Extinction

by J.T. Brannan

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

An extraordinary discovery in the Sahara desert will turn history on its head...

A series of unexplained phenomena create shockwaves across the globe – a huge religious statue moves its arm, and there's a spate of floods and earthquakes. Many think it's the end of the world...

Investigative journalist Alyssa Durham receives a call from an old friend claiming that these phenomena may not be entirely natural, but when he is assassinated in front of her, she finds herself on the run for her life.

Alyssa teams up with Jack Murray, a scientist from a secretive government research laboratory, to uncover the truth. But who wants them dead, and what are they trying to protect?

As chaos descends, Alyssa and Jack are drawn into a battle against an unknown enemy with the highest possible stakes, because one thing they've learnt is that nothing is safe from extinction...

(P)2014 Headline Digital

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 402

Sample

THE MACHINERY HUMMED beneath Egypt’s unforgiving desert sun, operated by a specialist team called in by Clive Burnett.

Indeed, Burnett had been forced to call all manner of people in to help him with his find in the Valley of the Kings. He had even had to inform Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who had – for the first time in Burnett’s long experience – agreed that they needed outside help.

And so an international team had descended on the fabled valley – computer technicians, biologists, metallurgists, experts in all manner of different dating techniques, radar communications specialists, anthropologists, and even linguists. Every science which could be represented was there, waiting for their turn to explore the treasures hidden beneath the sand.

This morning’s visiting party, Burnett noted as he waited at the bottom of the access tunnel, were the linguists. It would be interesting to find out if they could decipher anything. But first, there was the tour.

‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said brightly, excited as always by what he was going to show them. ‘If you’d like to step this way, we’ll enter what we’ve established is some sort of reinforced control room for the radar field that’s being revealed by our archaeologists back on the surface.’

As the linguists entered the room, they looked around with excitement. The room was a mass of incredibly complex machinery, reaching from one wall to another. The visitors were struck by how similar the computer systems looked to what they were familiar with themselves. But their amazement soon turned to horror as they saw the bloodstains that covered the floor.

‘What happened here?’ one of the visitors asked.

‘There appears to have been some sort of shoot-out,’ Burnett said. ‘This room hadn’t been disturbed since the incident happened, it was a completely closed environment. When we realized this, we pulled out immediately and waited until we could secure the bodies, knowing that the oxygen could destroy the organic matter. But we managed to save the bodies – which share almost one hundred per cent of our own DNA, by the way – and figure out what happened.

‘There were three bodies, two men and a woman. As far as we can make out, the woman shot one of the men, who sat in this chair here,’ he indicated with his finger. ‘Someone, most likely the second man, then shot the woman in the head from behind, pulled the man out of his chair and took his place behind the console, where he later died of a combination of starvation and lack of oxygen.’

‘But what happened here?’ another of the linguists asked, while some of the others tried to read the strange words inscribed on some of the machines around the room.

‘As far as we have been able to ascertain, this whole room was the command centre for some sort of sonic weapon. These computers are full of files, full of information, and our specialists have managed to get them operational again, with power from the generators back up top. But we’re going to need your help to decipher what we have.’

‘Is it true?’ a woman asked. ‘About what happened?’

Burnett nodded, knowing that the story was already working its way out from the enclosed research site, and would probably soon be hitting the world media anyway.

‘We believe so, yes. But let me show you,’ he said, heading towards one of the computers. He switched it on, and the visitors again marvelled at how similar it was to what they themselves used.

‘Although we can’t yet read their language, we can still learn a lot from their maps.’ He pulled one of the maps up on to the screen as he spoke, showing a world which looked familiar, yet somehow different.

‘It’s shifted,’ one of the scientists commented eventually.

‘Yes,’ Burnett confirmed. ‘A catastrophic string of disasters – possibly caused by the technology in this room – produced a polar shift, resulting in cataclysmic climate change and mass extinction. The map of the world was changed irreversibly.’

He gestured around the room. ‘This chamber, indeed Egypt itself, used to lie within the Arctic Circle. And what appears to have been the major civilization of the time had its main cities further down the eastern coast of modern-day Africa. The capital appears to have been located somewhere around present-day Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, with another major city a few hundred miles below, in what we now know as Mozambique.’

‘Like Washington and New York,’ one of the linguists said, struggling to take it all in.

‘But when did all this happen?’ the woman asked, clearly shaken.

‘From our initial investigations, we have reason to believe that the people in this room died just over two point four million years ago.’

The shock hit the linguists like a physical body blow, writ clear across every one of their faces. Burnett didn’t blame them; he could scarcely believe it himself.

‘But that means. . .’ one of the men stammered.

‘Yes,’ Burnett answered the unfinished question. ‘It means we are not the first.’

And if that’s true, Burnett did not add, then it also means we probably won’t be the last.

‘READY?’ CLIVE BURNETT asked, excitement written across his weather-beaten features, clear in the intense midday sun of the unforgiving Egyptian desert.

‘Ready,’ Tom Bowers answered, barely suppressing his own excitement. He was the archaeological team’s demolitions expert and he had rigged forty pounds of plastic explosive to a natural rock formation nestled within the country’s fabled Valley of the Kings.

Burnett had been a field archaeologist for over three decades, and he was convinced this barren desert location was hiding what he had been searching for all these years – the legendary ‘Hall of Records’. The Hall was one of those common myths of Egyptology that might just be true – a huge repository of ancient texts, including those from the Library of Alexandria, which were thought to have been secreted away in Egypt before that city had been razed to the ground thousands of years before.

Years of painstaking, meticulous research had led Burnett to believe that he had at last found the location, and high-altitude X-ray tomography had recently shown a very large structure under these sands. The only trouble was, the fifty thousand tons of granite which covered it precluded a dig further into the sand beneath.

But Burnett had presented his evidence, and Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities had finally relented and authorized the use of explosives to clear the site. As Burnett watched Bowers make his final preparations, he felt a trickle of sweat slide down his face – caused by anticipation, not the fiery heat of the desert sun.

Bowers nodded to Burnett as the rest of the team stood watching behind the safety markers. Bowers smiled, one friend to another, and pushed the plunger of the demolitions box.

At first there was nothing – no sound, no explosive concussion – and Burnett feared that the charges had failed to go off. But moments later he felt the ground shake beneath his feet, and grinned as clusters of debris shot high into the pure blue sky above them, shattering the foundations of the rock formation which hid his prize.

He could see the rock shivering, resisting the power of the linked explosives, putting up one last fight, before it forever relinquished its hold on the sands and shattered.

Burnett watched as dust and debris was thrown hundreds of feet into the air and the solid rock seemed to literally disintegrate before him.

He turned to Bowers, ten feet ahead of him at the limits of the safety zone, and gave him a gleeful thumbs-up.

But something was wrong; Bowers wasn’t smiling. Instead he seemed alert, confused, scared even.

Then he turned fully to Burnett and the rest of the team. ‘Get back!’ he yelled at the top of his voice, struggling to be heard over the falling rock. ‘It’s going down!’

Burnett only had moments to consider what his friend meant. Surely the rock was supposed to be going down, wasn’t it? But then he saw what the demolitions expert meant as the remnants of the vast granite rock slipped beneath the rapidly opening ground and millions of tons of sand were pulled towards what was now a gigantic sinkhole.

Burnett saw Bowers’ legs go from under him as he was pulled inexorably towards the ravenous mouth in the middle of the valley. He instinctively made a move forwards to help his friend but then felt the ground moving once more beneath his feet, rooting him to the spot. His legs seemed useless, turned to stone by the shock of the event, and then arms grabbed him, hauling him further behind the safety lines. His breath ragged, adrenalin coursing through him, he turned and looked one last time at the place where the rock had once stood, and saw his friend’s hands disappearing over the edge, pulled deep into the sinkhole in the desert floor.

He struggled against the hands of his colleagues, straining to get to his friend, but eventually relaxed, head bowed, resignation taking him.

It was too late. Tom Bowers was gone.

It was over twelve hours later that the site was deemed secure enough to venture close to it and the first order Burnett gave was to retrieve the body.

He and his team stood at the edge of the sinkhole, which seemed to drop far, far down into the valley floor, straining their eyes to find Tom Bowers. It took several minutes, but the battered form was eventually spotted, half buried in the sand about thirty feet down, one broken arm and two-thirds of his mangled face sticking out grotesquely from the caved-in wall.

Burnett was issuing instructions to the retrieval team when he heard a cry from Claire Goodwin, a senior member of the team. ‘Get over here!’ There was a beat pause, and then she repeated the call with increased urgency. ‘Get over here! Everybody! Now!’

Burnett was the first one there. He peered down into the chasm, in the direction Goodwin’s finger pointed. ‘What?’ he asked, irritated by the interruption. ‘I don’t see any. . .’

Burnett’s voice caught in his throat as he saw what Goodwin was pointing at, and it didn’t take long for everyone else on the team to spot it too.

Metal, glinting dully in the glare of the sun, perhaps one hundred feet down.

There was no ancient stonework here, only a long, curved piece of metal – the outer edge of something far larger, still buried.

The discovery excited Burnett but he put aside the archaeological purpose of the mission until the body of Bowers had been retrieved, his family had been – painfully, but necessarily – informed, and repatriation arrangements had been made.

The funeral was to be held back in the US in ten days’ time, and Burnett decided to postpone his grief and concentrate on the mission at hand, determined that his friend should not have died in vain.

Some members of his team suggested the metal structure buried deep beneath the sands might be some sort of war bunker, or research facility left over from the Nazis. Hitler was known to have been interested in archaeology, looking for historical evidence in support of his ‘master race’ theories. He had authorized many digs throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and it was possible that the structure was in some way related to this.

But, Burnett argued, how would they have buried it in one hundred feet of sand – over the entire valley, he added, and not just in this one area – and then topped it off with a fifty-thousand-ton geological formation?

It was possible that seismic activity might have shifted the sand, but the granite suggested something else.

Two days later, the site had been cleared up and the walls of the sinkhole shored up and secured, enabling members of the team to descend on to the top of the structure and start clearing away more of the sand and debris.

‘What’s it made of?’ Burnett asked the team’s chief metallurgist, John Jackson.

‘I’m not exactly sure,’ Jackson replied. ‘Seems to be some sort of variant of titanium, but nothing I’m familiar with.’

‘Can we get through it?’

Jackson thought for a moment, then nodded his head. ‘We can, yes. It’ll just take some time.’

‘Get started now then. We don’t know when the locals will turn up, and I want to be inside before they get here.’

Jackson announced that he was through more than six hours later. Word quickly spread to other parts of the camp, and within minutes all thirty members of the crew were there.

The curved metal object was an access hatch, much like a submarine hatch, and was located on what appeared to be the roof of a building still buried underground.

The hatch opened to reveal a metallic access tunnel, with a ladder leading down into the dark.

Burnett stepped forward and turned on the torch secured to his helmet. ‘I’ll go first,’ he announced with authority, and as he placed his feet on the metal rungs, he only knew one thing – this wasn’t the Hall of Records.

He hoped that whatever it was would be worth his friend’s sacrifice.

Claire Goodwin and two other members of the team accompanied Burnett, while the others listened to the radio sets connected to their chief’s communication system.

There were long pauses as the four archaeologists descended the ladder, Burnett commenting every now and then on the structure of the tunnel, and their current depth.

‘We’re at the bottom,’ Burnett eventually announced. ‘We’re leaving the access hatch and entering the structure itself.’

There was another pause as the team dismounted the ladder, and then everyone still on the surface heard a sharp intake of breath, loud over the radio.

‘I . . . I. . .’ Burnett seemed lost for words. The team members still on the surface heard him breathe deeply several times, trying to collect himself. ‘I. . .’ he continued eventually, ‘I don’t believe it.’ Another pause. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before in my entire life.’

THE COLOSSAL STATUE could be seen from miles away by anyone approaching the city on the main freeway that crossed through the rainforest until it broke out on to the coastal plain. The statue loomed over the city from its position over two thousand feet high on the mountain, a robed, bearded figure with its arms outstretched towards the ocean beyond.

Made out of concrete and soapstone, the forty-metre-high statue had been a symbol of the city for over ninety years, a focal point for the nation’s devout religious fervour. Weighing in excess of seven hundred tons, it was one of the world’s largest statues, visited by millions of tourists each year, many of whom made the pilgrimage all the way up to the top of the mountain to stand at the huge pedestal upon which the statue rested. There they stood, craning their necks and looking up in awe at the image of the prophet above them.

One such group of pilgrims stood there now, squinting tired eyes into the sun to see their redeemer in all his glory.

And despite the strength of their religion and the passion of their beliefs, nothing in their experience had prepared them for what they saw next.

It was early in the morning, a time many people made the pilgrimage to the top of the mountain, to watch the sun rise over the horizon. It bathed the statue in an otherworldly glow, making it seem even more impressive, as if the statue and the sun were somehow connected. But this morning was different. As the tourists looked on, believers and non-believers alike, they saw the statue move.

The movement of the statue was no mere tilt, as if with the wind, or wobble, as if disturbed at its base; incredibly, the entire statue leaned backwards and raised its enormous head to look at the rising sun, lifting its gigantic stone arms high above its head.

It stopped then, leaning backwards slightly and gazing at the sky between upstretched arms, as if this was how it had stood for almost a century. But the people there knew that this was not the case; they had watched for two whole minutes as the statue had moved ever so slowly to reach for the sky, as if asking the Heavens themselves for help. But help for what?

Soon, it wasn’t just those who were there who were asking the question. The first footage went out over the social media networks just seconds after it happened; within ten minutes, everyone who had filmed it or taken pictures had sent them over the airwaves to family and friends across the globe. And within thirty minutes the entire world knew, and had seen it.

The statue – this seven-hundred-ton block of concrete and soapstone – had moved.

And the world wanted to know why.

JOYCE GREENFIELD FELT the bracing morning air and smiled. Another beautiful day, she thought as she skipped lightly down the steps of her brownstone apartment, holding the lead of Sebastian, her pedigree hunting dog.

Sebastian was the pride of her life, at least ever since her boyfriend Adam had left her for another woman late last year. You couldn’t trust men, she’d learnt that the hard way. But dogs you could trust. Especially Sebastian, whom she’d had since a puppy, a wonderful little thing who had been her constant companion in both the good times and the bad.

It had happened late last year, the same old clichéd story heard a million times before, except this time it had happened to her: she had come home from work early one afternoon to find Adam – her beloved, the man whom she had hoped to one day marry – in bed with another woman. In their bed – an even worse betrayal. It was where they had discussed their hopes, their dreams, their ideas of what living a life together would be like; it was where Joyce had told him the little things, the secret things which made a person unique, and which she had shared with no one else.

And the woman wasn’t even just another woman, it was Georgina Wilcock; maybe not her best friend, but a friend nevertheless. How could a friend do that? Joyce supposed she should have known – she’d seen Georgina do the same to other women’s boyfriends, even other women’s husbands, but she had never suspected it would happen to her. Stupid. You couldn’t trust men, and it turned out you couldn’t trust women either.

But, she repeated to herself as Sebastian trotted along obediently at her side, you could trust dogs. You could always trust dogs. Cats were nice too, she thought, but not like dogs. She had always agreed with the idea that there were dog people and cat people. You could like both, sure, but not equally – you had to decide one way or the other which you preferred, and she was definitely a dog person.

She had lived with dogs all her life – her parents were dog people too – and had even found a way to smuggle Francis, her pet from the age of six, into her college dorms for the whole three years she was there; she just couldn’t live without dogs.

She had had others over the years, often fostering dogs for animal shelters before they found permanent homes, and the stories of their lives more often than not reduced her to tears. How could people be so cruel? It never ceased to amaze her. Malnutrition and neglect were the least of the dogs’ problems – some had been forced into fights, resulting in horrific wounds, another had been set on fire for making too much noise during the night, one more had had all her teeth pulled out with pliers for chewing the leg of a kitchen chair.

But with Sebastian, it was a clean slate. She had always loved the breed, long and sleek but well-muscled, a ridge of hair rising along the length of its back giving it a unique look. And some of the things it was bred to hunt! But Sebastian was a pure pet dog, bred for health and appearance, and Joyce felt herself admiring his perfect form, his long, easy gait, the way he carried his large, heavy head proudly, chest out, chin up.

Being a pedigree – descended from champions, no less – he hadn’t been cheap. But she had always wanted one, she earned good money, and the opportunity was there – why not take it? And so she had paid her five hundred deposit – the balance of fifteen hundred would be paid when a new litter was born and she had made her selection – and put her name on the waiting list.

She had never regretted the decision once, and it made her feel good to walk with him through the city streets, as she felt eyes turning towards them, admiring Sebastian; and in that admiration she felt mutual acclaim, the fact that she was with him making her someone to be admired – look at how that lady walks that beautiful dog, people would say, she must really have something about her.

And that was how she felt that morning, a deep glow of satisfaction within her, making up for all the other problems in her life. She would walk down the street, across the junction and then into the park, where Sebastian would have a good half-hour runaround, and Joyce Greenfield felt good. Sure, she worked long hours and hadn’t had a proper relationship since Adam, but with the sky blue and full of promise, and Sebastian at her side, her worries faded into the background.

She first felt the difference as they waited to cross the road to the park. Sebastian would normally wait patiently by her side, in a perfect ‘sit’ position, but this morning he seemed agitated by something. He started to fidget as they waited for the lights to change, then stood up and pulled forward, yanking her arm.

Surprised, she nevertheless managed to rein him back in; and then the lights changed and they crossed for the park, although Sebastian kept on pulling her. What was wrong with him? Could he smell something? she wondered. Maybe a girl doggy over in the park? She’d been meaning to have him ‘done’ for a couple of years now – after all, it was supposed to help prevent serious disease and all sort of other things – but she still thought she might breed from him one day and so had never made the appointment.

Sebastian calmed as they entered the park, and she momentarily forgot about it as they walked down the tree-lined paths towards the playing fields where she would throw the ball for him.

But then she noticed that other people walking their dogs were being jerked along by their agitated canines. As she started to pay more attention, it seemed everyone was having some problems with their dogs.

And then Sebastian pulled her again, harder this time, and she fought to correct him, but he fought back and pulled her forwards, faster and faster, towards the playing fields, and now she had no control, she was just being pulled along behind him, stumbling over herself in an effort to keep up. What the hell had gotten into him?

They were in the playing fields just moments later, and Sebastian paused, tense, as if sensing something beyond Joyce’s comprehension.

Her head snapped round at the screams that broke out seconds later, and she saw the huge dog just two hundred yards away with its jaws wrapped round its owner’s arm, blood gushing.

Over to the other side, a pair of old ladies screamed as their little toy dogs began to snap and bite at their heels, continuing their attack as the women fell to the ground, claws and teeth going for their faces with savage ferocity.

Everywhere she looked, dogs were attacking their owners, biting legs, arms, faces, necks. The green grass of the fields was stained red with fresh blood everywhere she looked.

And then Sebastian turned towards her, lips pulled back in a feral snarl. No, surely not her own dog as well, surely not Sebastian, her faithful companion?

But in the blink of an eye Sebastian launched himself at Joyce, forcing her to the ground. She cried out as in a frenzy his claws and teeth ripped her to pieces.

HANS GLAUBER LOOKED out of the little window of the huge aircraft and stifled a yawn. Four hours already, and only halfway there.

He loved his job as head of international sales for a distinguished yacht firm, but the travel could be a real killer, hopping from one continent to the next, sometimes more than four times in a single week. He’d grown accustomed to it now of course but it hardly made it any easier.

He’d arrive at his hotel at about eight in the morning and, although the temptation would be to simply crash out and get some sleep, he knew the best thing to do would be to follow his daily routine and go to bed that night at the normal time. His body would adjust to the time difference naturally this way, and he’d be absolutely fine by the following morning, which was when the big meeting was scheduled for.

‘What’s that?’ he heard himself ask, almost without realizing.

The middle-aged lady in the seat next to him leant across to have a look. ‘What’s what?’ she asked.

Glauber wasn’t sure. He peered out of the window, looking harder.

‘There!’ he exclaimed, prodding at the glass with a pudgy finger.

The woman looked in the direction of Glauber’s . . .