Mass Extinction Event (Book 12): Days 357 to 364 Read online

  Copyright 2020 Amy Cross

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle edition

  First published: April 2020

  As the first year of the crisis comes to an end, dark forces battle for the future of humanity. War is coming, and Thomas soon finds himself drawn into the battle that's raging outside Project Atherius. As he and his sister try desperately to survive, they discover that the secret to the entire project might be hiding in an unusual place.

  Meanwhile, Elizabeth discovers the awful truth about someone she loves. Project Atherius is about to be unleashed, no matter how many lives have to be lost in the process. Separated from her father, Elizabeth soon receives help from an unexpected source, but how much of her own mind will she have to sacrifice in the process?

  Days 357 to 364 is the twelfth book in the Mass Extinction Event series. The book ends with a cliffhanger, and readers are advised to start with the first part of the series.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Day 357

  Day 358

  Day 359

  Day 360

  Day 361

  Day 362

  Day 363

  Day 364

  Days 357 to 364

  (Mass Extinction Event book 12)

  Prologue

  One year ago...

  For him, death is an affront. An insult. A failure. But he's use to all those things, so – now he knows the end is near – he feels strangely calm.

  The pain is intense, but Joseph tells himself that he can't stop now. People are pushing past him, and each nudge and bump brings a fresh burst of agony that seems to radiate all through his body. In the old days, he would have become annoyed, he might even have turned and shouted at passersby, but somehow none of that feels very important now. Besides, he came to the airport specifically because he wants to be bumped.

  There are vials in his pocket.

  The vials look empty.

  They're not empty.

  “Sorry, dude, can I just squeeze past?” a man says, pushing Joseph out of the way. “Sorry.”

  The vials don't break. Is the glass too strong? Adjusting his grip, Joseph reminds himself that he's been patient for so long, and that a few more minutes won't really make any difference.

  “Are you okay?”

  Turning, he seems that a woman is watching him with an expression of concern. He stops, shocked by this moment, convinced that there must be some kind of trick. He knows that people don't care about strangers, so he finds himself wondering whether the woman is hoping to scam him somehow.”

  “Do you want me to fetch someone?” she asks. “You look a little pale.”

  “I'm fine,” he mutters under his breath, and he pushes on through the crowd.

  Hah!

  He's beaten her.

  He still doesn't quite know why she was pretending to care, but he figures that he at least managed to let her know that he saw through her. He'd been fooled in the past, but not this time. This time he was wiser, and he wouldn't let himself get tricked by a pretty face. That had been the problem with Maddy: she'd been pretty, and he'd managed to convince himself that she liked him. He should have known, he realized now, that Maddy only had eyes for Carver, that she'd been seduced by the glitzy lifestyle that Carver had offered.

  Screw her.

  If there's one thing he wishes now, as he continues to make his way through the jostling crowd, it's that he could see Maddy's face at the end of it all. He knows she'll end up dying in agony, and he wants to witness that moment. Then again, he figures there's not much chance of that happening, so he tries to put the idea out of his mind. That doesn't work, of course. He knows he's unduly fixated on Maddy Crozier, and this late in the game he understands that it's too late to change.

  “You thought I didn't matter, huh?” he mutters under his breath. “You thought you could use me and then forget about me. You thought I wouldn't be able to fight back or -”

  Suddenly a man slams into him, almost knocking him off his feet. Without stopping to apologize, or even to acknowledge what just happens, the man blunders off through the crowd. Joseph steadies himself, and then he checks the vials in his pocket. Somehow, impossibly, they're still intact. How can that be the case? The man was big, built like an ox, and he was moving fast. The vials should have broken by now, and Joseph feels a little bitterness as he realizes that the deed is still not done.

  Soon, though.

  He just has to be patient.

  “You're gonna remember my name,” he whispers, once again thinking of Maddy. “In your lasts moments, just as you're about to die, the last thing you think about will be me. You'll know that I caused all of this, because I've set it up like that. I'll be laughing as you die.”

  In his mind's eye, he imagines her final, terrified moments.

  “You'll be wishing you hadn't treated me like this,” he continues. “Maybe you'll even be begging me for mercy, but I won't show you any. That's not how it works. You don't get to take back what you did to me. You're going to pay for it, though. You're going to pay with your life.”

  That's the theory, anyway. He wants to feel her pain, he wants to experience the moment of her death from inside her body. Then, if there's time, he wants to experience the deaths of all the other people who've wronged him, but deep down he knows that Maddy's the one who really matters. Everyone else on the planet can be lumped into one big category, and they can all suffer together.

  “It's coming to get you,” he chuckles as he feels himself getting bumped from behind yet again. “Project Atherius. You don't know that name, do you? None of you do, but you should. Project Atherius is where this all started.”

  Stopping for a moment, he feels the pain surging through his body. For a few brief seconds, he wonders whether he might be about to collapse, in which case the vials might somehow survive intact. He considers breaking them now, but he's too wedded to the idea of them being smashed by some idiotic member of the crowd. Once he's sure that he can keep going, he sets off again, heading toward the doors up ahead. This is all taking much longer than he expected, but he figures the end of the world is not the time to start cutting corners.

  The end of the world.

  That's what's in the vials.

  That's what he's going to unleash at any moment.

  He should have lived forever, he's sure of that. He missed his chance, maybe. He should have cast death off and found some way to go on. He had it in him, that's for sure, but he figures he got distracted. Still, there are other ways to live on. Immortality can mean so many different things.

  He's always assumed that the end of the world will start with a bang, that it'll be a single, massive moment. Now, however, he realizes that's not true at all. Instead, it starts with a man in a crowd at an airport. The kind of man no-one ever notices.

  But he's used to not being noticed.

  Shuffling through the sea of bodies, he keeps his hands in the pockets of his light beige jacket. His fingers are wrapped around a pair of glass vials, each of which is airtight. The vials are just a couple of inches long and half an inch wide, but their contents have the potential to spread around the world many, many times over. It's almost as if the man has two entirely new worlds in his pockets, ready to release them at a moment's notice. He's been waiting for this moment for so long, and now it's finally here.

  Most important
ly, the glass of these vials is particularly thin; so thin, in fact, that even the slightest pressure will cause them to break.

  “Long live the human race,” he mutters sarcastically. “Long live Project Atherius”.

  Day 357

  Elizabeth

  Sitting alone on the end of my bed, I listen to the hum. This whole place just seems to hum all the time, and I don't know why. I can feel a very faint vibration running through the walls and the floor, as if somewhere deep down in the Project Atherius facility there's some vast machine that's burning in the depths of hell. Whatever the machine is, I feel as if it might suddenly burst up through the floor at any moment and destroy us all.

  My eyes are fixed on the door. Dad promised to come and see me this morning, to talk to me and answer some of the millions of questions that I still have. When he arrives, I know exactly what I'm going to ask him first.

  ***

  “Where's Rachel?”

  “Huh?” he replies nonchalantly, as he sits on a chair next to the bed.

  “Where's Rachel?” I ask again.

  “I thought you might want to know about Joseph,” he replies. “I'm sorry you weren't allowed to see him in the end, but there were a few... problems. To be honest, I was relieved. Joseph is an aberration, he should be destroyed instead of -”

  “Where's Rachel?”

  “Joseph is -”

  “Stop trying to distract me,” I say firmly.

  He sighs.

  “You told me Rachel had been sent to Philadelphia,” I remind him. “Your exact words, I think, were that she'd been moved to a facility in Philadelphia. You said you'd try to find out how she's doing, and that was right before everything went crazy in Boston.”

  I wait, but he looks a little worried, as if had never occurred to him that I'd asking these questions.

  “So now we're here,” I continue, “I figure you must know what happened to her. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So where is she?” I ask. “Is she okay?”

  “I'd have to ask around,” he says cautiously.

  “But she's alive?”

  “The last I heard, yes.”

  Again, I wait, and again I can tell that something's wrong. I guess I was hoping, deep down, that he'd laugh at me and call me crazy, and that he'd offer to take me to see Rachel immediately. Instead, I get the distinct impression that he's holding back from telling me the truth.

  “Is she okay?” I ask.

  “I honestly wouldn't like to say until I've checked with a few people. Listen, Elizabeth, I know that yesterday Maxwell Carver took you to see -”

  “We only stayed for a few minutes,” I explain, interrupting him. “That zombie in the room wasn't in a good way, Carver told me we could try again today. Now stop trying to distract me and tell me the truth about Rachel.”

  He looks away for a moment.

  “I can take it, Dad,” I continue, even though I'm getting really scared. “You don't have to protect me from the truth, not anymore. Whatever's happened to Rachel, I want to know right now. And I want to see her.”

  ***

  “No,” I whisper, “that can't... That can't be her.”

  Standing in one of the laboratories, I'm looking into a large glass tank. There's a thing in there, a baby-sized husk of discolored skin, and I can just about tell that it's human. At the same time, it looks dead, and I'm about to ask Dad whether this monstrosity is real when – suddenly – it shifts its weight slightly and I see its black little eyes starting to open.

  “That isn't her,” I stammer, taking a step back. “That's not Rachel!”

  “When she arrived here,” Dad says, “it was quickly determined that she was infected. The doctors at Project Atherius had never encountered a live infected child before, they were quite excited by the opportunity to carry out certain tests. If it makes you feel any better, Elizabeth, Rachel has been hugely helpful in our efforts to fully understand the virus.”

  Too horrified to speak, I watch as Rachel stares at me. I know there's no way she can possibly recognize me, that she's still too young and we were only together for such a short time, but I still can't help looking into her eyes and wondering whether on some level she knows that she's seen me before. Is her mind trapped in there, after all this time, or has she already been entirely consumed by the sickness?

  Suddenly she opens her mouth and lets out a low, growling hiss. At the same time, her body twitches and she tries to pull herself toward me, although she can barely move at all.

  “Why?” I whisper.

  “Why did she get infected?” Dad replies. “I don't know.”

  “No,” I say, still staring at Rachel as she snarls at me, “why did you keep her alive? Or maybe alive isn't the right word, but why did you...”

  Again my voice trails off.

  “Why didn't we destroy her?” he asks. “The call wasn't mine to make. Like I said, everyone here at Project Atherius was immediately convinced that she'd be useful, and that has certainly proved to be the case. Even just last week, a section of her bone marrow was used by some specialists who are trying to confirm exactly how the virus manages to spread so quickly once it's inside its host. That's an example of a real benefit that we've managed to extract from an otherwise hopeless situation, and there are -”

  “You're torturing her!” I snap.

  “Absolutely not,” he replies. “No, Elizabeth, I won't have you making emotional accusations like that. She's less than a year old, and she was infected from a very early age, so there's not really any 'her' in there.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask incredulously, shocked that my own fact could be so cruel. “She's a baby! She's a living, breathing human being, just like anyone else!”

  “That's not true, Elizabeth.”

  “What if it was me in there?” I continue, with tears in my eyes. “Or Henry? Would you still just stand there and let this happen?”

  He hesitates.

  “Yes,” he says finally.

  “You can't be serious.”

  “I am,” he replies. “Elizabeth, if the fate of the world depends on something like this, then there's simply no way that I'm ever going to stand in the way. You might find that difficult to believe, but it's just the way things are now. Rachel was too far gone when she arrived here, there was no way of saving her, but we believed she might actually be useful. She still can be, even now, and we can't let emotions cloud our judgment. If you're interested, I can get one of the doctors here to explain all the advances that Rachel has helped us make.”

  “She's a baby,” I reply bitterly, before turning to look at her again, “and -”

  Before I can finish, Rachel lunges at me, hissing and snarling. She slams against the other side of the glass, and I instinctively take a step back before I remember that she can't possibly get through.

  “It's me,” I stammer, even though I know there's no point. “Rachel, it's Elizabeth, I looked after you when...”

  She slumps back down against the bottom of her tank, and I can't help but notice that she's left some bloodied smears on the glass. I want to help her, to figure something out, but deep down I know that I'm too late. I was probably too late all those months ago, the last time I saw her, but it's horrible to see her in such an awful state. Finally, as I feel a sickening churning sensation in the pit of my stomach, I turn and walk to the door. I think I might actually be about to throw up.

  “I didn't want you to know this,” Dad calls after me. “You must understand that.”

  Stopping, I turn and look back at him.

  “You're wrong about one thing,” I say, as my voice trembles with shock. “I don't find it difficult to believe that people would do something like this. I've seen enough of the world over the past year to understand that there are some sick, depraved people around.” I pause for a moment. “I just find it difficult to believe that you'd be part of it,” I add. “I always thought you were a good person.”

  “El
izabeth -”

  “Oh, and by the way,” I continue, “I named her after Mom.”

  Before he has a chance to respond, I hurry out of the room and make my way along the corridor. I'm limping heavily, but right now I need to get as far away from Dad as possible, and I need to figure out what I'm going to do next. My thoughts are swirling and I can't shake the nausea that's building in my stomach, and finally I stop in another corridor and try to get my breath back. In my mind's eye, however, all I can see is the horrific sight of Rachel's rotten, zombiefied body.

  Until this moment, I always had hope that somehow she'd be okay, that by some miracle she'd made it through the madness. Now I know the truth, however, and I'm starting to think that maybe we're all out of miracles.

  Elizabeth

  “How are you doing in here?” Toad asks suddenly.

  Turning, I realize that I hadn't heard him entering the room. He walks over to the baby and crouches down to take a look at her.

  “Did you choose a name for her yet?” he asks, turning to me.

  I pause for a moment. “Rachel,” I say eventually.

  “Nice name.” Reaching down, he runs a finger across Rachel's chin. “Hello Rachel,” he says after a moment. “I'm sorry things have been a little crazy. I can't promise there'll be much of an improvement in the immediate future, but I'll do my best to keep you safe.”

  “It was...” I pause again, wondering whether I should open up to him. “It was my mother's name,” I explain, feeling a rush of relief. I don't know why, but it feels good to have someone named Rachel around again, even if she's just a baby. I guess I'm still in mourning for my parents. “She... She was Rachel. I guess maybe it's stupid. If you want to change it -”

  “Rachel's fine,” he replies with a faint smile. “I have no idea what kind of world she's going to grow up into, but at least she's got a good name.”