The Extinction Series | Book 4 | Spread of Extinction Read online

  SPREAD OF

  EXTINCTION

  The Extinction Series

  Book 4

  By

  Tara Ellis

  Mike Kraus

  © 2021 Muonic Press Inc

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.

  Thank you!

  EXTINCTION Book 5

  Available Here

  Preface

  The Earth’s tectonics continue to shift in ways that allude to an unknown synchronicity between the layers. The resulting fallout is an exponential disaster leading to an extinction level event, unless one of the deadly components put into motion can be stopped.

  Australian marine geophysicist Peta Kelly thinks she may have found a way to do just that. But with infrastructures failing, traveling thousands of miles to trace the origins of a novel prion disease is a nearly impossible task. She’ll need help.

  Devon, a devoted colleague and friend, has been by her side since escaping the initial eruption of the Mohorovicic Discontinuity (MOHO). As they flee the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) facility where the government’s last best hope fell to the illness, Peta leads them on what is likely a mission doomed to fail.

  Tyler believed in the unusual scientist’s ability to pull off the impossible from the moment she helped save him and his father from the island of Madagascar. With both his parents falling victim to both their plight and The Kuru, he’s left on his own as they leave for South America. Tyler still has hope of finding a cure for his dad, and will stop at nothing to get it.

  From the first minute of Jason Hunter’s experience with the Earth-changing seismicity, he was mentally thrust into the past. Back to a time where he struggled daily with the guilt of being alive after watching so many others die. If not for his canine companion, Marty, to ground him to the present, he might have already given up.

  After emerging from the hospital in Seattle, Washington, as the lone survivor out of hundreds, Jason found a reason to keep fighting. His daughter. Though they’ve never met, he knows where she is and hopes she shares whatever unique genetic quality gives him immunity to The Kuru. With his friend Eddy, who spontaneously recovered from the disease, Jason manages to travel south with a stop at the CDC lab, only to learn they were fighting a lost cause.

  Thrown together with Peta, Tyler, and their friends, Jason and Eddy embark on the same quest, but for different reasons. Reasons that could either bring them all together or tear them apart, with dire consequences.

  Only twelve days before, fourteen-year-old Jess Davies’ greatest concern was to avoid the scorn of her scientist father. Now, she just wants him back. He lived through the Kra Puru disease except, according to the indigenous Lokono people of the Amazon, the cost of survival was his soul.

  Left to fend for herself with the help of a few friends after her dad abandoned her, Jess must define her new reality. While she doesn’t want to believe the old stories of the prion disease are true, it becomes increasingly clear that it’s more than the people who are changed. The jungle is sick, too, and the symptoms have only just started to emerge.

  Dr. Madeline Schaeffer was a brilliant scientist who chose to follow the money, instead of the science. Once she understood how her involvement in the chain of events leading up to the collapse of the seafloor that resulted in the MOHO eruption, it was too late.

  Too late to stop it, too late for redemption, and too late to rein in the international corporation that started it: International Coalition Of Natural Sciences (ICONS). When Mads discovered that in addition to the tectonic shifting, their quest for a new fuel source had also released a deadly pathogen, she made the noble choice to try and stop it. Except in the end, it got to her first.

  As these people from different parts of the world and walks of life come together under a common goal and destination, their paths will cross in ways none of them could have anticipated.

  The Earth is angry. The balance has been disrupted. In order to right it, the price will be the complete devastation of the human race.

  Either that, or the loss of their souls.

  Chapter 1

  GERALD

  Rocky Mountains, Western Montana

  The sound of his heavy footfalls reverberated loudly in the uncanny silence that had settled over the woods of the Rocky Mountains. Gerald concentrated on the noise, timing it with the strident breaths he sucked in against the pain raging in his chest. Low hanging limbs from the Ponderosa Pines slapped at his face and tore at his arms, threatening to topple him and end his plight prematurely.

  Gerald was running for his life. There was no mistaking that. Though he couldn’t understand the how or the why, the intent was perfectly clear.

  The ground fell away from under his feet, and he threw out an arm to control his fall as he slid over exposed rocks on his way down to a creek bottom. The disturbance of the soil released a loamy smell he usually found welcoming, but that morning it only reminded him of a freshly-turned grave.

  “Humph!” He landed at a bad angle which resulted in his knees taking the brunt of the impact. At sixty-five, a lifetime of sports and hunting had left Gerald without much cartilage in the joints. He hadn’t jogged in years, let alone run headlong over rugged terrain.

  Bending over, he rested his hands on top of his thighs and took stock of his surroundings. It was shortly after dawn, and a fine mist rose from the aptly named Muddy-Bottom Creek. He’d set out just before first-light, and hadn’t even made it to his usual hunting blind before it happened.

  He knew where he was. Gerald had roamed these woods his entire life. First, as a child idolizing his father, and later as an adult with his own kids. He’d inherited the fifty-acre family farm after his dad passed away, and th
e state land that bordered it expanded his ability to hunt close to home.

  That had been Gerald’s only agenda that morning. To go out into the welcoming forest and perhaps bag a young elk to supplement his dwindling food supply, instead of staying home and putting a bullet in his head.

  Funny, how having your life threatened by something other than your own hand made you realize how desperately you wanted to live.

  Gerald’s wife, two daughters, and one grandson all rested in the ground back on the ranch, beyond the house. The one thing they never had before was a family graveyard, and that week he suddenly found himself in need of one. He spent hours each day learning how hard it was to dig a deep, proper square hole large enough to accommodate a body.

  He’d been surrounded by warm, moist dirt scented with a hint of pine, mold, and decay. Gerald couldn’t get it out from under his nails. Distraught with an overwhelming grief, he’d dug the last grave for his youngest daughter without gloves on. He’d relished the pain of the blisters as they formed and burst, a small method of punishment reserved exclusively for the living.

  Rocks and loose dirt trickled down the embankment less than ten feet away, and the discreet splashing it created broke through his scattered thoughts. Gasping, Gerald jumped back and twisted around, ignoring the protest from his knees.

  “No,” he whispered, when he saw the shadowy, slinking forms of first one, and then two large creatures gathering on the ridge above him.

  Backing away from the dark memories as well as the approaching predators, Gerald’s feet became submerged in the cold mountain runoff. He slipped awkwardly over the slimy rocks just below the surface, fighting to stay upright. In spite of being off-balance, he brought his rifle around from his shoulder in a practiced motion. He’d already gotten several shots off before his run through the woods. Although he had successfully dropped one of the mountain lions, it didn’t stop the others. In fact, three more had appeared in response and somehow…joined the one that remained, to start the pursuit.

  It shouldn’t be happening. Unlike a lion pride in the African Savannah, cougars didn’t hunt in packs, and they sure as hell got spooked when shot at. Attacks at all were rare, and often thwarted by some yelling or thrown objects.

  As Gerald watched the muscular cats casually saunter along the edge of the small ravine, matching his pace, he got the distinct feeling the animals were toying with him. That they weren’t afraid.

  In a seemingly direct contradiction with the natural order of things, they weren’t backing down.

  He had two bullets left.

  The backpack containing his snacks, beer, lunch, emergency first aid kit, family photo album, Glock, and a box of ammo was sitting back in a clearing where he’d left it. After hiking for two miles he’d stopped for a short break which included getting his water bottle out and a power bar. As soon as he’d walked away from the bag to relieve his bladder, the first of the cougars stepped in between him and his gear. Almost as if—

  “No,” Gerald repeated, that time shaking his head to emphasize his denial. The two cougars lingering above him wouldn’t break eye-contact. The nearest responded to his plea by peeling its lips back to reveal massive fangs as it snarled. It was a primitive call that alluded to things more powerful and unseen. The sound had the desired effect, causing the hair on Gerald’s neck to stand and his bowels to turn to water.

  “Haw!” Gerald screamed back as he raised both of his arms and waved them in the air. “Get out of here! Haw! Haw!” When the usual deterrents once again failed to have the anticipated response, he leveled the rifle and took a shot at the nearest cat.

  In normal times, the bullets impact dropping the lead cougar would have stopped any further advancement. Of course, Gerald wasn’t living in normal times. There was nothing normal about burying your family, your neighbors, or the pastor from your church. There was nothing normal about a pack of mountain lions stalking a full-sized man who’d already shot and killed one of them. No, there was absolutely nothing normal about that morning, or that week, and the only thing Gerald was certain of was that he didn’t want to die that way. Not like that.

  Man was the apex predator. Part of what put him at the top of the food chain was the ability to kill, and the natural instinct most animals had to fear him. Without that fear, the natural balance of things became skewed and distorted and a man or woman could find themselves standing in a creek with several predators waiting to tear them apart.

  And he only had one bullet left.

  There was a splash behind him, from further up the creek.

  Gerald didn’t look. He didn’t need to. Instead, he lunged to his left, across the narrow stream and toward the far bank.

  He thought for a moment that he was going to make it. His feet found purchase and a surge of adrenaline gave him the strength he needed to grab onto a root with his left hand and haul himself partway up.

  Then something caught his foot.

  It wasn’t the bite of two-inch incisors or lethal claws that brought him down, but a gentle nudge that was just enough to drop him to his knees.

  Twisting at the waist, Gerald then flung himself onto his back. He began to make whimpering sounds as he struggled to get his finger on the trigger and his other hand on the stock of the old rifle.

  It was knocked from his hand.

  The motion was so fast and explosive, Gerald didn’t see it coming. The rifle was simply wrenched from his hands and he watched as it spun through the air before landing in the water several feet away.

  His fingers burned. They felt warm.

  Still whimpering and trying to push himself backwards up the hill with his heels, Gerald held his right arm out to block the expected attack. He noticed two of his fingers were missing. There was no pain.

  “H—” he licked his lips, tried to swallow, and failed. “Haw!” It was a pathetic sound. The sound of a mouse stuck in a trap. The hunted, rather than the hunter.

  There were two of them. Whether they were male or female, he couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. No laws of nature mattered anymore, for either man or animal. It was all backwards and upside down.

  “Upside down,” Gerald muttered, thinking back again to the dirt. The warm, moist dirt as it covered the face of Laura. His Laura. His wife and best friend of forty-six years.

  The nearest cougar growled. Low in its throat so that it sounded like an insane purr reserved for nightmares.

  Scented with pine needles and moss, covering the sweet faces of his daughters, the small pink lips of his two-year-old grandson.

  Gerald stopped struggling.

  Nothing was right.

  A tug at his right foot. The other cat was taking the boot in its mouth, almost gently, so as not to damage the meal.

  He should fight back. That was what you were supposed to do when attacked by a mountain lion. Fight back, because they only went after easy prey and if you made yourself big enough, or loud enough, or scary enough, they would leave you alone. Only, they weren’t scared.

  They weren’t scared. But Gerald was.

  A third cougar moved into view on the opposite bank, sniffing first at the dead cat before turning its yellow eyes on him. Then a fourth.

  The mountain lion to his left moved in closer, like it was studying his reaction. It came to within a foot of his face, so that he could feel its hot breath caressing his skin. He could smell the fetid stench of its last meal. And he couldn’t look away.

  A tug.

  He was being dragged down the embankment. Taken back to be shared with the rest of them.

  “Upside down,” Gerald whispered again, his eyes wild as he looked beyond his executioner, searching frantically for a way to escape. Only, there wasn’t any. He’d already figured that out the night before, when he lowered the Glock from his temple and instead put it in the backpack.

  That had been a mistake.

  Chapter 2

  MADELINE

  Lassen National Forest

  Northern Ca
lifornia

  The smoldering heap of charred mattress and human remains could have been mistaken for any other normal burn pile, until you got close. Madeline stood far enough away to avoid the cloying smell of melted plastic and burnt flesh. It lingered, and there were already enough odors wafting through her house as it was. She didn’t need that to follow her inside.

  Satisfied that any risk of the fire spreading to the surrounding grass had passed, she lowered the garden hose and retreated twenty more feet to the garden. It wasn’t yet noon, but she was already planning her dinner and breakfast for the next morning. It was important to add the fresh vegetables to the frozen meat she’d be grilling. Madeline didn’t have much of an appetite, but it would be several more days before she was fully recovered and she needed all the nutrients she could get.

  A lot had been accomplished since she’d woken some forty hours earlier. Picking a small tomato, Madeline moved on to the carrots, ticking off the mental list in her head as she went. The cleaning was done, the generator was set up, the necessary equipment was retrieved from the trailer, and she could finally focus on more important matters.

  Before her illness, she would have lacked the patience required to go methodically through the house, cleaning it the way she had. However, things had become so much…simpler. Her thoughts were clear, concise, and unmuddied by a mountain of emotional issues she hadn’t even realized were there. Oh, Madeline knew her sanity was often questioned, and that she could be reactionary at times. But as she stood there, selecting the carrots to accompany her barbequed chicken breast, it was a welcome change from the chaos that used to rage inside her head.

  After her initial shower and fluid intake the evening she woke up, Madeline had closed the bedroom door behind her to seal off the stench of her own waste. There were quite a few surprises waiting in the rest of the house, and it would be a full day before she had the strength needed to return and drag the bedding outside.