Authors: J.T. Brannan
Extinction
Copyright © 2014 Damian Howden
The right of Damian Howden to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2014
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 0681 7
Cover design ©
www.blacksheep-uk.com
Cristo Redentor photograph © Alamy
Remaining photographs © SuperStock
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Table of Contents
J.T. Brannan trained as a British Army officer at Sandhurst, before deciding to pursue a writing career. A former national Karate champion, he now teaches Karate, MMA, and his own system of reality-based self-defence. He lives near Harrogate with his wife and two young children. EXTINCTION is his second novel.
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 . . .
Origin
Extinction
Destructive Thoughts (A Short Story)
‘What an absorbing, rollercoaster of a read’ Elly Griffiths
‘Origin is a truly original novel, seamlessly meshing a modern high-tech chase thriller, stuffed full of guns and gadgets, with elements of ancient history to produce a book that’s both thought-provoking and relentlessly exciting’ James Becker, bestselling author of THE FIRST APOSTLE
‘Hugely authentic . . . unpredictable’
SciFiNow
‘There are shades of Dan Brown in this impressive debut novel’
Choice Magazine
‘A high-octane cross genre thriller’
Living North
For Justyna, Jakub and Mia
I
WOULD LIKE
to express my heartfelt thanks to my terrific agent Luigi Bonomi and everyone at LBA; my fantastic editor Alexander Hope, along with editorial assistant Darcy Nicholson, my publicist Ben Willis and the rest of the team at Headline Publishing; my parents for their continued support and help with last-minute baby-sitting; my children for letting me write, and for telling everyone they meet that their daddy is an author; my good friend Tom Chantler for his excellent eye for detail and his scientific expertise; and most importantly, thank you to my wonderful wife Justyna, who does . . . well, almost everything, really! You’re the best.
‘Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.’
Carl Sagan
The Varieties of Scientific Experience:
A Personal View of the Search for God
‘R
EADY
?’ C
LIVE
B
URNETT
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.