Authors: Steven Spellman
Tags: #Fiction, #government, #science fiction, #futuristic, #apocalyptic, #virus, #dystopian
As they stood by, talking
amongst themselves, Geoffrey took the opportunity to look through
the telescope himself. Really, he didn’t want to see what was out
there—he had called for help in the first place to debunk the
frightening hallucination, not verify it—but as no one seemed to be
paying his repeated questions any mind, the only thing left to do
was see it (whatever
it
was) for himself. When he did feed his face into
the mask, he saw what looked remarkably like a small meteorite
fragment. The fragment seemed to be about the size of a small beach
ball and permeated completely with small craters. Staring intently
at the fragment, Geoffrey’s eyes widened. The meteorite seemed to
be glowing, but glowing wasn’t the proper description for what it
was doing. There was a light or perhaps some faint radiation,
emanating from the fragment, but it illumined it like nothing
Geoffrey had ever seen before. The fragment was nearly two miles
away but the faint ‘light’ surrounding it made it appear like it
was no more than a few feet from Geoffrey’s eyes.
It was nothing like any
natural or artificial light on Earth. In fact, it basically defied
any description at all. The luminance didn’t seem to wane even
though a decent distance separated it from the viewers.
Furthermore, it seemed to pulsate with some equally mysterious
power. Whatever it was, it promised to be the very first of its
kind, even an alien artifact perhaps. Eager to have yet another
discovery named after him, Mr. Reynolds suggested, and all the
other scientists agreed, that it should be checked out. Of course,
Mr. Reynolds was at the head of the expedition, as everyone mounted
up on special snowmobiles that had been fabricated specifically for
scientific discovery in the coldest weather on the planet. Once
everyone had gained a few extra pounds in protective clothing, the
voyage began.
There aren’t many life
forms in Antarctica and virtually no animals, so, except for the
cold, no one feared venturing out into the open tundra. Even
beneath myriad layers of thick, double-insulated fabric, the biting
frost could still cut to the quick, and so, it was with shivering
limbs and chattering teeth, that a reluctant Geoffrey and the group
of ambitious scientists (Mr. Reynolds always foremost) arrived at
the fragment. Everyone was interested to see what new thing they
had stumbled upon. Even though they were closing in on the thing,
the ‘light’ coming from it did not grow brighter. Whether from the
observatory two miles back, or right up on it, the unnatural glow
gave off a clear luminance as if the observer was always very near
to it.
Gathering around it now,
everyone dismounted their dual track snowmobiles and drew
cautiously closer. It was truly fascinating. The luminescence
covering the fragment made it difficult to see exactly what it was,
but it was not creviced as it initially appeared. Rather, the
assumed craters were minute variations in the light surrounding the
fragment. What lay beneath the light looked like some kind of
transparent, perfectly round rock. It was
impossibly
perfect. Everyone’s snow
mobile was equipped with a decent-sized storage bin that contained,
among other things, large tongs for just such an event, whereby an
unusual specimen might be handled. Mr. Reynolds was the first to
get his out. Another scientist produced a plastic container that
looked large enough to hold the glowing meteor.
Mr. Reynolds closed in on
the fragment, tongs outstretched, as the others looked on. They all
wanted to be the first to handle the thing and thereby take more
credit for its discovery, but being so close to it now, without the
thick, glass dome to protect them, the fragment looked suddenly
more ominous and threatening. It was only sheer pride and ambition
that led Mr. Reynolds to move where the others hesitated. In
reality, he was just as scared as they (perhaps more), but as
strong as his fear was, his thirst for recognition was that much
more. The tongs he held were intended to collect smaller specimens,
approximately the size of a soccer ball, and it soon became
apparent that they would not suffice to pick up this strange
artifact. Mr. Reynolds asked if anyone had anything larger that may
be of better use. Everyone looked in their storage bins, but no one
had anything.
Geoffrey cleared his
throat, “I have a shovel…”
“That won’t help,” snapped
Mr. Reynolds, uncharacteristically agitated, “The ground is too
hard to dig around it and I don’t want to damage it. It could be
fragile.” Exasperated, Mr. Reynolds slumped his shoulders.
“Somebody needs to go get something bigger that we can put this
in.”
Geoffrey moved toward his
snowmobile. “Not you,” the scientist snapped, and Geoffrey froze
where he was standing, “You’d probably bring something useless
back,” he waved his hands impatiently at the other scientists who
were looking around nervously and shifting side to side, “Someone
go get something we can pick this up with. Hurry, off with
you!”
The other scientists left
to get more supplies, while Mr. Reynolds and Geoffrey stayed. Once
they were alone, Mr. Reynolds adjusted the glasses just above his
scarf, and stepped closer to the object.
“That might not be a good
idea, Sir,” advised Geoffrey, as the scientist pulled his scarf
away from his face and knelt down beside the fragment so close that
his prescription grade glasses nearly touched it.
“Who’s the professional
here, Son?” Mr. Reynolds asked, coolly. He reached out, not really
intending to touch the thing. He removed his gloves and raised both
his hands over it to see if any heat was coming from it, when the
fragment pulled his hands onto itself. It all happened so quickly
that Geoffrey hardly had time to react. In a split second, Mr.
Reynolds had gone from hovering over this thing, to grasping it,
both hands clasped upon it by some irresistible force, and clinging
to it for dear life, quite against his will. With the fragment
firmly in his hands, he began to shake violently. His mouth hung
open and his eyes rolled back in his head until nothing but the
whites showed. He head began to bulge slightly as if some creature
was filling it, and his shaking grew ever more violent and
erratic.
If Geoffrey didn’t do
something—and
now
—Mr. Reynolds would be shaken to death. Already, Geoffrey saw
the spittle flying from Mr. Reynolds’s mouth while his teeth and
jaws were being rattled loose from their sockets. Geoffrey grabbed
the shovel and slammed Mr. Reynolds’s shoulder with it as hard as
he could. Thankfully, the hit knocked the scientist and the
fragment loose from each other. The scientist flew in one direction
and the fragment in another. Geoffrey dropped the shovel and
checked on the overly ambitious astronomer. He was still shaking,
but not nearly as much. His irises were still nowhere to be found,
but he was breathing.
Geoffrey looked back at the
fragment, and noticed that the ‘light’ coming from it had dimmed
considerably. It was also here that he noticed that the ‘light’ was
actually separating the fragment from the ice beneath it. The light
wasn’t coming from it, but
encasing
it like a shield. From what Geoffrey could see,
the light had a physical presence. As far as he could tell the
‘light’ was solid matter! He turned back to look at Mr. Reynolds’s
hands, and just as he suspected, the light, though also noticeably
dimmer, was covering them like a glove…and being sucked into them
with every passing second. In the course of a few brief minutes,
Mr. Reynolds’s hands absorbed the light like a sponge would a
syrupy liquid. Then, Mr. Reynolds’s hands stopped glowing and his
body ceased its shaking, but still he showed no signs of
consciousness.
The others are definitely
not going to believe this!
Geoffrey
thought as he waited anxiously for their return.
Chapter 5
Lenard Hanson was well
used to spoiling the women in his life, partly because he loved
them, but mostly because they would accept nothing less. His wife
had demanded every convenience and luxury his money offered from
day one and had taught his daughter to do likewise. Delilah was
used to driving or being chauffeured in the most expensive cars,
and, when she didn’t fly private jets, flying only first class.
Now, she was right at home as she traveled across the nation under
only the best accommodations to receive all the press and attention
lavished upon her for being the first non-astronaut American to
journey into space from American soil. Extra attention was given
her, as her father had predicted, for being the youngest person to
venture into outer space at all.
There were welcome parties
waiting for her at every airport and hotel; security officials at
every place in between. Thousands upon thousands of people were
eager to catch a glimpse of what it looked like to be young and
ultra-privileged, even if it was only from behind a camera or a
restraining rope guarded by armed men that, for all appearances,
knew only how to shout, “Stay back, you!” Nothing—absolutely
nothing—was going to threaten Delilah’s time in the spotlight. She
intended to keep the eyes of the nation glued upon her, and only
her, for as long as humanly possible. Imagine her indignation and
shock when talk of a possible global epidemic drew everyone’s
attention away from her story. She was in New York City when the
agent her father had hired called her room to inform her that her
interview—the one for which she came to the Big Apple in the first
place—the one that was scheduled for the next morning, had been
cancelled. She threw a full-fledged tantrum the moment she received
the news. This was what she usually did on the extremely rare
occasions she didn’t get what she wanted, but this time, it was to
no avail.
What could her agent
do?
Make
the
station conduct the interview? This was not her pliable father she
was dealing with, the agent wanted desperately to remind her
(though, of course, in the interest of his professional career, he
didn’t). These were people who cared little about her wealth and
even less about her tactless
temperament.
Besides, this rumor of a potential global contagion was possibly a
breaking story not to be rivaled, not even by the Delilah’s
boundless ego. Filled with her own childish fury, Delilah paced the
nearly eleven hundred square feet of her penthouse loft hotel room,
incensed that anything, even a potential outbreak of Biblical
proportions, would deprive her of something she wanted. She picked
up the phone to call her father—she’d give him an earful and he’d
do something about all this—but before she could finish dialing the
numbers, a chilling realization presented itself. If the people
around her were somehow infected with a terrible disease, then she
was vulnerable as well.
What if the hotel receptionists who
had handed her the card key to her room were infected? What if the
guys who had brought up her luggage were infected? What if the
hotel’s entire staff was infected? Suddenly, the rumored crisis
became very real to the spoiled socialite. In the process, she had
forgotten that she was still holding the phone receiver. She let it
fall from her hands, now. How could she know that it, too, wasn’t
infected? Panic welled up in her breast, and it didn’t matter that
she didn’t know what this possible infection was. It also didn’t
matter that she as yet hadn’t heard any real news at all about its
existence, or lack thereof. All that mattered was that she could
potentially be affected by it. Her blind panic mounting by the
second, she stripped off her clothes and rushed to the bathroom for
a hot, purging shower. She scrubbed the shower head, the water
dials, and most of the shower’s walls, with one of the new loofah
sponges that had been stocked in the bathroom. To watch her scour
things to a glistening shine as she was doing, one might not have
guessed that this young woman had never scrubbed a single thing in
her life.
Then, she snatched up another brand
new loofah and commenced to showering. Once that was finished, she
threw on some fresh designer clothes and undergarments, rushed out
of the room and to one of the hotel’s elevators. Her intention was
to head straight for the reception desk and demand that someone
report to her room post haste to sanitize the entire place
immediately. The phone in her room had a specially dedicated line
to the reception’s desk for such things, but Delilah was loath to
touch anything in her room just now. In fact, she had rigged up a
series of gloves made from the new towels left in her room, which
she fastened to her wrists by strips of bath rags that she had torn
to pieces for the purpose. She left one bath cloth whole to hold to
her mouth as protection from possible airborne infection. She truly
looked a mess, all rigged up as she was, but right now, it didn’t
matter to her how she looked, which was another first.
She hit the necessary buttons on the
elevator with her unsightly towel-gloved hands and soon descended
to the ground floor. She had nearly reached the desk, all but
hysterical by this time, when a new and terrifying thought gripped
her. If the hotel staff was indeed infected with this nameless
pandemic, wasn’t she putting herself at further risk by being in
such close proximity to them? And if that was the case, how could
she possibly expect them to sanitize her room, as they would
certainly bring the infection with them in the first place?
Everything was so confusing and Delilah began to fancy that it was
becoming more difficult to breath, what with all the pathogens
entering her lungs. She struggled to hold her breath, even beneath
the cloth, and of course, that didn’t work. She looked down at her
exposed arms. Certainly, the horrid disease was attacking her
unprotected flesh at that very moment!