The Human Xenocide

Chapter Twenty-Four - To Perm

“The fate of our nation depends on this.”  President Whattson told her in a serious tone from the side.  “Kill whatever is murdering those people and deliver the package.  If you fail the entire nation could be at risk.  We are in no position for a land-based invasion.”

Lilly turned the other way to look at the secret service man half expecting him to say something too.  He didn’t.  So instead she turned back to the president and stated, “I’ll try my best.”  She then turned to the general and it finally hit her.  They were trusting her to be the final defense against a meaningless invasion.  She was the final means to stopping a massive war.  She liked this power, a lot.  She wanted to become important and now the lives of millions depended on her, “I know you can’t take me there, too risky.  Just tell me where to start looking and I’ll gather my things and be on my way,” she said to the general then turned back to the president, “I won’t let you down, that’s a promise.”

She looked back at the general as he pulled a large map out from below the table and slammed it on the surface.  He pushed lightly on the rolled edges until it was opened enough for the small group to see the map.  It was a detailed map of Russia.  Several red X’s speckled the map, each X was a town attacked and killed by the monster.  The X’s started off in central Russia near the Southern border, the Kazakhstan boarder, and veered up in an Eastern direction just below Omsk.  All the X’s were very close together.  After about twelve X’s it made a sudden V turn North-West and the X’s grew farer apart. The trail went above Omsk and quickly skimmed the northern city limits of Yekaterinburg, it was as if the attacker had sped up but at the same time continued to attack towns at night.  The most recent X was narrowing in on the large city of Perm, “By the way this path dictates it should be somewhere within one hundred miles of Perm and coming up to it from the North-West at fairly high speeds,” the general stated after taking a good look at the map.

“So Perm it is then,” Lilly started standing up.

“Good luck.” President Whattson gave her one last smile and a weak salute.

Lilly smiled back and vanished.  She jumped for her room first.  She needed to gather her things and prepare for this undercover operation.

***

Zee had a fairly large whiteboard set up in the empty carpeted space between his oddly placed rooms.  It was lifted three feet off the ground and was about five feet tall.  The board also extended a good ten feet across.  On the board he had several countries marked starting with Russia.  After Russia was Egypt, next to Egypt but slightly below it were Libya, Sudan, and then Chad.  After those and on the same level as Egypt was Iraq. Finally slightly below Iraq was Iran.  Each of the seven countries had their own columns.  Each column had numbers in them aligned with numbers on the far left, days.  The very bottom of the five foot board had the word ‘Total.’ 

Russia started on the first day and had numbers varying from four thousand to six thousand every day after that.  Egypt started on the seventh day.  The numbers in Egypt started fairly low at just over two thousand five hundred.  On the eighth day Egypt’s number skyrocketed and small numbers around the hundreds appeared under the columns for Libya and Sudan.  By the tenth day Chad also had numbers in its column.  On the tenth day all four countries stabilized around four to six thousand daily.  On the eleventh day Iraq started brewing numbers and Iran followed slowly after. 

These numbers tracked the amount of kills Lilly’s ghouls committed each day since the first day in Russia.  For some reason he was interested in what was going on.  In the total row Russia had a staggering ninety-two thousand while Egypt had forty five thousand, Libya, Sudan, and Chad had varying numbers from twenty thousand to thirty thousand each. Iraq and Iran both had around thirty thousand each.  The number of days had crawled all the way down to twenty-one.  The overall total on the far right held about two hundred and seventy thousand.  Two hundred and seventy thousand dead because of Lilly’s actions, and he didn’t even think she knew what was going on.  That’s a lot of people for only three weeks.