones in use were either empty or harbored dolls or small dogs instead of children, and the gazes of those who pushed them were haunted from the loss.
Preschools closed. The colorful letters that once drew the wide-eyed gazes of bright young faces were lost on adults. The playtime blocks and spaceships and hovercrafts and computers and picture books were all abandoned, not even sold secondhand.
Pods and hallways of elementary schools became hushed. For a while the fourth and fifth grades still met, then those thinned to silence as older children perished.
Janitors had the run of the places. They cleaned and replaced light bulbs and painted, in the hope that the structures would someday see an influx of children.
But fewer humans was a good scenario for the Earth and ultimately would lead to more resources for humans when a cure was found, many news stories maintained.
Manufacturers of baby supplies went out of business. Diapers and baby clothes and food and rattles and pacifiers vanished from store shelves. Software to entertain and teach the basics of the alphabet and numbers were put on hold.
And the economic spillover did not end there.
Orders for family-size hovercraft vehicles, including campers, fell drastically. Those who still traveled to vacation spots no longer had tricycles secured to the rear, only bicycles for older children and adults.
Hoverboards had long since taken over the role of skateboards, but these were in use only by older kids and young adults.
The list of compromised businesses grew longer with the death of each child.
Unemployment rose sharply.
During the early phase of the Martian Plague, news programs used graphics to display an impact map. In them, the first solid red circle covered the Washington, DC, area, including northern Virginia and Maryland. From there, red bands formed. The circles were dubbed IDAs, or Infant Death Areas. Thin red lines shot from these and extended to central and western regions of the United States to create more IDAs. New lines crisscrossed into more death circles until the North American continent went entirely red, eventually reaching such sparsely populated areas as the Arctic Circle.
Central and South America followed suit.
Red lines shot across the oceans. Red circles soon dotted, then encompassed Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia. Red lines crisscrossed one another. Preventive measures failed. Red dots formed and spiked outward to form more IDAs.
Millions of babies perished, in and outside the womb.
In the midst of this arose another phenomenon—all but overlooked with the pandemic of infant deaths.
Adults were living longer.
Those with disease were beating their illnesses and living in numbers that paralleled the fetus mortality. Specifically, deaths due to disease plunged to a relative trickle.
The news stories abounded at both ends of the spectrum: a lack of births offset by adult longevity.
The blame was placed squarely upon SCONA for meddling with Mars.
SCONA blamed the NIH Lunar Labs for allowing the microbe to escape to Earth.
The United States government, and many others that followed the EFF doctrine of a lighter human footprint upon the Earth condemned SCONA for bringing the microbe to Earth, but pointed to the benefits as well. They congratulated one another, believing their time had arrived.
The hardline EFF seized upon the chaos of the worldwide tragedy and activated its vast network of operatives. Finally, the moment to enact their ultimate solution for the Earth had arrived.
Chapter 15
Devans was not good at waiting. Period. You’re either doing something or you’re done doing something. Idling is a waste of time. Waiting in a loud, increasingly tension-filled airport while the world was going to crap was taxing his mind to exponential degrees, but it wasn’t about him right now, so he set aside his impatience as best he could.
Karen Wagner had boarded her flight for the moon, despite the agitation building up in the airport. The EFF was making bold moves at an alarming rate now, and he wanted to know she at least made it off the planet before they struck with their true intentions.
He felt a stab of emptiness.
Come on, you’ve only been with her a night and a day.
Yeah, but there’s something there. She didn’t have to check in with me almost daily during quarantine, and our conversations were more than just microbe-related.
Over the next twenty minutes of waiting for her flight to take off, he tried Cal several more times with his arm computer phone and mindtext. All went unanswered.
Karen texted that her flight was in the air now.
Devans set his jaw and headed out.
A river of people flowed along the wide hallways of the arrival and departure gates. He slipped through gaps and made his own way with a dividing hand when necessary, at first muttering a word of apology and then forgetting it altogether when met with angry replies. Escalators and people movers were damming points, but he could at least make headway on the stairs and walkways.
No sooner did Devans realize this when the airport—always a place of grand-scale bustle—turned into a house of mass indecision and rising panic. People clogged the hallways. Sometimes there were lines of movement, sometimes they came to a standstill. Workers attempted to usher people along. Announcements came that flight after flight was now cancelled. Murmurs rose to shouts and became a perpetual roar. Glass shattered in a gift shop window. The two men with chairs in their hands didn’t bother fleeing. Instead they vanished inside. The shock of this quieted the hall for a few moments; then the roar resumed.
Then came gunfire, screaming, and smoke.
Airport police ran through, shouting for people to run for the exits.
Devans stopped before another gift shop. The owner or manager was pulling down on the metal mesh to block the entrance, but it hit a snag at waist-level and would descend no more. On the display counter was a set of pocket tools. One was opened to revealed pliers, knife blades, screwdrivers, finger clipper.
“A hundred credits for one of those!” Devans shouted, reaching for his wallet.
“Damn EFF. Should just leave. Not sure there’ll be anything left after today.” The manager shook his head and tried to kick the gate down. He paused as Devans strode toward him. “Hey, you’re the Mars guy, right? Help me with this damn thing and I’ll give you ten of ’em.”
“Deal, but just the one.”
The manager ducked under the gate, unlocked the display case, and grabbed one of the items still in its small box. He slid it out to Devans, who opened the box and pocketed it. With the manager back on the crazy side of the gate, they reached and pushed down on the gate with their combined force. The metal mesh screeched over a catch point, then rolled down to slam against the floor. The manager placed a foot on the handle and locked it. He shouted to be heard over the rush of feet and voices around them. “Thanks, spaceman! Watch your ass. From the links I watched, it’s all going to crap at light speed now.”
