Read Part 1 here
Read part 2 here
The Beginning of the End
Garry Johnson was officially a United States Department of Agriculture inspector whose job description included spot inspections at any food service facility in the Country. In reality, he performed inventory and quality control inspections at the vast underground food storage facilities strategically located at the most geologically stable locations across the continent. Today's access point was a local box store in Greensboro, North Carolina. After flashing his credentials and making a show of looking over the fresh food section, he entered the dry goods storage area and disappeared.
Like many others around the Nation, this particular box store held a closely guarded secret hidden in plain sight that few knew about. Select big box stores in America and around the world had both a secret walk-in and a drive-in entrance to an elaborate and complex system of underground tunnels that interconnected most major cities on every continent. Today storage room 9861 was due for its final inspection before being sealed shut until such time that it was needed. The tunnel that Garry had entered through the secret passageway was big enough for two electric trams to pass each other and still have sufficient room on each side for an elevated walkway. Taking one of the Segways plugged into a charger against the wall, Garry began to wiz along the walkway at a good pace passing several empty or partially filled storerooms on each side while in route. As he pulled up to 9861, he felt pain in the soft tissue between his ring finger and the middle finger on his left hand. The small black ant with its protruding antenna looked like a tiny ball between his fingers with a couple of hairs sticking out. Rubbing and crushing the ant with the thumb of his other hand, Gary winced at the now discolored splotch of skin with a tiny red dot in the middle where the stinger had sunk home. Holding his hand and cursing under his breath, Garry went about his task for the day.
On the other side of the Country, in a remote area of New Mexico, Jenny Silva was out hiking and exploring with her Jack Russel Terrier Trigger. It was warm and dry, and the terrain was very rough and rocky. They were slowly climbing a small hill, Trigger dashing ahead checking the path for both danger and adventure while Jenny looked for interesting rocks as along the way. Jenny was a gem hunter and an amateur rock hound, so she made frequent stops to turn over stones or investigate objects that, at a glance, looked out of place. At first, Trigger's barks seemed normal, that dog liked to bark, and he barked a lot! The barking could get annoying when entertaining company at home, and Trigger often had to be sentenced to time out in a back room. But out on a trail, like today, the barking was actually very comforting to Jen, and it made keeping up with Trigger somewhat easy, so he got to run free most of the time. But now, suddenly, the barking became more muffled, so Jenny stood up and started calling him. The sudden cry of pain from the animal sent a chill down her spine. Jen then dropped the stone she had been examining and ran up the hill toward the sound, which had now stopped abruptly.
Looking around, Jen called frantically for the dog, but all had become still and quiet. Scanning the terrain as she walked, Jen made out a darker patch along a rocky ledge. It was a steep slope to reach the area, and dog tracks were clearly visible in the loose dirt scattered around the hill. Moving closer, Jen could see fresh soil piled up around a hole about thee foot wide near the base of the ledge. Digging car keys out of her fanny pack, she peered into the hole using the small LED light she used to locate keyholes in the dark. Bright sunlight above the entrance made it hard for the dim penlight to penetrate the hole's darkness. So Jen got down on her belly and stuck her head along with the hand holding the light inside to get a better view. Trigger, she called tentatively. Trigger, are you in there? She thought she heard a scraping sound, but it was just a whisper. She was worried that Trigger might be in there hurt, maybe even snake bit. Snakes! What if there was a snake in there, she thought and then shuddered? Well, she decided, I'll just look in the entrance, and if he is not there, I will just have to go for help.
Looking inside, Jen saw that just beyond her hand, the hole turned slightly and seemed to open up into a larger cavern. A cave, she thought? A little excited about the prospect of finding a new cave but worried that the dog might have dropped off of a steep ledge in the dark, Jen moved a little deeper into the opening. She was thinking about Trigger and not about what might have created the hole or about all of the fresh dug earth along the hillside, had she considered the danger, she might have avoided what happened next. Jen felt a jerk, and then, her outstretched hand, along with the light, simply disappeared in an instant. The shock of suddenly losing a hand froze her in place, and then the end came too fast for Jen to fully comprehend what was even happening. The mass of small insects had covered her face and was stinging her eyes and the back of her throat even as larger mandibles took hold of her other hand and arm and began dragging her body deeper into the cavern. She was kicking and screaming for a few moments, but almost no sound was making it past her mouth, which was writhing with stinging insects, or her teeth grinding in the final stages of agony. In a few hours, the young woman's vehicle would be found abandoned, but there would be no sign of her body or of her dog. If she had been discovered, there would have been little remaining that could have been identified. The ants had long since completely filled the entrance to prevent further intrusions, leaving Jen's keys with its small light attached just inside the hole like a tribute to mark the site of the first human taken in the harvest.
At the United States Geological Studies headquarters, a situation room had been established years before as part of the World Plan for the Preservation of Civilization. The goal of the WPPC was to give world leaders enough warning so that an orderly evacuation of chosen individuals could be conducted as soon as confirmation of the beginning of the extinction event was received. The plan had five significant aspects, the largest of which was the land solution. Massive underground cities had been built near existing major above-ground cities. Each of these underground cities was connected by tunnels, and each was individually stocked with enough food, tools, and supplies to restore civilization in case a catastrophic earth disaster actually did happen.
Any increase in seismic activity above the usual background activity raised the alert level. There were also government agencies watching the world's oceans for changes. Satellites kept track of the earth's magnetic fields, the Sun, and changes in space and on other planets. Storm trackers watched shifting jet streams and weather patterns while an army of wildlife experts tracked changes in the animal kingdom. Anything that could be tracked for changes was being watched, if the event started then, an alert would sound across the globe, and this gigantic and costly plan for survival they called WPPC would be initiated.
Besides the Underground project that served as the land point of the five-point plan, there were also specially designed ships that represented the Waterborne plan. Nuclear-powered planes that could fly for years without refueling constituted the airborne aspect, and rockets that would take pods up to several secretly built space stations would serve as the space portion of the plan. Years of planning had gone into this project, and examples from all people groups had been specially chosen to survive the end of the world if it came to pass. Domesticated animals and lifeforms critical to the survival of mankind were also included, along with thousands of varieties of seeds. But it was reasoned by the elite think tanks worldwide that most living creatures would find some way to survive. After all, if this event had happened multiple times, there had been survivors, or the planet would have died. So for the final point, the assumption was made that there would be above-ground survivors, including human survivors, even without taking any extraordinary precautions ahead of time. Thus, there were also strategically placed supply storage facilities on the surface to enhance survivors' chances after the event. The object of the WPPC was not just to survive but to not be sent back into the stone age with only a random chance for survival.
In the last few days, the recent earthquake and volcanic activity increased the alert level from yellow to orange. Ice melts, energetic particle blasts from the Sun, ocean currents changing dramatically, and supercell storms popping up from nowhere added to the rising alert levels. There had also been mysterious bird die-offs, and now the number of animals being observed in the various wildlife preserves had started to diminish. Monkeys, cats, and even elephants had just begun to come up missing. Ranchers reported the disappearance of cattle and horses off of open ranges, along with jackrabbits and sage hens that were usually plentiful. There were plagues of mice in cities, but they were not the typical varieties you would expect to see. Officials were confused to see hundreds of field mice and other little-seen rodent varieties moving into local neighborhoods and menacing people inside their homes. Something was obviously changing now, and the world was just one step away from hitting the panic button and initiating the long-awaited WPPC plan to be put into motion.